Assange arrested in London (BBC) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11937110 <comment><USER2> In other, rather ironic, news, two Irishmen brutally assaulted a Swedish citizen on a ferryboat from Sweden to Finland. They were taken into custody on arrival in Finland, but were later released because the crime occurred on Swedish waters. The men subsequently returned to Ireland.

The Swedish police decided to drop the case irrespective of ample CCTV evidence and both men having pleaded guilty. Quoting prosecutor Thomas Holst: "Were we to try to get everyone suspected of a less serious crime extradited, we would have to work around the clock."

<comment><USER3> Citation?

<comment><USER2> <http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article8031457.ab> (In Swedish)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use the Guardian thread, it has the most comments.

Guardian <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978645>

MSNBC <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978690>

BBC <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978651>

TheNextWeb <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978656>

Sky <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978613>

CNN <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978636>

NY Times <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1978692>

<comment><USER5> Not anymore. This thread now has more comments.

<comment><USER6> With Assange in the courtroom: <http://twitter.com/#!/newsbrooke>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Am I just cynical, or does anyone else get the overall impression that this is a bunch of geeks running around fantasising that they're in 'The Matrix' or something. And doing it thanks to the efforts of a single confused 22 year old (Manning), who is now screwed.

Some of the material I've read so far is interesting. Very little surprises me. None shocks me.

There is no technological achievement here, either in the original leak, or the distribution of the material. If anything, I get the impression that Wikileaks is fairly inept.

I'm not really against the leak - I've enjoyed reading the material. One of the things (genuinely) that I've found fascinating is the quality of the writing - I wish some of the people I work with could write as well.

Irritating people do get to me though, and I'm beginning to lump Assange in with Jimmy Wales. Wikipedia, and Wikileaks both have larger than life, seemingly egocentric figureheads. Both services depend heavily on the efforts and religious-level fervour of other people who often do things for free or near-free.

Weird? I mean, if I ran a web site that distributed material which might get a governmental back up, I would probably keep a low profile.

Looking forward to some robust comments on my thoughts!

<comment><USER8> Assange is 39, not 22 (though, admittedly, he does not look his age).

Assange explains why he is a figurehead in his Q&A session with CNN: [http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-03/world/wikileaks.assange.q...](http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-03/world/wikileaks.assange.qanda_1_julian- assange-bradley-manning-wikileaks)

<comment><USER9> I find it telling that the one actually interesting and critical question from an actual diplomat, about to what extent he feels his leaks are undermining the diplomatic process, is the one question he refuses to answer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Given that Assange wants to bring down secretive government, it's pretty obvious he wants to undermine diplomacy.

<comment><USER9> If that was the case, then why doesn't he have balls to admit it?

<comment><USER10> When hasn't he?

<comment><USER9> In the CNN interview that was linked to above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Assange willingly showed up at a police station and was arrested by appointment. He probably has a plan.

<comment><USER11> I think the plan is fairly simple: to clear his name by showing these absurd trumped-up charges for what they are, the machiavellian machinations of the US via a disturbingly compliant Swedish legal system.

<comment><USER4> I read a good article on why the charges against Assange are absurd: <http://rixstep.com/1/20101001,01.shtml>

And a more recent follow up: <http://rixstep.com/1/20101202,01.shtml>

<comment><USER12> Is there a better source? I'm not sure I'm inclined to believe anything rixstep says.

<comment><USER4> I'm not inclined to believe anything regarding Wikileaks or Assange. I'm sure more than a few people have seen those tweets and some Twitter crawlers/indexers have them stored somewhere. We'll see how it plays out, no need to speculate at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Despite my low level of contribution to this site, I must say I'm tired of seeing WikiLeaks/Assange on the Hacker News front page. Granted, all this may be newsworthy, but going by the Hacker News Guidelines, it feels more "Off- Topic" than on, in that it's about politics and would be covered on TV news, like the TSA submissions a while ago.

<comment><USER14> I don't think this story is off-topic. Most of us are interested in how technology is changing the world around us. That means something on-topic can be about how new technology is affecting medical practice (for example, potential advances against tooth decay) or about how it is affecting politics (in this case, increasing governmental vulnerability to widespread dissemination of secret information).

<comment><USER13> It looks like more people agree with you than me, so I'll take the opportunity to at least explain my point of view.

I come to Hacker News to see people talk about technology, innovation, trends, start-ups and tiny projects that pop up that do things that seem so obvious in hind-sight, but are in fact really clever. This recent news about WikiLeaks and Assange I feel don't really fit in any of these categories.

The Hacker News Guidelines [1] may be open to interpretation, but it does explicitly state:

> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics

and

> If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.

There is a bit after the first quote that states "unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon," which I suppose is where we disagree. Nonetheless, if you and others feel it fits here, I'll respect your opinions.

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER15> You mean as opposed to say mountain climbing, dietary habits or aspirin ?

I don't see you complaining about things being 'off topic' in those threads.

<comment><USER16> Come off it, you expect him to comment in every thread that he believes is off-topic?

This sort of argument should have a name (I'm sure it does) - "but gov, you didn't complain last time I cleaned your windows badly".

<comment><USER15> No, it's just that those are _far_ more off-topic than this one.

<comment><USER16> Off-topic is largely subjective though and there were about a million submitted posts on the same topic. One post can be ignored, multiple posts on the same topic that one finds off-topic probably warrants a comment.

Oh and one more thing: topic, topic, topic topic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why this is important:

The world is changing, the definition of "journalist" is changing. In a different time such leaks would have come from a spirited and lively free press, but today our traditional forms of journalism (newpapers, radio, tv) are utterly mainstream, moribund, and very much part of the establishment. Wikileaks throws the new order into sharp contrast and raises questions about what is journalism, what legal protections journalism deserves, etc. Some of these questions _had_ been answered (especially in the US) but the question now is to what degree and in what way do those decisions carry over to the brave new world of the internet.

The worst case scenario is that courts, the public, etc. decide to keep an antiquated cargo cult definition of journalism, restricted to newspapermen and television reporters. The danger there is that the flourishing of journalism on the internet in unfamiliar forms will lack the protections (legal and societal) that traditional journalism has had.

This is all the more sensational because Assange and wikileaks have become the poster boy / touchstone for these issues. This is troubling to me because wikileaks is not the best archetype for nouveau journalism. Firstly he has a very significant political ax to grind (though he has not been grinding it as sharply as in the past such as with "Collateral Murder"). Secondly the revelations that have come from wikileaks have tended to be comparatively minor, especially when judged against the cost of obtaining the leaked information. This sets him up as the perfect target for governments and traditionalists to tar and feather him and use him as an archetypal example of why new media is not journalism and does not deserve the same protections as traditional journalism.

</comment><comment><USER18> <http://rixstep.com/1/20101202,01.shtml>

Is this correct?

<comment><USER15> It's a dubious source but it raises interesting points for independent verification.

Someone in the mainstream media (one of those investigative journalists that they have so many of there) should dig in and find out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This can be better for him in terms of his safety now. Hope everything will end safely for Assange.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sad. I really wanted to see the promised documents about UFOs. In my opinion, it would raise much more noise in the society.

<comment><USER8> If you have the "insurance" file, you likely already have them on your computer.

Why would Julian's arrest/conviction/disappearance affect whether or not you see the documents? He has nothing to do with the leaking effort.

<http://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/12163859271917568>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree

</comment><comment><USER22> I'm enthralled by the world's obsession with this man. Sure, I get that some people like that he plays reluctant hero up against the "evil" US, but come on. The guy is charged with sexual assault. If there's any chance he did it, then he should go to trial. Why would we treat him any differently than other criminals?

If there was no misconduct, then we will find out, and the charges will be dropped.

<comment> mike-cardwell I keep reading that the sex was consensual and that it's the fact he didn't use protection that made it a crime. I don't really understand how this can be the case though, but it seems to be all over the place if you google it. Sweden must have a very strange law.

<comment><USER22> I scoured the web and read a bit about the case. It seems that one of the "victims" isn't complaining, though the 2nd is.

I'm not going to play PI, but it seems to me that if a woman is that upset after sex, then something went wrong. Maybe he refused to spoon.

<comment> mike-cardwell Whatever it was, it doesn't sound like anything which could be classified as an assault, sexual or otherwise.

<comment><USER22> Isn't that what the trial is supposed to find out? I don't know a lot about the UK justice system, but I imagine they wouldn't issue a warrant without something to bring to the trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> yawn...</comment>


Google+ API Launch Still Months Away - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/06/google-api-launch-still-months-away/

<comment><USER2> This is disappointing news. Watching G+ was a bit like watching a wave crash and roll back. My twitter feed actually slowed down for a few days while everyone played with the new kid, only to pick right back up again.

The great thing about G+ is it seems to be popular with a few really interesting people I like to follow who post more to G+ than they did on Twitter. However the lack of an API is preventing wider use and adoption. Right now there is no convenient way to say integrate your own blog and while I actually use the twitter website a lot more now, 3rd party tools are still the most popular way for people to organize their multiple social networks together..

Of course I realize API integration has it's dark side too, mostly in the form of spammers, but it's a small price to pay for having a more active community.

<comment><USER3> I agree.

Google+ got a lot of momentum, and then it all slowed to a crawl. And once the real names stuff broke, and got it a bunch of bad press, the traffic seemed to slow to a crawl over there.

I worry that they're going to leave it too late - that by the time they have a product worth having they'll have lost their customer base.

<comment><AUTHOR> They certainly seem to have thrown away a lot of their advantage from the brilliantly-executed launch. If they had followed up quickly, and avoided the real names rathole, they were on track for a huge success. Now it'll be a much tougher path. I still think it'll be at least semi-successful, but it doesn't seem as likely to take significant market share away from Facebook or Twitter any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, are there any ghetto homebrew APIs that just talk to Google+ via POST and GET requests? I've found something that lets me crosspost something to both twitter and Facebook, and it's annoying having to do it explicitly in Google+ as a separate action.

<comment><USER5> See the penultimate paragraph of the article.

<comment><USER4> Looks like that just reads Google+ data, but doesn't actually post anything back to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shouldn't they have started with an API? Facebook tacked on their API later and look how well that's worked. Facebook's API is horrible, just figuring out how to use the login system is extremely painful.

Google should have built an API first, and built their own Google+ website on it.

<comment><USER7> Any time I work with a Google API I am literally surprised how beautifully engineered they are.

I trust Google on this one too -- so much in fact, I believe they already have such an API that the website is interacting with, it is just not mature enough to be publicly accessible.

<comment><USER8> Agreed 100%. The only issue I have with Google APIs is wondering if they might get cancelled. The actual APIs are a joy to use compared to most sites'. They are well designed, well documented, and mostly consistent across different products (once you implement something using one Google API, the rest look pretty familiar if you use them later).</comment></comment></comment>


Detailed articles on the avionics of NASA's space shuttle - <AUTHOR> https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shutref/orbiter/avionics/ <comment><USER2> This is awesome.

But it has no pictures! And the font is so _tiny_ :( my eyes can read it, but my brain's getting scared by the walls of text.

What I'd love to see is photos of the various modules, and then further photos of all the insides.

\--

Probably the thing I want the most - as crazy as this probably sounds - is a character ROM dump. I like fonts from old things :/

I recently learned that the bit of avionics with the weird keyboard in it that's typically found in "large" aircraft is called a Control Display Unit, or CDU. (Here's a random 747 cockpit with two shown facing upwards: [http://flic.kr/p/aFRHt4](http://flic.kr/p/aFRHt4)). I did an image search for CDU font, and promptly had one of those times I immediately hit the jackpot: [http://sigmatechnica.com/lynx-helecopter-cdu-semi- teardown/](http://sigmatechnica.com/lynx-helecopter-cdu-semi-teardown/) has a 2048x1536 photo of someone who randomly got a CDU from a Lynx helicopter off eBay to poke at, and took a bunch of photos of everything they could make it do, _including the font-self test!_

That's the kind of thing I wish I had, but for random industrial equipment - and, sure, the space shuttle. (Know where I can find ROMs for old avionics? lol)

For the VT220 font-rendering geeks, the CRT in the mentioned CDU (no model info :( ) happens to be mounted vertically.

<comment><USER3> From the second link,

 _> Interestingly the indicators are incandescent bulbs…_

 _> an odd choice as they have used LEDs as indicators on the PCBs as we will see later._

Lightbulbs have well-understood failure mode (open circuit) and detection of such failures; it's exceedingly rare for a lightbulb to fail half-way. Contrast that with LEDs which can fail while remaining as either open or closed circuit. This (costly & lengthy airworthiness certification aside) is why even modern airliners use lightbulbs for avionics indicators - often in redundant pairs. One of very few maintenance items commercial pilots are allowed, and indeed trained, to perform routinely is replacing the indicator lighbulbs.

In-depth coverage by Mentour Pilot: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RifyTCwwNy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RifyTCwwNy0)

<comment><USER2> TIL!

For a few seconds I started thinking about packaging LEDs with onboard LDRs so any failure that results in not-100%-light-output produces an open circuit... but I can see the result having too many moving parts to comfortably pass certification. If such a thing is even possible to make.

Your mention that LEDs can fail closed rules out a current-consumption monitoring system...

And then a "light up all the indicator lights" button (which IIRC does exist?) connected to a camera and machine vision system would _work_, but it'd probably be a ton more expensive (to build _properly_) than just sticking with incandescent bulbs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow this covers a lot of my job, and is really concise and well written.

This might be the best link ever posted to HN for me. Thank you.

<comment><USER2> What kind of job do you do? My vague guess is NASA historian or tour guide.

<comment><USER5> These articles would be of interest to anyone developing flight avionics systems for spacecraft, airplanes, or, I can imagine, drones.

<comment><USER4> Yea flight avionics, sort of. Aerial camera systems and the UI to control them.

<comment><USER2> Wow, that sounds really cool.

I really like the UI design that goes into avionics - the fact that every possible scenario has to be thought out and handled, and that the end result has no flashy eyecandy or extraneous functionality; it's all function, it's all required (or it's not there); everything on the screen at any given time is significant, and (hopefully) care is taken that the amount of data (ie, significance) showing at any one moment is not information overload. A very hard balance to get right, I'm sure.

The rigor and discipline imposed over the process of software architecture and implementation in aviation (moreso than medical devices, it would seem) is both inspiring and instructive, and I definitely look up to it.

I must admit I'm genuinely interested to learn more about how the role of UI design plays into avionics construction - I've leaned toward UX for quite a while (I think I started headscratching about the subject around 13-14, although I didn't know that was what it was called at the time) and I think it's probably something I'd do pretty well at when I'm finally looking for a job. Web UX is... frustrating and demotivating, though. I don't want to kill myself doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's much more than avionics if you navigate up the path:

[https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/](https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/)</comment>


Google's tenth messaging service will "unify" Gmail, Drive, Hangouts Chat - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/report-google-planning-tenth-messaging-app-this-ones-another-slack-clone <comment><USER2> I have no doubt that _this_ will be the messaging service that everyone coalesces on. Just like Allo before it.

/s

</comment><comment><USER3> Fool me once... Fool me tenth...

</comment><comment><USER4> I am sure this one will finally have open standards again right?

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe [https://www.xkcd.com/927/](https://www.xkcd.com/927/) is appropriate.

<comment><USER6> It's more like shuffling the Titanic deck chairs.</comment></comment>


What iPhone X Should Have Looked Like - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@x0054/what-iphone-x-should-have-looked-like-cd0f77077711 <comment><USER2> Why.This also completely ignores engineering feats. LG V10 did this idea and it's... been disbanded.</comment>


Signed up for Standford's courses and haven't heard a thing? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone else? <comment><USER2> You can check the web sites of the respective courses or better check here: <http://class-central.com/>. 5 or so classes are starting from the 23rd of January, I think one is starting from 30th of Jan. And rest are starting in Feb or March.

</comment><comment><USER3> I signed up for probabilistic graph networks and haven't heard anything. I thought it was supposed to start at the end of Jan.</comment>


How to Port from Python 2 to Python 3 (2019) - <AUTHOR> https://stxnext.com/blog/2019/04/16/python-3-migration-guide/ <comment><USER2> Python 3 and IPv6 are the poster-children of how _not_ to do a major upgrade. I'm not sure what the right way is, but if the short-term advantages of the upgrade do not outweigh the immediate pain, prepare for the matter to drag out for _decades_.

<comment><USER3> Upgrades are just hard.

See perl5 to perl6 GWbasic to Qbasic to VB to VB.net

you either make a clean break or keep all the warts, Either way folks are going to be unhappy.

Keep the warts, COBOL, Fortran, C, C++, PHP, Excel

<comment><USER4> Ruby did a great job back in the day with their 1.8 release which changed the language to be Unicode friendly.

<comment><USER5> What did they do differently? I guess they benefited from hindsight.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hopefully no more people will keep saying "learn Python 2 because 3 has almost no packages".

It is so easy for people to just repeat what they heard even if that idea originated a decade ago and was valid a decade ago.

And that way we got into a mess of not migrating until pass the time it is no longer supported...

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been doing a lot of Python 2 -> 3 lately, and found this to be one of the best actionable guides: [https://portingguide.readthedocs.io/en/latest](https://portingguide.readthedocs.io/en/latest)

Also, using tox on the project to run tests against both python 2.7 and multiple versions of 3 and the work goes pretty quickly.

<comment><USER5> Looks like a lot of the guide assumes you want to run on Py2 and 3 concurrently. The time for that has passed to be honest. A clean port is easier to do.

<comment><USER7> For larger code bases making direct jump straight to Py3 that breaks Py2 compatibility without a transitional period can be problematic especially if it's a library.

The time may have passed, but lots of code is still out there that needs to be updated.

<comment><USER5> Maintaining two branches shouldn't be a problem. If you waited this long to port, velocity on the legacy branch can't be especially high.

Now that I think of it the legacy branch should be eol soon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We built a product with an embedded Jython interpreter. Jython is stuck on Python2 and somewhat abandoned. So that's nice.

Re: packages, one of the huge advantages of the C ecosystem has been that compiled packages are _usually_ fine across language transitions, not only between major compiler version numbers but even from C to C++ which are much more different languages than Python2 to 3. How different would the Python transition have been if it were possible to load Python2 packages in a Python3 program?

</comment><comment><USER9> Isn't it ironic that Sentry is one of the tools mentioned in py2->py3 migration? (Sentry is on py2 and as far as I remember they were not very optimistic about migrating)

<comment><USER10> that's correct. sentry itself is on python 2.7, not the python client.

not to pick on sentry here, but you know, my experience is that people are having a hard time migrating due to them using obscure tricks and features of python 2.7. so their code is breaking because the language evolved.

the saying goes write dumb code or something because debugging is twice as hard. if there is anything to learn from all this, it's to write dumb code because maintenance is twice as hard too.

that's all that is happening really!

<comment><USER11> Why would you even build a logs collector in python? Especially if it's your core business and you know you will need scale and reliability. You kinda shoot yourself in the foot.

<comment><USER12> they're using python 2.7. perhaps started on an earlier one. maybe there was nothing except java 1.4 when they started.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The big issue of ports like these is not the tutorial but to justify that to your boss.

From enterprise to a self run startup you have to see if it's worth it .

<comment><USER14> Hi, I'm one of the STX Next content crew. We actually have a companion piece to this that goes over the reasons why you should migrate: [https://stxnext.com/blog/2019/07/30/why-migrate-from- python-...](https://stxnext.com/blog/2019/07/30/why-migrate-from-python-2-to- python-3/)

Maybe that would be useful for a conversation with one's boss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I literally just got on a phone call to discuss our migration away from 2.7, very timely post.

</comment><comment><USER16> IIRC, the Python used in the macOS vim(1) is still 2.x. So at least on a Mac it won't be possible to just move on to Py3 and forget / uninstall Py2 for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER17> I think you can just do

        brew install vim -- --with-override-system-vi --with-python3

To get a vim with python 3 on mac os. You are correct that it defaults to python 2, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Porting is a non-event for most non-large projects. In short:

\- First cut a new major version

\- Write a few tests if needed, they go a long way here.

\- Update to 2.7 best practices and logging

\- Run tests, commit

\- Add a few future statements, commit

\- Run pyflakes3 on it, fix, commit

\- Run under 3.x/fix until clean, commit

However, if your project is huge and/or does a lot of string and bit twiddling it's excruciating. Hence the controversy between factions.

</comment><comment><USER18> sed -i 's/print \\("[^"]*"\\)/print(\1)'</comment>


〔Coding style〕Reasons to add the curly brackets behind if / for / while in C/C++ - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@goblin5417/coding-style-reasons-to-increase-the-brackets-behind-if-for-while-617e6665ca97 <comment><USER2> Multi-line macros should be wrapped in "do { ... } while (0)" anyway. Not only does it ensure that control flow constructs apply to them atomically as intended, regardless if they use curly brackets or not, but also isolates any potential variable declarations into their own scope, ensures that all uses of the macro are followed by a semicolon and gives you an early exit construct for free ("break;").

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't write brackets where the condition and body fit on one line, and do otherwise. e.g. like these:

      if (ptr == NULL) return NULL;
      for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) dst[i] = src[i];

I particularly like it for guards at the beginning of a function, because they end up being less visually heavy, thus drawing my attention to the (presumably more business-logic-y) other lines of code.

It's somewhat like how Ruby lets you write your control structure at the end of a statement to have it only apply to that statement, e.g.

      return nil if ptr.nil?

And I find this style looks different enough to multiple statement control structures that I don't make the mistake of adding an additional statement without also adding brackets.

Of course this is a comment about formatting code, so YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER4> counterpoint: having to scroll around to understand the code with superfluous syntax makes understanding harder and slower as you have to jump around.</comment>


Female Founders Got 2% of Venture Capital Dollars in 2017 - rwx<comment> http://fortune.com/2018/01/31/female-founders-venture-capital-2017/ </comment><comment><AUTHOR> I would like to know the percentage of female founders that tried to get VC dollars before condemning VCs.

Its probably pretty bad, but if the field is 4% female founders and 96% male then I'm more curious how to increase female founders.</comment>


U.S. Court of Appeals just invalidated most business method patents - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/10/30/your-business-model-patent-has-just-been-invalidated/

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary from the article: "The summary is that the court has said that there's a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or thing. In other words, pure software or business method patents that are neither tied to a specific machine nor change something into a different state are not patentable. "</comment>


The Future of Education: Genetic Enhancement and Metahumanities [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://jetpress.org/v25.1/sorgner.pdf

<comment><USER2> The author only mentions heritability once in the article. While educational attainment is also heritable people tend to view it as 'extrinsic.' The seemingly intrinsic nature of genetic modification is largely what drives moral reactions against it and the fact that any offspring will also retain those changes. This is of course also true for extrinsic factors that are also heritable but due to the quirk that human beings have a sense of their bodily self which is distinct from the rest of the universe we tend to distinguish between the two (probably to our detriment). That said people trying to distinguish use of any tool to 'fix' an abnormality vs 'enhance' something that is normal are idiots because the distinction is merely one of perspective around whether something is 'broken' or not. Frankly the world would be a whole lot better off if everyone had a IQ > 130 (functionally, since we would renormalize).

<comment><USER3> >That said people trying to distinguish use of any tool to 'fix' an abnormality vs 'enhance' something that is normal are idiots because the distinction is merely one of perspective around whether something is 'broken' or not.

man, while i fully support speeding up the evolution through all the means possible, your statement is kind of self-contradictory: you use "normal", and thus implicitly you bring up the notion of some distribution with clear notion of "normal", ie. some well distinguishable significant mass at the center and thus the 'fix'/'enhance' difference becomes very well defined (not just merely one of perspective) - 'fix' is moving up toward the mean/center mass while 'enhance' is moving up toward the mass's upper edge and away from it.

<comment><USER2> I will plead that I am using normal in the normative (and thus subjective) fashion but even in a positive fashion you still have to pick the values you choose to measure. You can't simply reduce a phenotype to a single dimension of good/bad and try to push it back to the middle. See for example the giant literature reflecting the many gains of function that accompany learning disabilities. If I take my meds to fix only the 'bad' parts aren't I somehow gaining a leg up because I have an advantage along another dimension? Probably an even better example is bipolar disorder where the current 'fix' makes the person catatonic, a clear loss since they are often highly productive during mania. The reason I bring these up is because they are better edge cases than something like cystic fibrosis (which is a better fit for your argument) where there isn't really much debate (and doesn't fit with the article). Other single gene causes of mental disability might also be a better fit for the 'pure normal' but what happens when we discover a 2 gene source of mental disability? How about 10? How about 100? Where do you draw the line between mental disability and just being stupid? If I feel sorry for zygotes that will grow up to have average IQ because many of the most beautiful things in the universe are beyond their grasp. Does the fact that they will be 'average' mean their parents should be denied the ability to give them the gift of one day having deep insight into the beauties of the universe? This is a longwinded way of saying that I think part of this issues is because many people in our society conflate 'normal' with 'best,' the result is that they argue that it is ok bring someone back to the average but that somehow anything beyond that is immoral. What kind of sick society doesn't want every member to lead the most fulfilling, contributing, and meaningful life possible? Sure there are plenty of arguments about certain treatments being out of reach of the poor, but to bring things back to the original article: have you seen the prices of private schools lately?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those that think there is anything new in transumanism should read the 20th century arguments for eugenics, that is essentially what we're talking about albeit with a shiny new techno-hipster coating. This is not speeding up evolution, evolution encodes meaningful adaptations to an environment over eons, not fashionable "enhancements" to a persons "IQ"(however that happens to be measured) that may change from year to year. There is a holistic reality that is so blindly and eagerly thrown off by dreaming of the wonders of a brave post/transhuman future it makes one wonder at what point the post- posthumanists will circle back around and want to recover their true humanity unsullied by their forebears ham-handed tinkering. Good luck with all that, personally I'll stick with my boring old unmodified plain humanness.

<comment><USER5> You can't really prevent people from practicing eugenics though.

At the lowest level it manifests as dating preferences - everyone prefers to breed with those they find mentally and physically attractive.

Direct genetic manipulation is just a stronger way of expressing those preferences.</comment></comment>


San Francisco Working on Pilot Basic Income Program - <AUTHOR> http://hoodline.com/2017/01/san-francisco-to-launch-pilot-basic-income-program <comment><USER2> This is going to go badly without education, mental health, and other services being govt subsidized as well. You need to not only take care of basic survival but also provide resources for self actualization. Otherwise people will just sit around.

<comment><USER3> Education, Mental Health, and other services are already government subsidized.

<comment><USER2> Not enough. Even a person on AVERAGE income struggles to pay for those services. They would be completely out of reach to someone on Basic Income.

<comment><USER3> First, with UBI, _everyone_ would be on Basic Income, so "someone on Basic Income" doesn't define an income level.

Second, currently, those services -- other than K-12 which is universal and free -- are provided through means-tested non-cash programs. While many proponents of UBI favor it eventually replacing all means tested programs, the San Francisco pilot won't (and can't, because SF can't trump state programs.) So low-income people get support for those not available to average income folks.

<comment><USER2> I agree with everything you said. I feel like my point still stands. Without additional services freely or cheaply available that allow people to achieve more than just 'survive' I can't imagine any BI experimentations accomplishing anything more than just subsidizing people to sit around.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Cobra Effect, but with an antidote - <AUTHOR> https://unintendedconsequenc.es/the-cobra-effect-redesigned/ <comment><USER2> Shameless plug: a while ago I wrote a blog post covering similar topics with a goal of critically re/thinking about how we think about designing systems. [https://www.notion.so/Towards-Humanistic- Systems-6f8cf442bca...](https://www.notion.so/Towards-Humanistic- Systems-6f8cf442bca149afbf7e1eea096619d9)

I think the problem with this article is that it tries to suggest tips on how to _prevent_ the cobra effect before the system is deployed, but instead it should be more about _recognizing_ and _reacting_ to it quickly after the system is deployed.

The way I see it (an extension of Campbell's Law [1]), systems tend to get corrupted and have perverse incentives no matter what. You're probably not going to understand the problem enough to design the perfect system the first time, no matter how hard you try.

In other words, don't try to predict the future, to see all ends, because you can't. Even more important than the ability to design good systems is the ability to change the system, not just to re/design the entire system at once, but to iterate over time.

This is much, much easier said than done, but realizing it is the first step.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell%27s_law)

<comment><USER3> Yep I agreee.

This is the nature of complex systems. you cannot possibly see all permutations of your decisions/actions.

However one should at least think them through and then have a feedback or monitoring system in place to recognise when you are having unintended consequences and then react.

You iterate to a solution by constant monitoring and feedback, then reacting. Put another way it is not "I implement this and I am done"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the suggested solutions, it sounds like you need deep domain knowledge to know exactly how the cobra effect will manifest and what rules to use to prevent it.

That's hardly a simple solution!

<comment><USER5> Hopefully people making policy have access to subject matter experts with deep domain knowledge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought this was going to be about tripping on cobratoxin. It is a central analgesic, at the right dose.[0] And there must be old folk knowledge, because William S. Burroughs went on about it decades ago.

0) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542074/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5542074/)

</comment><comment><USER7> So all you need is hindsight.</comment>


Ask HN: What to watch out for when building a service like Lavabit? - <AUTHOR>

I have been following the unfortunate events that happened to Lavabit, and I think the service shouldn't have gone down that way. These days I'm setting up my own mail server, and it would be nice to throw in some good encryption too. If I can offer the same thing for others, maybe that will make a good service for those who want a secure mail box but don't want to take care of a mail server. Come to think of it, it's pretty much what Lavabit did.
From what I understand, Lavabit ran into problems because they wanted to fight some fight with the US government. In the service that I'm planning to build, I will just give up whatever information a legal entity wants when they ask for it in a legal way. The idea is, if your emails are all encrypted, you should have no problem with me giving people encrypted copies.
The above doesn't sound very smart, so I figure others should have thought of it already, so I must be missing out on something. What should I be afraid of?
PS: I don't want to be exposed yet, so wanted to use a throwaway account, but a new account would need to wait a while (I'm not sure how long) before it can submit. Guessing that there is nothing bad in just discussing this, I'm going ahead and submit it under my real account. <comment><USER2> What lavabit was forced to do, was grant a back key to all the emails for all the users that it had. That way they could listen/read all the emails from everyone.

Lavabit owner said, that he cannot do that and if they want he can grant access to the specific users that they require. They wanted more, took this to court and guess what .. they won.

He was under court order not to disclose anything and was fined 1000 usd per day until he provide the keys.

Eventually he did, but he gave them 11 printed pages of 4size words of the key.

Anyway ... that is the story.

You problem will be that you need to create something secure. If you comply with something like this, then it is not secure. Someone is listening to all of your users. So, if you fall under US juristiction or i would assume EU, a simple warrant might suffice for you to grant them all access betraying your users. Have in mind that you being in another country and having your servers based in US does not really save you. Best option hide in an african country and create your servers there. Good luck !

<comment><AUTHOR> If users encrypt their email from the client, there won't be anything meaningful to eavesdrop, will there? I figure there may be a problem with incoming emails that are not encrypted, but surely people have to fix that on their own (e.g. telling their peers to encrypt emails sent to them).

Is it unreasonable not to give up a key that I don't have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Americans.</comment>


Ask HN: How to pursue a specific career path using MOOCs / online resources - <AUTHOR> Hi HN! I am a self-taught developer who is feeling pretty lost. I am asking for guidance on finding a focus point in my studies/aims.
I have two goals:
-to be able to set up and run my own website which requires use of databases (not just static web pages)
-to learn any specific marketable skill well enough to get an entry-level job
I have taken CS50, MIT's Python courses, and courses on web development by HKUST and Uni of London. I've set up basic sites by following these courses and tutorials, using frameworks meteor, React, Ruby on Rails...
The result has been a bunch of disconnected knowledge that hasn't helped me achieve my two goals. None of the courses have been comprehensive enough to get a site up and running. I haven't gained enough experience in any specific area (frontend/UI, backend, testing, coding for mobile, etc) to get a job.
If anyone has advice, or can point me towards resources that I've overlooked, you will be a lifesaver. Thank you. <comment><USER2> I was in your boat a few years ago. I knew a lot of STUFF but all the strings weren't attached to where I could build something worthwhile. I decided to dig into Django. I had to do probably 2 tutorial toy projects just to get a slight handle on things. Then I dug in, creating a site for myself. I struggled through the docs (which are amazing) when I had an issue, and really dug into the framework. It took a while, but in the end I had a beautiful site that worked well for what I needed it to do at the time.

Really, my advice is to just CODE. Try to finish a project. Don't get discouraged when it's not happening as fast as you'd like. Take things slow, and focus on one implementation at a time.</comment>


Show HN: Self-hosted comment-system for static sites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/skx/e-comments/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is not a new project, but it has recently been updated to allow threaded/nested comments.

The demo shows what it looks like:

[https://tweaked.io/guide/demo/](https://tweaked.io/guide/demo/)</comment>


Some Canadian businesses want to let Americans back in. Most Canadians don't - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/us-canada-border-coronavirus/2020/06/30/2cbfd3b0-b55c-11ea-a510-55bf26485c93_story.html <comment><USER2> I feel for the resort owner mentioned at the top of the article, but what I feel most is disappointment over his selfishness in wanting to take tourism dollars in exchange for risking his community and the province-at-large to outbreaks of coronavirus.

Already in Ontario we're seeing worrying signs of quarantine fatigue, but I sincerely hope we can beat this thing without falling victim to selfish indulgences.

It's an interesting thought experiment to consider whether our willingness to accept a temporary loss of our personal freedoms is tied to the success (or lack thereof) of the coronavirus response in the United States.

<comment><USER3> From my observations, the experiment is failing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm Canadian, and based on my social circle at least I don't think anyone wants to see the border open to non-essential travel until either the US has things under control or (more likely) there's a vaccine.

We're finally getting a handle on COVID, with 200-300 new infections nationwide daily and dropping, and we're on track to have schools opening (sort of, for some TBD definition of "open") in the fall. We don't want to fuck this up.</comment>


Instant. Customizable. Search. [Rate my start-up] - <AUTHOR> http://www.dashler.com

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea here is a page that allows you to search any website you choose, in the easiest manner possible. To me, that means having auto-complete available as I type my search, choosing whether or not I want the results in a new tab, and not having to load the landing page of the site before doing my search.

I've been using this as my startpage for about a week, and it's added a layer of convenience to anytime I'm in "research mode" about a topic. I can flip through Google, Twitter, Youtube, etc, and get a good all around feel for the prevalence of a topic, in a matter of seconds.

The filter function on the left searches through your list of search providers, but also instantly searches through Dashler's database of sites. You can specify part of a name, or a tag like "books" or "shopping" or "blog". (If you have a site you think should be there, please let me. I can add it right away.) In the "tools" section, you can add/edit/delete the search provider selected.

You can also add your own search provider. All you need is a URL with a "%q%" in it, which will be replaced by what you type in the search box.

Try it out, and let me know what you think.

<comment><USER2> It looks nice but I think I'll stick with slickrun, which saves me the 2s initial page load and can launch far more things than just searches.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hmm.

Showing tips / help one line at a time might not be the best idea. For instance if you want to figure out what the filter does, you have to just click next over and over again and hope that at some point it will tell you.

Otherwise, this is pretty nice. Probably better than using a search toolbar. Though, I have quicksearches in my address bar for all of these, which means it's not really useful for me.

For instance if I want to research some programming topic X, I will go into my browser and type: "g X" -> Ctrl + T "w X" -> Ctrl + T "so X" to open tabs with searches of google, wikipedia, and stackoverflow (for instance). That's easier than clicking around on your site.

Now if you could display all search results side by side, it might be more interesting. And if you could create quicksearches for groups of that... So if I want to search Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.de at the same time and see results from all side by side (or in a grid layout if there are more than 3 sites). If you could do that, I'd totally use it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting concept -- It seems like it might work better as a browser plug-in though.

If you want to keep it as a web site, I would make the interface (your search box, browser list, etc.) as unobtrusive as possible (remove all the daed space, try to move your entire search interface to a bar at the top or left perhaps, and create a results pane who's vertical scroll bar is flush w the right side of the screen -- this will create a much more comfortable and familiar experience for users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great design advice. I'll experiment with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It might be a good idea to pre-emptively load the results from all the search engines so you don't have to wait for each one. Additionally, it should be obvious which ones get results and the ones that get poor results should be pared away.

Cool idea tho. You should hire a designer -- the current UI while functional definitely has that "engineer touch" :) (Not insulting, I have the same problem!)

<comment><AUTHOR> How could I figure out which results are good, and which are bad?

<comment><USER5> Well, you definitely might not end up at a wikipedia article, or a wolfram alpha search. Beyond that you can try to get smarter about ordering them. If, for example, there are a lot of "related searches" on google, that might mean google has worse results. Or, if Google or Yahoo's first result is Wikipedia, you should rank Wikipedia first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool, I'll use it for today and come back with feedback. I suggest adding DuckDuckGo, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great! I appreciate it. DDG is available... type "duck" in the filter box.

You can add it to your list of providers by clicking "add" in the tools menu.

<comment><USER6> I think the UI needs attention most. I want to use it, but I want the searches to be done at once, so I can just skim across the sources. Maybe on hover- over?

It would also be good if adding a new engine were easier. The language is a bit confusing. I think there should be an explicit "add another search provider to this list".

Keep it up! I'll be checking back!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 1\. people don't like iframes with scrollbars. 2\. people don't customize.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like it. But I'd like it even more if it didn't use up so much screen real estate. I have a large monitor, and keep my browser windows pretty small (around 1024x768, which a lot of sites are designed for) Which is fine, but then the window-within-a-window results get positively tiny.

</comment><comment><USER9> Really don't like that I searched for something, found a link, clicked on it, and had the whole thing loaded into an iframe that I couldn't make go away easily.

</comment><comment><USER10> This should be considered more of a side project than a startup.

</comment><comment><USER11> Load the sites side by side.</comment>


Can't navigate to docs.angularjs.org in chrome - saiko-chriskun

Navigating to any url under docs.angularjs.org redirects my (latest) chrome browser to https://%26/g. Doesn't happen in other browsers :/. Happening to anyone else? <comment><AUTHOR> Works fine for me in Chrome.

Have you tried disabling the plugins or Incognito mode?</comment>


Ask HN: Why some startups are using AWS? - <AUTHOR> Or essentially: why someone who presumably knows what he's doing, is using AWS? I understand why the clueless do, because it's so convenient and Amazon marketing power is so strong - i had clients who had no concept of a dedicated server in their heads: for them it was either AWS/GCP/Azure, or buying a server and putting in their office - Amazon pushed other alternatives out of their brains with their marketing power - but the startup founders should still understand?<p>With AWS or any cloud you overpay 5x-100x. Why anyone rational would do it? <comment><USER2> You pay a premium for flexibility. If you need a single dev server today and it is 50-50 that you will either need 100 servers next year or 3, then AWS or another cloud provider is the logical choice. AWS reserved instances can also give you a discount that makes the price competitive with regular dedicated servers. Note that you can also request a dedicated host on AWS EC2 and have a server reserved just for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> What startup knows how to install, maintain and support infrastructure 24x7?

<comment><AUTHOR> See, it might make sense not hiring a sysadmin who will work on your physical servers in the datacenter if it's about paying $500 to AWS monthly vs $100 to the datacenter - coz the salary is say $5000 a month. But if the startup plans to stay on that level forever, they better not even start. And pretty soon you'll find yourself paying $20000 per month (very practical thing in a still small startup i know) vs $4000, turning situation around - and going off cloud while being live may be a painful transition.

(yes you get discounts on large volumes in the cloud, but so do you in the datacenters - you can for example rent whole rack which is a lot cheaper than doing it per-server).</comment></comment>


Massive study: Birth order has no meaningful effect on personality or IQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150716124449.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> Direct DOI to article for those with access to the Journal of Research in Personality: [http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.05.005](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2015.05.005)</comment>


Standing on the Shore*: How AI Is Disrupting the World's Largest Industries - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/data-collective/standing-on-the-shore-how-ai-is-disrupting-the-worlds-largest-industries-38df7430a543#.sycl9bnph <comment><USER2> I don't normally comment, but given my background and general interest in the subject areas discussed, it's sparked an interest in commenting on the subject.

It's an interesting article, but I am a proponent of the idea that AI / deep learning / neural network based computing is still in it's infancy. I've worked in several of these industries and though newer companies are cutting into market share through a mixture of "intelligent" design and large-scale ingestion of data, I believe that it's important to admit we're a long way from being able to say that there is really a dramatic revolution through adoption if artificial intelligence / algorithms (bearing in mind I'm keeping well clear of the strong-vs-weak argument in using that term), in any given industry. Instead I think there are many fringe cases that carve out what might become the wider adoption of the future. These are nicely exemplified herein, but limited to mostly brute forcing the computational abilities of our limited (though fast and vastly impressive) advancements in technology.

For sure, the last 20 years have seen great change and so too will the next 20. However, I think it's sensible as (if/a) technological practitioner(s) to greet the change with a level and realistic perspective, we are still developing simple "AI" like systems. Also, businesses are extremely hesitant and cautious, both universally and especially across sectors, when make more than the necessary change required to one up each other. If you scrape off the top layer of innovation and hype, there is still a long way to go before we're swimming in the waters of a technical revolution (and one may argue how wise we are to seek it; one for another time)...</comment>


Show HN: Habitify – Form new habits, earn points and donate them to charity - <AUTHOR> https://habitify.co/ <comment><USER2> The link to charitywater.org is broken at the bottom of [https://habitify.co/how.html](https://habitify.co/how.html)

My advice: Since there's a Mac version Habitify does not depend on mobile device functionality, so it might be worth considering a web version to broaden the potential customer pipeline [I am assuming based on the donation model requiring Habitify to track users' points that there is already a web component].

To me, other advantages of a web implementation are challenging assumptions about users and pulling utility and functionality out from the rituals of programming against Apple's API's and for the constraints of iTunes Store.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice. I also plan to make web version for Habitify and it will coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting concept! One thing to mention, "remaining" has been spelt incorrectly in your iOS screenshots (at least in Notification Center) and is currently spelt as "remainning". This is both on the website and App Store.

<comment><AUTHOR> ohh, thank you for mentioning me about incorrect word. I will edit it in next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really cool idea! Would love to check it out. One concern I'd have is: how are you guys funding this? How can I trust that you will be making the donations that you claim?

<comment><AUTHOR> Charity donation is a small additional feature on out app. We will convert your points into cash and donate them directly to charity: water. The point to money conversion rate is still small, because we are not a charity organization and we dont go fund for it. Total points, total money after converting are appeared on our app, our website and our profile on charitywater.org. Then you can easy to check it.</comment></comment>


Would Air Travel Be Safer Without Pilots? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/11/21/would-air-travel-be-safer-without-pilots-steve-jurvetson-thinks-so/ <comment><USER2> "Planes are mostly already flown on autopilot already."

Well, yes, the easy bits. The problem is that you still need pilots when things don't go _exactly_ to plan, and they never do: [http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation- myths/](http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/)

This is not to say that passenger planes can't be automated someday, but we're nowhere near there yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a pilot who loves flying, I am sad to say I must agree with the article. Computers are ideally suited to fly planes, statistically will be safer and we like it or not, will be flying most large aircrafts in a future not to distant. (My guess.. 20 years tops)

</comment><comment><USER4> Air travel is already safe. Statistics show 1.27 deaths per 100,000 flight hours, or another stat in a single year you have the odds of dying as 1 in 4 million or so. You are more likely to die driving to the airport. How would having no pilots decrease those odds significantly? I would think that any decrease due to a computer doing it better would be offset by bugs in the software or unanticipated situations.

<comment><USER5> _would be offset by bugs in the software or unanticipated situations_

Indeed, it's always the "unanticipated situations" that cause problems both for humans and computers - and in the case of flying, I think it's better to have some level of automation to reduce human error, but there must always be a manual override. Completely replacing the pilot with innumerable lines of code executed by a computer would be even more dangerous as it's far more likely that a pilot can react intelligently to assess the situation and take manual control of the plane than someone be able to immediately find the bug and fix it, without introducing any new ones, then update the software "on- the-fly" (literally).

It's similar to the issues that abstractions cause in software: the more we rely on them to hide details, and the more complex the systems we build as a result, the harder it is to reason about the problems that arise due to something lower down in the stack. "Out of sight, out of mind."

Here is a related article about this: [http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to- dea...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/automated-to-death)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > When you look at airplane crashes, it's not equipment failure. It's human > error.

A lot of the crashes are due to equipment failure. Take a look at the series "Aviation Disasters". A pilot is needed to figure out what is wrong, and to compensate to bring the airplane back. A computer program can't do that.

Such is far, far more complex and nuanced than dealing with a failure on a car. Just take Sully's landing on the Hudson after a flock of geese took out his engines. What computer program could have figured out why the engines failed, and what was possible for the airplane to do? Evaluate the weather conditions, and make the best choice of landing spot? Phooey.

<comment><USER7> Do the pilots need to be in the plane?

<comment><USER8> If they're in the plane, they have a greater incentive to land it safely - which is why I want a pilot on board with me.

<comment><USER9> What about the gigantic incentive to live resulting in _poorer_ performance?

We saw this on Air France - where the pilots' panic caused them to ignore readily available information that would have saved their lives.

On the whole of it, I'd rather the plane be flown by a computer, with a remote pilot jumping in for extreme edge cases.

<comment><USER8> How about all three? Computer, with a pilot on board monitoring things, and a remote pilot for extreme emergencies.

Someone should be able to physically take some kind of control when the computer pilot breaks and the comm link to the remote pilot doesn't work.

<comment><USER10> Well, that's more or less how it works today. Airline pilot's job is basically hours of boredom punctuated by minutes of terror. Computers do most of the work, pilots are there for takeoffs and landings (which could be automated) but more importantly for when things really go wrong. Airline pilots flying scheduled flights (Part 121) are in constant communication with the dispatcher on the ground. Dispatcher is trained to pretty much the same standard as pilots and helps with the planning, safety and can help with workload during flight. Having all three in place is probably why airline flying is so safe these days.

On the other hand, I could see freighters (e.g. likes of FedEx fleet) fully automated in the near future (5 years? less?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Steve Jurvetson wants to disband the TSA. The following text is copied from his post: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/315439026](https://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/315439026)

\---

I focused on scenarios for removing all security checkpoints and delays from a customer perspective.

Imagine checking in at a kiosk to get your boarding pass, and going though no security lines to board the plane. Bring anything you want with you, but know that the flight is under video surveillance, like retail stores today.

I assumed technologies that work in rudimentary form today and will benefit from Moore's Law. (The only 12-year forecast that I felt confident about is the continuation of the 100-year abstraction of Moore's Law, bringing a 256x computational advance by 2018).

So, I started with the assumption that computer-controlled flight would be possible. It's a pretty safe assumption given what we already have today.

With no cockpit, everything changes. The potential for harm is greatly reduced if the plane cannot be navigated from within. No hijacking. No use of the plane as a weapon.

Bombs become the only threat, and a reduced one.

Personal weapons? A gun or knife-fight could do more damage in a restaurant, or many large group gatherings. Why bother with a plane where criminal activity will be recorded, and the only people harmed are on board?

As for bombs, passive sniffers in a free flowing airport gateway are more plausible than detecting improvised weapons than could be used against a pilot.

At the airport, a quick fingerprint biometric would be a natural way to get a boarding pass (as 12 million people have already done in Florida to get access to an amusement park). So even smuggled bombs would have more capture and downside risk for a terrorist cell than other targets.

Pie-in-sky ideas: hardening a UAV to bombs should be easier than current planes; smaller planes could lower risk; luggage could fly separately; biologic weapon sensors could trigger a flight path to quarantine, etc.

<comment><USER12> then somehow someone hacks you

f __kd

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've always wondered why we don't have more sophisticated autopilots for trains. I recognize the importance of having staff on a train to deal with a lot of the engineering, break, track and other equipment issues, but It's unclear to me why the actual driving (braking/acceleration) of the trains is still done by (often bored out of their skulls) train operators.

I'm guessing the big element that was missing was sensing track obstacles and braking accordingly - in Singapore/Dubai they have doors limiting access to the track, and in vancouver they have (tending to failure in the winter) track sensors to see if anyone has hopped onto the track.

</comment><comment><USER14> Not yet, but a decade or two out, maybe. It requires much better sensors. For one thing, you need all the gear for automatic driving to get from the runway to the gate. Landing on an airport without ground aids may be necessary in an emergency.

What we'll probably see first is larger one-pilot aircraft, able to land themselves in case of pilot failure. Also, unpiloted fighter jets are almost inevitable, simply because modern airframes can pull more Gs than pilots can stand. Boeing is modifying old F-16 aircraft into the QF-16, which is unmanned. These were originally intended for target practice, but DARPA is interested in using them for other purposes.

<comment><USER15> The QF-16s are unmanned but they are not computer-controlled. I believe the argument here is for computer-controlled airliners not remotely piloted ones. After what happened to one of our Scan Eagle UAVs[1], the last thing we need is the tragic loss of life and PR nightmare of an unmanned commercial airliner getting hacked and crashed.

[1][http://rt.com/news/iran-drone-hacked-downed-353/](http://rt.com/news/iran- drone-hacked-downed-353/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I do not know how I feel about this. I realise that a modern day plane basically flies itself once it reaches cruise altitude what is referred to as fly-by-wire. However, the notion that pilots are not needed or do nothing on planes is ridiculous.

Are we forgetting that it was a pilot in 2009 on US Airways Flight 1549 that safely landed the plane after striking a flock of geese during its initial climbout only to be ditched into the Hudson River shortly after. If a pilot was not in the plane at the time, no computer would have been able to save the plane.

Typically a pilot will turn off the autopilot around 1000 feet and then do the rest for descent and subsequent landing. On takeoff, most pilots will fly to around 10,000 feet, some to cruise altitude before turning on the autopilot. There are some tasks on modern day planes that cannot be currently done without a pilot (at least not safely).

We have to remember things like autopilot still require manual input from the pilot and cockpit crew to get from its departure point to its destination. A pilot doesn't just fly a plane out of an airport, press a couple of buttons and then do nothing for the rest of the flight, this is a misconception perpetrated by the media and so-called experts who have never flown a plane in their life. Autopilot is merely a tool, much like a machine keeping a patient breathing and their blood flowing in the operating theatre is a tool for surgeons. The machines need to be calibrated, have their data input and be closely monitored much like a pilot does on a plane, even with autopilot engaged.

While I applaud the forward thinking from people like Steve Jurvetson, statements like " _Planes are mostly already flown on autopilot already_ " would be strongly disagreed with any pilot you ask. No two flights are the same and all flights are made up of individual and manual decisions from the pilot and crew. If a pilotless plane were something that could be a reality, the airline industry which has been struggling for years now to keep costs down amidst rising fuel costs would have already partially integrated this or started to cut down on the number of pilots they hire.

I would like to see a pilotless plane decide what to do when the landing gear fails and an emergency landing needs to be made. I would like to see what happens when a tire blows on a high-speed take off and the plane has to make an emergency landing, or what happens when a plane has to make an emergency detour over rocky terrain.

You would still need people to operate these planes remotely, what happens when contact is lost with a plane and it finds itself flying without a pilot at 35,000 feet who can manually take control of the plane and land it? Is Steve forgetting that a pilot would effectively be replaced with someone in a call centre type building sitting at a computer terminal remotely programming commands and programming things like runway codes and other things into the plane?

Some things just can't and should never be replaced. Is modern day technology meant to replace doctors? Every time a new device intended to help keep a patient alive is created, is its intent to aide or replace a doctor? Of course not. People would never agree with replacing doctors with machines completely.

Looking to eliminate drivers on the ground is one thing, because ground transportation is far more dangerous than air transportation. I agree with driverless cars because we already have the data and vehicle trips thanks to mapping data and technology mean they are predictable to a certain degree. Air travel is the safest kind of travel there is, fatalities and accidents have been consistently going down year after year, the number of accidents with fatalities in the last 10 years on Western commercial airlines can be counted with both hands.

Replacing pilots in commercial aircraft is something that will not happen in my lifetime, or perhaps ever. It is one of the worst ideas I have ever heard. Not everything can or should be automated for the sake of automating them.

<comment><USER17> This comment sounds a lot like the writing at [http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation- myths/](http://www.askthepilot.com/questionanswers/automation-myths/).

<comment><USER18> He doesn't have a strong argument. Perhaps he knows more than he's saying but most of those tasks could be done in advance or by remote (not time critical, like navigating around storms), or by suitably trained flight attendants (medical emergencies and miscellaneous busy work he alludes to).

If 1% of landings are on autopilot, why not all of them? He doesn't answer this except "setting it up is hard". But setup can be done remotely, if not in advance, by someone who's also controlling several other aircraft, so there are efficiency gains.

We have had driverless trains for decades - see London's DLR. The ticket inspectors can ask the passenger sitting at the front to please change seats so they can unlock the control panel and handle abnormal situations.

<comment><USER19> Rail systems aren't really comparable because, well, they're on rails. You have five more degrees of freedom when flying an aircraft.

A train driver's main job is to have good reflexes. Aside from opening the doors in case of fire, I can't think of a railway accident that couldn't have been prevented by simply stopping the train(s) in time. A driverless train simply needs an emergency stop button and a way for passengers to get out in an emergency.

<comment><USER20> You can reduce most things to not stopping when you should, but... [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaste...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Bernardino_train_disaster)

<comment><USER19> In that particular case there were faulty brakes on one of the cars. Had they been working (or the fault communicated properly) and the train not been overloaded, the derailment would likely not have happened. There was no other alternative - if no braking had happened, the disaster would almost certainly have been worse.

In a computerised system, the brakes would most likely have fault reporting. Actually in this case they did - the logs indicated that the dynamic braking system wasn't producing any current. This should have been indicated to the driver.

There's also plenty of human error there in not reporting the brake failure and 'eyeballing' weights. Passenger trains are presumably designed such that even with severe overcrowding and lots of luggage there is small chance of the brakes being underpowered. I have no idea why an emergency brake system wouldn't activate all possible means to slow things down.

I agree that in this instance braking actually worsened the problem, but the solution was still that the train should have been braked properly. A computerised system would likely have performed similar steps although it would know the braking force provided by each technique and respond accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Obligatory reference to "Children of the Magenta Line"

[http://independentflightinstructors.com/instructors/2011/11/...](http://independentflightinstructors.com/instructors/2011/11/children- of-the-magenta-line/)

(Automation systems typically tell the pilot where to go with a magenta line, on the G1000 systems I am used to it's an indicator of GPS navigation)

From the opening line: "as we look at this accident history, we find that in 68% of these accidents, Automation Dependency played a significant part".

So automation certainly _is_ not the solution currently, at least not by itself. It handles a lot of the routine very well, but not non-routine situations, which happen frequently enough. Big events like Captain Sullenberger's Hudson landing have been mentioned, but there are many other smaller situations that occur on a regular basis.

On the other hand, automation has been a crucial part of making commercial aviation so incredibly safe and accidents so rare that we no longer really have a statistically relevant sample base. That's an enormous achievement, but automation is only part of the story.

The current amazing safety record has been achieved with the current consensus/compromise setup: humans + machines.

Most of the problems that happen nowadays seem to happen due to problems at the man+machine interface. Asiana 214 for example would have been fine as a fully automated approach just as much as a fully hand-flown approach, but confusions between the automation and the pilots caused a crash.

However, looking at those statistics and saying "we must remove one element" is fallacious, simply because the statistics do not show how many crashes were _prevented_ by having that element aboard.

So while these sorts of radical proposals sound good and appear to make a lot of sense when not examined too closely, I would be very surprised if the objectively best solution is not the combination that we have, refined further to smooth out problems at the computer/human interface.

Automated trains and cars have been mentioned as examples. Planes are fundamentally different, because with any surface bound vehicle you can, in an emergency, just stop and wait for help. For a train, that's literally it. For a car, you'd probably want to pull over somewhere safe, but if worse comes to worse you can stop in place and hope everyone around you stops as well or avoids you.

If you "stop" a plane in flight, everyone on board dies. You have to actively land the plane on a suitable surface at suitable speed and orientation, arguably the hardest part of flying. That's also one reason why requirements for airplane engines are so different than for cars: if a car engine dies, you pull over. If a plane engine dies, you also die unless you find a good place to land in the next couple of seconds or minutes.</comment>


Demo Invest - <AUTHOR>

We currently have a demo site, which we paid to have developed. Will investors, invest in a demo or do they prefer to invest purely in an up and running site. The site will cost about $60k to be fully comnpleted and we do not have the starting capital to do this. Please help? <comment><USER2> Investors will invest in a team that they believe in. They pretty much never invest in a "a site", regardless of whether it's a demo or up and running.

And, of course, given that this is Hacker News, rather than "People Who Outsource Their Hacking News", we might not be the best people to talk to. Just a thought...

</comment><comment><USER3> I am not sure what kind of help you are requesting.</comment>


NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/10/nasa_fusion_engine_fast_mars_trip/ <comment><USER2> Arguably we've had "fusion drive" for spaceships ever since Project Orion. Very simply, build a ship with a big shield in the back, throw nuclear bombs out behind the ship, detonate, the shock and radiation hits the plate (some ablates, but it's still fairly study and safe), and some kind of shock absorber system pushes the spaceship forward. Repeat. You can feasibly get to 0.10c with this, using 1960s technology, and really big ships.

I think most of the earlier designs involved fission bombs, but there's no reason you couldn't use fusion bombs, and maybe even some kind of laser or magnetic means of initiating fusion. Which seems to be exactly what UW is talking about here.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_\(nuclear_propulsion\))

A _lot_ of the engineering and physiological problems of a Mars mission go away if you have the ability to move huge masses between Earth and Mars fast. You can skip the low energy launch windows and just go for a short on-Mars trip, rather than needing to loiter for a year or two between windows. You don't need to worry about supplies in space and radiation issues for a year- long transit. etc.

<comment><USER3> and you think that getting x nuclear bombs into orbit is safe?

and even when all bombs go into space without incidents, having them there until start is no risk neither?

i think something more conventional would be better, even when less economically ...

<comment><USER4> Well, combustion engine in my car is not very conventional either by XIX century standards. Maybe we should ride horses?

Why you make assumption that bombs must be delivered to space vs constructed there from resources mined in asteroids?

<comment><USER5> Plutonium is a synthetic element, requiring a nuclear reactor to create, then must be purified. Uranium is currently unknown in asteroids, and even if it were found would require refining with thousands of large centrifuges.

Converting uranium to uranium hexafluoride, centrifuging it over and over, then converting it back requires massive industrial facilities, currently impossible in space.

<comment><USER4> What about moon?

I'm pretty sure that smart people will figure out the solution. I just wanted to point out that most probably we can find solutions that are safe enough and the only limiting factor is our imagination (or lack of it specifically).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Something is rotten in Denmark. If this project achieves a sustained fusion reaction as claimed, that represents a huge breakthrough, and not just for space propulsion, but for the general topic of fusion power.

If it succeeds, it would sweep away all present fusion reaction prototype methods, including the well-tested but so far ineffective( * ) tokamak and laser-fusion approaches.

* By "ineffective" I mean none of them has reached the break-even point, that point where more energy is released than is required to initiate the reaction in the first place.

The article doesn't say whether the prototype device has actually succeeded in igniting a sustained fusion reaction. If it does, it would quickly move beyond its present goal of producing a more effective source of space acceleration and would answer some longstanding questions about fusion power itself.

The fact that this isn't being discussed leads to my statement above -- something is rotten in Denmark. Either the project is overselling its possibilities, and/or it can't really achieve fusion break-even.

Speaking hypothetically, if the device could produce a sustained fusion reaction with substantial power, it could be scaled up and used to propel a spacecraft to Mars in much less than 30 days. Assuming a sustained acceleration of 1 g, the hypothetical craft could accelerate for 1/2 the trip, turn around and decelerate for the other 1/2 of the distance, arriving at Mars with zero velocity. Apart from minimizing travel time, this hypothetical profile would prevent the bone loss that accompanies sustained time at zero-g.

Making the above assumptions, and assuming that Mars is at a close approach point in its orbit, the travel time could be as little as ... wait for it .. 50 hours.

Derivation:

1\. Distance d (meters) for acceleration a (m/s^2) and time t (seconds): d = 1/2 a t^2

2\. Time t for distance d and acceleration a, assuming 1/2 acceleration and 1/2 deceleration: t = 2 sqrt(d/a)

3\. Result for Mars close approach (7.834e10 meters) and acceleration of 1 g: 49.64 hours.

Again, speaking very hypothetically. I still think something is rotten in Denmark.

<comment><USER7> > _Something is rotten in Denmark. If this project achieves a sustained fusion > reaction as claimed, that represents a huge breakthrough, and not just for > space propulsion, but for the general topic of fusion power._

Achieving fusion in a tokamak or with lasers has been a solved problem for a couple of decades.

The problem with fusion power is generating more energy from the fusion than consumed to power the lasers or tokamak.

There is no such problem here as I understand it; the system isn't supposed to sustain itself from fusion, but instead will rely on solar panels or some other energy source to power the fusion reactor.

<comment><USER6> > Achieving fusion in a tokamak or with lasers has been a solved problem for a > couple of decades.

I should have been more clear -- I mean sustained fusion _generation_ , meaning a net energy gain over that required to start the reaction in the first place. That hasn't been achieved.

> There is no such problem here as I understand it; the system isn't supposed > to sustain itself from fusion ...

Not according to the NASA documents (see below). If that were true, there would be no point in using the system. If the fusion reaction produces less power than it requires, the designers would be better off using the source electrical power to drive an ion thruster.

The claim being made is that the fusion scheme creates more power than is required to start it -- by using electrical power to initiate a fusion reaction that produces more power than it requires. If this were not true, the amount of converted solar energy described in the project (i.e. 200 KW) is not enough to propel the relatively massive spacecraft to Mars in 30 days using other methods.

Here's the evidence:

Link: [http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_phaseII...](http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2012_phaseII_fellows_slough.html)

Title: "The Fusion Driven Rocket: Nuclear Propulsion through Direct Conversion of Fusion Energy"

Quote: "an in-depth analysis of the rocket design and spacecraft integration as well as mission architectures enabled by the FDR need to be performed. Fulfilling these three elements form the major tasks to be completed in the proposed Phase II study. A subscale, laboratory liner compression test facility will be assembled with sufficient liner kinetic energy (~ 0.5 MJ) _to reach fusion breakeven conditions_." [emphasis added]

Which brings us back to square one. If this project were to succeed, it would instantly replace the existing approaches (i.e. tokamak and laser inertial confinement) as the most promising candidate for large-scale fusion power generation.

As I said before, something is rotten in Denmark -- why isn't this project being described as a candidate for earthly fusion power generation, given that it must achieve break-even to accomplish its mission?

<comment><USER8> The thing about a fusion _rocket engine_ is that the energy is used to throw stuff out the back. In a fusion _generator_ this would not be considered a feature - if you want a stationary generator that doesn't melt your city you have to contain that plasma, which is very, very energy-intensive.

<comment><USER6> Yes, true, but neither scenario has a working model of a fusion generator with power gain > 1.

> if you want a stationary generator that doesn't melt your city you have to > contain that plasma, which is very, very energy-intensive.

Actually, if you think about it, a rocket engine that can create a fusion reaction and direct the energy out "the back" as you put it, and a power generator that also directs fusion energy to a secondary process, are very similar. In the extreme case, you could take the space device, put it in a vacuum chamber, and direct the thrust into a steam generator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, a little goggling gives a hint this may not be BS after all.

I am unclear on the exact methods, but there appears to be existing research into generating a plasma "pinch" via compression of aluminium around a core of detrinium-tritium. This generates a massive magnetic-flux (which seems to be a result of actual fusion during the compression) and if it is held in a magnetic cage with an out at the back, you have propulsion.

(1) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinch_(plasma_physics)> (2)[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compres...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosively_pumped_flux_compression_generator)

</comment><comment><USER10> Love to watch (and support with my money) all these low cost space propulsion projects. This kickstarter project [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027072188/plasma-jet- el...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2027072188/plasma-jet-electric- thrusters-for-spacecraft/posts) was particularly amazing to watch. Best donation / entertainment money spent ever. And I hope B612 foundation would result in some great fun as well ;) Or not :)

And another thing. And advice for kids looking for summer internships. Don't do these 'iPhone games' startups. Try something real, like NASA or Lockheed, or whatever. If you good, who knows, maybe a few lines of your code will have a chance flying into space.

<comment><USER11> Former aerospace, current iPhone app guy here. Each career path has its pros & cons. Working at a place like NASA or Lockheed lets you work on some very cool projects, often times you are working on some project that never sees the light of day (canceled due to budget cuts and what not). Also, the bureaucracy at large aerospace organizations can be stifling.

Having said that, Space X seems like it offers the best of both worlds.

<comment><USER10> I should have been slightly more precise, the advice was specifically about taking an internship in aerospace as a kid. I don't have any advice about having a career in aerospace industry... Haven't had one. I only had a short internship as a high school student at aero/space R&D company back in Russia. But that [aero/space R&D, not Russia ;)], I can highly recommend.

I think actually, a more general advice is to take an internship in any high tech industry area in which a cost of software or design failures is very, very high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article: _Given the tight financial strictures of the US government this is unlikely_

This is what pisses me off about the last decade. Plenty of money to bail out the richest people the planet has ever seen. Plenty of money to kill brown people. Making a fusion drive? Making sure we all have medicine? Sheesh, we're not made of money!

</comment><comment><USER12> _The FDR is one of only ten projects to get Stage Two funding from the program. This $600,000 award will provide the proof-of-concept FDR system over the next 18 months, and a working spacecraft would be ready as soon as 2020, Pancokti predicted – but if NASA wanted to throw money at the project, this timescale could be cut._

There's a lot of people on HN who could double that budget without blinking, he hinted.

<comment><USER9> Reading lutusp post, anyone on HN who got sufficient funds to double the budget, would also have learnt to look very closely at extraordinary claims with only ordinary evidence.

Be nice if it was true, and one day I am sure it will be (I mean the Sun DES this all the time and not even a single Phd was involved)

<comment><USER13> I'm not saying this FDR is guaranteed to work or be the best idea, but I'm pretty sure lutusp is trolling or something. He is clearly not understanding any of the issues. Repeatedly he talks of needing to create a steady reaction, and talks about needing to meet the same requirements of a fusion electric generator. Neither of these things is proposed by the FDR project. It is pulsed, and it generates only kinetic energy (much like an H-bomb, relatively old and proven technology). Further, he talks of ion thrusters as an alternative, which would take months to get to Mars, whereas this is talking about 30 days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The once a minute firing of the engines feels like it'd be a very unpleasant sensation - I wonder what the momentary acceleration experienced would be.

Also - this craft sounds perfectly suited for laser-transmitted power (rather than carrying a large solar array) - have one or more earth-orbiting lasers beaming energy to the craft. Though I'm not sure if we have the technology today to aim & focus a laser at that range (?)

<comment><USER15> I saw George Dyson give a talk about the Orion project - where they were planning to set off conventional atomic bombs in a series to propel spacecraft - and he had found a paper that had done the math and claimed that the crew of the spacecraft would only feel low-frequency sound, like the bass at a loud rock concert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What kind of residues leaves that kind of engine? is it gas or solid? because small solids at that speed will surely make the earth orbit in a quite dangerous shooting range in no time. What is the expected coherence of a gas cloud flying that fast? Is it going to be dangerous? or will simply dissolve in to space. Would the material expelled fly away from earth orbit?. Sorry, too many questions..

<comment><AUTHOR> My guess would be that the products would be gases. Pinching a little ball of deteurium would make it very hot, and vaporise the metal that squishes it.

<comment><USER16> Are gases dangerous at 30km/sec?. I mean, of course they are, but are they still dangerous in space?. Will the cloud keep more or less cohesive or will it disperse?

<comment><USER17> It will disperse. Gas is made up of atoms going in many different different directions; even if some gas doesn't seem to be moving that's just a statistical average.

Thus, in space all those different particles will fly off in different directions at 30km/sec. They'll be harmless in microseconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is very early, preliminary research. Actual fruits of a manned or otherwise fusion rocket to Mars may be decades ahead. Even at NASA's slow pace they could get there by the 2030es (or 2020es if they listen to Zubrin).

Edit: at 150 tons payload for low orbit (early estimate) it's not exactly easy to launch. If you can do that on a man-rated rocket you're all ready for Mars on just chemical propulsion (in a Mars-direct/Mars-semidirect scenario).

<comment><USER11> Not even the Saturn V could launch 150 tons into LEO (though it could come close). No current rocket even comes close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Columbus took almost one month to pass through the Atlantic Ocean, who could imagine something like this even one century ago?

</comment><comment><USER20> Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on Earth as fusion power plant? (it seems to produce more energy than is consumed to produce the fuel, right?)

<comment><USER6> > Maybe I misunderstand everything, but why couldn't such a system be use on > Earth as fusion power plant?

That was my question also (see my other post in this thread) -- if they really achieve fusion break-even (i.e. produce more power than they require to start the reaction) then they have done something that many decades of fusion research have so far failed to achieve. If their device can really do what they claim, it has implications far beyond the described project.

<comment><USER9> I am not validating these sources but suggest that there is a known approach that collapses aluminium over a core deuterium tritium. It is not self sustaining, but it generates some net positive energy, thus enough I guess to throw a pellet out the door

[http://www.alternative-energy-action-now.com/general- fusion....](http://www.alternative-energy-action-now.com/general-fusion.html)

<comment><USER6> If this method actually worked, I think we would all know by now. Achieving break-even in a controlled laboratory fusion reaction is the "holy grail" of fusion research and would produce instant worldwide headlines, not unlike the (ultimately false) claims made by Pons & Fleischmann, who thought they had achieved room-temperature fusion some time ago:

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

So I don't think so. It's a matter of how much a positive result would completely change the fusion research landscape. It's something that people would know about right away.

<comment><USER21> You insist on a misnomer. Achieving electrical breakeven haven't been done yet (and even if it will be)

<comment><USER21> Sorry, this site really doesn't like pinch to zoom. I'm having a little trouble - the post wasn't even supposed to be posted, but oh well.

I was doing research and apparently I was wrong too, depending on a definition of fusion breakeven (which I was unable to find) Care to explain what is yours?

If you achieve even smallest amount of fusion, technically you have more energy than you started with. Electrical break even would be the holy grail of fusion research, but even then you have to reach economic feasibility (produce enough power to pay back the cost of a plant)

<comment><USER6> > I was doing research and apparently I was wrong too, depending on a > definition of fusion breakeven (which I was unable to find) Care to explain > what is yours?

Fusion break-even means the reaction produces more than or equal to the power required to initiate it. Apart from stars and weapons, it has never been achieved.

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

Quote: "The fusion energy gain factor, usually expressed with the symbol Q, is the ratio of fusion power produced in a nuclear fusion reactor to the power required to maintain the plasma in steady state. The condition of Q = 1 is referred to as breakeven."

> If you achieve even smallest amount of fusion, technically you have more > energy than you started with.

Yes, but with serious problems. One of them is that you have to continue providing more power than the reaction creates, in order to keep the reaction going. This means the overall available power is less than the input power. The reaction is using up much of the power to sustain itself, and that power can't be applied to another purpose. So even though technically there is a lot of power present, it cannot be applied to any purpose other than energizing the plasma. This means the net available power is less than the input power.

This is a bit hard to visualize, so let's say that we have 1000 watts available to apply to some ordinary purpose, or to sustain a fusion reaction.

We discover that the fusion reactor requires all 1000 watts to keep its plasma activated and fusing, but the fusion reaction only produces 250 watts. So, even though there is 1,250 watts of power in the system, 1000 watts of that is required to sustain the plasma in its fusing state and is therefore unavailable. That means only 250 watts is available for any other purpose.

Hence the importance of break-even. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really hope this works out! But the real question is: could this be used for atmospheric thrusters on Earth?

<comment><USER23> Based on the amount of thrust it produces for the weight of the machine, not a chance.

Only works in an environment with very low friction. i.e. space

<comment><USER24> Why not? Aren't rocket-fueled thrusters much heavier due to the weight of the fuel alone?

<comment><USER25> Pretty much. More mass to lift = more fuel = more mass = more fuel etc., plus burning fuel isn't the most efficient way of getting kinetic energy into the thing you are lifting.

I would say it is unsuitable for atmospheric engines because of the way it runs. Earth to Mars in 30 days will need you to be travelling at almost 90 km/second. The engine has to fire for 3 days straight because the delta v you need is retardedly high, so it pulses the engine once a minute so that the passengers don't die and the ship doesn't break up due to huge g-forces.

Lifting something into orbit needs to be done fast, because most of your energy is spent counteracting gravity, not air resistance. A slow pulsing engine would not be enough to get you up.

<comment><USER16> Three days of hammering impulse is not going to be fun!

<comment><USER22> I guess you won't feel the pulsing that much...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Alright count me in for this trip. At least if it includes a return ticket :)

<comment><USER27> If it's in the 2040s or 2050s, and I'm into my dotage and pushing 100, I'll spring for a one-way. They can fill my return slot with someone younger, or bring home an extra 150lbs of Mars rocks.</comment></comment>


Scala Native Next Steps - <AUTHOR> https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-native-next-steps/4216/48 <comment><USER2> Please change the link to [https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-native- next-step...](https://contributors.scala-lang.org/t/scala-native-next- steps/4216). The current one jumps to the last comment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Switching to graalvm native I guess and making a synergy

<comment><USER4> They are not yet switching to GraalVM, much of the conversation is about how GraalVM doesn't solve the same problems that Scala Native solves.</comment></comment>