Monkey the Cat Hunts for Dinner - <AUTHOR> http://benjaminmillam.com/cat-geek/monkey-the-cat-hunts-for-dinner/ <comment><USER2> There's a small typo in the title of that article, it should read _Urban cat makes human slave build contraption so he can play hunter whenever he wants and then have some food_

<comment><USER3> You remind me of this: "What if we are all just pawns in corn's clever strategy game, the ultimate prize of which is world domination?" \--Michael Pollan in [http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/michael_pollan_gives_a_plant_s_eye_view?language=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> But Don't Shoot the Dog! ;-)

[http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching- Training/dp/05...](http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Shoot-Dog-Teaching- Training/dp/0553380397)

This is actually a very fun read about conditioning - no matter if you have a cat or dog. I've read it quite a while ago, and I remember that conditioning cats is not that difficult, as long as you stick to positive rewards. Punishment doesn't work.

For those who think this will be abused for manupilating people - that's what we do all day no matter if we read this book or not. It's just the way you do it, and that probably won't change by reading this book. It will teach you a lot about your own behavior.

<comment><USER5> I've taken a chance and decided to trust you. So I've ordered this book, don't let me down random internet stranger!

<comment><USER6> Book recommendations from random hn users has changed my life. 4 hour body in particular.

For dog training I really like Michael Ellis from Leerburg.com. His free videos are really all you need, some of the paid dvds can be repetitive, but ultimately he keeps up with the latest trends and I think is amazing with dogs. Everyone has their own theory it seems though..

<comment><USER7> Would you recommend 4 hour body to someone who is generally put off by Ferriss' writing style and ego-centricity?

<comment><USER8> I've never read the book but searched for it on Amazon, "8,283 of 8,919 people found the following review helpful":

[http://www.amazon.com/review/RKBQAAIIRUO5X/ref=cm_cr_dp_titl...](http://www.amazon.com/review/RKBQAAIIRUO5X/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=030746363X&channel=detail- glance&nodeID=283155&store=books)

"(1) It takes more than 4 hours a month in the gym to have a great body. I'm sorry, it just does. Mr. Ferriss recommends performing 2-3 SETS, for a total of less than 30 reps, per WEEK, to get a great body. Ask any athlete, bodybuilder, trainer... not enough. Not even close."

"(2) Almost all the supplements recommended in 4HB have never been scientifically proven to do what Mr. Ferriss claims they do."

<comment><USER9> The first review is pretty terrible though. You don't need exercise to have a "great" body. Abs are made in the kitchen. It literally requires 0 hours at the gym to get to 10-15% body fat. Exercise helps burn more calories but it's still about consume less than you burn.

The reason why four hour body and other related diets work is mainly because proteins and fats are more filling than carbs and not as calorically dense so you throw yourself into a caloric deficit.

The rep argument is a red herring. Doing 40 reps on a 10 pound dumbbell is insignificant. Doing 10 reps on a 40lb weight is a workout all on its own.

Supplements like fish oil work great!

I read the book and I recommend it! It's like a good basics guide. If you want to learn more it get under 10 percent body fat you may want to read into the topic further (read into ketosis) but just as a

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome, but the training schedule seems overly complicated. One would think it would be easier to have the balls initially positioned so that they fall into the feeding mechanism at the touch of a feather; probably at a place where food used to be served, so the cats are likely to be there and search for food. A cat should be able to figure out the procedure after knocking the balls in accidentally a few times. After this, it would just be a matter of moving the balls gradually further and further away from the feeding apparatus over time.

<comment><USER11> Or just cover the balls in catnip at first to make the cat take an interest in them and realize what they're for.

<comment><USER12> That wouldn't work on the quarter or so of cats who are immune.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is super awesome.

About 5 years ago I built my own SSHable/Camera cat treat dispenser. We'd dump food on my cats head from work and laugh... it wasn't nearly as kind to the cat as this is.

</comment><comment><USER14> Using RFID to detect the presence of the balls feels like overkill. Why not a light sensor, or a hair trigger switch out of reach of the cat. Sure The cat can now be fed by finding random objects, but maybe the training of using the ball will stop the cat from figuring that out.

</comment><comment><USER15> Did anyone notice that the batteries powering the device are "9 Lives" brand?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eveready_Battery_Company#/medi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eveready_Battery_Company#/media/File:Eveready_9_lives_Super_Heavy_Duty_D_cell.JPG)

</comment><comment><USER16> (Unintentionally) misleading title. This is not about a monkey being hunted by a cat...

<comment><USER17> Confusing for a moment, sure, but not really misleading - 'The Monkey the Cat Hunts for Dinner' would've been that, without the leading 'the' the sensible expectation is that it's a cat name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> hmmm wonder if this actually is beneficial to the cat in any way? The theory is the cat is more 'actualized' because he is actually hunting his food. But this doesn't smell, taste, or behave like food.

Generally in animals the 'reward' is triggered at a sensual level. Meaning take sex, yes there is a sex drive and a very strong drive for 'actualization'. However if you remove the smell, taste, feel, visualization but kept the 'mounting' behavior it probably wouldn't satisfy the drive, as the satiation triggers are wired to the senses.

Basically, I think actually bother to hiding the food is going to satisfy the cat on a far more deeper primal level than training him to redeem food tokens. But maybe it will, interesting.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm trying to think of a useful thing to teach a cat, using this technique, that would be helpful at home.

<comment><USER20> Some people train their cats to use the toilet instead of a litter box, using similar methods. Less mess and no litter to buy.

<comment><USER21> I considered doing this with my cat, but from reading up on it, it sounds like its not less mess because cats don't understand the concept of aiming into the toilet... Maybe it depends on the size of the cat though?

I'm going to try teach my cat to fetch using clicker training. When she was a kitten, she used to fetch things I threw and then drop them at my feet.

<comment><USER22> I have strays from backyard that get to stay in when it is very nasty out. There guys are not trained but uncannily each has managed to somehow id the bathtub as the 'emergency place'.

<comment><USER20> Every cat I've ever had has been like this; if their litter box is full or for some other reason they don't want to use it, it's always the tub. I think it has something to do with the relative privacy the high bathtub walls afford them.

<comment><USER21> I've seen cats use the shower too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fun read but I'm really against keeping a cat inside all day, for most of its life.

Granted you may not have a choice, depending on your location. But generally I think more effort should be placed on slowly getting a kitten acclimated to the outside world than something like this. I've done it with all my cats, basically starting to let them outside around the time they are neutered.

The kitten will naturally take a very cautious approach as they slowly explore their environment. It's actually fascinating to watch as they slowly gain more confidence and move farther into the brush and edges of your yard/property (provided you have the space). Eventually getting into tree's and exploring up as well as out.

They are happier, they are healthier and they live longer. My first cat that I raised this way lived until 18.

<comment><USER24> > and they live longer.

Every source I can find indicates that, on average, strictly indoor cats live much longer than indoor/outdoor cats who in turn live much longer than strictly outdoor cats.

(My own experience aligns with this and further with the there being a much wider distribution in lifespans as you go further down the strictly indoor to strictly outdoor continuum.)

<comment><USER25> Do these sources include premature end of life from accident/injury/predation? It seems, at least intuitively, that these factors would significantly drag down life expectancy for outdoor cats. However, I think it would be useful to see the estimates with these factors excluded (noted of course) to just compare life expectancy assuming death from natural causes.

<comment><USER26> I don't know of any sources, but wouldn't injury and predation actually be natural causes for these outdoor cats? Saying that they shouldn't be counted because they "weren't natural" sounds a lot like the No True Scotsman fallacy. We don't tend to consider predation and injury as natural causes in humans mostly because we consider ourselves the apex predator so there's nothing seriously that can prey on us. And injuries in humans are typically caused by accidents and not our natural state; in a cat however they can get injured by the prey they're hunting or the environment without it necessarily being an accident which I would consider a natural cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That is one hard-to-parse title! :)

</comment><comment><USER28> 'Prey balls' with cat detection and evasion capabilities seem like a potential development of the idea, if it weren't so technically challenging.

<comment><USER29> I think this has already been accomplished by [http://getshru.com/](http://getshru.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I thought the article would be about a monkey hunted by a cat for dinner.

</comment><comment><USER27> That is one hard-to-parse title!

<comment><USER31> I was expecting to read about the unfortunate monkey some feline dined on.

</comment></comment><comment> norea-armozel My cat would just poop in my shoe if I tried to make her do anything. LOL

</comment><comment><USER32> don't feed kibble to your cat please.

<comment><USER33> I've heard both "don't use dry food, it causes issues" AND "don't use wet food, it causes issues" so... You're going to have to provide some citation for your opinion.

<comment><USER34> Wet food causes dental issues but isn't a problem with regular checkups unless your vet prescribes dry food to a cat especially prone to dental issues caused by wet food.

Dry food is tied to obesity due to being higher in carbs, and obesity -> higher chance of diabetes.

As for nutrition - high end dry food will always be better than cheap wet food but overall, from what I've gathered from many vets, is that wet food is better.

So I can see the argument for "wet food is taking better care of your cat" but, unless you notice your cat getting overweight, I don't think kibble could be considered harmful.

<comment><USER35> I thought the lack of any moisture in dry food can create other issues too?

<comment><USER34> Some studies cite that, although with small sample sizes (making the difference between 11% and 39% only a factor of 8-12 cats).

The often cited danger is urinary obstructions and studies like [0] that show wet canned food treats the condition. Another study [1] show it happens less frequently with cats who eat wet food as opposed to dry food. So many people make the conclusion that wet food prevents and treats a potentially fatal condition, therefore wet > dry.

I don't find either study entirely convincing, most vets and studies don't seem to cite dry food as the inherent problem, but rather free-eating cats, overweight, and indoor-only (lack of exercise specifically). (No citations this time, sorry. I don't keep all this stuff handy!)

When the studies themselves aren't blaming dry food (entirely) and vets don't seem to overwhelmingly condemn the use of kibble, I don't see reason to do so myself. I trust the studies and vets.

[0] [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10023397](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10023397)

[1] Paywall, but I think this is the study. [http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2014/03/12/16.4.DC1/JFM...](http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/suppl/2014/03/12/16.4.DC1/JFM_16_4_US.pdf)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple brings HDCP to a new aluminum MacBook near you - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/11/17/apple-brings-hdcp-to-a-new-aluminum-macbook-near-you <comment><AUTHOR> I love how you can be treated as a criminal even if you do the right thing and pay for it. And the MPAA wonders why there are so many people "stealing" movies?</comment>


Best Idea Wins - <AUTHOR> http://awealthofcommonsense.com/2017/12/best-idea-wins/ <comment><USER2> I'm sorry to have to rain on OP's parade, but this is wishful thinking.

First and foremost because "best" is highly subjective and will not be interpreted the same way depending on whom discuss the idea. In practice, "the idea of the guy that has decision power" wins. Or, in a more democratic setup, "the idea that makes consensus" wins.

As an example, take the Seinfeld joke described in the article. It is assumed that the joke was included because it was inherently good and everyone agreed to use it. But if you listen to the podcast carefully, it was actually included because Larry David found it funny and vetted it. Had he not liked it, it would not have made the score.

Same goes in technology. "Best idea" from a technological or scientific standpoint rarely wins. Many factor ranging from financial to political weigh in the final decision and what gets implemented is often subpar when looked through the technologist lenses.

<comment><USER3> Cranston didn't suggest anything major that would require a budget discussion or a technical change about the scene. The recipe was the same, he just spiced up the meal. On the second part, the author continues with Youtube in the same way, spicing up the Internet to get people more entertained.

It is the culture that allows people to "spice up" an idea what makes the difference. Such small changes can bring high value with very little effort, which is referred as "mastering the best that others have figured out". "Best idea" here is not something that would require political maneuver or more resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People here are reacting to the headline. The point doesn't seem to be that the best idea _does_ win, but that the best idea _should_ win. It's about listening to other people's ideas.

>As Charlie Munger once said, "I believe in the discipline of mastering the best that other people have figured out. I don't believe in just sitting down and trying to dream it all up yourself. Nobody's that smart."

It really is a discipline to hear and prioritize other people's ideas. Our egos are big and we have our own ideas going. Putting ourselves aside when we hear a better idea is hard. Fostering environments where that happens is even harder.

</comment><comment><USER5> To state the obvious, you can't listen to every idea. At least not all the time. That would be very uneffective.

It's better to build some stereotypes which you revisit from time to time, and build your network of people who you trust from a pool of people that passed this stereotypes "filter".

Of course a good idea can come from everywhere, but I don't think Cranston went to routinely ask the lightworkers, cleaning personnel, or secretaries for good comedy ideas, after that. He was still more likely to get good input from the people who specialize in comedy.

<comment><USER6> When a lighting guy gives you a comedy idea, many people would tell him to keep to lighting and leave the comedy to the comedians. Cranston's point is that by not using a stereotype filter to ignore the lighting guy he ended up with a better scene.

He doesn't have to seek out advice from the lighting guy, he just has to be in a culture where the lighting guy feels comfortable sharing if he happens to have a good idea.

<comment><USER5> However, more generally, if everybody wants to share ideas with you all the time, you _have_ to apply a filter. It's just that in this particular situation, there was no need, and no polite way, to apply a filter.

That in the end he ended up with a good idea is just nice.

<comment><USER6> There was an extremely easy polite way to apply the filter. Just don't use the idea because it came from a lighting guy.

<comment><USER5> That's not "applying a filter", though. The time listening is already spent. (But yeah, if it isn't immediately clear that it's a good idea, I'm sure there is less incentive for a comedian to invest the time to try and understand it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's not the best idea, it's the last "good" idea used.

For example, Google may not be the last search engine, nor may it be the best search engine, but for the average person in the US, it's the last "good" search engine they have used.

<comment><USER8> Read the article. It's not, despite the title, claiming that the best idea wins as a generalisation about what products/companies succeed.

The article is about the importance of creating a culture where the best ideas are adopted, regardless of who/where they came from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Folks are (rightly) focusing on the descriptor "best." Best needs a specified metric, or it's meaningless. This always annoys me in internet discussions/arguments about "the best X" where nobody specifies a criterion for "best."

The best tool to drive in a nail is a hammer. The best tool to drive in a screw is a screwdriver. Neither one is generically "best" without context.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think not the best idea but best executed idea wins.</comment>


Towards a Type System for Containers and AWS Lambda to Avoid Failures [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://christophermeiklejohn.com/publications/hotedge-2018-containers-preprint.pdf <comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the point of this paper is?

* It talks a lot about containers, but this is really just contracts across systems, whether they run in containers or not. So not sure why the word "container" is necessary.

* It says "towards a type system", but then just muses about IDL/REST/Thrift, says "we need cross-system stuff ... so we should use better types", ...but...what does that look like? There are vague assertions that "we've done this", but I don't see any description of what that actually looks like.

* The Zookeeper/Kafka example, while apt, I'm not sure if "having a cross-system type system" is exactly right, as Zookeeper is purposefully/validly ambivalent about what its clients encode within it's file system, so whether the replication data is F/F+1/whatever is meaningless to Zookeeper. So to me the solution is not "cross-system type system" where Zookeeper becomes aware of Kafka's invariants, it's just Kafka itself correctly/internally interpreting the Zookeeper data. If that means it's an Either[ValidCluster,InvalidCluster] within the Kafka "ClusterInfoApi" abstraction, that's fine, but that's not something the Zookeeper API/IDL is going to care/know about.

* You're never going to get all networked services to agree on the One True networking format/One True type system/IDL, so why even muse about this as a possible approach?

Disclaimer I don't read academic papers on a regular basis.

<comment><USER3> "Towards" papers are typically workshop papers which give a preview of ongoing work, usually by PhD students.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is what we've done at StdLib [1] with FaaSlang [2].

FaaSlang uses static analysis and a superset of ESDoc comments to infer types for the API interface to serverless functions on our system. This allows for automatic type coercion from query parameters, automatic error checking, and more - all caked in at the gateway layer before a function is executed.

Zero configuration; just write comments the way you normally would. It's almost a healthy midpoint between TypeScript and JavaScript, operating above the runtime, but theoretically applicable to any language run within a function container.

[1] [https://stdlib.com](https://stdlib.com)

[2] [https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang/](https://github.com/faaslang/faaslang/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting.

I just went through this a bit and it doesn't appear that the specification allow for polymorphism in the type system. Am I missing something here?

If that's true, it doesn't seem to address the issues highlighted by the paper, although does handle simple type checking across interfaces of primitive types.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be clear, it seems you have basic coercions (a la C, or ad-hoc polymorphism) but no general support for subtype polymorphism nor parametric polymorphism.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, I have to sign up for stdlib? Do I have to pay for it? (Never got that far, and the fact I have to sign up is quite misleading for something called stdlib.)

<comment><USER4> You have to pay for APIs / Functions that the individual vendor charges for (if the functions are not free) - for example, MessageBird charges $0.005 per SMS sent [1] using their sms.create function.

You also pay a nominal fee per ms of compute used when somebody uses an API _you've_ built.

But you can get started for free - $5.00 of credits included that should cover up to 100,000 requests, if you're really experimenting feel free to message our team (my email is in my profile here, I think).

[1] [https://stdlib.com/@messagebird/lib/sms](https://stdlib.com/@messagebird/lib/sms)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've not nearly as much experience developing these systems, so getting started without types was a bit daunting. I wrapped my Lambda functions in protobufs and used a shared common definition repository. Then the lambda services support either the JSON rep of the protos or full-on binary protos, and the type checking happens on both ends. Curious what y'all think of this as a solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're trying to highlight that most of the work you're doing to make sure the interfaces are well defined and match up manually can easily be done by a type checker, as you would have if you wrote this as a single application.

<comment><USER6> How are you going to handle updates and migrations of types? Something I've been thinking about in terms of dependently typed APIs is versioning and migration - but more at the code ecosystem level than in terms of running systems that can't be turned off. But there is kind of a similarity there. You can think of the ecosystem of written programs as kind of a distributed system. Would be nice to give library authors the tools to more gracefully migrate their consumers code in a type directed way, and to highlight potential problems prior to deployment, but this could equally apply in a distributed computing context.

<comment><USER7> Welcome to Erlang/OTP "releases" where the folklore is that Ericsson engineers spent as much time testing releases (read: state migration code) as they did application code.

<comment><USER6> Interesting. Yeah, from what I understand the Erlang philosophy was to just throw out the idea of a type system and deal with faults dynamically, which is understandable given the time the language was created. But given what we've learned about type systems in the intervening years, it would be super nice to leverage a type system for this, and greatly reduce the testing overhead.

I'd love to see this in an event sourcing context too. This paper, "The Dark Side of Event Sourcing: Managing Data Conversion", seems to hint at there being some interesting algebraic foundations to splitting and merging streams, adding new fields, etc: [http://files.movereem.nl/2017saner- eventsourcing.pdf](http://files.movereem.nl/2017saner-eventsourcing.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm really happy more work is being done in this space! Also nice to see nods to various attempts from the past - it's important we learn from their failings, but also their successes. It's too easy to get stuck in the mindset of "Ugh CORBA" and "noes, SOAP", without being able to see an opportunity there. Let's be persistent and figure this stuff out!

</comment><comment> gm-conspiracy I am having SOAP-related WSDL flashbacks.

<comment><USER8> I would take SOAP/WSDL over barely documented restful APIs and JSON...

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, popular opinion disagrees and that's part of the motivation for this work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like the premise of the paper, but the motivating examples feel really weak to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Care to extrapolate? We tried hard to take industry use cases.

<comment><USER9> kafka/zk bug: I just don't think this is a compelling example of an underspecified interface being to blame. In my view, it's squarely on kafka to correctly implement its replication policy, and that likely isn't something I'd want to bake into an interface layer at the system/network boundary. Also, kafka is a fairly foundational infrastructure-y component from a modern "serverless" perspective, and its interface w/ zk is critical — it just doesn't exemplify the type of pain you see from underspecified interfaces in large microservice deployments. Unlike between tons of small containers, the kafka/zk interface is worth scrutinizing and warrants a ton of manual testing and verification.

lambdas/kafka: from my perspective, this one is kind of conflating the value of Options with the value of a typed IDL with some notion of generics baked in. It's not clear to me that Option[Number] is what I'd want in this scenario, maybe I just want to reject anything that doesn't validate to a Float — but I think that's kind of tangential to whether or not generics in a more conventional sense would be useful.

edit: I guess I would have liked to see examples that show how this would help with discoverability, code generation, distributed tracing, monitoring, verifying large systems of microservices. It's a nice position to start with though -- are you planning on a follow up or an implementation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "CORBA, while successful" ....

<comment><USER11> What're they going to say? "CORBA was a giant shitpile and created tire fires for several years but since this is an academic paper, we have to present historical context for our ideas"...

<comment><USER12> Your CORBA experience depended on how you used it. If you used the IDL and messaging and plugged in your own backend it could work quite well. People are still reinventing new IDLs to this day.

<comment><USER13> People have been reinventing IDLs since forever and a day.

S-expressions are the oldest serialization format that I know of. ASN.1 is a fairly ancient IDL that was used for RPC back in the early 80s (ISODE/ROSE). There's ONC RPC, with XDR as the IDL. There's DCE RPC (and MS-RPC). And many many many many others. There's tons of serialization formats, and they all tend to have one or more related sort of RPC frameworks, ad-hoc or otherwise. Perl5 has several, no?

This is the space of NIH.

Take protocol buffers. It's supposed to be an anti-ASN.1, but it's actually remarkably similar to ASN.1's DER (distinguished encoding rules), which means it has lots of the same mistakes. It's all very sad.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you actually read the paper, we talk about ASN.1 and why it's insuffient for what we are doing. That's clearly stated, and it's clear you didn't read that paragraph.

<comment><USER12> If you want people to be supportive and care about your work, this is not the way to go about it.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for noting this. I was hoping my lengthy reply would get this point across more subtly, but maybe a more explicit note will be better.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Three Layer Causal Hierarchy [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~kaoru/3-layer-causal-hierarchy.pdf <comment><USER2> Context: [http://andrewgelman.com/2016/07/07/30608/#comment-283490](http://andrewgelman.com/2016/07/07/30608/#comment-283490)

</comment><comment><USER3> I still don't know how to convince myself that causal relationships exist at all and that everything isn't just things like correlations, that would go into level 1 in this hierarchy if Pearl's.

<comment><USER4> I'll try...

Rain causes people to be wet. This implies that if we were to God-like stop the rain, people wouldn't be wet. But if we were to prevent people from being wet (by buying them an umbrella), that wouldn't stop the rain. This is not something you can infer from correlations alone.

<comment><USER5> That's far too little logic to be a counterexample here. Rain correlates with a lot of things. If you were to stop _all of those things_ , you could surely stop the rain as well. For instance, if rain is correlated with clouds, and you get rid of clouds, you'll get rid of rain. The fact is, there does not exist this thing you've called 'rain' that causes people to be wet and does nothing else relevant to your argument.

There's plenty of reason to believe that causal relationships are structural simplifications of correlative ones. We just don't have any great formalizations of them.

<comment><USER6> > If you were to stop all of those things, you could surely stop the rain as > well.

By the way, this is not true in general. Suppose B…F are sampled from Boolean variables with bias 0.5. A Boolean circuit like A = (sum(B,C,D,E,F)>3) + (not B and not C and… not F). A is correlated with all of its causes B through F. However, stopping all of its causes, causes A to turn on.

> If you were to stop all of those things, you could surely stop the rain as > well.

But, you typically can't intervene everywhere. For example, you may not have any power over the gardener who normally turns the sprinkler on. The point of interventions (like turning a sprinkler on) is that you can reason about what would happen.

<comment><USER5> "B...F" are not all the causes of A. You forgot to include the relation "f(B...F)", whose existence is also strongly correlated with A, as per the entire justification for using that '=' symbol the way you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is really well-written, so I looked up the author, and no surprise it's Judea Pearl.</comment>


C-Reduce, a C program reducer - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/csmith-project/creduce <comment><USER2> John Regehr gave a presentation to the Bay Area Rust user's group recently about his work. Since then we've started applying C-Reduce to Rust bugs and it has been working surprisingly well. If you've got a curly-brace language then give it a try.

<comment><USER3> John's talk was amazing. Watch it here: [https://air.mozilla.org/rust-meetup- may-2014/](https://air.mozilla.org/rust-meetup-may-2014/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've tried using this to test my tests— take some code that has (presumably comprehensive tests) and C-reduce it to the smallest program that passes the test... Then go see what important code it removed and fix the tests until it doesn't pass.

Kinda fun, but tedious because it ruthlessly trashes the formatting, so matching up the before and after code is hard.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like you're effectively using it as a test coverage tool to find code paths that aren't being tested, would that be an accurate summary?

<comment><USER4> Not quite, because code can still get run by a test but not be tested.

This isn't all that interesting to do except on code that already has ~100% branch coverage. (Since obviously any unexecuted code is going to get removed, and lcov is a lot less work to use :) )

There aren't really any good mutation testing tools for C— e.g. tools to test your tests by breaking your code and making sure your tests fail. C-reduce can be used as a limited kind of mutation test— one that only tests reductions.

One nice thing is that for code with 100% coverage any successful reduction is quite often a shortcoming in the tests or a missed optimization in the code, which isn't something you can say for most other kinds of mutations. (except for the fact that c-reduce does a lot of formatting garbling that doesn't really change the code)

<comment><USER5> Ah, nice. So it's more like a "semantic coverage" tool, i.e. finding the code paths that don't have any effect on the output.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FYI the first bug mentioned in their paper has to do with bitfield signedness/sign extension, or in this particular example, the lack thereof. (In my experience, bitfields in C are more trouble than they're worth...)

The demogroup Farbrausch wrote a code-reduction tool for a slightly different purpose, but with a similar motivation: [http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming- for-...](http://fgiesen.wordpress.com/2012/04/08/metaprogramming-for-madmen/)

This also reminds me of the joke [http://github.com/mattdiamond/fuckitjs](http://github.com/mattdiamond/fuckitjs) which does almost the exact opposite --- reduces code until it does _not_ have any errors.

</comment><comment><USER7> See also Delta Debugging for a line-based (non-syntax-aware) version of this. Very useful for cutting down test cases to size. I'm enthusiastic that c-reduce is threaded.

[https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/dd/](https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/dd/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Here is one of the papers relating to the project: [http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/pldi12-preprint.pdf](http://www.cs.utah.edu/~regehr/papers/pldi12-preprint.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting. I was working on something quite similar when I was in PayPal. Here is a prototype: [https://github.com/anupamsr/ut- test](https://github.com/anupamsr/ut-test)

Then the powers that be came and took all the credit. Since then I haven't touched it.

<comment><USER10> While I enjoy the sentiment, ;) one cannot have riders on GPLd code, it either is or isn't.

<comment><USER9> Why? The code is GPLd for those who are allowed to use it. It is not free as in beer. But once you get the beer, you will get to know the recipe.

But if you think there is some other license that better expresses my... sentiment... you are welcome :)

(I know, it sounds kiddish. It was a long time ago and I felt really burned because PayPal management, from lower to top, is seriously fscked ethically. It took me more than a year to get interested in creating something new.)

<comment><USER11> I believe you cannot add restrictions on top of the GPL, which is one of the reasons OpenSSL is not compatible with the GPL for instance.

As such, if you license your code under the GPL anybody at paypal can use and modify it under the terms of the GPL, as per the terms of the license.

What you can do is have a dual license "as long as the combination of restrictions on the work as a whole does not put any additional restrictions beyond what GPL allows"[1].

That being said, I'm not a lawyer, so I might have misinterpreted the wording of the license.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Com...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License#Compatibility_and_multi- licensing)

<comment><USER10> Correct. One cannot have GPL + some other stuff because it isn't GPL at that point and becomes a huge mess. Imagine trying to track all of the exceptions!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


YC Founders at Work Series: Reddit interview tomorrow at 1:00pm PDT - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.posterous.com/yc-founders-at-work-series-reddit-interview-t <comment><USER2> I hope she asks him about his favorite muffin.

<comment><USER3> Will you be talking about your Kiva/social entrepreneurship experiences in this interview?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Question Wish List:

Is Reddit inspired in anyway from Hacker News?

Is Reddit Profitable?

Any acquisition offers?

<comment><USER3> 1) I believe it's the other way around

2) Assuming yes but since Conde Nast is part of a private company, who knows how Reddit contributes to the income statement.

3) They were acquired by Conde Nast a few years back.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the answers rjett.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What spectator sport would AI compete in? - <AUTHOR> Many people have watched AI compete with humans in Chess, Go, and Dota 2. Do you think we'd ever be willing to watch AI compete with AI? If so, what would the game be? <comment><USER2> Auto racing, both all-AI and mixed with humans.

To all you self-driving car makers, put up or shut up. Until you can best human racing safety, I'll never buy or ride in a self driving car.

<comment><USER3> I doubt you'll see mixed human/AI racing.

Even if you could trust the robot cars to run along side human driven cars, you can't trust the human drivers around the AI opponents.</comment></comment>


Lessons Learned While Raising $33 Million In Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/11791/9-Quick-Tips-Learned-While-Raising-33-Million-In-Venture-Capital.aspx

<comment><USER2> All good advice, especially #7

Also, keep in mind that most lawyers that deal with startups are open to a deferred compensation upon successful funding type deal. (and they might even become your angels, or connect you to other investors).</comment>


The Abolition of Work - <AUTHOR> http://deoxy.org/endwork.htm

<comment><USER2> This is my favorite political essay, ever. I've been a fan of it for ages, and re-read it often. Sure, it's not completely rational, but it _raises the bar_. If you can't answer the questions Bob Black raises, you really haven't thought through your beliefs well enough.</comment>


10 Reasons You Should Design And Code - <AUTHOR> https://mackenziechild.me/10-reasons-design-code/

<comment><USER2> I will add this to my list of top 10 useless advice articles. Useless in the sense that it does not offer any actionable next steps.</comment>


Venezuela Blocks Twitter as Opposition Stage New Protests - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-02-14/twitter-says-venezuela-blocks-its-images-amid-protest-crackdown <comment><USER3> It has begun. The president has prohibited protests, and went on TV calling his supporters against protestors, claiming they are against democracy and that he's suffering a coup-d'etat. A restraining order was issued against the opposition candidate. He's going full dictator now.

Expect similar social unrest, and the same tactic from the government (blaming the protesters as violent, calling then "right-wing fascists") in the rest of latin america as their economies start tanking as deep as Venezuela. Argentina is on the brink of it. Brazil is 4-6 years from it if it keeps being brainwashed and electing incompetent, corrupt left-wingers.

<comment><USER4> Maduro declared all protests illegal then a few hours later called for his supporters to protest against his enemies. This guys is literally destroying a nation.

I agree with you on Argentina but Brazil is probably a different story - <USER2> as corrupt and not as crazy. Peru and Ecuador are much closer to Venezuela's and Argentina's situation.

The amazing thing is how long these situations can go on. The combination of the survival skills of millions of people and their desire to avoid civil war along the lines of Syria mean this can continue for a very long time.

<comment><USER5> Nobody would thought Argentina was on the brink of it 2 years ago. Brazil is a mess.

<comment><USER6> Argentina has been courting disaster in one form or another for at least 20 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the downsides of centralized services like Twitter. Reminds me of Tim Berners-Lee's call to re-decentralize the web [http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim- berners-l...](http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-02/06/tim-berners-lee- reclaim-the-web)

</comment><comment><USER8> They also forced the cable operators to take the only TV channel actually informing about the protests off the air (NTN24).

Right now twitter is working normally, but the govt keeps running these small tests, taking websites offline, in preparation for a complete blackout since the only way to find out right now what is going on is through the internet.

</comment><comment><USER9> Some images from the protest:

[http://imgur.com/a/zj4J9](http://imgur.com/a/zj4J9)

Dead people in this one:

[https://imgur.com/gallery/4GgOL](https://imgur.com/gallery/4GgOL)

</comment><comment><USER10> Maybe this would be a good opportunity for university students over there to test out a network like Freenet for communicating? FMS, Frost, or Freemail could be used for messaging back and forth in place of e-mails and social networks. A couple people could build a jSite for news stories/pictures/videos. I don't think groups of students would have that hard of a time adding each other as peers under darknet mode. The docs make it pretty easy to switch over [1].

If they can't talk freely to one-another over emails or popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter... maybe they shouldn't use them.

[1] [https://freenetproject.org/documentation.html](https://freenetproject.org/documentation.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> I am surprised about reading this at HN before than Venezuelan press. I hope there is not censorship at the level too.

<comment><USER12> If they're censoring Twitter, don't you think they'd try to censor domestic media as well?

<comment><USER11> They would have to shutdown the whole press (not that they haven't done that before), but the website is still there and still publishing opposition friendly news

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is why we need to use decentralized alternatives to our most popular services, in this case Twister (P2P Twitter alternative):

[http://twister.net.co/](http://twister.net.co/)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you know any Venezuelans, tell them about Tor.

[https://www.torproject.org/](https://www.torproject.org/)

<comment><USER8> Yes I have been spreading Tor for a couple of days now. I started in my office and friends. Last night one of the biggest Venezuelan twitter accounts retweeted me too, so many people are aware now.

I need to find a similar solution for mobile phones since most people here access twitter using the phones. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER13> Have a look at Orbot.

[https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/](https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/)

It is Tor on Android devices.

<comment><USER8> I thought that was only for using the web on phones, but I just saw that it also works with Twitter and any app that supports proxies. Thanks!

This is one of those times when I wish there was a simple, secure messaging app for everyone. I don't know if apps like whisper or threema are 100% safe so I'm wary about recommending them.

<comment><USER13> If you are looking for a secure desktop IM client, look at Pidgin with OTR.

[https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_main](https://securityinabox.org/en/pidgin_main)

For Android, I had probably trust anything by Moxie. Plus, you don't need to trust him - it's open source. Not that you have to verify it, but it's a good chance it's more secure than closed-source products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Since commenters have already mentioned Tor, Freenet, Twister, and Tim Berners-Lee's idea of re-decentralizing the web: [https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative- internet](https://github.com/redecentralize/alternative-internet)

</comment><comment><USER15> I know it's failed everywhere else in the world, but maybe internet censorship will save _me_!

<comment><USER16> I know it's failed everywhere else in the world, but maybe Socialism/Communism will work for us!

<comment><USER17> The problem with this idea, is the implication that Capitalism hasn't failed people many places in the world already.

<comment><USER5> "Capitalism" is not a system. Capitalism is life itself.

The system can be more socialistic or more free-marketist, that's the only choice. And the more socialistic have failed more.

<comment><USER17> > "Capitalism" is not a system. Capitalism is life itself.

Of course it is a system. Just as feudalism is a system. It's a way in which to organize distribution of abstracted wealth. You might claim that it's a consequence of industrialization (and still be wrong, but at least make sense).

Would you characterize the organization of the native North Americans as a capitalist society, before the arrival of Europeans?

<comment><USER5> Capitalism is just private property and voluntary contracts. It's impossible to untie life from that.

Feudalism is a system, but it was built into capitalism. Feudal lords had land as their property, they made voluntary contracts of their vassals: I'll protect you and give you some land, you'll give some of your production to me. There was also trade, merchants et cetera.

This applies to everything. The Native North Americans had private property and various kinds of contracts -- which probably involved some communal property and other stuff.

When there's some entity exercising coercion (non-voluntary contracts), that entity is the State and there is socialism.

<comment><USER17> > Capitalism is just private property

Agreed. In particular, ownership of the means of production, land and natural resources (and now extended to ownership of ideas, information and data [eg: gene sequences that have been "discovered"]).

> and voluntary contracts.

I don't think we agree on what "voluntary" means.

> It's impossible to untie life from that.

"Life"? Are you trying to say that property isn't a social construct? How is the concept of property relevant outside of a society?

> The Native North Americans had private property

"What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth, for the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs only to him?" -Massasoit

"We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?" -Sealth

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Its beautiful how anonymous groups from everywhere specially from south america are supporting us with the "tango down" operation, see #opvenezuela.

</comment><comment><USER19> Where are the champions of democracy when we need them most?

</comment><comment><USER20> But haven't Americans assassinate Hugo Chavez? Blocking the twitter seems to be a necessary step to stop further influences from capitalistic sides.

<comment><USER12> Is this sarcastic?

<comment><USER21> No, idiots really think Hugo Chavez was incapable of dying without the help of Americans

<comment><USER17> Assassinating elected presidents is so 1970s. Much better to corrupt the bureaucracy...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


In U.S. Jails, a Constitutional Clash Over Air-Conditioning - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/us/in-us-jails-a-constitutional-clash-over-air-conditioning.html <comment><USER2> I suspect this is an area where both liberals and conservatives will be proven hypocritical. (Full disclosure: I consider myself fairly liberal.)

Background: Air conditioning is a luxury in most parts of the world. Even in some developed, relatively wealthy parts of the world air conditioning is not universal. When I visit Malaysia and Singapore the houses I visit only have A/C in the bedrooms, and only for sleeping. The daytime temperature inside easily reaches the mid-90s. And these houses are owned by people with first- world wealth, some in their 70s and 80s with typical ailments and conditions. The same state of affairs exists commercially--plenty of restaurants lack AC, including restaurants frequented by the wealthy. As long as you have a fan you quickly adapt. I suspect many places will never see the same level of ubiquitous air conditioning Americans enjoy because it hasn't always become as powerful of a status symbol.

(Also, A/C isn't all its cracked to be. Comfort is much more malleable than you'd think. Like most Americans I used to only drink cold water. After adapting to some Asian locales where you typically drink tepid and even warm water with your meal, if not piping hot tea, I could not longer even stomach drinking cold water. It's also bad for your teeth. I now prefer my Pellegrino at room temperature ;)

Why will it expose hypocrisy? Because liberals argue that the standard for cruel & unusual punishment should be measured by reference to not only domestic norms, but also international norms, and especially the norms of other modern nations. By that standard, lack of A/C doesn't even come close to being cruel & unusual, except in the most exceptional of individual cases. It couldn't even be considered any kind of punishment, certainly not in the Deep South. I grew up in NW Florida--Singapore and Malaysia are at least as bad.

OTOH, conservatives argue the standard should be measured only by reference to domestic norms. While not all conservative interpretations reference contemporary norms, many do. The contemporary norm in the U.S. is (and has been for decades) that A/C is absolutely necessary for a civilized existence.

We regularly hear stories about heatstroke every year and assume that the elderly are completely incapable of living without A/C. In our collective imagination it follows that lacking A/C must somehow be unhealthy even for fit folk, especially considering how uncomfortable most of us feel in the heat. I won't be surprised if and when I hear some conservatives make reference to norms in other countries when discussing the necessity for A/C. They'd have to, because most Americans think of lacking A/C as some kind of punishment. And even if that punishment doesn't rise to cruel & unusual, it would clearly be easier for conservative pundits to persuade by reference to international norms rather than trying to explain why A/C is punishment but not cruel punishment. It's too easy to counter the punishment-but-not-cruel-punishment argument, as a rhetorical matter, by appealing to our notions of healthy & safety. And those notions are pretty twisted.</comment>


Ask HN: HN Alternatives? - <AUTHOR> I love HN.
But HN is so news oriented it doesn't give me the kind of hacker/entrepreneur community that I'm envisioning.
What are some other sites where hackers/entrepreneur go to just to ...
- discuss early stage startup ideas
- brainstorm implementations and solutions
- give each other feedback on prototypes
... as suppose to commenting on news? I guess like a forum?
Reading news gets old after a while and makes me feel like I'm just a follower not a leader.
I'm planning to start a web community if there isn't one. I did a survey to see if people would be interested here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1358654
But that post quickly got drown out by the noon news flood, which is part of the problem that I'm talking about.
(P.S. I do go to real-life meetups of hackers/founders. Those are great but scarce. The only good one I have been to so far in the Bay Area is "hackers and founders". And they don't even meet that often in San Francisco.) <comment><USER2> I love browsing through a tons of different subreddits that have now matured and grown very interesting. In decreasing order of interest to me:

<http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/longtext/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/PhilosophyofScience/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/cogsci/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/math/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/compsci/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/shamelessplug/>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/Freethought/>

Not all of these subreddits are busy but it doesn't matter. I have over 50 hand-selected subreddits and even though I removed all of the popular subreddits (reddit.com, politics, pics etc.), I always see very interesting articles. And the number of comments in each article is usually between 10-50, kinda like HN.

If any of the subreddit starts to get too popular and mainstream, usually 2-3 new subreddits popup that are more specific and interesting. Once a week I spend a few minutes looking for new interesting subreddits. <http://www.reddit.com/r/newreddits/> helps with that too.

If you really want to start a web-community, just ask for mod permissions on a few subreddits that interest you. I'd much rather click once to join a subreddit and view its articles during my regular reddit browsing than go to whole another site. I wish HN was available as a subreddit. I would never have to go to another news site.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+...](http://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade+longtext+programming+PhilosophyofScience+cogsci+startups+math+compsci+SomebodyMakeThis+browsers+gamedev+shamelessplug+Freethought)

This will aggregate all of those subreddits in to a single view.

<comment><USER4> wow this looks surprisingly like hacker news, good choice, chime!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've started going back to reddit, the subreddits seem to do a pretty good job of staying on-topic these days.

Other than that, <http://allyourstartuparebelongto.us/> looks like it might be a promising alternative (although I hate the domain name with a passion).

If you like the ISV space, The Business of Software forums are good: <http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz>

I would like something close to HN from 2 or 3 years ago if anyone happens to find it:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20071031003304/http://news.ycombi...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071031003304/http://news.ycombinator.com/)

<comment><USER6> If you want the HN of 3 years ago, <http://allyourstartuparebelongto.us/> is for you. I'm looking for a better domain name. Suggestions are welcome. I've been trying to get startup.co and techstartu.ps, but so far no luck.

The submission/banning criteria is actionable startup advice for tech startup founders. Relevant tech is OK as long as it directly relates to or is obviously useful to startups. No news. And no politics, economics, science, etc. unless it meets the startup criteria.

The site is running open source reddit, so there is ample opportunity to hack it as well. I've done a few minor things, and I plan to add email notifications as well. Feel free to fork reddit on github and play around.

<comment><USER7> tartups.com is available, so you can do what delicious did and have s.tartups.com

<comment><USER8> Though without the s, tartups.com has some pretty bad connotations.

<comment><USER9> And "Hacker News" doesn't?

<comment><USER8> Not to its target audience, no =).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a (almost)first-time, solo entrepreneur who is bootstrapping (yes I have almost everything going against me!), I would really value a community/forum like this.

There are times when I'd like to discuss things, seek support, and learn from what others are doing in a more casual setting. HN is great for learning but as a community for informal discussion, it seems just a tad heavyweight.

<comment><AUTHOR> We have exactly the same problem. (I'm a solo bootstrapper too).

It sounds like I should just go ahead and start this entrepreneur forum that I'm envisioning.

<comment><USER11> no don't do that. if you are solo, you need to be focussed on what you are building. Creating something of HN scale would consume you and if you just want a community for few people, just add them to a mailing list or something.

<comment><USER12> This particular line of discussion prompted me to create a subreddit for us solo founders. Check it out at <http://www.reddit.com/r/solostartups/> if you'd like to join in. I may be the only person posting there, but maybe others in the same boat I'm in will join in as well and we can all support each other through running a startup (or side project) all alone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a little off topic. But I was browsing this thread (and enjoying it per usual), and then I realized that the voting system doesn't have to be one- dimensional. Imagine voting on a 2- or 3-dimensional axis. In this case, one might want to 'vote' towards an idea. Like say:

        [Good idea]

                     [Ignorance]

                [Mistake]

     [Disagree with idea]

It would be more difficult to represent the frontpage, etc. Basically, things would cluster based on 'goals' or axes or what have you. But it might make reading things even more easy. It would be sort of tagging meets voting (but not really 'subject tagging' a la blogs or news websites, but 'response tagging').

The cool (and time-saving) thing would be that you could drift towards response tags that interest you as a reader. Per HN topic. And per HN globally.

Anyway, just an idea if anyone is thinking of experimenting with a new HN....

Ideally, I think you'd make the system as bottom-up as possible. There wouldn't be a set list of 'response tags' or 'vote tags', but there would be commonly-used ones that were readily accessible. Anyway, semantic-voting-ish.

</comment><comment><USER14> After almost four years here, I've definitely felt recently that HN has jumped the shark. I'm also looking for alternatives. allyourstartuparebelongto.us looks promising.

<comment><USER15> I agree that HN has jumped the shark. As an example case, I dare you to try to express an opinion on HN which does not toe the party line.

And for those of you about to down-vote this comment: where are the articles pointing out the problems with HN, where are the articles showing the flaws in Lisp, where are the articles which denounce venture-capital-funded startups as the snake-oil of the modern age?

"But those positions are _wrong_!", the puppeteers cry. Really? Last time I checked, questioning conventional wisdom is what made the modern western world possible.

<comment><USER16> >Where are the articles showing the flaws in lisp?

Easy. Worse is better:

<http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>

<comment><USER17> The source:

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html>

I was at the OOPSLA (+- a few years of 2002) where Gabriel denounced being a programmer and claimed to be a "code poet"... Looking at dreamsongs it looks like he's mostly followed through on that statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are you going to the "new" posts and upvoting the topics you feel deserve to be on the front page?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I don't really see how this solves my problem though.

The design of HN is news oriented, not discussion or community oriented. And because it doesn't have categories, when the amount of submission reaches a certain size, up-voting "new" posts has marginal effect compares to random floods of submissions.

A year and half ago, I was reading every "new" post, because I wanted to be fair, but it's just not feasible right now.

<comment><USER19> A phpBB-like forum would be great. I think you should just go ahead and start it. I'd use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If you don't plan to monetize and brand that forum, I think subreddit is the way to go.

<comment><USER21> A Stackexchange site might be too. It seems the main difference b/t the two is that the Reddit/HN format is oriented submitting links for discussion and pithy comments, whereas SE is oriented around submitting questions for specific answers and collective problem-solving. The latter might be more what the OP is looking for.

<comment><USER12> I prefer the subreddit approach, mostly because I subscribe to the subreddit and see new stuff there in addition to all my other reddits, without having to hit an extra site. Mixergy's community (FoundersMix) is great, but I don't care so much for the StackOverflow engine for general discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Start a Stackexchange site with like-minded HN folks?

[http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack- exchange-...](http://blog.stackexchange.com/post/518474918/stack-exchange-2-0)

And don't forget good ol' Slashdot. Alot of the old trolls moved on the new hotness social media sites.

<comment><USER22> There's already startups.com (but it doesn't cater to the same HN group). The problem with SE sites is they are geared more to solving problems and less about having a dialog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting that this article got so many upvotes. It seems to have struck a chord.

Ever since my last two submissions(interesting technical articles which should appeal to hackers imho) sank without a trace, I have been looking for an alternative myself. I wonder if (and this maybe blasphemy) whether three distinct sub-yc s for hacking/startups/other-intellectually-interesting-stuff may not solve the problem.

</comment><comment><USER24> Simplest solution: add down-voting to submissions as well as comments. Then people can downvote the super off-topic and repeats.

<comment><USER25> This would solve the problem when a submission will get 20 or 30 upvotes just because of an interesting title, then most of the next 100 people looking at it would not agree but it's already got enough votes to sit on the front page for quiet a few hours.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> How about a mailinglist automatically filters out posts based on relevancy? Using ardvark-like NLP?

A small niche mailinglist is probably the closest thing to a real online community, for two reasons:

\- relevant emails always get read by everyone in the mailing list \- people read emails anyway, so there's less step involved as suppose to going to a website to read posts.

But a conventional mailinglist is not scalable - some of the lists I'm in get so many posts everyday that I become de-sensitzed to them.

There's a solution however.

The way to keep the posts relevant is to sub-categorize them much like subreddit, but that's also work and it's manual. That's where NLP and machine learning comes in so that the system can learn your preference and only email you the relevant posts. Of course, you also get an option to receive less- relevant posts too.

(I should probably make this into a post as suppose to a comment.)

</comment><comment><USER26> The lean startup circle Google group is pretty active, with decent SNR.

<comment><USER5> To save some googling: <http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle>

Great find, by the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hackers and Founders & Meetups in Hacker Dojo are great places for physical meetups in the bay area.

We also launched a product called HelpaStartupOut.com where startups and founders can post feedback, post educational articles, jobs etc. It's a simplified classified service for startups.

@jaytee_clone check it out and would love to hear feedback, the project is still very new chris [at] thestartupdigest.com

</comment><comment><USER28> This may be good for feedback/discussion: <http://answers.onstartups.com/>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone tried these?

<http://econnect.entrepreneur.com/>

<http://www.partnerup.com/>

<http://www.startupnation.com/>

<http://cofoundr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER29> What's your favorite & least favorite thing about HN? subreddits? other startupy sites you follow?

</comment><comment><USER30> forrst.com — I'll give invites to anyone who wants one. Email kyle AT forrst.com with the subject "Ask HN: HN Alternatives?"

</comment><comment><USER31> answers.onstartups.com is a pretty good resource, though I sometimes get the feeling that it's overrun with "idea guys."

</comment><comment><USER32> It's called Ask HN.

</comment><comment><USER33> redit

</comment><comment><USER34> Try <http://friendfeed.com/> and follow the right people.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think it's a big loss for HN when these questions and discussions get posted on Reddit on another platform. A lot of the people here are young, but I feel they feel a need to be brainy or wide when posting here. Who says HN should be buttoned up?

But for people who feel that way, maybe we should have a "HN-unplugged" or "bleeding edge HN" forum.</comment>


Ig Nobel 2019 Winners - <AUTHOR> https://www.improbable.com/ig-about/the-2019-winners/ <comment><USER2> I think people that give that "prize" do not quite understand what research and science is.

<comment><USER3> They really do -- they are the editors of the science humor magazine "Annals of Improbable Research". But I think part of the issue is the the name "Ig Nobel" which implies that they are claiming the science is bad, which they really aren't (in general). From time to time there are occasional awards that are given as a criticism, but most of them are in good fun and the awardees aren't insulted by the award at all.

<comment><USER4> The focus also changed, way back then the Igs were awarded for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced". Over time they changed to "honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think".

If you are in Boston next year you should attend. The show isn't mean-spirited at all.

<comment><USER5>
      way back then the Igs were awarded for discoveries "that cannot, or should not, be reproduced"

Could you be thinking of the Journal of Irreproducible Results?

<comment><USER3> The Annals of Improbable Research is actually the descendant of the original Journal of Irreproducible Results -- there was an argument with the publisher in the 1990s and so most of the staff left to create the new magazine. The Igs started in the JIR era.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We made a fashion app for outfit inspiration and opinion – Feedback welcome - <AUTHOR>

Hey there!
We would enjoy reading some feedback from the awesome YC community about our app: Modde. Modde is the app for fashion feedback and inspiration. Share your outfit of the day, get emoji feedback. Explore photos for inspiration and express your emoji opinion. It's a fun way to get inspired about what to wear, and to truly look your best.
http://pitchpigeon.com/email/yzm4mwm4z
You can tweet @inModde <comment><AUTHOR> Updated link:

[http://pitchpigeon.com/pr/yzm4mwm4z](http://pitchpigeon.com/pr/yzm4mwm4z)</comment>


Game Resales and Project $10 - <AUTHOR> http://www.entertainingcode.com/archives/game-resales-and-project-10/ <comment><USER2> _Pre-owned games pose much of the same problem on the console market as piracy does on the PC market. The end result of both is the same: people play our games without a single bit of money ending up with the people who made the game. In the worst case, we end up paying a lot of money to keep servers online, while getting no money at all from the sale. In the worst case, we end up paying a lot of money to keep servers online, while getting no money at all from the sale._

I find it hard to believe that he's making this argument with a straight face. When someone pirates a game then you have two copies of the game online. When someone purchases a used copy of a game then, sure, the publisher doesn't get any more money, but the servers still have the same level of traffic on them.

This is like saying that selling a used car that's still under warranty is bad for the car manufacturers because they now need to maintain the car, even though it has a new owner.

If your original price can't cover the cost of the services that you've promised to provide then clearly you need to raise your prices.

<comment><USER3> Well, presuming that games have a lifespan, of say N hours, then there really is (from the producers side) very little difference between a game being resold X times or being pirated X times. In both cases, their servers experience X*N hours of usage, and they only get paid the original Y dollars.

The car analogy doesn't hold up, because there is an expectation that the warranty would be used for the entire lifetime of the warranty, whereas games that are sold aren't done so with the expectation that after 40 hours of usage or so, they'd be resold continuously to other parties who would also play them for 40 hours, and so on. Perhaps a better analogy is that the warranty on a car has an explicit limit on the number of miles that may be driven, which prevents the warranty from being used by multiple parties driving the car continuously.

As counterintuitive as it may seem (and, i expect controversial on HN) I actually think providing a service code with the original game (that can be purchased for $10 by future purchasers of the game) actually aligns the use of the service and payment to the server operators quite well, without getting into the ugly world of "You may use the online service for Z hours before your account times out." (going back to the Car Warranty analogy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not that I'm going to feel sorry for the retailers who are complaining because they may possibly not get that sweet sweet resale of a used game but I feel like this just leads us down a slope where in the future more and more games will have parts cut out of it unless you buy it new and paid your $10. What's going to happen when there are _no_ more new copies? Are they going to release the extra content for free at that point?

And what's to say that for Mass Effect 3 EA won't limit the number of endings you can achieve unless you buy it new?

Oh shit, I think I just gave them an idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> <i>I'm sorry if that takes money out of retailers pockets, but I really do think that the talented people who sweat blood making these games deserve the money more than people who only know how to push people to buy used instead of new.</i>

Then the developers should just charge more up front. I only buy used (or deeply discounted) games because $60 is just too much to spend. If they make it where I still have to spend close to $60 even on a new or discounted game I just won't buy anymore games.

</comment><comment><USER6> If used games are a "problem" for publishers it simply indicates that they haven't worked hard enough to give a game replay value.

<comment><USER7> The nature of some games is not conducive to replaying it. Games with story driven plots tend to lag when replaying it, although the experience may be worth the price of admission. For instance, I played through Bioshock once and thought it was worth the money. However, I have yet to replay it. I, for one, support this. This is content they could simply release as DLC for everyone, but they choose to give it out for free to people who buy the game new, making an incentive for users to buy new.

No matter how fun a game is, there's a certain segment of the gaming population that will trade it in after the first run through, and another segment who only buys games used to save money. I see no problem with companies monetizing this segment of the population.</comment></comment>


The First Photo Ever Created by a Japanese Photographer (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://kanakukui.com/2016/04/15/first-japanese-photo/ <comment><USER2> the dates are a mess and make no sense :

> After Shimazu's death in 1958, the Terukuni Shrine (also referred to as > Shōkoku Shrine) was built in Kagoshima as a memorial to the late daimyo. He > was enshrined there in 1863, and the photograph was placed there as an > object of worship. However, it later went missing in the 1800s.

<comment><USER3> Likewise:

> The following year, the camera was obtained by Shimazu Nariakira, a Japanese > feudal lord (daimyo) who ruled the Satsuma Domain from 1851 until his demise > in 1958.

No, he didn't rule for 107 years :) More like 7. He died in 1858.

<comment><USER4> Yes. The Wikipedia article cover it too, but with correct dates (and more general information): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimazu_Nariakira](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shimazu_Nariakira)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One of my favorite books I read last year was "Photography for Everyone: The Cultural Lives of Cameras and Consumers in Early Twentieth-Century Japan," which traced the development of the Japanese middle class in relation to photography— how people learned to consume collectively, developed a distinct aesthetic from Western photographers, and the gender dynamics of adoption of a new technology.

<comment><USER6> What was the "gender dynamics of adoption of a new technology" part about?

<comment><USER7> See for yourself: [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Photography%20for%20Eve...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/search.php?req=Photography%20for%20Everyone%20japan)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _Having obtained the camera, the daimyo ordered his retainers to study it > and produce working photographs. One of these retainers was Ichiki Shirō (市来 > 四郎). Ichiki had previously excelled in the study of gunpowder production, > which involved an understanding of chemistry._

> _To the daimyo's delight, on September 17, 1857, Ichiki succeeded in > creating a portrait of Shimazu dressed in formal attire. Ichiki recorded his > struggles, and eventual triumph in mastering the camera, in his memoirs > which he compiled in 1884._

Does anyone know if these are available in an English translation? Sounds like it'd be a fascinating read - I wonder how much of the memoirs are taken up by the nearly-decade-long process of mastering the use of that camera.

<comment><USER7> Your best bet is Anne Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography (Yale University Press, 2003; ISBN 0-300-09925-8).

Which is a mammoth 477 MB pdf: [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=D82EEFD90A97302DBD9...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=D82EEFD90A97302DBD919A68F95B62BC)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> interesting read. makes me think of my great(x3)grandmother, and her father, who both were a photographers not too long after this occurred. I hadn't quite realized just how early days it was for photography when they ran their atelier in the late 1800's.

i find this stuff quite fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER10> I visited Nagasaki a year ago. I was surprised how open the city was historically to outsiders. After some reading I understood why. Previously I only knew the city in reference to the atomic bomb. European and Chinese influences are noticeable all over the place.

It is only in Nagasaki where you could have bough an European machine.

This year I am planning to visit Kagoshima. I wonder if the photo is still there after it was found.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love the big suit like David Byrne in Stop Making Sense.

<comment><USER12> It's a sort of cape with starched shoulders sticking out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kinda hard to imagine such primitive, yet working technology. Reminds me of Fatal Frame though

<comment><USER14> > _Kinda hard to imagine such primitive, yet working technology_

Photography wasn't that different until the advent of digital (not to mention there are still people working with daguerreotype photography). And the box is just a pinhole style camera, which we still use...</comment></comment>


Python Web Frameworks – Development Server - <AUTHOR> http://pyrseas.wordpress.com/2011/12/29/python-web-frameworks-development-server/

<comment><USER2> FYI, Quixote (<http://quixote.ca>) provides a bunch of options too:

         python -m quixote.server.simple_server
         python -m quixote.server.medusa_server
         python -m quixote.server.twisted_server
         python -m quixote.server.fastcgi_server
         python -m quixote.server.scgi_server

simple_server uses BaseHTTPServer and is thus single-threaded and blocking but works fine for development. I like FastCGI or SCGI with a dedicated webserver as a frontend for production.

</comment><comment><USER3> (posted to blog as well) would like to know more about the strengths/weaknesses of these development resources. For example, one of the things i love about the django dev server is that it "listens" to all the project dependencies and restarts when any file is saved (which has saved me from trying to understand why something I fixed didn't work and discovering that it's because the changes weren't .pyc'd)

<comment><USER4> Flask/Werkzeug does that as well, provided your app is in debug mode.

For flask it's...

        app.run(debug=True)

Or having `DEBUG = True` somewhere in your config object/file.

<comment><USER5> One thing about that though, Flask seems to monitor file changes in its project tree and reload whenever any of the files have changed, and with my OCD symptom of saving after every few dosen keystrokes, the reload script keps crashing on syntax errors taking the rest of the server with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's not a bad overview, but what's the point? How one way is better than the other? Does it make any difference which development server to use?

<comment><USER5> Although it's not stated, the point is that pretty much every framework that is not based on Twisted uses BaseHTTPServer which is known only to run in single-process mode, meaning that you should NEVER use it anywhere near production environment.

<comment><USER7> I am not sure what you mean by "single-process mode", but I am guessing that you are referring to the ability to serve more than one request at a time. If this is the issue, then BaseHTTPServer works just fine in production environments if a thread pool is used or if multiple instances of the application are run behind a reverse proxy.

<comment><USER5> Sorry I wasn't clear, I meant serving more than one request at a time, and apparently this is even possible without using multiple instances, use multiple inheritance with a threading mixin. This is not going to be properly concurent due to GIL limitations but it should be good enough -- [http://blog.doughellmann.com/2007/12/pymotw- basehttpserver.h...](http://blog.doughellmann.com/2007/12/pymotw- basehttpserver.html)

However this setup can lead to socket lockup (see picked answer) -- [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5693741/whats- difference-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5693741/whats-difference- between-a-simple-webserver-and-apache-server)

<comment><USER7> I am not sure what you mean by "properly concurrent", but I am guessing that you are referring to the fact that Python code cannot use more than one core because of the GIL. This limitation also applies to Twisted applications.

For high volume apps, it often makes sense to run multiple instances of the app behind a reverse proxy. That's the only way to make full use the CPU when running Python.

What is "socket lockup"? The word "lockup" is nowhere to be found on the page you references.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sometimes I have problems with runserver and IE. I forgot exactly why (probably multiple requests) but fixed it by using this:

<https://github.com/ashchristopher/django-concurrent-server>

Really nice module.

</comment><comment><USER9> The twisted.web server is nice because you can both develop on it and deploy it with minimal configuration. Using twisted.web.wsgi.WSGIResource, you can use it to serve normal WSGI sites, too. It's handy for running multiple sites on different ports.

It doesn't automatically reload on file changes, but PyQuitter[1] can provide that functionality, so it's not a huge issue.

1\. <https://github.com/ludios/Pyquitter>

</comment><comment><USER10> What this article taught me is the mind-boggling plethora of Python web frameworks out there. I'm heavily into Django myself, and it does well enough that I'm curious as to the demand for the other frameworks. How many Python web frameworks do you really need in 2012?

<comment><USER11> For me? Two.

Django is good for getting a site/system up and running fast, so long as I'm not too concerned with specific implementation details (the users 'just work', etc.)

Pyramid is good for a longer-term/more custom system where being easily able to modify (or choose) particular implementation details is important to me. It's not as fast to get a full-featured site off the ground, but the pieces glue together in a way that I really like.

I think that there was a well known post many years ago about "glue" and "full stack" frameworks, comparing pylons (now pyramid) as the former, and django as the latter.

#EDIT: Oh, and I used to do a bit of work with Zope/Plone, but that's pretty much what you'd consider to be the 'enterprisey' setup for python, and I wouldn't recommend it for most uses.

<comment><USER12> That mirrors exactly our experience. We have used Pyramid for three recent project and its awesome. It just takes a little longer, but its flexibility is impressive. We've just used it with Pure templates also, which I was very impressed with</comment></comment></comment>


Find Your Way Through Lisp Labyrinth. - <AUTHOR> http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2011/01/find-your-way-through-lisp-labyrinth.html

<comment><USER2> cute but doesn't really describe me.

what if you like dylan, scheme, common lisp and clojure?

personally if i could have scheme and clojure plus dylan i would be happy. there is soem serious cruft in common lisp that dylan clears away... of course, i'd rather have common lisp syntax with that clearing away but in the end I don't much care.

If I had my druthers for doing OOP, I'd use Dylan or Smalltalk. As someone said to me not too long ago, I've obviously been voted off the island.</comment>


Ask HN: Are you building something?  How long for? How much longer to go? - <AUTHOR> I've been working on my project in stealth mode for a bit over a year now. Hopefully release in the next few weeks.... <comment><USER2> 8-9 months and I'm still at idea stage! I think that the first stage, whether it's idea or protoype or MVP (or whatever you want to call it) is the most important one because it helps you focus on one thing and one thing only so that when you actually start coding/working on it you know where you're going and how you're going to acheive it(not necessarily). A piece of advice, don't stay in stealth mode for too long, always keep an eye on the market/the conditions that made you start the project in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER3> almost two years and this year I'll finish. Its the promise to myself to be self employed. And in case it will fail I dont know.. I view my project as imposible to fail, at least from a technical perspective. But to survive it will need users. I'll talk with you then.

<comment><USER2> Good luck!

<comment><USER3> thanks! I have to let you know that my idea stage also took some time, so you are on the right path. I think an idea is a good one when you dont change your mind quickly to do something different. In case you do, it means it was not a good idea from the start, just a one night stand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How many hours do you have in it? I spent about 3 months on a project just recently and realized I bit off way more than I can chew not sure what direction I'm going anymore.</comment>


Consistency and discipline over motivation - <AUTHOR> http://blog.donnywals.com/consistency-and-discipline-over-motivation/ <comment><USER2> One thing I've personally noticed is that being disciplined can quickly create or renew motivation. Getting something finished even though I don't want to do it feels great. That alone is often enough to jump start that positive feedback loop and get me moving rapidly again.

<comment><USER3> Me too. This is also called "fake it till you make it". It sounds like empty b.s. But there is a lot to it. The book Stop Worrying and Start Living suggests that when your mood is bad, force yourself to smile and pretend outwardly that everything is good. I've found this really helps, even though it sounds dumb.

Also along the same lines is Picasso's famous quote: inspiration comes, but it has to find us working.

<comment><USER4> You made a typo, it should be "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living".

<comment><USER3> Fixed, thanks, that's a funny one!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Suffering from HNDoS; read it at [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.donnywals.com/consistency- and-discipline-over-motivation/&strip=1)

Also links to [http://impossiblehq.com/get-disciplined-not- motivated](http://impossiblehq.com/get-disciplined-not-motivated) and [http://thereallimegreenandloki.tumblr.com/post/101385465984/...](http://thereallimegreenandloki.tumblr.com/post/101385465984/fuck- motivation-its-a-fickle-and-and-unreliable)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for putting up the cache link :) it's actually an outage on directVPS' end so I hope they resolve this fast

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: "When I look at more senior developers I notice...[they] take multiple short breaks throughout the day and between those breaks _they tend to be very focused on the tasks they have to complete_. They don't have their Slack open all the time and _they work on a single thing at a time_. And they are consistent about that."

For help focusing on a single thing at a time, check out [http://focusr.co](http://focusr.co)

</comment><comment><USER7> Great read.

One of my favourite quotes is "motivation follows action". Often times I've found myself loath to do something, but once I start "revving up" (at work, it might be starting with something simple like a small refactor; at home, it could be committing to simply washing one plate of the stack I have remaining) I find I gain the motivation to keep going.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, waiting to get motivated can be really frustrating and it can fuel a sense of guilt because you know you should be doing something. Just starting do it triggers a rewarding feeling and spawns that precious feeling of motivation i guess.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I started taking fixed breaks every hour to (try to) reduce my rsi pains and it does seem help my productivty. I used to check reddit/hn/feedly whenever I got really frustrated with something but now I usually power through it because I know I'll get a break soon anyway.

</comment><comment><USER9> I agree that motivation needs to be trained. But be careful with "being tough with yourself". People tends to fail ah the beginning and then blame themselves so much that they give up...

</comment><comment><USER10> > When I look at more senior developers I notice that many of them have a > workflow similar to this.

Could it also be that they are good at getting you to notice this? I think pretense is valued above consistency and discipline.

<comment><USER11> > I think pretense is valued above consistency and discipline.

And what has led you to that thought?

<comment><USER10> Because the OP seems to suggest you overcome lack of motivation by pretending you have motivation, but he calls this discipline and consistency. Also, the comments about fake it till you make it support that interpretation.

I've also gone to meetings.

<comment><USER12> It's not about pretending you have motivation; it's about using discipline and consistency (having a routine) to get you through the periods where your motivation wanes.

Motivation comes and goes; discipline is as eternal as you will it to be.

<comment><USER11> And discipline is a bit tricky to boot-strap. I think that's the part that's being argued about here. Or maybe not.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>