Wait continues for European Schiaparelli Mars lander - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-37707776 <comment> david-given My understanding is that there are three spacecraft involved:

Schiaparelli, the lander; really just a technology demonstrator. The signal was lost at about landing. It was always intended to go into low power mode after landing to wake up later, so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth, but it may also have crashed.

The ExoMars orbiter, the Trace Gas Orbiter, which carried Schiaparelli to Mars; it's just braked into orbit but has gone behind Mars and is uncontactable, but at last report everything was fine. It has (hopefully) recorded Schiaparelli's telemetry for downlinking to Earth later.

Mars Express, an existing probe in orbit around Mars; it has also been recording Schiaparelli's telemetry; it can't decode the packets, but it can be used for doppler analysis.

Right now Mars Express is downloading its data. They say it'll take about 10 minutes. I don't know whether that data will be enough to say whether Schiaparelli landed safely or not. I do know that it'll be a while until all the data from both orbiters is downloaded and analysed, and by then Schiaparelli may have woken up and called home (I don't have the schedule to hand), so it's not a writeoff yet.

 _Edit for clarification:_ Turns out that TGO was actually doing its engine burn while out of contact from Earth (very small engine burning for a very long time), so when it comes out from behind Mars we'll know whether it made it into orbit or not. I should have actually guessed that from playing KSP.

<comment><USER2> > so it's possible that the signal just didn't make it all the way to Earth

You make it sound like the signal was lost in between somewhere :)

<comment> david-given The Space Kraken is surprisingly good at absorbing radio waves.

...but seriously, it's a small battery powered vehicle with a tiny antenna, and it's trying to be heard from between 50 to 100 million kilometres away, and even in the best case it's just been tumble dried, blowtorched, hammered with explosive charges, and then dropped a couple of metres. I wouldn't be surprised if it lost some signal strength.

Mars Express was supposed to record the doppler shift of the carrier wave on descent, so should be able to pick up any landing signal. We'll see when they release the results.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448)

"#MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC #ExoMars"

...then...

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064)

"ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars #ExoMars"

Also a photo of some very happy space people.

Edit: another tweet saying they'll need around 2 hours of data to confirm that they've reached orbit, confirmation at 20:30 CEST ([https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788781863687036928](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788781863687036928)). Space is somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster.

<comment><USER3> Note that the lander is Schiaparelli, TGO (Trace Gas Orbiter) is just the "mothership" which it uplinks to; TGO achieving orbit, though, is still a special achievement.

<comment> david-given TGO is the actual _mission_. The lander's just a technology demo --- important for the next ExoMars mission rover, but it was only going to last a few days anyway.

Schiaparelli being lost is a 'well, go figure' moment; TGO being lost is an utter disaster.

Unfortunately landers are sexy, while science-rich orbiting probes aren't, so it's Schiaparelli that's getting all the press.

<comment><USER4> i think it's more of a case of 'good news is no news' \- failures are naturally more interesting than just saying that everything went according to the plan and we only have a few pics to show for it.

<comment><USER5> Whilst that's true, the popular coverage before the landing (judged entirely from the BBC News home page) focused exclusively on the lander attempt rather than the orbiter.

<comment><USER6> BBC will focus particularly on the lander because it's the direct followup to the British Beagle 2.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While you're all waiting for a signal from the lander you may be interested in the aerothermodynamics testing of the the module at a ballistic range - [http://i.imgur.com/Xs6NdMC.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/Xs6NdMC.gifv)

Some more reading can be found at ESA's website [http://exploration.esa.int/mars/49139-aerothermodynamic- test...](http://exploration.esa.int/mars/49139-aerothermodynamic-tests/)

EDL (Entry Descent and Landing) on Mars is such a tricky thing because it has a thin enough atmosphere parachutes don't work well, but enough atmosphere that you have to take it into account when controlling/designing the landing module (hence Schiaparelli's complex aerothermodynamics testing).

This is also why NASA's Curiosity rover had such a complex "sky crane" system and why NASA is willing to provide SpaceX communications support in exchange for the EDL data of SpaceX's landing module (the Red Dragon mission).

<comment><USER8> Is that just GIF artifacts, or can you actually see a shock front as the lander mockup passes in front of objects (particularly, the striped markers)?

That's incredible!

<comment><USER9> Wanted to add that while it is hard to judge the speed, if it would happen to be subsonic then I guess it technically is a pressure front and not a shock front as it is when supersonic, if I've understood the distinction correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Signal aquired! [https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788768364235743232](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788768364235743232)

<comment><USER11> That's nice, but that's not the lander. That's the downlink of landing data.

<comment><USER12> It's starting to come (EDM is Schiaparelli lander, TGO is orbiter):

\</comment></comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

Latest status for lander: still unknown (next checkpoint after 20:00 CEST)

Latest status for orbiter: seems good

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

1) _The @ESA_EDM landing recording from #MarsExpress has started arriving on Earth, #ESOC teams report seeing packets flowing #ExoMars_

2) _It will take just over 10 minutes for #MarsExpress to transmit the @ESA_EDM recording #ExoMars_

3) _Interpretation of the @ESA_EDM recording is quite complex - could take more than 30 minutes_

4) _@ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is signal only, no telemetry. We can already tell a lot from that though._

5) _#MarsExpress team now processing @ESA_EDM landing recording to extract the trace of the lander 's signal as it descended to Mars._

6) _#MarsExpress recording of @ESA_EDM descent is now processed and is being analysed by experts at #ESOC_

7) _ACQUISITION OF ORBITER SIGNAL! #ESOC hears @ESA_TGO 's signal loud & clear after it emerges from behind #Mars_

8) _Initial reports from @ESA_TGO telemetry are that it performed exactly as expected during the #BigBurn_

9) _@ESA_TGO team are now analysing the health of the orbiter, looking good so far_

10) _Teams monitoring the Schiaparelli lander continue waiting for indication of the lander's progress. Engineers are waiting for the next signal receipt slot, which will be provided by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will overfly the Schiaparelli landing site between about 18:49 and 19:03 CEST, and downlink any received signals at around 20:00 CEST._

11) _@ESA_EDM recording from #MarsExpress is inconclusive - not clear yet what the status of the lander is_

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770921788178432](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770921788178432)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771548517785600](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771548517785600)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771906455470080](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788771906455470080)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788775324389634048](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788775324389634048)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788779693700968448)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788780512089432064)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788782643697577985](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788782643697577985)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788783926173130752](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788783926173130752)

[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Live...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Live_updates_ExoMars_arrival_and_landing)

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788790526422188032](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788790526422188032)

<comment><USER13> Right, but we already know that the lander emitted some signals part way through the descent (directly transmitted to Earth 1 hours ago):

> #GMRT signal trace has jumped again, which should be the signature of > @ESA_EDM parachute deployment #ExoMars

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755782665928704](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755782665928704)

> Further jumps in the signals from #GMRT - should show heatshield separation > and powered descent #ExoMars

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755964786839552](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788755964786839552)

So this doesn't tell us anything new. What's still to be seen is whether it survives the landing on the surface.

<comment><USER14> If the lander survived, it was expected to transmit. So far it seems that nothing like the expected transmission has been received.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Unfortunately, this reminds me a bit of the wait for the Mars Polar Lander, which crashed on mars in 1999. If the initial communication fails, we have to start hoping for automatic recovery from progressively more and more unlikely failures.

For example, if the initial communication at the end of the landing fails, you hope that it's just the direct-to-Earth antenna. But since it doesn't look like Mars Express could confirm the landing, we have to hope that something prevented it from contacting that - a bad angle or something. Well, perhaps another orbiter will pick it up, or a watchdog timer will time out and fix the problem (for example, by switching to another radio, if they have one).

There's no point in the flight controllers giving up hope, for the few days the batteries would last. But at the same time, the list of things that could cause the failure without destroying the lander totally grows smaller.

(That being said, we now have orbiters that should be able to image the landing site, which could help diagnose the problem more quickly.)

</comment><comment><USER13> Most up to date info is here:

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations](https://twitter.com/esaoperations)

</comment><comment><USER16> Summary for the day posted on ESA's website. The highlights:

> The Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) of ESA's ExoMars 2016 has successfully performed > the long 139-minute burn required to be captured by Mars and entered an > elliptical orbit around the Red Planet, while contact has not yet been > confirmed with the mission's test lander from the surface.

> Media briefing tomorrow at 10:00 CEST for more information. The briefing > will be streamed online.

[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/ExoM...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/ExoMars_TGO_reaches_Mars_orbit_while_EDM_situation_under_assessment)

</comment><comment><USER17> The map makes it look like it was supposed to land right on top of Opportunity. Seeing as how Opportunity is (last I checked) still operational, would it be possible to send it out to investigate what might've happened if Schiaparelli did indeed fail?

<comment><USER15> Probably not. While Schiaparelli is close enough Oppy could plausibly reach it after quite a bit of driving, it would be criminal for Opportunity to go investigate an engineering problem when it was sent to mars to do science.

<comment><USER18> OTOH, wouldn't it have been awesome if Opportunity had recorded the lander on descent? I'm not sure how much azimuth swivel the cameras have but maybe they could have parked it uphill pointing in the right direction...

<comment><USER19> AFAIK, Oppy was in fact watching. Given its abilities it's however unlikely it was able to see something substantial.

<comment><USER19> Info on Opportunity watching for Schiaparelli EDM: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763583](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12763583)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 18:53 CEST: The ExoMars/TGO spacecraft completed its critical orbit-insertion manoeuvre at Mars today and its signals were received by ground stations at 18:34 CEST, just as expected. The timely re-acquisition indicates the engine burn went as planned, and mission controllers are waiting for a detailed assessment from the flight dynamics specialists at ESOC to confirm it.

Teams monitoring the Schiaparelli lander continue waiting for indication of the lander's progress. Engineers are waiting for the next signal receipt slot, which will be provided by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which will overfly the Schiaparelli landing site between about 18:49 and 19:03 CEST, and downlink any received signals at around 20:00 CEST.

</comment><comment><USER21> Briefing in approx 30 minutes:

[http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival](http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival)

A press conference is scheduled for 20 October at 08:00 GMT / 10:00 CEST, when a mission status update is expected, along with the first images from the Schiaparelli descent camera. This will also be streamed live via the player above.

<comment><USER21> Parachute deploy of lander confirmed, heat shield function confirmed. Parachute flight worked, but parachute release did not match expectations. Things went downhill from there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Schiaparelli lander status update from ESA TV live stream (20:35 CEST):

\- already two sources confirmed losing signal during landing sequence (GMRT radio telescope in India [1] + Mars Express orbiter [2])

\- still more data coming around midnight CEST (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter [3])

\- processing new data will take some time (ESA team will work on it through the night)

\- press conference with hopefully more news about lander's fate tomorrow at 10:00 CEST

\</comment><comment>

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Metrewave_Radio_Telescop...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Metrewave_Radio_Telescope)

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

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

<comment><USER22> With Beagle 2 (ESA's other attempt to land on Mars), we also lost the signal, but it turned out that it made a safe landing. But solar panels failed to unfold and that blocked transmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >End of planned @ESA_EDM transmission - still no signal at #GMRT - this is not unexpected due to very faint signal at #GMRT #ExoMars

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788759668940210176](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788759668940210176)

</comment><comment><USER23> Beagle 2: solar panels didn't deploy. Philae: didn't anchor to surface, bounced into a crevice. Schiaparelli: missing in action. If this is another loss, ESA is continuing its bad run with landers.

<comment><USER24> Yeah. It's pretty disappointing. I really would like to see ESA leave the shadow of NASA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yeehaa!! Well done humanity!

ESA Operations @esaoperations 40s 40 seconds ago

#MarsExpress signal acquired! The ESA Deep Space Antenna #Cebreros reports a clear signal from @ESA's veteran Mars mission. #ExoMars

<comment> david-given Mars Express recorded Schiaparelli's signal during descent. All this report is is that Mars Express has started downlinking the recording to Earth --- it's not a report that contact's been made with the lander.

<comment><USER26> I was under the impression the data sent to MarsExpress was a confirmatory landing signal. No?

That data, re-transmitted from MarsExpress is now arriving:

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033](https://twitter.com/esaoperations/status/788770343888556033)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > MarsExpress has started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording. Even at > light speed it will take 9m47s to reach Earth #ExoMars (seconds ago)

<comment><USER28> Though of course, knowledge of whether it has in fact started transmitting the @ESA_EDM landing recording will also take 9m47s to reach Earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This will be devastating to the ESA's funding which is why they are spinning it so hard. This really sucks.

</comment><comment><USER20> All good for the orbiters!

No news for the lander.

See you tomorrow morning.

</comment><comment><USER30> I watched the animation and I saw that the lander would land with a hard thud on the surface, with a system to collapse underneath and cushion it's fall. Why didn't they use the sky-crane method that NASA and JPL came up with?

<comment><USER31> If they had the mass budget to fit a crane they'd probably pack bigger batteries.

<comment><USER30> I'm not sure I understand. The Mars Rover is powered by a nuclear reactor.

<comment><USER32> The Schiaparelli lander is an experiment to test this specific landing method. The landing is the experiment. It's battery-powered and will go dark in a few days.

<comment><USER30> Much clearer than you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> events diverging from what was expected after the ejection of the back heat shield and parachute. This ejection itself appears to have occurred earlier than expected, but analysis is not yet complete.

The thrusters were confirmed to have been briefly activated although it seems likely that they switched off sooner than expected, at an altitude that is still to be determined.

[http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Schi...](http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/ExoMars/Schiaparelli_descent_data_decoding_underway)

</comment><comment><USER33> "#FlightDynamics reported to the #FlightDirector that "We are captured in Mars orbit...all within expected tolerances" #ExoMars" .....TGO is in Mars Orbit!!!!

</comment><comment><USER34> Live video stream from ESA HQ:

[http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival](http://livestream.com/ESA/marsarrival)

</comment><comment><USER35> Beagle 2 comes to mind ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beagle_2)

<comment><USER7> With the (possibly incorrect) thread title as it currently stands, this is a relevant and interesting read.

The interesting part was waiting 12 years for another orbiter to image the landing area to figure out what went wrong with Beagle 2.

If ExoMars/Schiaparelli never sends a signal indicating what happened, would NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE camera been able to photograph Schiaparelli (the lander) and figure out what went wrong?

The Beagle 2 is 2 meters across and Schiaparelli has a 2.4 m diameter.

<comment><USER36> Interesting. The Beagle 2 is 12 pixels on the original fotos. Using mad CSI skills (aka Super-Resolution Restoration) they enhanced it to 100 pixels.

[http://www.space.com/32691-europe-beagle-2-mars-lander- photo...](http://www.space.com/32691-europe-beagle-2-mars-lander-photos.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "ESA Flight Operations Director Michel Denis has confirmed that they have lost contact with the probe.

The team is now hoping to pick up a signal from the Mars Orbiter, but it's not looking hopeful"

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/19/exomars- space-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/10/19/exomars-space-probe- schiaparelli-landing-mars-surface-live/)

<comment><USER32> Wow, the news coverage is really awful. They have not confirmed anything yet.

<comment><USER22> While ESA is nowhere as good as NASA at public outreach[1], does it really suck that we have to wait an extra day to find out what happened 100 million miles away?

[1] NASA probably is overly concerned about public outreach, to the point of choosing missions that look cool or sound cool over those that actually work or do new science.

<comment><USER32> The original title was: "No Signal from European Schiaparelli Mars Lander". I was talking about trigger-happy, misleading coverage from the BBC and Telegraph, not ESA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I saw this headline and went "SHIT!" No, I'm not emotionally invested, in fact I only learnt about it a few hours ago here on HN. Good to hear they have signal.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe windows update kicked in?

</comment><comment><USER39> totally misleading title... there was no signal at the time because they were still waiting for it.

<comment><USER13> I believe the lander was expected to send a confirmation signal directly to Earth after landing, which it did not do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Just now:

#MarsExpress signal acquired! The ESA Deep Space Antenna #Cebreros reports a clear signal from @ESA's veteran Mars mission. #ExoMars

[https://twitter.com/esaoperations](https://twitter.com/esaoperations)

<comment><USER41> /thread

<comment><USER4> not yet, depends on the contents of the signal</comment></comment></comment>


New Allegations Emerge Against Michael Arrington - <AUTHOR> http://betabeat.com/2013/04/new-allegations-emerge-against-michael-arrington-including-an-outside-investigation-for-physical-assault/ <comment><USER2> ...and pop media eats one of its own...</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use this SEO tool? - <AUTHOR> Would you pay for a chatbot that helped you with SEO? A conversation might look like this:
bot: What's your website address?
you: www.somewebsite.com
bot: It looks like your site is about "some thing". You currently rank 55 for that search term in Google. Is that a good search term to work on?
you: yes
bot: What about "some other search term"
you: no
... [More suggested terms]
bot: Let's see if we can improve your rankings. One way to do that is to comment on relevant blog posts. This will put a link back to your site which will improve your ranking.
bot: Is this a good blog post to comment on: <url> (comment/skip)?
you: [read post, then press comment button]
bot: Here's some suggested comments: [Some auto-generated comments that relate somewhat to the article, are grammatically correct and don't look spammy]
you: [Choose the comment that looks the most relevant]
bot: Great - I've posted your comment.
[...later]
bot: Your comment on <website> has been accepted by the moderator.
bot: Also, your Google rank for "search term" has gone from 55 to 34!
bot: I see you've put out a new blog post! Shall I post it on Twitter and Facebook for you?
you: yes
bot: Joe Blogs commented on your post, shall I reply? [Suggested replies...] ...
etc.
The idea is to make it super simple to improve your page rankings for those who don't know anything about SEO.
I was thinking of charging around $10 a month for this service. Would you pay for it? <comment><USER2> Well, I would probably me more willing to give your bot a try than respond to the hundreds to thousands of emails from SEO companies I receive telling me that my website needs this or that... lacking traffic, ranking for the wrong keywords, despite the fact that they send me this PDF document with keywords that have nothing to do with my website.

The bot would certainly have to do more than send me those generated pdfs that the SEO companies think they can sell me on. But depending on its usefulness, I may willing to pay at least $5 a month. Although I admit, I am a hard sell.

But an assistant bot keeping me up to date on all things happening on my website? I've got over 1500 posts on one of my popular websites, so if the bot certainly kept tabs on everything and gave me all sorts of data.. whether via email or just an open chat channel, I'd say it'd be well worth it!

Some things I would definitely like:

1\. how long does it take Google to index a new published post of mine?

2\. are any of my current posts listed in google and if so, where? (page number, position number, search query, keywords, etc.)

3\. what about other search engines?

4\. suggestions about new articles to write based on current ones -- just new ideas from what it scanned

5\. take an article and summarize it into like 5 bullet points for me (I'm big on summarizing blog posts for my readers)

6\. I'd love to know what articles on my site are currently being shared on social media-twitter,pinterest,facebook,linkedin,etc.

7\. I'm far too busy to engage in social media interactions, so if I had a bot to kind of do that for me, whether it sent out a post across all social media, and then checked, and even possibly replied, that'd be cool

And yeah? That last one... take my $10 :P

I seriously lack social media engagement... and I know it.

I know that is probably asking for a lot, but just throwing out some ideas and suggestions. Lots of potential!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

1, 2, 3 and 4: definitely doable 5: tricky, probably impossible to do reliably 6: doable 7: without any manual interaction this could end up looking spammy. If you're happy with that, it could work.

Also forgot to ask what platform people would prefer: Android, iPhone, Windows, OS X or Linux? Platforms like Messenger and Slack are probably out of the question unfortunately because the bot would have to be querying Google automatically, which is more reliable from your own IP.

<comment><USER2> For me personally, I'm more of a web guy.. I like things on the Internet and I like mobile-responsive design. Something that I can access from my phone -- whether on Android or iOS and it works, is great.

As a developer myself, personally I just focus on that. Saves time and money and resources to just make it all responsive. Not knocking app developers at all, because more people DO prefer to go to the Android store or Apple store, but I prefer to hop on Chrome or Safari and navigate to the website and use a product.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do popular sites don't have chat? - <AUTHOR>

I am talking about stack overflow, github or other projects that have a large community. I am building a community kind of project and I am wondering if there is a specific decision from these sites not to include chat for x,y reasons between their users. It is technically fairly easy so there must be something else. Isn't it a good incentive to keep your users online for more time? <comment><USER2> Why would they need to include chat services? External chat clients already exist, and for the _important_ internal messages, there are systems for communication:

\- StackExchange has a comment system, as well as a Meta discussion board, as well as chatrooms for every StackExchange site

\- GitHub has commit messages and issue tracking, as well as e-mail addresses listed for contact, and in-project e-mail threads

So these sites really do have chat, just not the Facebook-Messenger type of chat that you might be thinking of.</comment>


Hacking Hacker News Headlines - <AUTHOR> http://metamarketsgroup.com/blog/hacking-hacker-news-headlines/

<comment><USER2> So the optimal hacker news headline is as follows:

 _Why showing the future is essential to acquiring data_

Noted.

<comment><USER3> _Showing why acquiring data is essential to the future_

I have a feeling that headline wouldn't do all that well, but it does seem to be keeping with google's culture.

<comment><USER4> Testing your hypothesis here - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2520098>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure if I'm being naive, but does the '|' and the '-' have some sort of NLP significance?

From the article, what's the difference between "data |" and "data -" ?

<comment><USER6> I think '|' denotes the beginning or the end of the title, and '_' denotes a wildcard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like you should work in absolute points-space, rather than rank-space.

Also, no clue if the factors you pulled out are orthogonal.

<comment><USER8> True. But credit where credit is due. Very cool analysis for a throwaway blog post specifically manufactured to garner karma.

Only thing I'll add as a data critique, the negative factors are reported as things to avoid. But, in fact, all of the reported on titles actually made it onto the Hacker News front page (1). There are an awful lot of submissions that never make it that far. In fact, the significance of the findings indicate that those terms make it onto the front page A LOT (2). I don't think the negatively correlated terms should necessarily be viewed as failures. Just less successful. My own suspicion is that those titles do draw eye-balls, but someone using titles like those is also likely to be kind of a bad writer, preventing those stories from getting upvotes. It would be very hard to prove a correlation between quality of title and quality of writing, though.

(1) I believe. Hard to tell from the post.

(2) Otherwise there wouldn't be enough data for them to be significant.

<comment><USER9> _It would be very hard to prove a correlation between quality of title and quality of writing, though_

Especially since the author of the linked article isn't always the one who submits the article and therefore gets to choose the HN title.

<comment><USER10> The point of the article was as I understand it, which influence the title has independent of the data. Stuff like quality of writing will just be noise that does not matter anymore as long as you have enough data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> And, the best headline for Hacker News is a headline about hacking Hacker News Headlines :) way to put the research to good use...

<comment><USER6> The submission should have been titled:

"Essential Lessons Showing How to Hack Hacker News with Data Visualization"

and it will be ranked #1 in no tim... never mind :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a counter-point...

This headline uses none of the hacks described in the article, yet it is ranking quite well.

Perhaps people should focus on letting the content speak for itself rather then using tricks like this?

<comment><USER13> It does, however, use the trick of being alliterative—which an N-gram analysis of terms will miss.

<comment><USER10> it's short, which has one of the hacks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 64% isn't the greatest accuracy, but you guys were transparent about everything and the numbers look legit. Awesome job putting this together!

</comment><comment><USER15> Very nice, but the analysis seems to assume that HN rank is determined by the headline and not by the content. (More precisely: for the analysis to give useful guidance to would-be HN headline writers, it needs not to be the case that content features correlated with headline features make a big difference to HN rank.)

My proposal for a good headline according to the numbers in this article: _Showing why impossible future controversy survived the problem could hire data_. Score: 1.3 (could) + 1.2 (problem) + 1.3 (survived the) + 1.0 (controversy) + 0.9 (impossible) + 0.7 (why ___ future) - 3.3 (11 words) + 2.6 (showing) + 0.5 (hire) + 1.9 (data [END]) = 8.1. For comparison, _Why showing the future is essential to acquiring data_ gets 1.4 (essential) + 0.7 (why ___ future) - 2.7 (9 words) + 2.6 (showing) + 1.7 (acquiring) + 1.9 (data) = 5.6 -- except that it doesn't really get the points for "essential" (not at start) or "why ___ future" (two words in between) or "acquiring" (not in second place, word isn't quite right). Of course my headline has the little drawback of being total nonsense.

</comment><comment><USER16> Great -- I'm hoping L1-regularized logistic regression will become the standard first thing to try in these quick-n-dirty "predict response variable from text" experiments. That's our approach too. (I assume this is L1 or similar since you mention regularization causing feature selection.)

[[ Edit: deleted question about what 'k' is for the discretized 1{ rank <= k } response. It's mentioned in the article ]]

<comment><USER17> yeah pretty strong l1--most features were 0. we binarized rank on I_{rank<=20}. it turns out there are tons of articles beyond the first page that stay low forever. check out the interactive viz vad made: <http://hn.metamx.com> (warning 2.6MB compressed js ahead)

<comment><USER16> Another question, how are standard errors calculated? I assume they're not from the bootstrapping since the p-values clearly aren't from the standard errors ( +/- 1.96*se is crossing coef=0 for several cases but with small p-values). The other way I would think to get p-values would be the percentage of bootstrap replicates that have (coef==0). But for only 20 replicates you're stuck with p=0 or p=0.05.

I'm genuinely curious how to do coef significance testing for L1-regularized models. I once saw someone ask this at a Tibshirani talk and he said "oh we have no idea, we've resorted to the bootstrap before".

<comment><USER17> to be honest we just recorded the coeff values for each replicate and did the bootstrap variance calculation.

% of replicates with (coef==0) is potentially much more clever, especially since that's the test we want to perform anyway. i'll run that over the data and see what changes.

<comment><USER18> I think the question is these don't look like NormalCDF(coef/se) p-values given the coef and se you report. They tend to be too small.

From a frequentist perspective, counting zeroes don't make much sense because under the null of coef=0 there is still a chance you don't estimate coef=0, even after regularization.

<comment><USER16>
        I think the question is these don't look like NormalCDF(coef/se) p-values given the coef and se you report.  They tend to be too small.

right that's my question

<comment><USER17> interesting yeah some of them definitely don't look right. the output is from scipy's stats.ttest_1samp

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It'd be interesting to see how the domain shown next to the title factors into this too. Seems like everything from GitHub always does very well.

</comment><comment><USER20> I though this problem was with Digg, but I've experienced same with my submissions. It's funny that people judge content by headlines, we need a better way.

<comment><USER21> There is: delegate.

Find someone who reads Hacker News [1] and blogs. Subscribe to their RSS feed. There's a trick to [1], no doubt. But for most people the time savings far outweigh the occasional mismatch between your interests and the delegate's.

[1] For the same types of articles you do, ideally.

<comment><USER22> That's exactly what I do, though I don't read HN every day I have a script off in the cloud looking at the comments RSS feed, showing me every article that certain people comment on. As a quality filter, I find it better than the front page.

<comment><USER20> Is that script on GitHub, by any chance? Would love to have a look at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> also cleaning up the graph somehow would be great</comment>


Huge Monitor: Alienware Curved Monitor Looks Like It's From Another Planet - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/341413/alienware-curved-monitor-looks-like-its-from-another-planet <comment><USER2> I'd rock some major freecell with this guy</comment>


Tell HN: All Tweeting stopped 20 minutes ago - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Yep. I thought it was just me, but it seems down.

[https://downdetector.co.uk/status/twitter/](https://downdetector.co.uk/status/twitter/)

[https://outage.report/twitter](https://outage.report/twitter)

[https://api.twitterstat.us/](https://api.twitterstat.us/)

Edit: Scheduled tweets from tweetdeck seem to still work. Weird.

<comment><USER3> And on one of their status sites now: [https://api.twitterstat.us/incidents/r4qbz7c69np0](https://api.twitterstat.us/incidents/r4qbz7c69np0)</comment></comment>


Why the West's carbon footprint is worse than it seems - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/international/21679288-china-and-india-are-perceived-be-worst-emitters-carbon-dioxide-see-what-happens-when-we <comment><USER2> I liked the presentation a lot. In 2 minutes and 40 seconds it explains quite a lot. First time that I see the CO2 consumption being taken into account.</comment>


In the Middle Ages, the Upper Class Went Nuts for Almond Milk - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/almond-milk-obsession-origins-middle-ages <comment><USER2> People insist in considering almond milk (and many other vegetable based milks for that matter) as a mere substitute for cow milk, and not for a kind of food in its own right.

Where I live, with the exception of oat milk, all soy, rice or almond milk comes with tricalcium phosphate and sometimes sugar, some flavour and even vegetable fat. Same for yoghurt.

This tendency to add stuff (particularly sugar and fat) to food is becoming more frequent in bread and other vegetable products that were healthier once.

<comment><USER3> Sure, it's not the same as dairy milk, but I don't get this whole "don't call plant-based milk 'milk'" meme. What about Milkweed, or the white oozing "milt" that comes out of a dandelion stalk? Can those also not be called milk?

Maybe if there was a good word that quickly described what rice, soy, or oat milk was it would be OK. But simply calling them "juice" seems to be even more of a culinary misnomer.

<comment><USER4> it's not about what you call it... it about _not adding s to it to make it more like "cow milk" now that you call it milk_

like in, "look, kids are eating this for breakfast, we need to _fortify it vitamins and stuff to prevent deficiencies_ "... nevermind that those extra vitamins will just increase the risk of cancers or stuff in adults. it's becoming hard to find the "un-enhanced" sortiments of many products.

<comment><USER5> While I'm generally a fan of leaving foods as untouched as possible, I have not seen any link between vitamin D3 in the dosage applied to milk and cancer. Conversely, vitamin D deficiency is a population health problem (widespread), so the tradeoff is warranted.

<comment><USER4> > vitamin D deficiency is a population health problem (widespread)

...despite the study that got very popular on HN lately this is far from a clearly agreed upon theory. There's still only retrospective data and with enough confounding factors to make drawing any inference on the _causality_ of things very very hard. Until we all start wearing blood-analyzing implants for a generation or so, >50% of nutrition related studies will continue either being bullshit or not meaning what we think they mean,

<comment><USER6> In fairness if we're reading hacker news we're probably D3 deficient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk, this would appear to going in the face of hundreds of years of history of calling other things milk. I wonder what Milk of Magnesia will have to be renamed to

<comment><USER8> > And currently the dairy industry in Europe is litigating to ensure that only > mammalian milk is allowed to be sold as milk

Not sure what you mean by "currently" and "the dairy industry" and "litigating", but a (the?) relevant case was decided by the ECJ back in June. Press release: [https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/201...](https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2017-06/cp170063en.pdf;) full judgement: [http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...](http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&docid=191704&pageIndex=0&doclang=EN&mode=lst&dir=&occ=first&part=1&cid=543585)

For whatever it's worth, the lawsuit was brought by a German society that aims to ensure fair competition by truth in advertising. (Were they bought by the dairy industry? Possible.)

The judgement is clearly based on the definition "The term "milk" shall mean exclusively the normal mammary secretion obtained from one or more milkings without either addition thereto or extraction therefrom." from EU law made by the European Parliament and the Council. (Were they bought by the dairy industry? Possible. But given this sentence that is part of EU law, the court didn't have much choice.)

<comment><USER2> Many languages are spoken in the EU (as anyone can check by the several translations available for the many documents published by the EU: [https://curia.europa.eu](https://curia.europa.eu)), so this sounds really silly.

I say this because most meanings are lost in translation if we're to use them literally.

Take the english word 'oil'.

\- In Spain, oil would be translated to 'aceite': olive oil is 'aceite de oliva'; engine lubricating oil is 'aceite de motor'. The same thing happens in French, but a literal translation would sound weird in Portuguese, because

\- In Portugal, olive oil is simply called 'azeite', a word that is not used for sunflower seed oil, called 'óleo de girassol', or motor oil, called 'óleo' or 'óleo de motor'.

A similar thing happens with the word 'cream', translated to 'natas' if it refers to the solid phase of cow milk, or 'creme' if it refers to some form of paste, be it an edible spread, a soup, or some body lotion.

So the very fact that they translated 'cream' as 'natas', in the portuguese version, means that the context is everything and that people are not unquestioning automata.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder how much of this was related to the risk that Milk killed a lot of people in the Middle Ages.

<comment><USER10> With the access to fresh milk from their own farm animals that they had? Why would milk kill "a lot of people in the middle ages"?

Lots of rural communities in Europe lived until the 50s or so not much unlike the middle ages (no fridges, no electricity, farming, etc) and they weren't harmed by their milk at all.

<comment><USER11> Since this is also pre-pasteurization I'm thinking all kinds of diseases could be transmitted by cow's milk.

<comment><USER12> Pasteurization is only necessary for transportation. If you drink fresh milk from a clean source, the risk of disease is quite low. And I have nothing to gain by sharing this as a vegan :P

<comment><USER11> There's no risk from drinking milk from cows with open sores on their utters?

<comment><USER12> Ugh. Can you read? I said a clean source and LOW risk, not NO risk.

<comment><USER11> And as we all know it was really rare for cattle in the Middle Ages to be ill.

<comment><USER10> Why would they be ill more frequently than not? If anything, their lives were much better, and the environment much better than today's cows in industrial production settings.

In any case, anybody who hasn't spent all their lives in western cities, but knows rural communities, can attest to millions drinking fresh milk with very low risk for ages...

<comment><USER11> Milkmaids commonly had cowpox, did they not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Put 1 cup of Almonds and 3 cups of water in a blender, blend, filter and you have almond milk. Substitute Almonds for Peanuts or Coconut and you have Peanut or Coconut Milk. Easy and not expensive.

<comment><USER14> Just fyi to people making almond milk this way is often more expensive than just buying almond milk from the store unless you have a cheap way to buy almonds in bulk.

<comment><USER15> Store bought is often watered down and has a really small percentage of almond, at least where I looked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The book "The Lost Art of Real Cooking" by Alabala and Natziger describes how to make what they claim to be medieval-style almond milk and almond butter (apparently quite different from what we buy in stores today).

</comment><comment><USER17> Interesting article!

In Sicily (especially in the eastern part of the island) almond milk is quite a common beverage, it also makes for a killer "granita".

</comment><comment><USER18> A similar (almost identical) dessert is the Turkish Tavuk Göğsü, which probably implies a common origin for both dishes

<comment><USER19> I'd say muhallebi is closer to blancmange than tavuk göğsü, which is literally made from chicken meat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Blancmange and rice pudding? Yes, I'm definitely in favour of adding almonds to _those_ delightful desserts.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm not a big fan of almond milk in general but it's quite nice to make oatmeal with.</comment>


RFC 7540 – HTTP2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7540.txt <comment><USER2> A lot of this sounds like transport layer instead of application layer. I'm curious why it ended up in HTTP instead of TCP.

For example, you could specify that ports 49152 to 50179 formed a block on a given host, and so on in groups of 1028. Ports in a block would have to connect to the same port on the other end, and would share a packet buffer. There could be some rules to let the network stack pass on data to a process in anticipation of a three way handshake completing, TLS could assume that new connections shared the same secrets as existing ones, and so on. That seems simpler, and it prevents the wheel from having to be reinvented for every new application protocol.

An obvious reason not to do that is that TCP is too widely used for the effects of changes to be predicted. Is that the only reason?

<comment><USER3> It's funny to think that a mere 20 or so years ago, ethernet wasn't even a foregone conclusion. The first time I connected a computer to a network, I had to make sure I was plugging into the ethernet and not the token ring. Now here we are pushing transport layer fixes into the application layer just because we don't want to have to explain to sysadmins how to reconfigure their firewalls?

<comment><USER4> I think it is aimed more at home users that are stuck behind a NAT the ISP controls than sysadmins.

<comment><USER5> So we're not fixing the transport layer due to limitations in the network layer that _have_ been fixed, we're just not using them.

<comment><USER6> You mean IPv6? That suffers from exactly the same problem: ISP's just don't give a damn and don't roll it out.

You cannot expect your average internet user to know about these things, so they get away with it.

<comment><USER7> Major residential ISPs aren't rolling out IPv6 largely because they already have enough IPv4 space for their customers.

Take a major UK ISP like Virgin Media. According to Hurricane Electrics BGP looking glass project they are originating 9.4M IPv4 addresses[0], however, at the end of 2012, according to Wikipedia[1], they only had 4.8M customers.

[0] [http://bgp.he.net/AS5089#_asinfo](http://bgp.he.net/AS5089#_asinfo) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Media)

<comment><USER8> Virgin Media can't even expand that easily because they must lay cable in areas that weren't covered by NTL/Telewest infrastructure: and I believe is extremely expensive and time consuming with planning permission being what it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm surprised to see that even Safari and IE implement SPDY:

[http://caniuse.com/#feat=spdy](http://caniuse.com/#feat=spdy)

If you're working on a new app and your primary concern is modern browsers, if your network stack supports it, you could probably design for HTTP/2 from the get-go. That's exciting - no more choosing between semantic code and boosting performance with hacks like image spriting.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's annoying that IETF so behind the times that they still don't use HTML for their RFCs. In the last 20 years they've published 3 specs for hypertext transform protocol, but are still unsure about actually using hypertext yet.

They're probably very concerned about readability on a VT-100 by users who don't have enough memory to run Lynx.

In the meantime the spec is unreadable on a mobile phone screen (their "HTML" version of the RFC is still the same fixed-width text stuffed in a `<pre>` tag).

<comment><AUTHOR> There's probably a XML version, which mean you can use the standard XSLT sheet to get HTML output that's not confined to 75 characters on a line.

But completely agree... they still haven't agreed on UTF-8 either, and still require ASCII.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lukasa gave a great talk at PyCon on HTTP2:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACXVyvm5eTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACXVyvm5eTc)

It is my hope that hendrix[0] will have HTTP2 support before DjangoCon in September.

0: [https://github.com/hangarunderground/hendrix](https://github.com/hangarunderground/hendrix)

</comment><comment><USER12> While I took and thoroughly enjoyed my networking course back in school, I am still left wondering:

What features will an end-user now be able to enjoy because of this new RFC?

<comment><USER13> You have a completely warped perspective here.

This is something Google pushed, so that Google can have as many tracking cookies as they like when you browse the internet, without the cookies causing a noticeable performance degradation because a http request might exceed the American DSLs MTU size.

This was one of the primary engineering criterias. No really.

There's no features in it for the _user_.

<comment><USER14> I've only begun to study the protocol, but some things in the privacy section do concern me. Particularly:

HTTP/2's preference for using a single TCP connection allows correlation of a user's activity on a site. Reusing connections for different origins allows tracking across those origins.

Imagine a home or business where devices are configured for some privacy (cookies and various other things generally blocked) and the machines are communicating through a NAT or Gateway/Proxy. Wouldn't reused connections represent a unique threat in terms of allowing (third-party) websites to discern the behavior of individual machines and users?

<comment><USER15> Perhaps my understanding is way off, but I don't think it's possible to reuse a connection across different origins (unless perhaps the IP address of the server was the same for those origins)

<comment><USER14> Well, this:

 _Clients SHOULD NOT open more than one HTTP /2 connection to a given host and port pair, where the host is derived from a URI, a selected alternative service [ALT-SVC], or a configured proxy._

suggests to me that if you have TopLevelOrigin1 open and TopLevelOrigin2 open, and they both embed content from ThirdPartyOriginA, you'd (likely) have only ONE connection to ThirdPartyOriginA. I thought that would be an example of "reusing connections for different origins", and there would seem to be a correlation risk.

I was thinking that the "one connection per host:port" would (normally) be based on host NAME. However, your comment and the fourth paragraph in 9.1 Connection Management leaves me thinking that it could (optionally) be based on resolved IP Address.

To further complicate things, Alt-Svc can redirect requests to a different host. So HTTPS requests to TopLevelOrigin1 and TopLevelOrigin2 could all go to example.com and its IP Address.

Maybe a (welcomed!) reply will help clarify the correlation risk scenarios. I'll also search for prior discussions about it.

<comment><USER16> That doesn't increase the correlation risk, since the same could be done today with TLS session IDs or session tickets: even if you open more than one connection to the third party, your browser will attempt to reuse the same TLS session for performance reasons (it shortens the handshake and avoids expensive public key calculations).

On the flip side, the use of TLS means that connections to different origins must be kept separate, even with Alt-Svc. If I'm reading [https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-alt- svc-06](https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-alt-svc-06) correctly, "example.com" MUST present the certificate for TopLevelOrigin1 or TopLevelOrigin2, which obviously requires a separate TLS handshake and thus a separate TLS session for each one.

<comment><USER14> I appreciate you mentioning the Session ID and Session Ticket scenarios. Those can be disabled though, correct? HTTP/2 over cleartext TCP is also possible? Maybe still some increase in correlation risk due to those?

Do you think the Alt-Svc scenario we are talking about would guarantee two separate HTTP/2 connections?

<comment><USER16> > I appreciate you mentioning the Session ID and Session Ticket scenarios. > Those can be disabled though, correct?

Yes, the server can ignore both and always start a new session. And you could modify a client to never send either, but if you are already modifying the client code you could also modify it to always use a separate connection.

> HTTP/2 over cleartext TCP is also possible?

In theory yes, in practice most will only implement it over TLS, to avoid middleboxes breaking it. TLS-intercepting middleboxes won't negotiate HTTP/2, so it'll fallback cleanly in that case.

> Do you think the Alt-Svc scenario we are talking about would guarantee two > separate HTTP/2 connections?

Alt-Svc to a different hostname will always use TLS. From the draft: "Clients MUST NOT use alternative services with a host that is different than the origin's without strong server authentication; this mitigates the attack described in Section 9.2. One way to achieve this is for the alternative to use TLS with a certificate that is valid for that origin."

And with current TLS, the hostname is sent on the handshake (SNI), so it can't use the same session for different hostnames.

<comment><USER14> I think the security.ssl.disable_session_identifiers pref in Gecko browsers is meant to allow for it without modifying the code, and I haven't spotted a similarly easy way of controlling HTTP/2 connections. Otherwise, point taken.

Is there anything we haven't discussed that would fall within the HTTP/2 spec's "Reusing connections for different origins allows tracking across those origins." warning?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> See also [http://www.ietf.org/blog/2015/02/http2-approved/](http://www.ietf.org/blog/2015/02/http2-approved/)

<comment><USER18> Why is it approved in Feb. but published in May?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> ENHANCE_YOUR_CALM made it into the official spec. :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Binary protocols ftw!

</comment><comment><USER21> Apple needs to deliver at WWDC next monyh</comment>


Show HN: Fairytrail, Matchmaking for Adventures and Relationships - <AUTHOR> https://www.fairytrail.app <comment><AUTHOR> Fairytrail lets people match on a group tour by Airbnb or TripAdvisor. It's a fun, safe, and economical way for people passionate about exploration to date.

Having lived and worked in 4 countries (also traveling frequently), I figured dating doesn't have to be local. In today's world, people are no longer tied to one location. With the rise of globalization, remote work, and technology, the world is ours to explore.

I wanted to bring new people, cultures, and adventures from around the world to people's lives.

Local dating has very limited diversity and number of singles. First dates are often repetitive, a waste of time, and difficult to plan. There's no effective dating app for frequent travelers (e.g. consultants, sales engineers, flight attendants, digital nomads, truckers, sailors) or people who are open to dating outside their cities.

We want to solve those problems with Fairytrail, a dating app that combines matchmaking and group tours.

Fairytrail lets you: 1) Meet singles outside your city's bubble. 2) Save time by pre-screening matches by video chat before investing in a date. 3) Enjoy fun, hassle-free adventure dates powered by Airbnb & TripAdvisor in a safe, social environment.

Unlike other dating apps, Fairytrail puts people first, not location. Dating like traveling could be a lot more rewarding when we step outside the backyard.

Please reach out if you have any thoughts or want to chat!

</comment><comment><USER2> Hello, I think this is an interesting idea, I don't remember seeing anything similar. Your website looks professional and explains the process well. Congratulations on the idea and website! A small suggestion would be: I wasn't first sure if the group includes only the two people dating, or if its a group with other travelers and those 2 people dating join the rest.</comment>


ROME (Chrome experiments) tech showcase with WebGL - <AUTHOR> http://www.ro.me/tech/

<comment><USER2> Just saw this + thought it was more awesome than Avatar (the one with the blue people). It felt like a virtual vacation.... Or maybe I've been working too hard...

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, looks great.

A few more years of speed ups, a bit more bandwidth, and better client side web storage and we'll be playing multiplayer FPSs in our browsers.</comment>


Notes on Weight Initialization for Deep Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> https://madaan.github.io/init/ <comment><USER2> Helpful read. I find it amusing how prevalent guesswork is when it comes to neural nets. It seems like we might be taking the wrong approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yes, it's very interesting to see how often the theory is fit with the practical solutions in an "after the fact" manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Actually, there's already a better way to perform initialization, based on the so called lottery ticket hypothesis [1]. I haven't gotten to the article, so I'll just regurgitate the abstract, but basically there frequently are subnetworks which may be exposed by pruning trained networks which perform on par with full sizes neural nets with ≈20% of the parameters and substantially quicker training time. It turns out that with some magic algorithm described in the paper, one can initialize weights to quickly find these "winning tickets" to drastically reduce neural network size and training time.

1\. [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635)

<comment><USER4> As far as I understand there is no quick magic algorithm to find them: you train the full architecture as usual the long and hard way, then you identify the right subnetwork and you can retrain faster from the architecture and initialization of just this subnetwork

<comment><USER5> Based off of the results, you have to train a larger number of architectures to identify the right subnetwork.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > We can divide by a number (scaling_factor) to scale down its magnitude to > the right level

This argument bugs me a bit... since these numbers are represented using floating point, whose precision does not depend on their magnitude, what is the point of scaling them?

Furthermore, I do not believe his first example. Is torch really that bad? In octave:

        x = randn(512, 1);
        A = randn(512);
        y = A^100 * x;
        mean(p), std(p)

gives regular numbers ( 9.1118e+135 and 1.9190e+137 )

They are large, but far from overflowing. And this corresponds to a network of deep 100, which is not a realistic scenario.

<comment><AUTHOR> > They are large, but far from overflowing.

Sure, but isn't large relative? Sure you can make them overflow in octave as well, given enough layers. Which brings us to next point :-)

> And this corresponds to a network of deep 100, which is not a realistic > scenario.

Actually deep 100 is not unrealistic at all these days! [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09326](https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09326)

<comment><USER5> There are approaches to ensure parameters remain stable despite the depth (selu, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Independently of the scaling, I wonder if someone tried to initialize a deep neural network with a low-discrepancy sequence (also called quasi-random numbers) instead of a uniform or gaussian distribution.

<comment><USER8> What would be the advantage of that?

<comment><USER7> Better coverage of the space of weights (less clumps and holes). If I understand the lottery ticket hypothesis [0] correctly, this would lead to a better exploration of the space and thus better results.

[0] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635](https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.03635)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Beautiful article. I do not understand why he takes the time to do this in Python. I used 4 one-liners in Scilab for free on my laptop and understood better the intent :-)

<comment><USER10> because python is the de-facto standard for deep learning code.</comment></comment>


Sony's mini air conditioner can fit in your pocket - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnet.com/news/sonys-mini-air-conditioner-can-fit-in-your-pocket/ <comment><USER2> Physics concerns aside, this reminds me of [founding Prime Minister of Singapore] Lee Kuan Yew's oft-mentioned quote on air-conditioned underwear [1]:

> _The humble air conditioner has changed the lives of people in the tropical > regions. Before air-con, mental concentration and with it the quality of > work deteriorated as the day got hotter and more humid. After lunch, > business in many tropical countries stopped until the cooler hours of the > late afternoon._

> _Historically, advanced civilizations have flourished in the cooler > climates. Now lifestyles have become comparable to those in temperate zones, > and civilization in the tropical zones need no longer lag behind._

> _The ideal invention would be a light polyester air-conditioned > undergarment, enclosed around the neck, wrists and ankles and battery > operated. Everyone can then work at his optimum temperature and civilization > can spread across all climates._

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB915764828134990000](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB915764828134990000) (non-paywalled: [https://outline.com/d3TYvW](https://outline.com/d3TYvW))

<comment><USER3> Has this quote been debunked or confirmed? I personally feel drained and unproductive and lazy when in hot humid climates, but perhaps that is because I was raised in a temperate climate.

Anecdata, but I certainly know people who are from hot countries and work in hot countries who don't seem to have a problem being driven, smart, productive, etc.

<comment><USER4> I grew up in Singapore. The heat drives me crazy, I lose all ability to think straight and want nothing more than to run into a cold room or get a cold shower.

Once I'm in an air conditioned office, I'm what you presumably call driven, smart and productive.

I hate the heat so much I refuse to return to that country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No way it can work. Peltier cells are relatively inefficient heat pumps, that is, they move heat from say side A to side B, and lose some power into heat, so they need a big heatsink and possibly associated fan on side B to get to interesting low temperatures on side A. That little box shown in the photo will never work unless they give it a way to expel the heat in excess in a way that doesn't affect who is wearing them ("Hey, that thing lowered my underpants temperature by 10 degrees C; too bad it also released 20 degrees C hotter air in my shirt!" \- numbers pulled from you-know-where, just to illustrate the point).

That inefficiency also creates one more problem: assuming they solve the getting-rid-of-hot-air one, this thing will work as an heater for the room in which it works, because some power is always lost into heat, which will turn in less efficiency for the heat pump since it is now working in a hotter environment. And there's power consumption too: peltier devices of decent size draw amperes, not milliamperes, so a pocket sized device like that one, assuming they can change the laws of physics and solve all other problems, won't offer any benefit for more than maybe a couple hours at half power.

My conclusion is that toy is no more than a marketing gimmick that will never work, but (thanks to Sony's name too) as with all non working gimmicks that rely on 1% of correct-but-not-usable-here science and 99% of marketing, it will be cloned and produced in quantities by far east companies to be sold for cheap online, only to be immediately thrown away in some landfill.

<comment><USER6> Not saying it works, but it is in the ballpark. An idle human dissipates something like 100 watts. Heat and humidity interfere with your mammalian superpowers and you start having trouble getting rid of your 100 watts. A device which moves a faction of 100 watts can get you out of the horrible parts of the mammal powers (sweating buckets).

To compare to CPU cooling, a human is a small CPU in terms of power production. Peltier CPU coolers are not popular because they tend to be less efficient than big air heat exchangers… but… A Peltier CPU cooler is an "instead of" device. A Peltier cooler bolted on to your fanny is an "in addition to" cooling device.

<comment><USER7> > mammal powers (sweating buckets).

Um actually: only humans & horses use perspiration for cooling ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspiration))

<comment><USER8> That article is misleading. Cats and dogs have far fewer sweat glands, and they're mostly concentrated at the bottom of their paws, so it's not their primary method of thermal regulation, but they will sweat when they get hot to aid in cooling down.

<comment><USER9> You will pant to cool down in extreme cases too.

But the article is correct. It's not remotely a primary dissipation method for most mammals. Those animals don't need to sweat to stay alive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a few of these peltier coolers on the market already [1][2].

The theory is that since we are cooling using direct-skin-contact and utilizing blood-flow to cool the body it is much more efficient than air cooling.

[1] [https://embrlabs.com](https://embrlabs.com) [2] [https://www.dhamainnovations.com](https://www.dhamainnovations.com) [3] (DYI) [https://www.instructables.com/id/Wrist-Cooling- System](https://www.instructables.com/id/Wrist-Cooling-System)

<comment><USER11> First two look like marketing scams too, too small to do anything. You need good skin contact AND a way to prevent body from fighting the temp difference by drawing blood away from cold spot, aka Vacuum.

[https://news.stanford.edu/2012/08/29/cooling-glove- research-...](https://news.stanford.edu/2012/08/29/cooling-glove- research-082912/)

[https://www.rtxcorecontrol.com.au/](https://www.rtxcorecontrol.com.au/)

earlier prototype from 2007 [https://www.wired.com/2007/05/corecontrol- rtx/](https://www.wired.com/2007/05/corecontrol-rtx/) I remember seeing this one on Discovery TV

<comment><USER10> The cooling glove you linked seem to be aimed at cooling at a much more faster speed than just casually cooling off though, they mention Athletes, firefighters and soldiers.

Embrlabs spun out of an MIT project called Wristify and have a patented wave- like cooling, which is supposed to prevent the body from going into cold-spot- prevention mode.

There's a lot of reviews, including pictures, where the vast majority says it's working as advertised [https://embrlabs.com/embr-wave/#yotpo- reviews](https://embrlabs.com/embr-wave/#yotpo-reviews) but under-powered for some users.

<comment><USER12> Regarding the Embr, while I'm not actually insinuating foul play per se, I generally ignore reviews that appear on the manufacturer's own website, for obvious reasons.

If anyone has first-hand experience with these devices, I'd love to hear it! There doesn't seem to be a ton of critic coverage, and what there was didn't really go over how well it works in detail.

I'd readily buy one if I trusted that it could actually be effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is Sony crowdfunding? Surely they've got the money already being a massive corporation....

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that part infuriated me. I guess Sony - you know that scrappy little company trying to make it in this world - just can't put together the resources to build this world-changing gadget without OUR HELP, you know?

<comment><USER15> The idea is to get market validation before launching new products.

<comment><USER13> Couldn't that be achieved with a 'like' button?

I guess put your money where your mouth is...

<comment><USER16> Many people will like a product but not buy it later. This is more like preordering it with no promise that it's built. Contains a stronger commitment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article did not answer for me "but where does the heat go?" :(. (It has a link to a more complete set of marketing materials which may or may not answer that question, but it is all in Japanese.)

<comment><USER18> This[1] says it uses Peltier devices. They are not very efficient and, of course, also need to get rid of the heat somehow. I'm skeptical about the utility of this.

[1] [https://www.slashgear.com/sony-reon-pocket-is-a- crowdfunded-...](https://www.slashgear.com/sony-reon-pocket-is-a-crowdfunded- wearable-air-conditioner-and-heater-25585239/)

<comment><USER19> Peltier + fan, you can see it here: [https://first- flight.sony.com/images/projects/reonpocket/ima...](https://first- flight.sony.com/images/projects/reonpocket/image03.jpg)

Looks like it blows the heat away? So it's really just a spot-cooler, which would be uncool because a cold spot will fool the body in to thinking of an inflamation I think (so you'll get a stiff neck).

<comment><USER20> >Looks like it blows the heat away?

... and possibly just in the face of the guy/gal behind you (I am thinking of a typically crowded Tokyo metro/station).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The shirts come in a men's small, medium or large.

> The target demographic is business people who have to wear suits in the > sweltering heat.

If these were to sell in the U.S., where far fewer men wear suits, the target demographic would need larger sizes; many overweight people suffer badly in the heat.

</comment><comment><USER22> Recently I saw that you can buy a vest that holds an ice pack and uses a pump to circulate ice water around you. I was wondering if this would end up cheaper than air conditioning since you don't have to cool the whole room

<comment><USER23> That sounds like it would be bulky, and I'd be worried about leaks. I also wonder how long such a (presumably) small quantity of water would stay cool for - do you have any more info or links about this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Note that air conditioners are basically heat pumps. To cool one side it MUST throw the heat on another side. It "moves" the heat. Which is why a pocket air conditioner that blasts off cool air on one side is impossible. It has to have another long duct attached with it to throw the hot air considerably far, so that both hot and cold air doesn't cancel each other out.

How this device handles this task is unclear.

</comment><comment><USER25> Does Sony have any experience in designing and selling air conditioners? I've never heard of a Sony air-conditioner product before.

<comment><USER26> Since it's a peltier device rather than a compressor/blower design, it is more aligned with Sony's historic electronics experience, I think. Then again, Sony has made tons of electromechanical devices over the years, I don't think they'd be unprepared to build a traditional air conditioner, either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> TECs are a pretty awesome tech - I plan to build a cooling pad for my dog in my camper van which water cools the hot side to a radiator mounted under the floor, outside. Modeled on this YouTube video where he makes a freezer: [https://youtu.be/RkSR4rTl2GY](https://youtu.be/RkSR4rTl2GY)

</comment><comment><USER28> Thanks, I hate it.

Maybe there are better (& more sustainable ways) to adapt to heat? Say, wearing different clothes?

<comment><USER29> Not everyone spends 24/7 in a conditioned environment. There's a world beyond the keyboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> >Sony is crowdfunding the gadget.

Maybe one day Sony will grow big & strong and be able to foot the cost of developing a device.

...oh wait.

This whole thing smells like BS

</comment><comment><USER31> >The target demographic is business people who have to wear suits in the sweltering heat.

How to get rich using idiots 101. Brought to you by Sony Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER32> > _The target demographic is business people who have to wear suits in the > sweltering heat._

How about we change customs that are historical relics and now just feed global warming with unnecessary air conditioning?

Can't one leader in the banking industry. government, or other influential position point out the futility of sustaining that tradition and start a trend to change?

I'm sure they can find other ways to show their status that don't require wearing multiple layers of wool even in nearly tropical places like Hong Kong that need expensive, chemically intensive cleaning.

<comment><USER33> The Japanese Government actually has a "Cool Biz" campaign to reduce office air conditioning energy usage by relaxing traditional dress code [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Biz_campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Biz_campaign)

<comment><USER34> Ugh, in my experience, 28C is way too much to think/code in a productive manner

<comment><USER23> Woah, 28C is _way_ too hot, even if I'm naked!

For me, 21-22C is comfortable, but anything more than that will have me sweating and affect my productivity.

But even if I'm an outlier (I don't think I am?), 28C is surely too hot for most?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So it obviously won't work, cooling takes a lot of energy, der. (Heated jackets exist, but why not just pay for more down, than a complicated battery)

But it doesn't even have an open exhaust so a child should see the issue.

Is it even worthy of a takedown on YouTube?

[https://qz.com/quartzy/1674873/sonys-new-reon-pocket-is- an-i...](https://qz.com/quartzy/1674873/sonys-new-reon-pocket-is-an-in-shirt- air-conditioner/amp/)

</comment><comment><USER36> > The shirts come in a men's small, medium or large.

Because women never get hot, right?

<comment><USER37> Women don't have the traditional social pressure to wear suits.

<comment><USER38> In professions where a suit is de rigeur (law, banking, consulting, etc.) they sure as hell do.

<comment><USER39> Not really, you kind of have it backwards. Most wear skirts and heels.

<comment><USER38> Um, pants suits for women are a thing. And skirt suits are SUITs. With jackets and shirts and everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> "This device can keep you cool or warm using a smartphone app" Why? A scroll button from high to low will do all you need.

<comment><USER41> it's on your back</comment></comment>


In the future, airliners could be catapulted into the sky by electric motors - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21564826-future-airliners-could-be-catapulted-sky-electric-motors

<comment><USER2> It's a shame the submitter (apparently) didn't see the pun in "Proof by induction" and use it as his tag instead of the subtitle.

Whoever composed the article's title knows something about electricity, as well as having an irresistible inclination toward word-play.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, could you explain the pun?

<comment><USER2> "Induction" in electronics refers to the fact that electric and magnetic fields are intertwined in nature. A moving magnet produces an electric current in an adjacent conductor, and (in a perfect symmetry) an electric current produces a magnetic field. These effects are called "induction":

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

A quote: "Electromagnetic induction is the production of an electric current across a conductor moving through a magnetic field."</comment></comment></comment>


ShowHN: HealthSherpa integrates with Healthcare.gov, cuts signup time in half - <AUTHOR> https://www.healthsherpa.com/press/feb-24-2014-signup-with-ease

<comment><USER2> This is good. It makes me really happy to see someone actually solving these issues in a reasonable way rather than throwing hands up in the air and complaining. Better software and systems are better for everyone.</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup www.smartsenda.com - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN,
This is my first post here but I know you guys are pros. I would really appreciate your expert feedback on my new site. My husband and I have just launched a card organising site which allows users to shop for and allocate greeting cards. The idea being that it takes the hassle out of sending cards.
We've been working on this site for the best part of a year and officially launched one week ago. Problem  is lots of people are visiting but very few are signing up. It's making us wonder if there's something on the homepage putting people off?
I look forward to hearing your opinions.
Many Thanks
Lisa <comment><USER3> Some general thoughts:

\- I personally like your concept. I'm awful at finding good cards for people.

\- I like how on your "depot" page I can find cards by occasion / style (ie "Father's day" / "animals"), however I find the menu a bit odd (ie I can select a "father's day card" for "sister"?)

\- I personally like the idea of planning out future cards / dates ahead of time. Other people I know might feel that the card was forced, lacking personal touch, etc.

\- If it was me personally, I'd probably skip it because I like writing something in the card personally in my handwriting. As another example in some way I appreciate that when I get a card, my dad took the time to write his name in his own signature next to to the long message that probably took my mother a half an hour to think up and put together...

\- I feel a disconnect between the "we find the card saving you trips to the shops you can do without" and your designers page. The first makes me feel like all you're doing is running around to the drug store on the corner and posting it for me in case I forget, the second I like and personally like the idea of being able to check / see new cards that are unique that I might not be able to get locally.

\- How would your project look if you rearranged the message from "we'll get the card for you --> write in it for you --> and post it for you" to "connect with independent card designers around the world that you can't find at home --> if you want, we can also write in it and post it for you"? I think I might buy something if it was like this, then I can find a card that isn't in all the local stores, but I can still write something personal in it... (keep in mind that for me personally the message written by someone else just isn't for me... I may be missing something here, however...)

Just some thoughts from one person's perspective. Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER4> Personally, if I have to put in lot of personal information, I would stay away from the site..

If the company mostly operates in UK, the domain name should signify that - <USER2> is not very clear that it is mostly UK based / operated company till I went to "delivery" terms.

</comment><comment><USER5> the front page feel really busy for me, may just want to remove everything below "you relax" the above the 3 steps are all you really need and make the login/register buttons a bit more visible maybe put it as the first step as you have to singnup first

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, it's given me some food for thought.</comment>


DesignCrit - Tool for creating comments about websites - <AUTHOR> http://designcrit.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> I just launched this website. First version was written with NodeJS but I had a hard time being able to maintain it. I rewrote it using RoR. Any feedback would be appreciated!

</comment><comment><USER2> I like it. It would definitely be useful for presentations and mockups. I hope you get more visibility for this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I hope so too. Let me know if you know of any good ways to get visibility. I have been posting on HN and reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> No comments? :(</comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup, passubuy.com - <AUTHOR> http://passubuy.com My team and I recently built a browser-based platform for sharing items to sell with the user's Facebook community (friends & friends of friends).
The general idea is this: Through the power of Facebook, you post something you want to sell to your network of Facebook friends. If it looks good to them, a friend can buy it and you make your money. If it looks good to a friend but they don't need it, maybe they know a friend who does who they can pass the posting along to. If it sells, you still make money, but your friend who simply passed it along also makes money! Sales only occur between friends or friends of friends (or friends of friends of friends, etc., get the picture?), so you can always trust the transaction in a way that you never can on the "other guy's list." And anyone who helps pass a posting along that ultimately sells gets a cut!
I'd love to hear what the HN community thinks. <comment><USER2> It takes quite a while to load, I would suggest fixing that early.</comment>


Effortless Elixir Releases and Deployment - <AUTHOR> http://alchemist.camp/articles/elixir-releases-deployment-render <comment><AUTHOR> This is really great to see that at least some people have found my tutorial useful!

It's also interesting to see how much traffic being on the front of HN sends. So far it hasn't broken 200 requests in a minute ([https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECJVktXUEAE9kVN?format=jpg&name=...](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ECJVktXUEAE9kVN?format=jpg&name=small))

This is about 1/100th the traffic I load tested it to handle on a $5 Digital Ocean droplet (which I later upgraded to $10 due to TypeScript compilation using too much memory a different project).

Also, I completely forgot to set up any caching or any rate limiting on "articles" which are a new kind of thing on my site. Of course, it could easily be taken down with a DDOS.

But in the big scheme of things, this validates my belief that most people (including me) spend _way_ too much time worrying about scalability in early stage projects!

<comment><USER2> You can save back your 5$/month by increasing your machine's swap space. I did the same when more memory was only required for compiling.

[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to- add-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap- space-on-ubuntu-18-04)

<comment><USER3> Does anyone know how accurate their warning about swap space on an SSD is? I know SSDs have limited reads and writes and swapping to them obviously uses those limited reads/writes, but how much of a concern actually is it? Especially if you're only using swap during the compile/deploy step?

<comment><USER2> As soon as you hit some kind of limit it will abort the process and output the error. So you will be notified about it and it wont go unnoticed. And if you only use it during compile and deploy then you are at no risk :)

(ps: bad grammar, on mobile)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm primarily a React / Node dev, but I've been thinking about picking up another language and framework for a while. I feel like Node / Express is great, but I also sometimes feel like it's not a proper framework, in that you end up assembling a lot of code by hand (ex: auth, data modeling) and after a few projects it's tedious. Also, Node only offers concurrency as an unnatural afterthought...

I've dabbled in Django and it seems to solve some of those problems, but I also feel like web programming in an OO dynamic scripting language isn't that far away from doing it in JS so I might as well learn something mind-blowingly new...

I've been exposed to functional programming in OCaml in a rigorous college course and absolutely loved it, how would you guys rate learning Phoenix + Elixir in my case?

<comment><USER5> I think you're right to explore something else and I'm not aware of anything better than Elixir/Phoenix in the Web Framework world currently. It's incredibly well thought out and an absolute joy to use once you get through the initial learning curve.

I spent many years doing Python before getting talked into learning Clojure and it was incredibly eye-opening and made me a much better developer, so there is no bigger partisan than me for trying something completely different to your current skill-set. Give it a go!

<comment><USER6> why is elxir/phoenix better than clojure/luminus?

<comment><USER7> They a pretty comparable, I think the reason elixir is gaining more popularity, is mainly due to it looking like ruby rather than lisp. Also, I personally feel like the BEAM is better for handling concurrency than the JVM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of the first hands-on tutorials available on v1.9 mix releases - great content!

</comment><comment><USER9> Great writeup (even though it doesn't touch upon Distillery). Even cooler is that I discovered Render through this post.

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost all the previous deployment screencasts I did used Edeliver and Distillery. That's what I do for my primary projects. It's a slightly more complex setup, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great post and thanks for sharing! I've been seeing quite a bit of Render these days. Does anyone have any production experience with it and what are your thoughts? Also for those interested in using Elixir 1.9 releases along with Docker, I wrote a blog post a couple months ago: [https://akoutmos.com/post/multipart-docker-and- elixir-1.9-re...](https://akoutmos.com/post/multipart-docker-and- elixir-1.9-releases/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indie Hackers runs Render in production.

<comment><USER11> First time I'm hearing of this community; first glance, it looks great! However, I was trying to check out the content in the footer, but the scrolling pagination makes it impossible. :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the UX on IH frustrates me sometimes, too.

Courtland has said before that he regrets going all in on making it a SPA instead of a more traditional back-end MVC. But he wanted to learn Ember and I can totally get that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a performance difference between Elixir and Erlang? I assume not since they both run on BEAM but I've never dabbled with Elixir.

<comment><USER13> Between Elixir and Erlang, there's no difference because it's all BEAM bytecode when it runs.

Between arbitrary individual functions you might encounter, there can be differences, but only in the sense that it could happen between Erlang and Erlang if the functions had different implementations or degrees of optimization or optimization choices.

Worth noting for prospective adopters is that you can seamlessly call Erlang functions from Elixir by adding a : prefix, such as :random.uniform(), and there's no weird overhead or surprises involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really not being facetious here, but I want to ask - why not deploy this in docker containers?

</comment><comment><USER15> this looks awesome and is a great writeup.

Is it possible to use (peerage)[[https://github.com/mrluc/peerage](https://github.com/mrluc/peerage)] to setup autodiscovery between vms like you can in gcp?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure about peerage specifically, but here's an example with libcluster set up to discover nodes automatically when they join (or leave): [https://render.com/docs/deploy-elixir- cluster](https://render.com/docs/deploy-elixir-cluster)</comment></comment>


Crockford on JavaScript — Scene 6: Loopage - <AUTHOR> http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/08/30/yui-theater-douglas-crockford-crockford-on-javascript-scene-6-loopage-52-min/

<comment><USER2> This was the most useful episode of the series that I've seen. Basically, before watching this I had no idea of the most fundamental feature of Javascript, which is events loop and that only one function is executed at time.

This means that you don't have to worry if any other data is updated while a function works.

It also means that expensive code should be done as timeouts loop or some other way, but not as a for loop, which blocks the browser or server completely.

<comment><USER3> Yep. All of what you said also applies to ActionScript (and haxe with an AS or JS target) though not many Flash developers pay attention to that.

My code in these languages has evolved over the past few years from a pretty standard serial C style pattern to one that makes use of "blocks", timers, callback functors, continuations, lazy evaluations, etc because the perceived performance in these environments is many times greater once you embrace this style.

The downside is, you have to be really careful to structure your code to make it understandable by others when you do things this way... even when you do a good job, it can be much harder for other developers to really grok your code than it would if you used a more traditional procedural/OO style because of the non-linearity of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> imo this whole series is very good. I have noticed that just about any talk that Douglas Crockford gives I either learn something new or have something I knew a little bit become more solidified.</comment>


Peanut allergy theory backed up by new research - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-35727244 <comment><USER2> Beware of the exclusion from the study before you start ramping up your allergic child's peanut consumption:

"This indicates that peanut consumption may not be possible in some children who meet the LEAP eligibility criteria. In addition, the LEAP study design excluded 9.1% of the infants who were screened (76 of 834) because large wheals (greater than 4 mm in diameter) developed after the skin-prick test21 that were probably associated with peanut allergy; the safety and effectiveness of early peanut consumption in that population remain unknown."

</comment><comment><USER3> UK here. After we had a kid, they told us 'no peanuts and no honey' I was like, hm, whatever. I eat peanut butter and honey on toast some mornings so baby had a bit of that with me. Turns out being a normal person doing normal things is now good advice.

My parents used to dip my dummy in whiskey when I was teething. Not sure where the medical community stands on this one.

<comment><USER4> I grew to dislike alcohol/wine because my parents were constantly badgering me to have some of their homemade wine/grappa growing up. I certainly saw the opposite in the US where kids grow up kept strictly away from it, and then binge when they break free. As a result I'm probably going to offer it to my kid.

<comment><USER5> Careful with that if you raise your child in the US. Providing alcohol to a minor is a misdemeanor criminal offense in most states, even if you do it in your own home.

<comment><USER6> Most states (29/50) actually allow underage drinking at home with parental consent: [http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0...](http://drinkingage.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=002591)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On the topic of food allergies, there is a treatment called oral immunotherapy that supposedly can cure peanut and other allergies in both children and adults.

[http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2014fall/i-can-eat- it.html](http://stanmed.stanford.edu/2014fall/i-can-eat-it.html)

Essentially they introduce increasingly larger doses of the allergen until your body develops a tolerance to it (essentially what the OP claims, but as you're no longer a baby, it takes a lot longer).

The only caveat is that you are required to continue to eat the allergen for the rest of your life, to maintain your tolerance.

Stanford is currently enrolling in its peanut OIT study for adults. If you have a peanut allergy and have always dreamed of eating a PB&J without worry, now's your chance!

<comment><USER8> It's past the study phase. My friend's daughter just "graduated" from her treatment a short while ago. They went to Oral Immunotherapy (OIT) at Rocky Mountain Allergy in Layton, Utah. She used to be on the "smell a peanut and you might die" side of the spectrum. Yes, she has to eat a handful of peanut M&M's every day for the rest of her life to keep from regressing.

<comment><USER9> Peanut M&Ms might be the best pill regimen I've ever heard of

<comment><USER10> Yeah, good tip. I'm not allergic. But just to be on the safe side I better start doing this too every day. Just to make sure I stay that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very interesting and I think many have suspected as much for quite some time. Our culture of late has tended to place kids in a metaphorical bubble preventing them from many things which current research now seems to confirm may be harmful long term in the development of healthy immune protection.

In addition, based on this study, I wonder if it is worthwhile studying whether there is a "point of no return" in terms of protecting anyone from severe allergies. For instance, if you haven't been exposed to a severe potential-allergen prior to the age of 5, does it become exponentially more difficult to develop any kind of immunity that lasts long term?

</comment><comment><USER12> I was diagnosed with milk and peanut allergies as a kid (prick tests). My grandmother wasn't having any of that. She shoveled them into me. I just now had a glass of milk without issue. Neither has any effect. It may be anecdotal and specific to me, but it is safe to say that many kids are over-diagnosed when it comes to allergies.

I'm still slightly allergic to cats. Doc got that correct. But I've had cats in my house, sleeping on my bed, for decades without hospitalization.

<comment><USER13> My son has a peanut allergy, and whenever he eats them, he immediately starts coughing, empties his stomache by vomiting, and has difficulty breathing. Then an epi pen is administered, and we visit the hospital. Shall I 'shovel them down him' as you say? No thanks, I'll pass, and just keep peanuts out of the house.

<comment><USER14> > No thanks, I'll pass, and just keep peanuts out of the house.

Well duh!

If you have a serious allergy, you avoid peanuts like the plague. But if it's minor... say a slight rash being the only symptom... then perhaps it's worth giving the child peanuts, starting with a very tiny amount, and then increasing gradually. Keep an epi-pen around at all times just in case, and if there's a serious attack... drop the attempt altogether and surrender to the fact that your childs quality of life will be less-than-optimal forever more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You can add to the list a whole host of other things where exposure will increase immune systems and decrease allergies. Once an article appeared that said exposure to farm animals also decreases allergies and increases the strength of the immune system.

<comment><USER16> And living with dogs or with the windows open reduces asthma.

<comment><USER17> some daycares did install air filtration systems and got a whole lot more asthma cases. We didn't have the cash to do that for ours in the 90's and it turned out all the better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> So basically all the peanut-safe zones we're creating around young people these days are just part of a cascade failure, whee...

</comment><comment> nommm-nommm Women who consume peanuts during pregnancy are also less likely to have children with peanut allergies.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/23/peanut-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/23/peanut- allergy-pregnancy/4144583/)

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't trust USAtoday nor any source that isn't the actual published research[1].

"CONCLUSION: In this cohort of infants with likely milk or egg allergy, maternal ingestion of peanut during pregnancy was strongly associated with a high level of peanut sensitization."[1]

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21035177](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21035177)

<comment><USER20> Note this part:

> In this cohort of infants with likely milk or egg allergy

Even accurate conclusions for such a cohort might be very different -- including even inverted in direction of effect -- from what is true of the broader population.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why you use python? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Started off learning Ruby and was going to teach myself Rails. Then I deiced to give Python a try, before getting into Rails, and found I like Python way more than Ruby. So, I picked up Django instead of Rails.

</comment><comment><USER3> Because my last two customers have Python web apps (django and web2py). I prefer Rails, easier to work with, but what I can do? :-)

</comment><comment><USER4> For me it is the combination of numpy, scipy and matplotlib.</comment>