World Airports Voronoi (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jasondavies.com/maps/voronoi/airports/ <comment><USER2> This diagram is oddly selective about which airports it includes. It has some class D airports (Modesto, Santa Maria) but not others (Palo Alto, El Monte, Fullerton). There is no pattern that I can discern other than eliminating airports that are too close to each other, which kind of defeats the purpose of this exercise.

<comment><USER3> This is probably the most frequently asked question! The data is from here: [http://ourairports.com/data/](http://ourairports.com/data/)

I had to limit the number of airports displayed for performance reasons. I filtered the airport data so that only those airports with scheduled services and which are denoted "large" or "medium" are included (according to OurAirports), bringing the number down to 2,980.

<comment><USER4> Suppose that'll explain why there are at least three airports included in Ireland that have no scheduled services at all: the data's from nearly a decade ago

<comment><USER3> Interesting. The data is from 2014, which is when I created the visualisation. Perhaps I should auto-update it every so often!

<comment><USER4> Most recent item on "recent changes" was five years old in 2014. Galway Airport's certainly been shut for a lot longer than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is my favorite instance of a voronoi diagram: [https://imgur.com/a/zjNWL](https://imgur.com/a/zjNWL)

I actually wrote into the Reese's company to find out what that was happening to their giant cups, and got no reply unfortunately.

<comment><USER6> I would guess they have injectors for the filling at the centers of those cells. A Voronoi edge is equidistant from the two points it bisects, so it kind of makes sense that this would happen naturally if the filling is injected at a constant rate.

<comment><USER7> I'd guess more likely that they are chocolate nozzles -- it seems more straightforward to me to produce a precise chocolate "cup", pour or place the filling inside of it, then pipe a chocolate "lid" onto the cup. Presumably the multiple nozzles of chocolate would help it to settle flatter faster.

Edit: there's a video on Facebook that covers the whole process in a minute. My hunch is partly right: the wrapper and chocolate cup are indeed completed first, then a circle of peanut butter is indeed placed in, then the thing is shaken to encourage that peanut butter to fill the space uniformly. However the chocolate "lid" is just plopped on as one wide dollop from a hose, and then blown out across the cup with compressed air: so the Voronoi cells probably come either from this blowing phase, or else the hose has some sort of "spreader" inside of it or so.

<comment><USER8> I wasn't aware there was anything below the chocolate-like surface, so I understood you to be saying the same thing as grandparent.

<comment><USER9> Which country are you in? If you like chocolate and peanut butter (and sugar), I recommend trying a Reese's cup :)

<comment><USER8> I am in the UK, and I cannot eat nuts.

<comment><USER9> Well you're not missing out that much. USA chocolate isn't nearly as good as UK chocolate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did a similar visualisation a few months ago, but less polished, for my own curiosity: [https://twitter.com/iandioch/status/968938231550107649](https://twitter.com/iandioch/status/968938231550107649)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting to compare with ETOPS (good maps: gc.kls2.com) which governs how far away from acceptable alternate airports a commercial plane can be. It corresponds to safe flying time with a single functional engine. So a lot of the area in some of the larger Voronoi regions, especially in the Southern Hemisphere, is actually unreachable by any commercial flight from the closest airport.

<comment><USER12> It's worth noting that ETOPS only applies to 2-engine aircraft; a 4-engine aircraft can travel outside the ETOPS-permitted areas as long as it has enough fuel.

<comment><USER13> Depends on the jurisdiction, the FAA applies the same rules to 4-engine aircraft that are carrying passengers now.

<comment><USER11> e.g. [http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2015-03-18-Boeing-747-8-Intercon...](http://boeing.mediaroom.com/2015-03-18-Boeing-747-8-Intercontinental- Receives-FAA-Approval-for-330-Minute-ETOPS)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Voronoi diagrams are so fun. I messed around for months with them after I saw Amit Patel's procedural map generator that used them.

[http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/...](http://www- cs-students.stanford.edu/~amitp/game-programming/polygon-map-generation/)

Fortune's Algorithm is pretty simple, but it's tricky to get right, particularly if you're also maintaining the information in a form that lets you do something useful with it besides spitting out the points of the Voronoi centers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%27s_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%27s_algorithm)

<comment><USER15> I also consider Voronoi diagrams fun, and in my life I've implemented three different algorithms for generating 2D Voronoi diagrams (or Delaunay triangulations, which are the duals of Voronoi diagrams):

1\. Fortune's algorithm [0]

2\. The Bowyer-Watson algorithm for generating the Delaunay triangulation incrementally [1]

3\. Quickhull (which generates the 3D convex hull of points, which is the 2D delaunay triangulation of points). [2]

Of these, Quickhull is the simplest, and Bowyer-Watson is by far the hardest. Bowyer-Watson seems very simple, but there are demons hiding in that algorithm, and almost every implementation you can find online is incorrect (for instance, this one [3]). You can tell that these implementations of Bowyer-Watson are incorrect, because every Delaunay triangulation contains the convex hull of the points, and it's easy to tell when they don't. In fact, even the description in _Computational Geometry: Algorithms and Applications_ (a standard textbook) is subtly wrong.

The reason Bowyer-Watson is hard is this: it's an incremental algorithm where you add the points one-by-one to an already constructed Delaunay triangulation, you make sure all edges are flipped right, and at the end you have the full triangulation. However: you have to have a triangle to start with. In order for the algorithm to work, this initial "super-triangle", has to contain all the points in the set, and also be made up of points that are not contained in any circumcircle of any combination of three points in the set. However: if three points are colinear (or very close, which it is almost guaranteed some points are going to be), the circumcircle of those three points is MASSIVE (essentially "infinite", covering the entire half-plane). But the super-triangle points still have to be outside of it. This means that the super-triangle points have to be essentially "symbolic" points (not normal points with coordinates, but special magic points), and you have to hard-code special rules for them. It is _extremely difficult_ to implement these rules correctly.

Fortune's algorithm is on the surface more complex, but there's less goblins hiding in that algorithm. There's some tricky data-structure stuff, but it's not too bad. Quickhull is fairly straight-forward, and is the algorithm I would recommend if you want to give this whole Voronoi adventure a go (also has the benefit of giving you a 3D convex hull algorithm, which you can have all sorts of fun with!).

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%27s_algorithm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune%27s_algorithm)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowyer%E2%80%93Watson_algorith...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowyer%E2%80%93Watson_algorithm)

[2]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickhull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quickhull) (this description is for the 2D version, but the 3D version is similar)

[3]: [https://cdn.rawgit.com/axelboc/voronoi- delaunay/v2.1/index.h...](https://cdn.rawgit.com/axelboc/voronoi- delaunay/v2.1/index.htm)

<comment><USER16> I spent a couple weekends trying to implement Voronoi via Fortune's algorithm in PHP, since there is no existing library for generating them.

I couldn't get past the point of creating a seemingly random mass of intersecting lines. My math knowledge is lacking (I'm not good at groking geometry for some reason), so I wasn't sure what was wrong or how to approach fixing it.

Maybe I should give Quickhull a go. I think I understand what it's doing.

<comment><USER14> When I did it, I basically had to break down to the point of making a WinForms app that I could step through the algorithm iteration by iteration, drawing out the beach-line and and all the circles and edges as it progressed; I had to have that visualization to see that it was correct.

<comment><USER16> This sounds like a good way for me to understand it. I'll have to try this. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder what happens if you "give weight" to each point relative to size of the airport (measured e.g. by number of take-offs/landings per year)?

<comment><USER18> Then you get a "weighted Voronoi diagram," haha.

If the weights are multiplicative, the edges between adjacent cells become circular arcs. It looks cool, but it's much more difficult to generate and analyze. For instance, the region belonging to a generating point is no longer guaranteed to be convex, and may even have holes or be in multiple disconnected pieces.

Weighted Voronoi diagrams show up sometimes in multi-agent systems where agents have different speeds, e.g. pursuit-evasion problems, or in facility placement (where to build a new store/warehouse, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I've flown in and out of Mataveri and I know it sounds superstitious or whatever, but I felt that isolation. It's amazing to me that the Polynesians were able to colonize so widely.

Also, I love Voronoi diagrams. I ran across them many moons ago when I was building a wayfinding application and was looking for ways to generate map meshes—this was not that—but I thought they were super interesting.

<comment><USER20> I am in love with the so-so reviews they happily places on the homepage of the airport: [https://www.mataverinternational.com/](https://www.mataverinternational.com/) \- "It's a small airport with just one place to eat and a few store to buy stuff." Truth in advertising lives!

<comment><USER21> What I thought was curious about this airport was that yes, it is indeed very small and very basic (the departure lounge included outdoor seating overlooking the tarmac - a small waist-high fence separating you from the apron), but the flights in and out were on brand new 787s!

Easter Island really does feel very remote though. Even though the 787s are jam-packed with tourists, you're flying due-west from Chile for 6 hours to a tiny spec in the middle of the pacific. The in-flight map was mostly just entirely blank the whole time since the island itself is so tiny it didn't really show up!

In the museum there they had some really interesting exhibits about how the original inhabitants used interesting navigation aids to find land - e.g. looking for the directions birds were flying or sea-turtles were swimming, or the sea swell etc. Fascinating stuff. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation#Navigati...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation#Navigational_techniques)

<comment><USER22> 787 can land because the airstrip there is really long (more than 3Kms according to wikipedia. This airport was chosen by NASA at some point as an emergency landing stop for the shuttle, and paid for it's extension. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mataveri_International_Airport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mataveri_International_Airport)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Discussed from 2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10161326).

(Posted in 2014 too but there weren't really comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7557438](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7557438))

</comment><comment><USER21> I cant see Baltra Airport in the Galapagos Islands ([https://goo.gl/maps/x9PW5i4VWMH2](https://goo.gl/maps/x9PW5i4VWMH2)) - it is "near" the most remote Mataveri Airport on Easter Island and may skew the most remote result to another airport?

I guess not all airports are included (e.g there is one I've flown into as a tourist to the antarctic peninsula that is missing ([https://goo.gl/maps/u54LnTDYb8N2](https://goo.gl/maps/u54LnTDYb8N2))

Great visualisation though :)

<comment><USER24> Yeah, he mentions that: "There are in fact airports on Antarctica, but they are not classed as medium or large, and do not have scheduled services according to this dataset."

The list of airports in Antarctica is surprising long, but most of them are ice or snow and probably need to be remade each year. Some are hard to impossible to see on google maps, but many are quite visible.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Nice one, actually all Voronoi diagrams are cool.

If only there was a webpage/software where someone could click/select points on a map (or even better enter coordinates) and a user Voronoi diagram would be created ;-)

<comment><USER26> This does the job nicely [http://alexbeutel.com/webgl/voronoi.html](http://alexbeutel.com/webgl/voronoi.html)

<comment><USER25> Yes, thank you. Looks nice, clean is operational and configurable and with ~80% of the functionality I had in mind. I'm sure that with a few tweaks and a map as background/layer it would be perfect. Strange that there isn't something like this around, would be useful for finding the nearest Starbucks, Pizza Hut, drugstore, whatever...

If only I/we could have some extra time for all those side projects :-(

<comment><USER25> Just so that other people don't have to search: [http://lpetrich.org/Science/GeometryDemo/GeometryDemo_GMap.h...](http://lpetrich.org/Science/GeometryDemo/GeometryDemo_GMap.html)

and a very good tutorial: [https://chriszetter.com/blog/2014/06/15/building-a- voronoi-m...](https://chriszetter.com/blog/2014/06/15/building-a-voronoi-map- with-d3-and-leaflet/)

on how the UK supermarkets Voronoi map was made: [https://chriszetter.com/voronoi-map/examples/uk- supermarkets...](https://chriszetter.com/voronoi-map/examples/uk- supermarkets/)

also have a look at (code included): [http://bl.ocks.org/shimizu/5610671](http://bl.ocks.org/shimizu/5610671)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I did some work on Voronoi a few years ago. I made an overlay in Voronoi transparent colored cells that would show for example where the nearest convenience store was to a given location in the city and this would overlay the regular map of the city. I was going to try to sell these to the convenience store as they always had a map of the city they were in somewhere in each store. An improvement would be to run a google map from each store to each house and actually use the mileage to the store the store. This would account for rivers etc that would block the shortest path. There is probably an idea for a startup somewhere there....

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been grinding on an observation about the distribution of people on Earth. It can be reduced to the observation that the city of Ushuaia, AR at 55 degrees south is the most southerly city (FWIW the other two contenders for that title are near Ushuaia), while the city of Copenhagen, DK at 55 degrees north is definitely not the most northerly city. Although there is a great deal of land below the Antarctic Circle, there are only research stations there. There isn't as much land above the Arctic Circle, but civilians live above it.

<comment><USER29> That's really interesting. Do you think it could be related to the effect of map projection biases? Is that a thing dates far enough back to affect settlement decisions?

<comment><USER28> I haven't done the research but if you look at the kinds of groups that are settled above the Arctic Circle and how they got there, vs how a group would have got to Antarctica, it may just boil down to accessibility. Whalers eventually patrolled Antarctica's seas but, if they tried to farm its shores they didn't get very far. The Polynesian settlers of the South Seas are hard to beat for navigation ability, but one imagines that either the seas were not worth crossing, or the lands were not worth populating, to those navigators. On the other hand, Greenland and Iceland have at times supported Europeans and their agriculture.

Antarctica was not well bounded on maps until the Wilkes expedition and others in the 1830's.

<comment><USER30> A lot of the subantarctic islands have similar weather to the Faroe Islands in the North Sea.

However, the Polynesians were not cold weather people, and the subantarctic islands are extremely remote.

It was hard enough as it was for the Polynesians to settle New Zealand, I can't imagine them settling any further south.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> If you want to know more about those Antarctic airstrips, there's a great Wendover video on them:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3j-ptJD10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-s3j-ptJD10)

Most of them are just hard packed ice.

</comment><comment><USER32> As someone who studied Voronoi diagrams in college, I find this really fascinating. It's a really cool way of visualizing the data.

</comment><comment><USER33> Interesting - was looking at some of the larger area ones in the US and learned that Santa Fe has a tiny airport - smaller than the one here near Bend, Oregon in Redmond. Seems Bend is bigger than Santa Fe for that matter... didn't realize that.

Which means that the Albuquerque one ends up as the largest, it looks like, followed (eyeballing it) by Elko?

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://voronoi.surge.sh/](http://voronoi.surge.sh/)

Recently, I was working on a WebGL version that renders all 54,000+ airports and got it working again today after seeing this.It's quite pretty and runs well but needs some love.

</comment><comment><USER27> When I did work on Voronoi, i used the Mathematica built in function. I would get the gps coordinants from Google maps and use them as input. The output put into a google function that could make rectangular colored transparent regions on the map. But this was all 2d.

</comment><comment><USER35> I bet the vertices are correct, but shouldn't the lines in between them look like curves? They are projected solutions for the points that are equidistant by great circle distance to two airports, so I think they should themselves be great circle arcs.

<comment><USER2> They are great-circle arcs, but the presentation is a projected sphere, so the lines in the center will look straight because you're looking down on the curved part. Zoom out and look at the lines near the edges.

<comment><USER35> Thanks, you are totally right. Was zoomed in too far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Come on now what about Willy Field or the South Pole skiway? The USAP kind of has a schedule...

</comment><comment><USER37> I assume it's using the great circle distance metric. I wonder how it would look like if the metric was "shortest land/sea travel time".

</comment><comment><USER38> This is awesome. Now I'd love to be able to visualize which aiports are flown to/from the one under the mouse... Where can one get this data?

<comment><USER39> [https://openflights.org/data.html](https://openflights.org/data.html)

<comment><USER38> awesome, ty!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What would happen if distance over sea is penalized by a certain factor? Is there an extension of Voronoi diagrams that addresses this issue?

<comment><USER41> Voronoi diagrams work for any definition of `distance` that may suit your needs. So weighting by airport size and/or sea distance is pretty trivial.

<comment><USER40> I don't think it's that simple if the definition of distance is a function of position.

<comment><USER42> Yeah I'm pretty sure that whilst the 'mid' points on Delauny triangulation would be correctly scalped the edges of the Voronoi diagram would be wrong?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> There must be a correlation with population density

<comment><USER44> It doesn't look like it. You can have different size airports serving vastly different volumes. It looks like the spacial distance is first factor, and then municipal boundaries. The boundaries are historical and can be based on population.

<comment><USER45> You misread the intention of the parent's comment. It's not that population _is_ taken into account (your interpretation), but that is _should be_ taken into account.

<comment><USER44> Hmm, could be, but how can you definitively determine that? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is gorgeous. For me it recalls Fuller's Dymaxion map.

He would be cheering if he had this in his web browser.

</comment><comment><USER47> Am I missing something, there are a number of airports in Antartica, I assume that none of these are commercial though:

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

<comment><USER48> From the bottom of the page:

"There are in fact airports on Antarctica, but they are not classed as medium or large, and do not have scheduled services according to this dataset."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's also a (population density) x (per capita income) map.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is interesting because normally I'd assume this would just follow population density (Europe, the NA, Japan, see xkcd.com/1138) but India and China barely have any airports relative to their populations. That's a lot of traveling just to get to an airport.

</comment><comment><USER51> #whut? (headline)

</comment><comment><USER52> Doesn't work on my mobile (OnePlus5t) without requesting desktop site

</comment><comment><USER53> There are obviously more airports in the world than this. What are the criteria for inclusion in the visualization?

<comment><USER54> Inclusion by [http://ourairports.com/data/](http://ourairports.com/data/) in the categories "medium" or "large".

> 2,980 large and medium airports with scheduled services from OurAirports.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> This gives a lot of importance to small airports in small islands. Big international airports are surrounded by other smaller airports. They are associated with a tiny surface. I can not see how this representation may be of any use for airports.

<comment><USER56> Ability to divert in an emergency?

<comment><USER24> Absolutely. It's a map of closest airport for any location on earth.

You could do different versions of this for different classes of plane (e.g. select a minimum runway length).

<comment><USER57> This has a big influence on which routes a plane can fly. You can't be more than a certain distance from a usable airport at any time during the flight to mitigate the risk of engine failure resulting in an off-airport landing/crash. See: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETOPS)

<comment><USER58> And diversion airports of course vary with things like weather</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does Robinhood conduct a large-scale closed iOS beta? - <AUTHOR>

From my understanding, Robinhood is currently in private beta of at least a few thousand users. For this beta they have an iOS app that is not available on the App Store. A normal iOS account only allows 100 devices to be provisioned, and TestFlight is limited to 1000 devices. The only way I can think that Robinhood is getting around this is through enterprise app signing, but this is intended for internal apps. Does anyone know how Robinhood (or any other company that has done this) conducts large-scale private iOS app distribution? <comment><USER2> Probably the same way people like Instagram got around the 100 device limit - multiple developer accounts

e.g. from 2011, [http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702034791045771...](http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203479104577124762705613868)</comment>


Crosshatch Automata - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com/automaton-visuals-90bdd9f73286 <comment><USER2> What a strange coincidence... just last night, after reading about the death of designer Jorge Zalszupin and searching for information and photos of his work, I stumbled upon a piece of wall art from 1980 that clearly uses these techniques. It took a bit of effort to retrace my steps to find it, but here it is:

[http://www.nohomodern.com/index.php?pageID=13&listID=2174](http://www.nohomodern.com/index.php?pageID=13&listID=2174)

I love a strange synchronicity like this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Play with it here: [https://generated.space/sketch/crosshatch- automata/](https://generated.space/sketch/crosshatch-automata/)</comment>


Shutdown of US coal power facilities saved over 26k lives, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/06/coal-power-pollution-gas-saved-lives-study <comment><USER2> It also increased the crop yields of farms downstream from the closed plants a signficant amount, this is in the linked study and not in the news article. It would be interesting to compare the full results of decreased resource use for farming, also the replacement natural gas/ wind/dam versus the former coal power pollution.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5.epdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5.epdf)

<comment><USER3> Can farms currently downstream of operating coal plants sue for damages?

<comment><USER2> They could sue but winning seems unlikely - it's killing people/shortening lives and we in the USA and Australia are trying to extend the lifespan of coal plants.

Different study but shows correlation with low levels of fine particulate pollution with premature death. [https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2755672)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The rest of the world is rapidly removing coal while the delusional politicians of Australia are still trying to ramp up the production of it. How many properties and wildlife would have been saved if Australia had shut down its coal production?

<comment><USER5> > How many properties and wildlife would have been saved if Australia had shut > down its coal production?

Zero. Australia's position on coal is absurdly outdated, but even a complete cessation of greenhouse emissions by Australia would've only been a drop in the global bucket at about 1%. They'd still be having these fires even if the entire country ran on unicorn farts since the 1800s.

<comment><USER6> Australia exports more like 7% of total fossil fuels by CO2, according to this: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia- co2...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2019-08-19/australia-co2-exports- third-highest-worldwide/11420654)

<comment><USER5> 7% of fossil fuel and 7% of overall emissions aren't the same thing, though.

<comment><USER6> It's 7% of emissions caused by fossil fuels, not 7% of the fuels: coal is the worst of them.

Australia's emissions are smaller, however they enable much larger emissions elsewhere. Without that coal, India and China would be accelerating their transition to renewables.

<comment><USER5> > It's 7% of emissions caused by fossil fuels

Which is still not the same thing as 7% of global greenhouse emissions. Plenty of non-fossil fuel sources for emissions, like burning trees, cows making methane, etc.

Even if Australia _were_ responsible for 7% of global greenhouse emissions, ceasing wouldn't be enough.

<comment><USER6> By that logic, no country's emissions matter, even China.

Meanwhile, if you want to convince other countries to reduce their emissions, it's much easier when you're part of the solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> While we're still perfecting the renewable situation we need to shut down all this coal bullshit ASAP and patch in nuclear. I guess people would rather be _definitely_ killed by particulates and climate change rather than _almost never_ killed by radiation---just because it sounds scarier. Madness.

<comment><USER8> I support nuclear too, but the fact is - nuclear is a political hot potato and encumbered by enormous financial uncertainty.

If you wanted to spend $1B on energy, spending it on nuclear would be a crapshoot, while spending it on solar or solar + batteries would lead to implementation relatively quickly.

It's unfortunate given this table:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#Tables_of_energy_content)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> -

</comment><comment><USER10> How many opioid overdoses happened among the unemployed coal miners and their families?

<comment><USER11> As a direct result, likely not very many compared to 26,000 lives saved. The lives saved figure will continue to increase considerably over time.

There are a total of ~50,000 coal mining jobs left in the US. In 2005 there were around ~75,000 coal mining jobs in the US. So a similar number of lives have been saved - by the estimate - than jobs lost (and obviously a small fraction of job losses will have led directly to opioid deaths).

Presently US wages are rising the fastest - at about 2x the rate - for the bottom half of workers versus the top; US wages are hitting new all-time adjusted highs; and the U6 unemployment rate is somewhere around a real 50-60 year low, matching the floor in year 2000. Further, there has been a massive boom in natural gas and oil in the US over that time, including in eg the Appalachian coal region (natural gas) which was hit hard in spots by the coal industry erosion.

<comment><USER10> "In total during this period, the shutdown of coal-fired units saved an estimated 26,610 (5%–95% confidence intervals (CI), 2,725–49,680) lives." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0453-5)

Notice that the cited data, do not include any health statistics.

[https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN](https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/RIZQUN)

The cited github does not exist. [https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition](https://github.com/jaburney/naturalgastransition)

Searching for user jaburney in github also comes up empty.

It's hard to validate her health claims, but let's say that her low end number of 2725 is valid. At 25,000 coal miners, and let's say 25,000 coal plant operators (250 plants * 100 employees per plant) for a total of 50,000 employees impacted. If each of those employees is in a 4 person family, then 200,000 people could have been impacted. If just 3% of those people died due to addiction, the numbers are equal.

Please don't interpret my compassion for the unemployed coal miners, coal plant operators, and train engineers as a dismissal of global warming. The transition to carbon neutral power needs to happen, but in the process there will be people left behind, including people who are significantly economically impacted, leading to divorce, addiction, homelessness etc.

My comment obviously touched a nerve as many people don't want to consider the real impact to the workers. And no, they're not just going to take another bus across town to another plant. They're not going to relocate. They're not going to learn to code. They're going to suffer.

When people question global warming, maybe they're asking - Are you sure, because people are going to die in the transition?

Maybe more people are dying due to unemployment than are being saved due to lower pollution? Maybe the people who were counted as dying due to pollution were 95 and didn't make it to 96? While, the 22 year old addict lost over 50 years of their life.

Regardless, these people dying is a fact everyone should be conscious is happening. You vote to close coal power plants, you're voting to kill these people. There are real consequences.

<comment><USER12> I contacted the author about the missing github repository. It's is available now. The initial push failed because some data files are too large for github. She's presently separated the data files from the plain code in the repo and put the data on dropbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Study funded by whom? When I see "study finds" in a news piece, I get skeptical.

You could also do a "study" showing that millions of lives were saved in the US due to coal since 30% of US electricity comes from coal? How many hospitals were powered by coal-powered electricity?

India has tons of coal and 300 million people without electricity.

You could do a study showing that hundreds of thousands of lives are lost in inda due to lack of coal use.

Africa has 600 million people without electricity.

You could do a study showing that millions of lives are lost in india due to lack of coal use.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world- without-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/world/world-without- power/)

I'd love to see the cherrypicked data and biased methodology of this study.</comment>


HP's Todd Bradley refutes webOS shutdown rumors - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/29/hps-todd-bradley-refutes-webos-shutdown-rumors-final-destinati/

<comment><USER2> HP is an incredibly confusing company. The kind of company that makes you wonder if there is someone in charge.</comment>


The Lesson from Libya: Get Nuclear Weapons - <AUTHOR> http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003470.html

<comment><USER3> _U.S. government officials say it over and over again: we don't oppose countries like Iraq, Libya and Iran having WMD because we're scared they're going to attack us with them. Instead, we oppose them having WMD because that would allow them to deter us from attacking them._

That sounds about right...

Makes you wonder if the world would be a more peaceful, but more dictatorial and regimented place if everyone had nukes.

<comment><USER4> Kenneth Waltz has argued nuclear weapons spread peace. The strongest evidence supporting him is the lack of any nuclear conflict in the last sixty years and the way the weapons have brought peace between India and Pakistan. If he is right the best prospects for long-term peace in the middle east will probably come through a nuclear-armed Iran.

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

That said, there are two core ironies in the politics of proliferation that make this suggestion uncomfortable. The first is that at least at present the most vehement opponents of nuclear proliferation are often the most vocal critics of gun control. So few people who talk about the importance (or insignificance) of deterrence really seem to believe it logically.

The second irony is that the Nash equilibrium for rational-actor based models of deterrence is not peace, but random violence. The reason for this is that a certain amount of "demonstrated irrationality" is required to make the prospect of mutual assured destruction convincing to all players. Which means that if the world were truly rational we would expect some use of nuclear devices. And yet we don't see any, or haven't seen any yet.

All of which leads us to the strange observation that nuclear proliferation seems to bring peace, but not because of a rational deterrent effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> > The second irony is that the Nash equilibrium for rational-actor based > models of deterrence is not peace, but random violence.

Do you have a citation for that? I'd be interested to read further about it.

<comment><USER4> I think I got it from Robert Powell's stuff:

[http://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/person_detail.php...](http://polisci.berkeley.edu/people/faculty/person_detail.php?person=278)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is so terribly framed it hurts my brain, and my ability to respond.

Even if nuclear and chemical weapons were a pretext to attack Saddam Hussein, the reason the US attacked him was, ostensibly, because he was a threat (defined as vaguely as possible).

The reason why Libya was attacked was that Gaddafi is also a threat.

That Gaddafi was rehabilitated at the behest of international business interests doesn't mean that he was any less of a murderous bastard or any less of a social pariah.

In so far as the lesson is "if you're a douchebag (as defined by the UN) the international community may try to pwn your ass", then, sure one might view nuclear and chemical weapons as a deterrent against international attacks.

However it should be carefully noted that in spite of the fact that the Bush administration and a number of world governments asserted and believed that Saddam Hussein had chemical and/or biological weapons, they attacked him anyway.

In other words, even possessing these weapons weren't a deterrent against attack by the US.

Also, please note that giving up nuclear and chemical weapons were never promised as some sort of carte blanche get out of jail free card from the international community. All international agreements are ultimately contingent, the question is how much shit has to change between now and the point where your agreement would fall apart that dictates how strong and resilient your agreement is. Gaddafi's no chump, he knows nobody likes him, or he wouldn't be such a paranoid mofo.

Likewise, Iran and North Korea know how distrusted they are by NATO nations.

North Korea is a particular instructive example, as they _did_ go through a period of disarmament and verification, only to renege on their agreements. They got what they wanted from the international community, and after their incentives changed (presumably things weren't _as_ dire as they were before), they told everyone to go fuck themselves.

<comment><USER6> Your argument is poorly put together sir.

> the reason the US attacked him was (Hussein), ostensibly, because he was a > threat (defined as vaguely as possible)

> The reason why Libya was attacked was that Gaddafi is also a threat

\----

So why hasn't Ahmadinejad been attacked ... he is so much of a 'threat' (defined as vaguely as possible) that he makes surrounding Arab states nervous ... (see wikileaks for reference)

> However it should be carefully noted that in spite of the fact that the Bush > administration and a number of world governments asserted and believed that > Saddam Hussein had chemical and/or biological weapons, they attacked him > anyway.

\---

Yep ... but he didn't have nuclear weapons did he?

>In other words, even possessing these weapons weren't a deterrent against attack by the US.

\-----

I like how you tiptoe around that last bit about nuclear weapons

The central point of the article is pretty solid ... if you have nuclear weapons or even look like you have them, America isn't coming after you.

The part about them getting you to disarm so they can attack you is a bit of a stretch though.

<comment><USER5> > So why hasn't Ahmadinejad been attacked?

Because we're already involved in two land wars in the middle east and asia?

Because Iran has at least tepid Russian support? Because Iran has a large enough army and national spirit that a war in Iran would be extraordinarily costly and long ranging?

The proclivity for removing repressive regimes does not _guarantee_ that the international community will attack, just as the renunciation of nuclear weapons isn't a guarantee that a repressive regime will _not_ be attacked. That's why i'm so skeptical of all of these moral hazard arguments on the international stage. International politics are really complicated, and there are a lot of factors involved in decision making.

> I like how you tiptoe around that last bit about nuclear weapons

Well caught, but i still think i disagree. It's true that the US hasn't ever attacked or declared war on a nuclear state (well, i'm not sure what the engagement between N and S Korea last year should be called), so we're in hypothetical territory on that subject. But one could equally ask why we haven't attacked Myanmar in spite of their horrendous human rights record, and the answer is simply that China is their sponsor. It's not because of their lack of nuclear arms.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article focuses on Libya and Iraq, but forgets about Pakistan, whose nuclear weapons have done little to prevent CIA drones from killing terrorists and the occaisional civillian within pakistan's borders.

<comment><USER8> Why would the people in charge in Pakistan want to do that? We're funneling them billions of dollars in aid money, they're a client state of the US.

Aid was cut off briefly over 30 years ago when their nuclear program became public, but started right back up again so they could back the Taliban against the Soviets for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For any projection of power, however well grounded, there will always be a seemingly well-reasoned rebuttal of its legitimacy.

There are a lot of people out there who want to stick it to the U.S. just for playing a power game regardless of grounds for said power game. These people will always find a way to make the power game look bad, since by its very nature power is susceptible to such criticism. At this point, I am just starting to ignore these people because I have learned that the number one reason people criticize someone exercising power is because they want the power exclusively for themselves.

Power is neither good nor bad; power is power. What should be criticized is brutality.

</comment><comment><USER10> No, the lesson is if there is a revolution in your country, dont try to wipe it out with brute force. At least be mkre sneaky about it.

<comment><USER6> ... if you have oil

<comment><USER11> Nonsense. From an oil point of view, the US is better off if the dictator wins.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The bulk of US Foreign policy can be summed up in -- [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bigger%20Dick...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Bigger%20Dick%20Forgien%20Policy)

</comment><comment><USER13> 99% of the time, not watching the news is awesome. Most of it is noise that obscures what's actually happening - you do much better by studying history than watching the news. For instance, you'd do well to study the history of financial crises during one, instead of watching the news. The news say that armageddon is coming, whereas history says buy stocks after the crash.

Though occasionally, you do get bushwhacked - the thought process goes like this: "WTF? My country is bombing Libya? _google... google..._ Huh, my country is bombing Libya."

Analysis - I think the article makes some good points, but the conclusion is overly simplistic.

In terms of securing their current government, a regime hostile to the USA needs to look at a few factors, such as:

1\. Are they on the US leadership's radar already?

2\. Does US leadership believe the USA has enough resources to to make war on them without excessively compromising the economy or military capability elsewhere?

3\. Could further arming provide a casus belli for an administration that already wants to make war?

4\. What's the US leadership's current geopolitical strategy for the area?

North Korea is interesting because they have the fourth largest military in the world, and they've got ballistic missiles pointed at two of America's closest allies in Asia - Japan and South Korea. A coalition could absolutely defeat North Korea, but at _huge_ potential costs, nuclear weapons aside. So in their case, yes, arming with nuclear weapons probably helps their security, especially while America is already in two deep military conflicts.

 _(Note: I'm being descriptive here, not proscriptive. Obviously I think North Korea having nuclear weapons is a bad thing)_

On the flipside a lot of petty regimes like Cuba and Venezuela are mildly hostile to the USA but not on American leadership's radar as a threat and the American people would be against a war with them. In their case, arming with nuclear weapons would be a very dangerous gamble - they're basically safe from any U.S. offensive action at this point, but you'd be provoking a still very fierce tiger if you tried to get nuclear arms. Especially Cuba - I think American discovery of nuclear armament in Cuba would result in a near instant invasion.

The regimes and governments with the most interesting questions to ask themselves are the ones that are loosely aligned with the USA right now, but stand a very good chance of having hostile relations later. My gut reaction is that places like Saudi Arabian and Pakistan become more domestically secure against American action with nuclear weapons, but arming is risky - <USER2> American intelligence, leadership, or media happened to discover some blatant financing or backing of terrorism or insurgency around the same time the nuclear program was discovered, they might find themselves occupied. They're already next door to regions we're at war, so it doesn't even open another front and the key supply chains are already in place... U.S. leadership might decide they'd prefer to install more explicitly friendly leadership in those places if they tried to arm up.

In regards to Iran, I think it's point #4 - "What's the US leadership's current geopolitical strategy for the area?" My take is that the American leadership really wants the Iranian leadership out, but they think it's going to happen organically pretty soon and don't want to give the regime an external enemy to fight for unity's sake. Though, I think some of the more public war-dogging Iran was doing during Bush's administration was crazy - that administration seemed to really want to attack Iran, especially if operations had gone more smoothly in Iraq and Afghanistan.

<comment><USER14> You seem to be forgetting that US is not the only country enforcing the no-fly zone. This is about more than the US.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Tinder for Poetry (Data Collection Phase) - <AUTHOR> https://poempath.com <comment><AUTHOR> Okay, it's not _really_ like Tinder because poems cannot like you back. I built this website using Vue and Koa. Currently, it just collects data. I will be building a basic recommendation engine in the coming weeks. Any feedback is greatly appreciated- this is my first major WebDev project. Also, if anyone knows of a quality source of poems, let me know!

<comment><USER2> This is great! One suggestion, show the theme of the poem or maybe the first few lines so the person doesn't have to read the whole thing / scroll to the bottom to move on or like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm that is an excellent point. Thank you! I do not know if I have the data consistency to reliably provide a theme for every poem, but some sort of "at a glance" feature would be valuable.</comment></comment></comment>


Messaging app Kik just launched a bot store - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/5/11370850/kik-messenger-bot-store-ai-chat-app <comment><USER2> Well, this is interesting to see after what happened to npm a few weeks ago. Check out the getting started page, there's an npm install:

[https://dev.kik.com/#/docs/getting- started](https://dev.kik.com/#/docs/getting-started)</comment>


Ask HN: What's a non developer interview like at Google? - <AUTHOR> Yeah, we've seen those odd questions Google asks people interviewing for a developer role. I mean, thousands of articles have been wrote about that so far.
But what's it like for everyone else who gets hired?
Because it's obviously not all developers there. They've got people writing documentation, offering support to businesses for stuff like Adwords, various sales teams, etc. What do they go through when they're interviewed by Google?
Is it as interesting as what the developers have to endure? Or does everyone else just get a plain old interview with standard questions and tasks? <comment><USER2> Pretty standard. It depends which stage you're in but expect behavioral questions and maybe a consulting style case study. The first interview with the HR person was over the phone and any after that were through hangouts. The Glassdoor reviews for the financial analyst interviews are pretty spot on. I never ended up making it to campus to interview unfortunately but every now and then they contact me about other roles.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tech program managers and product managers for example get one round of whiteboard coding questions.

The rest is pretty standard, still high expectation though because of the number of applicants.</comment>


Does your Representative oppose Job Creation & Support a Warrantless Gag Order? - <AUTHOR> http://markmaunder.com/2011/11/15/sopa-hr-3261/

<comment><USER2> There's a link to EFF's "contact your rep" page relating to this bill, where you can send a message to your rep.

I sent that message.

You should too.</comment>


Proton Smaller Than Thought—May Rewrite Laws of Physics - <AUTHOR> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/07/100707-science-proton-smaller-standard-model-quantum-physics/ <comment><USER2> Many comments on this version of the story:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1499053></comment>


FBI ran website sharing thousands of child porn images - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/01/21/fbi-ran-website-sharing-thousands-child-porn-images/79108346/ <comment><USER2> Something to keep in mind:

 _In each case, the FBI injected the site with malware to crack Tor's anonymity._

 _Those hacks, developed with the help of outside contractors, were a technical milestone. When the FBI first realized it could break through Tor, Hosko said the agency gathered counterterrorism investigators and intelligence agencies to see if any of them had a more pressing need for the software. "It was this, exponentially," Hosko said._</comment>


Designing Crypto Primitives Secure Against Rubber Hose Attacks (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/technical-sessions/presentation/bojinov <comment><USER2> It's interesting, but it opens up a rather unsettling counter-countermeasure:

If I'm Mallet, I don't want people using passwords I can't quickly force out of them. Therefore, I pretend I don't know about this, or don't believe it, and _keep using the rubber hose_ on people who are implementing this protocol. Therefore, those people get worked over longer and end up in a worse spot than people who _are_ able to give up a password quickly. Net result is that people are terrified of using this stuff because they know that if they don't give up a working password quickly they'll be tortured longer.

Moral: This is probably a really good way to remember secure (that is, high- entropy) passwords. Don't pretend it's good for a use-case at which it is very obviously a horrible fit.

<comment><USER3> The best technique for this that I have seen are systems with plausible deniability. This is where you have a pool of seemingly random data and several passwords will open different parts of the data up, with the free space padded by random data. The idea is that you reveal a password with dummy content. If they continue to insist that there must be another password you can reveal a second, or third password that will reveal different data.

Of course, any actor that is willing to torture an answer out of you is probably willing to torture n answers out of you and/or watch you die in the process. This is one of those problems that there may not be a technological solution to and we should probably focus on spreading the concept of human rights to our children instead.

<comment><USER4> > Of course, any actor that is willing to torture an answer out of you is > probably willing to torture n answers out of you and/or watch you die in the > process.

The eternal question of how to fight monsters without becoming one in the process.

<comment><USER5> Simple answer - don't. You can't fight blind violence with more violence and expect that something good will come out of this.

<comment><USER4> And yet "we" keep on trying...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't see why, if you can torture someone into saying words, you can't also torture someone into playing a game.

People can be coerced into doing anything they would do normally (unlocking a lock; supplying their fingerprint; phoning their conspirator and saying to go ahead with the plan.) True coercion-resistance, I would think, implies that the mechanism has the ability to differentiate a stimulus supplied under coercion, even under the assumption that Mallet could have fed Alice some anti-anxiety drugs to regularize detectable symptoms of stress in her behaviour. (Coincidentally, "truth serums"—i.e. low-dose dissociative anaesthetics, ketamine or PCP being just as workable as sodium pentathol—also have anxiolytic effects. I can't imagine a state actor wouldn't take advantage of this if the goal is coercion rather than torture-for-the-sake-of-torture.)

As far as I know, there is one single useful mechanism for coercion- resistance: precommitment with counterparties. If Alice and Bob are supposed to have no further contact once the plan is in motion, and Bob knows this, then it is useless to torture Alice into contacting Bob—Bob will take the contact itself as a signal that Alice has been compromised.

You can automate this; if Alice (or her device) must attend regular KEx parties to get a new key (i.e. participate in a protocol with a security ratchet), then capturing her or her device prevents her from doing this, and so expires her key material (kicks her keys out of the keybag, basically.)

</comment><comment><USER7> What about using a scheme where the only copy of the key is easily destroyed when needed? Something like private key stored on a USB flash drive with hidden "auto-destruct" button. If the owner sees the situation coming, he just says to the criminal: "The only copy of the private key was stored on this disk. I've just destroyed it. There's no point in torturing me." Seems to prevent both violation of privacy and torture. The criminal must believe there is no other copy, though.

<comment><USER6> That sort of thing is usually taken as an admission of guilt as to the contents of the encrypted material, as far as being charged with an actual crime (rather than just held indefinitely without charge) is concerned. Instead of holding you illegally, they're now holding you legally.

On the other hand, if you can remove the active _mens rea_ component, this is a good solution. I imagine law enforcement is actively trying to prevent any software with a _dead man 's switch_ key-destruction component from ever becoming popular/ubiquitous, because it would enable people to claim they truly had no idea the software had a feature where their key would be destroyed in such a scenario; they were just using it because everyone else was. Imagine if BitLocker/FileVault had a mechanism like that, which could be forced on users by corporate policy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Quantum cryptography can be secure against rubber hose attacks. It can be designed so that if you measure the wrong thing (i.e. try the wrong password), the stored information is gone forever. And due to the no-cloning theorem it isn't possible to circumvent this with backups.</comment>


A rich web interface concept for mailing lists - <AUTHOR> http://mairin.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/a-rich-web-interface-for-mailing-lists/ <comment><USER2> Everything in that screenshot is doing too good of a job competing for my attention. The message gets lost easily.</comment>


Network sniffing in your browser - <AUTHOR> http://blog.websecurify.com/2017/07/httpview-feeds.html <comment><USER2> Off topic, but am I the only one amused that a company called "Websecurify" can't even spend the $0 necessary to put an SSL certificate on their blog?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://blog.websecurify.com](https://blog.websecurify.com) \- and now it even redirects to HTTPS automatically. It was there all the time but for some reason it was turned off.

<comment><USER2> Much better! Thanks for looking into it.</comment></comment></comment>


Let's talk about Elon Musk launching his Tesla into space - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2018/20180205-space-tesla.html <comment> King-Aaron Some of those twitter comments make me shake my head... Seems like a case of sour grapes to me.

<comment><USER2> The car is a bit Dadaist. Some people think it's a waste to send a car up into space --sure, from some perspectives it might be. He could have sent compacted garbage instead.

But he's an entrepreneur and also a showman (among other things) and this excites people (in multiple dimensions).

The Twitter stuff though, well, I think we've learned that there is this insidious aspect where largely average people people (people who otherwise have contributed around average to humanity, let's say) will try to one up each other into virtue-signaling who can think more virtuously.

All of that [outrage] Tweeting itself probably generates more waste (CPU cycles, network traffic, phone battery consumption, etc) than will be "wasted" by sending this roadster into space. But at least they'll get to feel smug.

<comment><USER3> >Tweeting itself probably generates more waste (CPU cycles, network traffic, phone battery consumption, etc) than will be "wasted" by sending this roadster into space. But at least they'll get to feel smug.

What a bizarre and highly inaccurate thing to say.

<comment><USER2> You're right, it is exaggerated. I accept that. I'm reacting to the unnecessary negativity for the sake of "looking better" while what's being tested has enormous implications for human achievement. So, sure, he's wasting a roadster. There is so much other waste in the world, even by these concerned people. To focus on this is being self-important and petty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is an episode of Star Trek Voyager (The 37's) where they come across a Red Ford Pickup floating through space.

I can't find a YouTube version of the floating part but here it is in the cargo bay: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD39p7cVS9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rD39p7cVS9g)

Would be great to VFX the Tesla into the episode.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is sending a car into space wasteful? I suppose it is, but then so are most art projects and publicity stunts. We're wasting far more resources on much stupider things than a single car (with Space Oddity on and a Hitchhiker's Guide on board) in space.

It's a statement, and I can appreciate it.</comment>


Google Talking To Game Devs About Creating Facebook Competitor - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29638/Google_Talking_To_Game_Devs_About_Creating_Facebook_Competitor.php

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder if this has anything to do with the Disney purchase of Playdom yesterday?

If Google can court Zynga, Playdom and Playfish it is a very worthy competitor to Facebook in terms of the social gaming aspect which is the most sticky part of facebook beyond the people.

But will people trust Google with their social information after Buzz and other privacy breaches?

Best bet would be to make a gaming site first that is public. I wish Facebook would do something similar in separate private and public profiles, the latter for all the game friends you want but not having to granularly set permissions for them not to see other groups of friends. Basically a Kongregate version of Facebook.

</comment><comment><USER2> Anyone else notice this? The article speculates about the platform, but Mark D (whom the article mentions just joined google) comments on the post.. He essentially confirms it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow that is amazing. What he is saying about it as well has long been a dream. I hope WebGL can do for 3d content/games what Flash did for video when youtube hit. Easy, accessible, fast loading content:

Mark DeLoura: _I think Flash will continue to be a very viable platform. The Flash toolset is pretty frickin' amazing, and there are a ton of happy Flash developers out there, and great games galore._

 _I would like to see higher-fidelity 3D content on the web though. It's been a dream of many people going back to VRML days. WebGL and Native Client are two solutions to this that will be integrated into the Chrome browser. At Google I/O we talked about Unity running inside of Native Client, which combines the hardware acceleration and security of Native Client with the fantastic toolset and runtime from Unity. It's peanut butter and chocolate (well, for me). :) This is a platform I'm really excited about for 3D web games._

<comment><USER3> Unity 3D!!!!</comment></comment></comment>


Obama Administration punishes reporter for using multimedia - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/bronstein/detail?entry_id=87978 <comment><USER2> I don't understand the fuss. Being a part of the press pool means you get access to places that you otherwise would not be allowed in. Now I understand that press-governemntal relations have gotten unusually cozy over the last few decades; with the press becoming almost an extension of the White House media arm.

At the same time, it is understandable for the President to be hesitant to allow such close access to their person, or to moments where things are said and done in a rather different manner than publicly presented. For example, if my girlfriend ever heard me say some things about her when I'm in beer-and- xbox mode with my closest buddies, I'd probably face a shitstorm.

Every once in a while when a politician forgets to turn off their mics and says something inappropriate, there's a kerfuffle about. But they need to be able to say those things in private. This pen-and-paper-only press-pool is a middle ground, so that the press can have some access, without having videos of inappropriate remarks or moments plastering across the 24/7 news media networks.

I see nothing wrong with this. Now on the other hand, if we are talking about the unusually cozy relationship of the media in restricting their criticism of the military, or military operations for fear of jeopardizing their embedded- access, then that's another story. Or the Washington bureaus cowardice in challenging the administration in the briefing room. I wish reporters would show more courage in those situations. But those situations are necessarily outside ones. They should gladly give up access, refuse to be cozied up to, refuse to go to those god-awful Correspondents' Dinners where they are wined and dined and bought. That I would heartily support.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure you watched the video and he was neither playing video games or drinking. I would not care what he says when he is doing that. But here he was out in public and people have right to say and note what he is happening around him. Democrats are about one thing, big government and control over people and media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article is trash.

Reporter does something that they were asked not to, it happened to involve technology, blogger misses the point and calls The Administration a bunch of Luddites.

<comment><USER5> It's not about technology, it's about transparency and the lack of it, to the point of hypocrisy, like when Obama removed bill reviews from the internet and accepted a "transparency award" in the whitewhouse in secret, banning any recording of the event, even though it's an event that should be publicly available.

The crime here wasn't even that she was banned, it was threatening others with the same if they reported about what happened to her.

However this is trivial to much more serious nonsense like meeting lobbyists across the street instead of at the whitehouse so they are off the recorded guestlist. Remember how lobbyists were going to be banned?

<comment><USER4> >The crime here wasn't even that she was banned, it was threatening others with the same if they reported about what happened to her.

Hmmm, yes, there is some meat to that issue. I guess I must have missed that bit after getting fed up with the 14 paragraphs before the article brought it up. I will maintain my point that the article is trash, but now its for so thoroughly burring the lead in addition to overall bad writing style.</comment></comment></comment>


Avengers Endgame Google Search Trick - <AUTHOR> 1. Go to Google.
2. Type 'Thanos'.
3. Click on the golden glove, top right. <comment><AUTHOR> Google's cool Avengers Endgame Thanos search trick - [https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/04/27/googles-cool-avengers- en...](https://www.iafrikan.com/2019/04/27/googles-cool-avengers-endgame- thanos-search-trick/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Goddamnit.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you still wear a suit to an interview? - <AUTHOR>

Massive internal conflict on this one. I'm a developer and every shop I've ever worked in are all 'casual' dress code for all employees. Yet for every interview I've always worn a suit. Have a speculative interview coming up and I find myself asking myself whether I should wear one...The whole practice feels archaic and unnecessary. I have no problem with 'smart' - goes without saying - but a full suit? Or, if I don't go in a suit, am I committing some massive faux pas?<p>Anyway, advice would be appreciated from interviewers and interviewees who don't wear suits... <comment><USER3> It depends on the culture of the firm you're interviewing at. There exist many companies at our industry where a suit does not communicate something desirable about you. For them, I'd go in my Sunday best rather than formal attire. For men I think this is approximately "Khakis and a long-sleeved shirt, ironed."

If you're in doubt about this, ask ahead of the interview. "Hey Bob, quick question since you'd know better than me: are you guys a suit-at-the-interview sort of shop?"

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't remember the last time someone wore a suit to an interview here.

General rule of thumb: unless your mom has heard of the company, don't wear a suit. If it's a startup, don't even wear business casual: wear jeans.

</comment><comment><USER5> I rarely wear a suit to an interview. When I was interviewing for jobs I'd show up in a suit and most developers interviewing me were in blue jeans, or flip-flops, etc. I now dress to be one standard deviation above what the people interviewing me are wearing.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not? It looks good and is comfortable (if it's not, get a nicer suit).

Yeah, it's archaic, but so is shaking hands and bringing in paper resumes, and you'll probably still be doing that.

What'll probably happen is anybody there from HR or non-technical managementment will think "oh good, he looks professional and isn't one of these super-nerds" and anybody technical will think "oh good, he knows how to handle the HR/corporate types"

</comment><comment><USER7> It definitely depends on the company. Irrespective of the company's dress code, you should look presentable for an interview. You don't have to dress formal to look presentable.

</comment><comment><USER8> Like what many people are saying here, at many companies wearing a suit might actually be a negative indicator, especially for startups and some top tech companies.

</comment><comment><USER9> a slight tangent, but. . .a few years ago I interviewed (internally) for a dev/mgr position for the group I was currently working in (not team lead - <USER2> was already a team lead). I would still be coding at least 50% of the time. I was already reporting to the hiring manager and was physically located in close proximity to him, so he saw me frequently throughout the day.

For the interview, I dressed as I always did - and we were not a suit type of place. At the start of the interview, he told me he was disappointed that I had not dressed up. I was stunned but did not respond and the interview proceeded.

I got the job and after a couple of weeks, I asked him why he wanted me to dress up for the interview. I asked if it was simply because he wanted to know if I _could_ dress _appropriately_ for the customer. He replied that was'nt it; he just though it would show appropriate respect for him and the position.

I though "this is reason # 102 why I really didn't want to move up the chain closer to you".

</comment><comment><USER10> Hi!

I think you should wear whatever makes you feel comfortable. But, you should not wear a suit or a t-shirt just someone tells you too. Be yourself!

Personally, I've got a big afro and I usually bring my skateboard to interviews. That's me!

<comment><USER11> That's dope, keep doing you, don't let them take your soul.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The job might only require a suit one day a year when you're meeting fancy pants people, speaking externally, meeting clients etc. Wearing a suit to the interview allows you to show that you can dress up well if needed.

</comment><comment><USER13> I stopped going to interviews wearing a suit since that only matters if you're going to be using a suit during the job, and if a suit is required for the job, count me out.

</comment><comment><USER14> As much as everyone hates it, appearance matters, especially for first impressions.

</comment><comment><USER11> I dress really well (I ooze style), but I don't dress formal.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the UK a suit is almost always a good idea.

<comment><USER16> Last time I wore a suit was so long ago that I can't remember. The last job interview I had for a UK company was in 1982 and I didn't wear a suit then. Nor did I wear a suit to the interview with the Norwegian company I joined in 1985. I got both jobs. Not sure what this really means, except that I think 'almost always a good idea' at least ought to be an exaggeration. If not, well, I'm glad I left to join a company and country where expertise seems to be valued over presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wear suits. Hides the gut well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Yeah, I look good in a suit.

</comment><comment><USER19> not since 1998.</comment>


Write Scalability of PostgreSQL - <AUTHOR> http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2011/12/write-scalability.html

<comment><USER2> I have understood that 16 cores is a sort of sweetspot for 9.1. I guess this explains the discussion about additional cores being helpful in 9.2.....</comment>