How fast can we make interpreted Python? - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.6047

<comment><USER2> It seems like the biggest point here is that compatibility with the extension API in Python is the anchor dragging down performance. Similarly, Ruby suffers from continued compatibility with its extension API. In the paper they compare with Lua and JavaScript, but it's worth noting that JavaScript doesn't have an extension API (well, JavaScript proper...not saying anything about node.js), and the team behind Lua are notorious for not caring about breaking API compatibility between versions.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, while this is a laudable effort, it seems what Python (and Ruby) really needs is a way to free itself from the chains of extension API compatibility.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, having a stable C extension API is what allows Numpy and Cython ([http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html](http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html)) to be as good and fast as they are.

My experience with numerical algorithms in Python has been a 10000x speedup and 10x memory reduction by using Numpy arrays and C/fortran functions. And when Numpy doesn't have a necessary function, a few extra lines of static C types and on-import compilation with Cython has still resulted in a 1000x speedup.

"Optimizing Python" needs to look at the whole existing ecosystem of C libraries - to be useful the end result has to be faster than what's possible now, not just faster than pure Python.

<comment><USER4> What exactly is Cython? I've not had a reason to use it yet; are the speed improvements worth it?

<comment><USER3> Cython is a runtime Python-to-C compiler.

The speed improvements are worth it given how easy it is to use, I have seen literally a 1000x speedup on a time-series data analysis script from adding about 10 lines of static type annotations.

The functionality I like best about it are:

* It can be used transparently without any makefiles or compilation steps. Add "import pyximport; pyximport.install()" at the top of your main script, and now every imported Cython-capable module is compiled on the fly at runtime.

* You can start out with _no_ changes to your python modules. All libraries and features still work within compiled modules. Then you can slowly start adding static types to a few variables at a time. The annotated variables become very fast native C integers/doubles/functions, instead of Python objects.

<comment><USER4> Sounds intriguing. I know a fair bit of C, python, Fortran. I've used f2py a bit. Do you have any good Cython tutorial you like to recommend?

<comment><USER3> For my use cases, the standard documentation and tutorials ([http://docs.cython.org/index.html](http://docs.cython.org/index.html)) have been enough.

* Install it with pip, the packages in your OS distribution may be out of date,

* Rename your numeric code module's .py file to .pyx,

* Use pyximport from the main script ( [http://docs.cython.org/src/userguide/source_files_and_compil...](http://docs.cython.org/src/userguide/source_files_and_compilation.html#pyximport)) to have it compiled at runtime without any extra build steps, and then

* Start experimenting with adding a few "cdef"s ([http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html](http://docs.cython.org/src/quickstart/cythonize.html) and [http://docs.cython.org/src/tutorial/numpy.html](http://docs.cython.org/src/tutorial/numpy.html))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Previous discussion:

[http://www.phi-node.com/2013/06/how-fast-can-we-make- interpr...](http://www.phi-node.com/2013/06/how-fast-can-we-make-interpreted- python.html)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5943258](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5943258)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the paper: [http://github.com/rjpower/falcon/](http://github.com/rjpower/falcon/)

<comment><USER7> > _Does Falcon support all of Python?_

> _Not yet! Lots of constructs (like catching exceptions, constructing > objects, etc...) aren 't implemented in the Falcon virtual machine. _

<comment><USER8> From the project page, [https://github.com/rjpower/falcon/](https://github.com/rjpower/falcon/)

"... However, this doesn't mean that programs which use these constructs won't run. Any missing functionality is routed through the Python C API, foregoing any potential performance benefit you might have gotten from Falcon. So, though Falcon isn't a complete Python implementation, it should still run all of your code."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If the goal is to get performance without giving up on Python's existing libraries, why not use Steven Johnson's PyCall ([https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl](https://github.com/stevengj/PyCall.jl)) package for Julia?

<comment><USER10> No need to learn a new language, perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> While this paper is quite easy and occasionally funny to read, being a total math idiot, I need somebody to help me out how to read the benchmarks at the end. The author claims that on average converting stack-based bytecode to register-based bytecode results in an average of 25% performance improvement, I have trouble finding where that number comes from. The charts are said to be a comparison of optimized code relative to unoptimized code, my question is, how come the unit on the y-axis is a percentage, and the unoptimized code isn't used as a base-line all labeled as 100% or given an absolute average time-took? The tiny gaps between unoptimized and optimized code are confusing me.

<comment><USER12> The baseline in the charts is standard CPython. The unoptimized is their register machine without optimizing the bytecode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be good to compare Falcon with Numba: "Numba's job is to make Python + NumPy code as fast as its C and Fortran equivalents without sacrificing any of the power and flexibility of Python." Like Falcon, Numba is compatible with CPython and whatever extensions you want to use with CPython.

[https://github.com/numba/numba](https://github.com/numba/numba)

Intro to Numba, parts 1 and 2:

[http://continuum.io/blog/numba_growcut](http://continuum.io/blog/numba_growcut)

[http://continuum.io/blog/numba_performance](http://continuum.io/blog/numba_performance)

</comment><comment><USER14> Since it's compatible with PyObject, sounds like it can be folded into CPython? Are there any arguments against that?

<comment><USER12> The maintenance effort.

The big performance win is nice (this benchmark:

[https://github.com/rjpower/falcon/blob/master/benchmarks/mat...](https://github.com/rjpower/falcon/blob/master/benchmarks/matmult.py)

), but it is still going to be a lot slower than doing it the horrible way (calling out to Numpy).

The benchmark is more aimed at demonstrating the reduction in loop overhead than it is at numerical speed, but numerical stuff is usually where you end up with a lot of loop overhead...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wish pyscho was ported to 2.7 64 bit :(

<comment><USER16> I totally long for Psyco too. PyPy turned out to be not really a replacement for it.

<comment><USER17> Oh really, why? Because it's not as compatible?

<comment><USER16> Yes. With Psyco it was possible to use the entire Python ecosystem, in my case PyQt and the science libraries.

There was just something magical about Psyco, just adding two lines to your script and seeing it run 100x faster. It was really great at speeding up floating point math.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The GIL must go!

<comment><USER19> I'll get rid of the GIL for you. You're not too attached to mutating state, are you?</comment></comment>


2011 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner - <AUTHOR> http://www.c-span.org/Events/2011-White-House-Correspondents-Association-Dinner/10737421177-3/ <comment><USER2> flagged because it definitely felt off-topic according to HN guidelines: <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html></comment>


Hacking Protonmail... with a browser. - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/99599725

<comment><USER2> Working assumption for this "NSA secure email" apparently was "the NSA does not have a web browser."</comment>


Jerusalem and the Follies of Trump's Embrace - <AUTHOR> http://nationalinterest.org/feature/jerusalem-the-follies-trumps-embrace-23528 <comment><AUTHOR> The article from a point of view where the move of the US embassy to Jerusalem and the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel could create more problems to US and Israel than fixing any.</comment>


Ask HN: What problem would you want us to work on? - <AUTHOR> My friend and I have some experiences with NLP and deep learning respectively. We are looking for side project ideas applying machine learning to any real world problem. What would you want us to work on? <comment><USER2> Hi, I would lik to share an idea with you. Please drop me mail on email@example.com Speak soon</comment>


Tough Calls: How 40 CEOs Made Their Career-defining Decisions - <AUTHOR> http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2718

<comment><USER2> "The best way to make a defining-moment decision is to study all the facts, learn everything you can about the circumstances you're in, the pros and cons, the cost-benefit analysis, and then make your decision. It's really got to be thought out."

cf. <http://www.gladwell.com/2010/2010_01_18_a_surething.html></comment>


Ask YC: VC/Angels in Vancouver BC - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know about any VCs or angels in Vancouver BC? <comment><USER2> <http://thefunded.com/> Most likely has the information your looking for, you can do search by area and level of funding.

</comment><comment><USER3> read the article : Revenge Of The Angel Investor

[http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=12ca4a9b-cd92-470...](http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=12ca4a9b-cd92-4701-9324-8c58ec59c644&k=15347)</comment>


Memory recall dependent on gene influencing hippocampus-based circadian clock - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13554-y <comment><USER2> Perhaps my thinking is flawed and grossly oversimplified here. Doesn't this just seem to line up with brain chemistry and how everything seems to work in the brain? When I drink a coffee, caffeine inhibits adenosine from accumulating in the brain which makes me feel more "awake". Eventually that chemical wears off and I start to get sleepy. I would imagine much like mood memory recall is dependent on some chemical in the brain, of which there is a limited supply. Sleep allows for cleaning and regeneration of said supplies.

What if its not because of the time of day, its just that once you've been awake for a certain number of hours your brain is running on empty until you sleep again? If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I would expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours.

<comment><USER3> >If you had folks working(and acclimated to) the graveyard shift I would expect similar results on memory recall but in the morning hours.

Only anecdotal, but I had a friend that worked graveyard shift for a few months and when she could get proper sleep during the day it was pretty much like that. She'd be awake and energetic around 10 or 11 pm, worked through her shift, would go through that same early 'morning' productive push and that after 'lunch' slump and by morning she'd be tired and kind of hazy before she went to sleep. It just ended up being she'd never get proper sleep during the day to the point she was tired and hazy all the time and couldn't take it any more and had to quit.

During the beginning though, her memory for things was definitely better at night when she first got up. She'd forget things from conversations we'd have in thr morning or sometimes she wouldn't remember them at all and her memory is usually pretty good, sometimes better than mine, with things or wouldn't really be that coherent about what was going on.

<comment><USER4> Generally, people working night shifts in "normal" settings have worse health and cognitive outcomes than people on equivalent day shifts. (Swing shifts are evil, and do far more damage than either.)

There seem to be two main factors driving that. One is simply that we arrange the world for being awake in the day: night-shift workers get less sleep due to daytime tasks (e.g. going to the bank), and worse sleep because isolating from light and noise is much harder during the day. The other is a bit more subtle: even with a bright office and blackout curtains, nightshift workers get hammered with conflicting time/light signals every time they commute home or go near a window. It's like a vastly worse version of checking staring into a computer screen right before bed.

There are other impacts, too - I've heard of nightshift workers getting something like SAD, and Vitamin D deficiencies are probably common. But all of that applies to people in wholly-artificial light cycles (e.g. submarines or the Arctic), and yet those people seem to cope far better than 'regular' nightshift workers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mentions Zeitgeber which I had to look up: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeber](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeber)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have read of Dementia having "sun downing" issues as patients get worse symptoms around dusk, and care homes having good results by brighter daytime lights and working on day/night rhythms.

Prof. Satchin Panda's work is on intermittent fasting and circadian rhythms, and in his TED talk he has dementia on a slide as one of the possible problems involved with this kind of metabolic dysregulation.

Now this memory recall depending on circadian rhythm;

</comment><comment><USER7> So heavy technology (blue light) use literally gives us worse memory. As our economy moves to be more and more attention-based, that sounds about right.

<comment><USER8> Where do you get that from the article? They even say tha the memory deficits were observed in constant darkness conditions as well (and therefore due to intrinsic clock not extrinsic light per se). Also keep in mind that mice are nocturnal so poor memory performance late in the light period for them is probably analogous to poor memory performance during early morning for us, when there is no light.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I notice that my recall is much better if I had learned the information while moving... either driving a car (actively aware of my surroundings) or on a walk. I can typically think back to exactly where I was when I learned something.

<comment><USER10> I think I have a related thing going on in my brain. My recall ability is poor to middling, but if I listen to a podcast a second time within a week or two of the first, I have these intrusive and extremely vivid scenes play out in my mind from the first time I listened to the podcast.

I want to try an experiment where I film my first listen, then a week later re-listen and narrate the 'film' without watching it to see how close i am.

<comment><USER11> Kind of similar experience. As a kid, when we'd go on a road trip, on the way back I'd remember everything I was thinking about on the trip there, but in reverse order. It was the landmarks and scenes that triggered the recall of what I had been thinking about when I saw it the on the trip there.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sleeping Hacks - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a chapter on the concept of sleep for my online book (http://howtogetfocused.com). I'm researching what science holds true about sleep, but I'd like to hear any stories or any interesting takes some of you have on improving sleep.
We live in a world where a common response to the question, "How're you doing," is "I'm tired as hell."
Any stories or articles you've found interesting would help.
For instance: how to enhance sleep, how to grow the mind through sleep, sleep tricks (I know Tim Ferris had a neat exercise on this a while back).
Thanks <comment><USER2> If it's a short chapter, then this may not make it in, or it might not make it in because it's 'weird', but polyphasic sleep is an interesting twist on traditional sleep schedules.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> The chapter will be as long as it needs to be. Don't know how many words it will take. Some of my chapters are brisk, whereas other chapters need some more context to get the point across.

Polyphasic sleep definitely looks like it will make the cut. In fact, that may be a major component--I'll have to try this out. Thanks, fragmede.</comment></comment>


Stop bashing MBAs - <AUTHOR> http://marcgayle.com/2010/05/12/stop-bashing-mbas/ <comment><USER2> The problem with MBAs is that they think you can only learn what a typical MBA program teaches in business school.

I learned everything that the authors learned in business school managing my own successful open source project. And I didn't have to take a loan out.

So to all those people who are seeking an MBA degree to learn "the business side of things" - start an open source project and try and make it successful. It will be the best learning experience of your life. You will learn more then any MBA from any university. And you'll be 80K+ less in debt.

<comment><AUTHOR> Again...that's also a generalization. No one ever said you can only learn the above in an MBA program. But given life's vagaries, it gives you a crash course. By the way, everything in the post are the ancillary things learned while learning how to learn.</comment></comment>


Cloudflare Firewall Rules to Protect WordPress - <AUTHOR> https://levi.lol/cloudflare-firewall-rules-to-protect-wordpress/ <comment><USER2> While a great idea in principle, this is... incomplete.

You can also do exactly the same thing with any web server. And you should. Just because you use Cloudflare doesn't mean your server is not directly accessible on the internet. Sure, its IP is masked, but that doesn't mean it's suddenly invisible.

In reality this is just a much more advanced version of security through obscurity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback! You're right, you can do this with any web server, but that is difficult for some people to implement. I'm not saying people shouldn't learn, and do difficult things to protect their websites, but starting with the Cloudflare Firewall is a step in the right direction.

What are the odds you can guess the IP address of my server? They're pretty slim I think. Also, if I use Cloudflare's Authenticated Origin Pulls, my web server won't respond to your request if you managed to find my IP.

Also, I'm not saying you shouldn't take other security measures, like having a secure password, use mod_security, etc. The intent of using these firewall rules are to prevent login attempts, or at least reduce the number of login attempts to your WP site.

Moreover, if I were to use Cloudflare Argo Tunnel, then it would mean my server is not directly accessible on the internet.

[https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/204899617-A...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/204899617-Authenticated-Origin-Pulls) [https://www.cloudflare.com/products/argo- tunnel/](https://www.cloudflare.com/products/argo-tunnel/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Note the comment about admin-ajax below the article; it's a real problem. One of the many bad design decisions in WP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding another rule would handle the admin-ajax situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So much needed, bye bye Wordfence and all so-called "security plugins".</comment>


More buildings should be made of wood - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/leaders/2019/01/05/why-more-buildings-should-be-made-of-wood <comment><USER2> Can wood buildings provide good sound isolation between floors?

I've lived on the 3rd floor of a wood framed 4 story apartment building, and won't repeat that experience if I can help it -- we could hear the couple upstairs very clearly, footsteps, their dog jumping off the couch and barking out the window, late-night sex, all were easy to hear.

In contrast, I lived on the 5th floor of a 9 story concrete and steel high rise, and couldn't hear anything. I even had the upstairs neighbors ask me if I could hear their new treadmill, and I could not.

I assume that the sheer mass of the concrete floors made it so quiet -- Can a wood framed building be constructed with that same level of isolation?

<comment><USER3> FWIW, I live in a brick and concrete building and hear all the things you mentioned, sometimes not just from immediately adjacent units, but also often units two or three floors away in some cases, e.g. loud parties or drilling/hammering (the rigid structure conducts the sound around the building I think - kinda like tapping on a metal pole or rail: doesn't matter where you put your ear on the pole you still hear the noise from the tapping)

<comment><USER4> loud parties or drilling/hammering? in a wooden building (in a pretty regular US home at least) you hear people gently walking or even just coughing on the floor(s) above or below you

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's a lead article in The Economist. A longer article on the merits of modern wooden buildings can be found in the same issue at [1]

[1] [https://www.economist.com/international/2019/01/05/efforts-t...](https://www.economist.com/international/2019/01/05/efforts- to-make-buildings-greener-are-not-working)

</comment><comment><USER6> I CTRL+F'd for "deforestation" in the article, thinking that anyone in their right mind talking about using that much more timber would at least mention it, and was surprised not to even see it mentioned.

> When a mature tree is cut down, a new one can be planted to replace it,

Again, expert carpenters could correct me if I am wrong, but the higher quality desired wood is called "old wood" some of which is over one hundred years old. You can't just snap your fingers, plant a field of trees and expect that to be ready in time to meet a surge of demand. The stuff is already extremely hard to come by -- you ain't gonna find it on the shelf in any big box store.

The vast majority of the stuff used today is "new wood", cultivated to grow as fast as possible, so the wood is not as dense and, as a result, weaker and more susceptible to decay and instability. Not exactly what I would want my skyscraper built out of.

I am assuming the author was considering composites and manufactured wood products as well -- again, these have not been proven to be as structurally sound as old wood over time.

Then the other factor in play here is the increased demand in logging. Logging is one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet. You would technically be requiring more loggers, thus causing more logging deaths.

Not so sure this is such a good idea, but I could be wrong.

<comment><USER7> That's true that newer woods are softer, but often for structural applications special types of engineering wood products are produced from newer woods which are very strong. One example that comes to my mind is structural ply, it's really strong stuff and practically always made from soft timber.

<comment><USER6> I found a reference here ([https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_...](https://www.fpl.fs.fed.us/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr190/chapter_12.pdf)) that discusses the mechanical properties of some of these fabricated structural wood products. Everything seems to be in comparison to just plain hardwood, but nothing seems to point to that it meets or exceeds the strength of hardwood. I am not convinced that any amount of glue, plastics, and pressing together other hardwoods (presumably, young woods as well) will stand up against good old fashioned old wood timber, which I simply don't think we have enough of to start building tall buildings with. If that's the case I'd rather be on the top floor of a steel building.

<comment><USER8> They're only going to design the building to be strong enough to withstand the loads it needs to bear, plus a standard safety factor. If they use a stronger material, they'll use less of it so that the resulting strength is the same.

I can understand being skeptical of decay, fire resistance, sound deafening, or other factors like that, but being worried about the strength makes no sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't see any mention of termites. Wood is much less attractive when you live in a termite-prone area - they're hardy little buggers, they can chew through concrete to get to your timber framing, and if you don't catch them early enough your entire house needs to be rebuilt.

<comment><USER10> Ahem. First google link "There is an urban legend that says that termites can eat through concrete to get into a home." [https://www.termite- control.com/termite-infested-homes/termi...](https://www.termite- control.com/termite-infested-homes/termite-and-building-material/concrete- termites/)

<comment><USER9> Huh, there you go. Although the third link on DuckDuckGo ([http://mytermitetreatmentcosts.com/do-termites-eat- concrete/](http://mytermitetreatmentcosts.com/do-termites-eat-concrete/)) does say:

> However, older degraded concrete is occasionally weak enough for termites to > make their way through. The same has been known to be true with lime mortar > which is common with brickwork. Termites have been known to make their way > through the lime mortar between brickwork to get to the wood behind them.

So it's not completely impossible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cement/concrete is a MASSIVE contributor to global warming (8% of CO2).[1]

Steel is not far behind at 5%.[2]

I feel like we need to talk about this more. Whenever "urbanists" go on about the environmental cost of sprawl and transport, first thing I think about is all the concrete & steel their vision requires. At least we can make transport sustainable.

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-46455844](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-46455844)

[2] [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611961/this-mit- spinout-c...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611961/this-mit-spinout- could-finally-clean-up-steel-one-of-the-globes-biggest-climate-polluters/)

(I guess the Economist cites different estimates, 6% and 8% respectively, but it's in the ballpark.)

<comment><USER12> Most urbanists prefer putting buildings closer together with less roads and parking lots in between over building taller.

<comment><USER11> What's your source? Most urbanists I read at least in the context of San Francisco _definitely_ advocate building taller. Maybe not skyscrapers, but at least 4-6 stories. And the "formula" for that type of construction uses a concrete first floor.[1]

I'm not _against_ the urbanist vision per se. I've just found that it's very "politicized" and they tend to not want to talk about CO2 impact of dense urban construction like it's some kind of attack. Like, I got downvoted a bit for my comment. Why can't we talk about this?

[1] [http://archplanbaltimore.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-one- plus-f...](http://archplanbaltimore.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-one-plus-five-is- shaping-american_27.html)

<comment><USER12> One floor of concrete plus five floors of wood is a common pattern, but it isn't necessary. You can easily build a six story building wood frame building.

Also, a big focus of urbanists is the "missing middle"[1]. This is the idea that there is too much focus on single family houses and high-rises and too little focus on housing that is shorter, but still denser than single family houses.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems like this analysis has vastly under-appreciated wood's tendency to burn. Yes, I see they've mentioned how in one specific type of burn test "modern cross-laminated timber panels perform better in fire tests than steel ones" ... but come on, are they suggesting that any kind of wooden house is safer than a cinderblock house? Storm risk?

It's great that wood is environmentally friendly and all, but does this opinion really consider how many more humans would likely die in house fires or tornados if we all moved into wooden homes?

Vast swaths of this planets are covered in nothing but cinderblock structures, and you know another thing they don't really need to worry about? Fire departments.

<comment><USER14> Like all things, it depends. In North America, the vast majority of houses are wood frame. The incidence of deadly house fire remains rare. If you build to code, wood frame houses can be quite safe. As for storm risk, there is a lot you can do to strengthen a wooden house against hurricanes. Cinder block houses lose their roofs just as easily as a wooden house if it is not properly anchored. There are also a lot of places where hurricanes just aren't an issue. Finally, wood generally fares better in an earthquake as it is naturally flexible whereas cinder block houses most assuredly are not.

<comment><USER13> Over hundreds of years of proximity to nearly limitless natural lumber, North Americans have evolved a highly complex network of water mains, smoke detectors, fire hydrants, and fire fighters to quickly come and put out the fires that inevitably happen before everyone burns because we build nearly everything out of flammable, cheap wood!

Imagine how much money and effort we could save if we build shit of of something that doesn't burn!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have built since few year my first wood house (Euroclass A+) and have had very limited "long-term" experience of wood structures for small "garden-like" construction, in summary: they are damn good in terms of thermal isolation, fire resistance (yes, wood burn, but structure sustain heat _more_ than concrete!), and maintainability (especially to change something inside, if wood is properly designed) however we should copy Japanese way of wood fitting to avoid metal fasteners (screws etc) because after years they tend to loose simply due to internal forces in the wood structure due to thermal dilatation etc.

Also I do not really now how long steam brakes towels can last, they are plastic and plastic normally do not last longer... Formally they are guaranteed 10 years. If we have designed implants properly they can be changed with a long but not extreme work however...

Another point is fragility in general: to have proper insulation, at least in EU but I assume also in the rest of the world, we use "VMC" (forced ventilation with air-air heat exchange) and while they are essentially brushless motors running calm and slowly they have filters, humidity regulators (that are essentially "heat pumps/fridge like machines) etc and again I do not know how much they can last in years.

With a broken ventilation living it's _hard_ , I experienced it very well since I have start inhabit my house before it's completion and I have to keep windows opened a bit or I literally suffocate inside in around 12 hours... And the resulting "closed smell" was really high... Probably that's the very same thing for modern concrete construction but that's is... Without some machines and electricity it became really hard to live inside...

BTW I'm happy and I note to some likely to downvote in these arguments: this imply little buildings like two/three floor maximum. We can build taller building in X-Lam but they are more experiment than reality. So draw your conclusion. The population model for modern wood houses it a Riviera model, not a skyscrapers town.

</comment><comment><USER16> Previous discussion on making more wooden buildings: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18174491](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18174491)

What it's probably gonna come down to is, can we make it cheaper than other methods? Will someone make enough money to really push modern wood composite prefab structures? Because let's face it, the construction industry doesn't give a crap about sustainability.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wood is good. Straw is even better.

Fire and earthquake resistance are two big advantages straw building has over brick, concrete and metal.

Have a look at the wikipedia article [0] for a short intro.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw- bale_construction#Proble...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw- bale_construction#Problems_with_straw-bale)

</comment><comment><USER18> This company seems to be doing wooden bricks (or legos): [https://www.aaltohaitek.fi/frontpage](https://www.aaltohaitek.fi/frontpage)

</comment><comment><USER19> How about just building less houses? Even China has overproduction of houses. All comes down to our economic paradigm where we need to produce infinitly otherwise we colapse

</comment><comment><USER20> There are an awful lot of unforested areas which could be planted with trees. I'm surprised none of the green initiatives are about planting large quantities of trees. Trees remove CO2 from the air, sequester it in wood, and provide lumber for building.

I'm a bit leery of wood skyscrapers, however. What happens when they burn?

<comment><USER21> The tallest wooden building allowed is only five stories. Wood framed buildings higher than that need special approval.

[http://www.woodworks.org/experttip/what-is-the-tallest- wood-...](http://www.woodworks.org/experttip/what-is-the-tallest-wood- structure-allowed-per-current-building-codes/)

<comment><USER22> As youngtaff points out, this is not true internationally...

London, UK, 10 storeys: [http://waughthistleton.com/dalston- works/](http://waughthistleton.com/dalston-works/)

Vancouver, Canada, 18 storeys: [https://www.thinkwood.com/our-projects/brock- commons-tallwoo...](https://www.thinkwood.com/our-projects/brock-commons- tallwood-house)

And then there are hybrid wood/steel structures, with a Japanese company planning a 70 Story tower:

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42839463](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42839463)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure Paradise, CA would disagree. There's no one construction material to rule them all, it should be chosen based on the local environment/situation.

<comment><USER24> A wood construction doesn't catch fire more easily than other building materials if done properly. In fact once caught fire wood is much more predictable than other materials.

<comment><USER23> > In fact once caught fire wood is much more predictable than other materials.

Uh, once caught fire, the structure is compromised and almost always lost. Success? (lol)</comment></comment></comment>


Tech Billionaire Compares Self to Jews under the Nazis - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-onepercenter-20140125,0,2424935.story

<comment><USER2> This is just Godwin's Law played out.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow. So crazy. Such arrogance.</comment>


1440p vs. 2160p - <AUTHOR> I was optimistic about my Dell S2718D, it had great reviews and was usb-c compatible. Until now I never owned a 1440p display. I've been on a retina MacBook Pro since they came out. I currently own a 2018 15" MacBook Pro...
I spend 60% of my time working in Affinity Designer, %40 actually writing code. So I needed a good monitor to support my workflow. The consensus on the internet seems to suggest the difference between 1440p and 2160p is minor.
This wasn't my experience and maybe it's due to prolong retina use? However 1440p is unbearable all it took was opening one Designer file to say fk this sh!t. The only other monitor I had was the 1st gen LG 27" usb-c ips display. The monitor was excellent until I had 4 die out on me in a row... Needless to say I'm very skeptical of LG at this point.
LG gripes aside I think you would have to be close to legally blind to assert 1440p is within arms reach of 2160p! It's just not even remotely close. The best advice I can give anyone looking for a new monitor is to always go 4K or better, you can thank me later. <comment><USER2> The other side of this is that people used 96 dpi (or lower) monitors for decades and they managed to get work done.</comment>


Mars hopper concept 'is feasible' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24213830 <comment><USER2> I love novel designs like this. I have no idea whether it would be feasible or not, but I think you need to have lots of iterations of designs to figure out what works and what doesn't.

All of the designs I've seen for airplanes on Mars tend to be unfeasible due to the air density being so low that you'd need giant wings to stay aloft. That ends up being really unwieldy to transport and use. Plus, how do you land a plane when there are no runways? Either skids or giant wheels, both of which have their own problems.</comment>


Copy-trading-platform for crypto traders and investors - <AUTHOR> https://coinpanion.io <comment><AUTHOR> Coinpanion is a copy trading platform that allows you to follow and copy successful cryptocurrency traders by using existing exchanges such as Binance or Bittrex. On this marketplace you can search traders, check out their performance and follow them for a subscription fee. You only have to add your API keys and then your are ready to go.</comment>


Ask HN: What else can JavaScript be used for? - <AUTHOR>

Coming from the web development field, I'm interested in what other areas JavaScript is being used in. I know there have been applications in art, education, games, and robotics. I started compiling a list of different uses for JavaScript. [0] What am I missing?<p>[0] https://github.com/webguyian/javascript-uses <comment><USER2> I don't really understand the question. It's a programming language and it can be used to do things that programming languages can do.

So to say it can 'do' education seems to be a strange comment. It can be used to write programs that help with education, and you can use it as a language to teach programming - but both of those things are true of Python, PHP, Lisp, Java, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand that most, if not all, of the things I listed can be applied to programming languages in general. I am interested in learning what other fields I can apply my knowledge of JavaScript in. Of course, I could build a website or an app for any field, but to me the medium is different if I were using JS for game development vs. for programming a NodeBot. Maybe it is more a question of the limitations of the language...

<comment><USER2> The language is a tool, not an objective. My suggestion would be to take a project you've already built in JavaScript and rewrite it in Io (another prototype-based language), because it will teach you to separate the problem from the solution.

Beyond that, find a problem, fall in love with it, become obsessed by it, and look for ways to solve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> _Beyond that, find a problem, fall in love with it, become obsessed by it, and look for ways to solve it._

Great advice. I'll get on that. Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazingly detailed motorbike model - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobile01.com/newsdetail.php?id=5933

<comment><USER2> I didn't find this particularly interesting, personally. It is a detailed model kit, but there wasn't anything novel that sparked my interest.

All commentary is in Japanese so that didn't help me, a non Japanese speaker, either.

<comment><USER3> To each their own.

Personally, I found it fascinating. As a programmer, I've got a lot of respect for the obsessive attention to detail, as well as the time consumed. :)

Constructing software is a lot like building that model. You break the problem down into a million tiny little pieces, and then you meticulously craft and polish each piece as you fit them together. Sometimes you labor for hours (or days) on pieces that people will never see, like the blue on those exhaust pipes.

At the end of the project, you've got something that you can appreciate and show off. Maybe it's useful, maybe it's just beautiful, but either way it's yours because you built it.

Props to the model builder, and thanks to the guy that put this on HN. It injected a little bit of awesome into my day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't find this particularly interesting, personally.

What it has to do with Internet at all?

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there supposed to be pictures on this page? None load for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> there is meant to be a massive amount of images on the page, just a really interesting hobby, that i would in no way have the patience for, but thought others might appreciate the dedication involved

<comment><USER6> I for one was amazed at the dedication involved. Also, I never realised what complex and detailed materials and extensions are available for dedicated model-makers, like all the pressed-metal replacement parts for the basic plastic model kit.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How should Twitter win back Wall Street - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER3> Let users pay for the service.

I'd happily pay $10/month for a 'pro' level or whatever they want to call it. I use Twitter constantly, but have always preferred third party apps - Tweetbot is by far the best.

If the pro level killed ads, increased data privacy somehow, and fully opened up every API to third party clients that would be more than worth it IMO. For example, I'm tired of Tweetbot kicking me to the mobile site to view moments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would you foresee the "pro" level to add in controls to minimize the "abuse" issue that Wall Street often points at?

<comment><USER3> I think that's tricky. If Twitter is perceived to be charging users to not be abused, that's obviously crappy. Paid accounts or not I think there should be better first-party options for controlling who you see and who sees you.

At the same time, if the APIs are fully open, third party clients would be able to build more powerful filtering features. In effect that would allow anyone to build entire sub communities on top of Twitter. This is starting to sound more and more like app.net...

<comment><AUTHOR> So in essence you end up with the #channels being filtered by third parties? How would those third parties get noticed. Would Twitter offer them some kind of sub domain or special alias?

<comment><USER3> We would have Twitter the API, and Twitter the umbrella network. You might want to promote a sub group into the larger network, or you may not - <USER2> to reddit in a way.

I imagine invite only groups, time-limited groups for concerts/conferences/sporting events, location-locked groups that you dynamically join and leave as you move around.

I may just be describing iMessage or Slack at this point.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would definitely like the idea of being able to add a private channel whenever I wanted one. Something like #{myusername}-private-{whatever} and then I could approve or add users to the channel

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Video blogging (vlogging). People don't want to type anymore, it's all about video updates. A lot of companies failed trying to offer a platform for video updates years ago (wrong timing). Thanks to Youtube, in 2017 it's the perfect year for that, look at instagram/snapchat stories. They shutdown vine which I think was the future of twitter. They should have replaced the 140 characters by a 15s video.

Twitter, if you're looking to hire someone to drive this switch, contact me.

<comment><USER3> Twitter already does video really well IMO. I use video in tweets all the time, and I watch videos from my timeline all the time. Why can't they continue both?

Yes they shut down Vine, but Periscope is making some interesting moves to mimic youtube and facebook live, but with the benefit of first-party blessing in the official apps and on the web.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a big believer in live video. Viewers and content creators have to be online at the same time on the same platform. You get less traffic and zero flexibility. People end up looking at replays of a live events. This is not where the money is...

By switching %100 to videos Twitter will avoid bulling and anonymous messages/accounts. Users will have to put their faces out there. Plus it's the hottest topic in 2017... video updates. That might piss off a lot of users at first but will bring in a bunch of new sign ups. Twitter needs a real face lift.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> a) 5-6 years ago, devs loved them and were building all kinds of creative software on top of their platform. Twitter got too greedy and wanted to have it all and squashed that. Don't know if they can somehow get devs to trust them again, but that was an ideal situation for them IMO that they ruined.

b) Run Twitter like a business. Focus on making profit and piss off with the social justice warrior crap. Have a system in place to report abuse? Sure, that's great and necessary. But stop blocking random accounts just because of political correctness, throttling accounts, etc. All of the engineering and design effort Twitter places on this endless virtue signaling could be dropped and their workforce could shrink and they can actually try and make money. Run it like a business, because that's what it is.

</comment><comment><USER6> They really need to make their promoted tweets cheaper. I attached a credit card with $100.00 to spend on ADs and Twitter burned through it in a week for a few paltry 'promoted tweets' that had very little engagement or views.

</comment><comment><USER7> Let free speech be free?

<comment><USER8> Too difficult. That means competing ideas must be compared on their merits.

Far easier to ban or throttle them. The extra time can then be spent congratulating oneself on being a platform of expression.

<comment><USER7> Too difficult? You literally don't do anything to achieve it.

<comment><USER8> I was being sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What about adding some kind of market place on their platform?</comment>


Date an Entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://blog.knowitapp.com/date-an-entrepreneur/

<comment><USER2> this made me a bit sick to my stomach. as i'm sure the original would as well.</comment>


PCG: a family of better random number generators - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcg-random.org/ <comment><USER2> This is the Nth time this website has been promoted on HN. As far as I know, a peer-reviewed academic paper has not yet been published; one was withdrawn for strange reasons. The algorithm, and claims made on this website, have garnered some significant criticism.

Getting an RNG right is important. I'd not trust this method until other people in the field have verified that the author's claims are true and critics have been satisfied. The accepted method for this is peer review.

<comment><USER3> Getting a secure RNG right is important. PCG isn't a secure RNG; neither is xorshiro, xorshift, or MT. You can't use them anywhere security relies on not predicting future outputs from past ones. If you have to ask, don't use them.

The most confusing thing about PCG's documentation is its "challenging" level of prediction difficulty. That's not a thing. The PCG authors should not have compared ChaCha or Arc4random with their generator.

Other than that, I'm a little confused why anyone would care how good PCG is. We have adequate insecure RNGs already, and secure RNGs are already so cheap that they make a reasonable default.

But, whatever. If people want to golf who can make the best insecure random number generator, seems fine.

<comment><USER4> I think all these people complaining about PCG not being secure or the existence of a new insecure PRNG have never worked in simulations or HPC. Absurdly fast PRNGs that are reasonably well behaved are super useful in things like monte-carlo simulations and black-box optimization algorithms.

The AVX-512 version of PCG runs at around 4 bytes / CPU cycle. That's pretty hard to beat.

<comment><USER3> There are secure AEAD constructions that are <1cpb today, and they do extra MAC work that a simple PRF in a CSPRNG doesn't need to do. I'm sure PCG is faster, but for the overwhelming majority of applications, it's not so much faster as to matter; meanwhile, a fast CSPRNG _also_ gives you security, which you might find you need later on.

<comment><USER5> Can you clarify this? A RNG is generating n bytes of _output_ per cycle. An AEAD is consuming n bytes of _input_ per cycle. And an AEAD doesn't need to have uniformly random-looking output to be secure.

<comment><USER6> An AEAD is consuming n bytes of input per cycle _and_ producing _at least_ n bytes of output, that is, the output ciphertext plus tag.

The definition of authenticated encryption is, essentially, indistinguishability of the ciphertext plus MAC security of the tag. You're right, the tag does not need to be indistinguishable from random, but in the majority of the cases it is anyway.

One significant difference between these non-cryptographic generators and cryptographic ciphers is that of latency---generators often optimize for latency, whereas ciphers optimize for throughput. By taking a cipher and a sufficiently large buffer, you can have low latency as well, at the cost of some memory.

For comparison, consider MORUS, AEGIS, and Tiaoxin, three unbroken contestants of the CAESAR competition. MORUS uses only AND, XOR, and bitwise rotation, and achieves somewhere between 0.5 and 0.66 cycles per byte on current x86 chips. AEGIS and Tiaoxin use the AES round, and where AES-NI is available, performs at between 0.15 to 0.25 cycles per byte. The claim somewhere above is that PCG can do 0.25 cycles per byte (or 4 words per cycle) when going all out with AVX-512; that's only hard to beat if you've not been paying attention.

<comment><USER5> Ah. So the "AEAD" part had little to do with it, in the sense that a non- authenticated cipher without associated data would work just as well. ChaCha20 makes and excellent and quite fast RNG, whereas using ChaCha20-Poly1305 as an RNG would be rather silly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> That table seems as if PCG has no downsides, and yet I've never heard of it and we're not all using it. The paper is from 2014, which is fairly recent as far as these things go I suppose.

I'm not well-versed enough in each topic they mention in the table, but it's definitely questionable to equate CSPRNGs with PCG and label them both green under "prediction difficulty". Without saying so outright, on /predictability.html it is made clear that this is not a CSPRNG.

The columns are not very well explained, either. I would assume that anything whose source is not a TRNG would have "Reproducible Results", yet arc4random supposedly does not have that. How an algorithm can be non-deterministic given the same inputs, I would be very curious to learn, as it seems like the holy grail of CSPRNGs.

I'm a little skeptical, but it looks like something to keep an eye on. They claim to have both simpler code, faster code and better randomness than the standard Mersenne Twister (which was my go-to RNG for non-cryptographic purposes).

Edit: It seems the page hardly changed since 2015. Maybe add (2015) to the title? Source: [https://web.archive.org/web/20151030045740/http://www.pcg- ra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151030045740/http://www.pcg-random.org/)

<comment><USER8> Disclaimer: My pet programming language has PCG as one of its available RNGs. It also has xorshift.

PCG doesn't have many downsides, and indeed is slowly but surely outcompeting the other hashes in the fast general RNG niche, like MT, xoroshiro, and xorshift.

Your "label them both green" complaint is misleading. The descriptive word "Challenging" is used to describe PCG, while "Secure" is used to describe the CSPRNGs. In this context, it's pretty easy to understand that the "Secure" in the description is the same as the "Secure" in "CSPRNG". The author admits in the PCG paper [0] that PCG isn't meant to stand up to cryptographic scrutiny and that it hasn't been reviewed as such, while also demonstrating that, by construction, the predictability of PCG is pretty challenging, especially compared to some other RNGs still in popular use!

From NetBSD's man page on arc4random: "There is no way to get deterministic, reproducible results out of arc4random for testing purposes." Other implementations of arc4random don't have the ability to control the initial entropy.

Ultimately, as far as whether or not the code is simpler or faster than MT, you can judge for yourself [1]. It is not a hard read.

[0] [http://www.pcg-random.org/paper.html](http://www.pcg- random.org/paper.html)

[1] [http://www.pcg-random.org/download.html](http://www.pcg- random.org/download.html)

<comment><USER7> > The descriptive word "Challenging" is used to describe PCG, while "Secure" > is used to describe the CSPRNGs. In this context, it's pretty easy to > understand that the "Secure" in the description is the same as the "Secure" > in "CSPRNG".

I would say that the same color should mean that it is of equal value. In this case, even after comparing the chosen descriptive words, it was not clear to me that this was not supposed to be a CSPRNG. It seemed so, but it could have been that it's just too new to make such a claim, or perhaps that an attack was found. The information is there when you look for it, but it's not obvious from this first impression.

I see where you're coming from, but I was not trying to be misleading. I think it's genuinely confusing for someone who knows what a CSPRNG is (me), let alone the average developer who wants to generate private keys fast and finds this.

Edit: and then there's this, as pointed out in another comment: [http://pcg.di.unimi.it/pcg.php#false](http://pcg.di.unimi.it/pcg.php#false) Apparently it can be predicted with only 3 outputs. If memory serves, even good ol' MT does much better than that.

<comment><USER8> Vigna's points are addressed by PCG's author directly here: [http://www.pcg- random.org/posts/on-vignas-pcg-critique.html](http://www.pcg- random.org/posts/on-vignas-pcg-critique.html)

<comment><USER3> I don't know about the rest of it, but the section of this response about prediction difficulty is word salad, and it's pretty amusing that the "pcg32 is annoying to predict" claim is backed by a proof of concept of a paper from 1988 (it is approximately "problem on an academic CTF" hard; someone should do that challenge, since I feel like people are always looking for straightforward-but-plausible applications of LLL on these things). Vigna didn't claim to have designed an RNG that was difficult to predict. But the PCG author did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One author of Xoroshiro has written a detailed (and harsh) analysis of PCG.

[http://pcg.di.unimi.it/pcg.php](http://pcg.di.unimi.it/pcg.php)

<comment><USER7> Ouch. I did not know this was a competitive field: this description you linked is very harsh, while the table on the front page (from OP) is the exact opposite. As if both are trying to sell their product by trying to discredit the competition.

<comment><USER10> There's more, too. That seems to be a response to this: [http://www.pcg- random.org/posts/implausible-output-from-xosh...](http://www.pcg- random.org/posts/implausible-output-from-xoshiro256.html)

And there's a response to the response: [http://www.pcg-random.org/posts/on- vignas-pcg-critique.html](http://www.pcg-random.org/posts/on-vignas-pcg- critique.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a fast and secure RNG, take a look at Google Randen instead: [https://github.com/google/randen](https://github.com/google/randen)

</comment><comment><USER12> Melissa O'Neill gave a talk in the Stanford EE380 Computer Systems Colloquium series.

See [http://ee380.stanford.edu/Abstracts/150218.html](http://ee380.stanford.edu/Abstracts/150218.html) for the abstract and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Oet5qjlms](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45Oet5qjlms) for the YouTube video.

</comment><comment><USER13> Rob Pike is discussing Go's math/rand update to PCG for Go2 at [https://github.com/golang/go/issues/21835](https://github.com/golang/go/issues/21835)

</comment><comment><USER14> previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9887548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9887548) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590816](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8590816) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836520](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11836520) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15019071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15019071)

</comment><comment><USER15> Does PCG need to use 128-bit arithmetic to generate 64-bit random numbers?

</comment><comment><USER16> Is this just an LCG that feeds into a markov chain? This seems more like marketing material than any new technical material.</comment>


A live HTML5 editor made with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://jawerty.github.io/Hyro <comment><USER2> There seems to be a lot of text editors being showcased on HN at the moment. While the engineering involved in each of them is remarkable, and way beyond what I could imagine accomplishing, I've yet to be convinced that any problems are being solved. Nothing I've seen has yet convinced me to move away from my emacs/git based workflow.

Maybe they are simply CV showcases, in which case this is an impressive piece of software, and congratulations to the developer, but you've yet to convince me to move away from 1970s technology.

<comment><USER3> Most of them are just CodeMirror / Ace stuffed that takes 90% of the pain of writing anything complicated in that domain, really. The CoreMirror author should take a fee for each product based on his lib, would become a millionaire( same guy who wrote TernJs , Eloquent Javascript , and few others, this guy's insane js developper, not sure how he manages to write this huge libraries in plane javascript and vim ).

<comment><USER4> I've heard of Codemirror but went and took a look again after reading this comment - I was surprised to see that Brackets, Lighttable and the Chrome DevTools source editor are built on top of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've definitely wanted to make plugins for Sublime Text that show a live preview in another pane. Unfortunately there's no way to create another pane of anything but text, so the current solution is opening new windows (for things like Markdown Preview, or Graphviz).

When I get some free time, I would like to see if it's easy to do in Light Table. Since it's open source, anything should be possible with a bit of work.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've noticed more desktop applications being built on HTML5, node-webkit, etc. Can anyone point me towards some good resources for getting started in this? I'm specifically interested in building a Windows application this way.

<comment><USER7> Check out [https://github.com/rogerwang/node- webkit/](https://github.com/rogerwang/node-webkit/)

I think a lot of the apps you are using this, or something very similar. I've only played around with it very briefly, but like jw989 said it's pretty straightforward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why do you make a live HTML5 editor using Node.js but you don't make it work online? I think it would be much awesome and useful if it worked online and you could embed it on any website.

I was thinking on real time examples where you could play around with the code to learn how stuff works. It would be great for learning how to code or for explaining how a library works.

<comment><USER9> That's what I was going for when I made my GitHub Gist viewer ([http://thedata.directory/view/10570653](http://thedata.directory/view/10570653)) If you have an HTML gist it'll display it when you put the gist number in the path (as in the link above). It will also give you an embed code so you can collaborate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how trivial it would be to make it markdown. If I weren't already not-doing work on my own project(s) by reading HN...

This is nice though

<comment><USER11> Is this what you're looking for? thlorenz.github.io/browserify-markdown- editor/

<comment><USER10> I'm not looking for a markdown editor, I have quite a few, actually (Textmate, Mou, LightPaper). I asked simply because it is a standard html wysiwyg so you could probably just change out the parser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is really great and I appreciate you making this. Thanks for sharing it!

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds the days of FrontPage and how I got started. I guess it's good for beginners. But I don't see a reason to replace my good old fashion editor vim.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd love to see something like this with Sir Trevor JS... I don't see that library mentioned very often.

<comment><USER15> Isn't the style of the output dictated by the user with Sir Trevor? Would be difficult to come up with something like this that improves the experience over Sir Trevor's inherit MYSIWYG style.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I noticed the =,is not working, just get '-' one. went to Notepad and my =, is working can someone please verify this.

<comment><USER16> After working with this a little bit, I like this, he did a good job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Upvote for adding deb</comment>


Ask HN: What do you guys use to managed PDFs and books? - <AUTHOR> I'm a Computer Science student at Stanford and I read a lot of PDFs, text books, and web pages due to my course work as well as personal interests in compsci.
The problem is that I have too many PDFs. I've been just using a directory
to keep track of them or using a citation manager like Mendeley or Zotero but
I'm not really happy with either situation.
It's really growing out of control and I have hundreds of PDFs now.
I know on Hacker News that there are constantly being PDFs posted of research
papers and I wanted to know how you were managing them and what apps you were
using. <comment><USER2> Sumatra PDF is nice. It is portable and remembers where you left off.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suggest taking a look at [https://getpolarized.io/](https://getpolarized.io/), the author is also here on HN.</comment>


British Court Says Government's Electronic Surveillance Is Legal - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/06/world/europe/british-court-says-governments-electronic-surveillance-is-legal.html?ref=technology <comment><USER3> Just to clear things up, its not technically a court, its a quasi-judicial body that is in charge of "policing" the RIPA (kinda like the patriot act)

They have limited scope, and act in a similar way to FISA.

</comment><comment><USER4> Throughout our history many dubious actions have been "legal" but not necessarily right or just.

Stateside, hopefully the Supreme Court will side with privacy rights once those cases wind their way through the courts.

<comment><USER5> "many dubious actions have been 'legal' but not necessarily right or just."

This.

It annoys me to no end when politicians insist that what the GCHQ is doing is legal, which just makes it _worse_ \- because it means it's not just a single agency overstepping its bounds and spying on us all, instead it's the entire system which is warped.

<comment><USER6> > It annoys me to no end when politicians insist that what the GCHQ is doing > is legal, which just makes it worse - because it means it's not just a > single agency overstepping its bounds and spying on us all, instead it's the > entire system which is warped.

If the GCHQ is acting in accordance with the law, even if the law is bad, then there is accountability to the public through the Parliament, and presumably the public, if they think the law is bad, can change the behavior by changing the Parliament.

If the GCHQ is doing bad things independently and disregarding the law as adopted by Parliament, then not only are the bad things being done as in the above case, but there is a fundamental breakdown in democratic governance.

Since the problems in the latter are a superset of the problems in the former, I'd say its hard to say that the former is worse.

<comment><USER5> My view is that if it were illegal then as soon as it became public knowledge then effort would have been made to stop it. I.e. It's a breakdown of the enforcing of the law but not a breakdown of the democratic process. Instead we've had a couple of years where the only thing any politician ever says is "well it's legal..." which _is_ a breakdown of the democratic process (since the law in a democracy is meant to reflect the will of the people saying that something the people are protesting shouldn't be legal is ok because it's legal is clearly a non argument!)

<comment><USER7> It does represent the will of the people. The people aren't voting for change and didn't do so when any of the "draconian" laws were passed, despite it being public knowledge. So this is perfectly what democracy is - <USER2> opinion, not special interests determining the laws. If you're sure your fellow citizens are mostly wrong, then you should reconsider whether you fit in among them. Maybe other countries have people who value privacy greater. For UK citizens this is easy, just go to a European country.

<comment><USER8> > It does represent the will of the people.

So you're saying the UK government held a vote asking "Do you want to be surveilled?" and a majority of citizens answered in the affirmative? I can't remember anything like that happening here in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing about pervasive government surveillance is that we just can't trust that the judges who decide their legality haven't been compromised. That's what's so devastating about these programs - there is a distinct possibility that their existence self-perpetuates by targeting those that would keep them in check. The same should be considered if the US supreme court decides their constitutionality [1].

[1] [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/supreme-court- nsa_n...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/supreme-court- nsa_n_5170559.html)

<comment><USER10> Except, at least in the UK, judges have an ancient tradition of independence from the executive and maintain considerable power. Judges at all levels up to the Supreme Court regularly find against the government on all sorts of cases include national security ones.

Attempting to intimidate a judge would be a shockingly risky thing to do, because if the judge complained it would probably bring down the Government - which is surprisingly easy thing to do if there's a major scandal with our Parliamentary system. Let alone that appeals are made in front of several judges the prospect of nobbling all of them seems remote to me.

It's a conspiracy theory too far, in the UK at least.

<comment><USER11> The whole mass spying seemed like a conspiracy theory to most of us just few years ago.

<comment><USER12> The fact alone that a particular conspiracy theory turned out to be true doesn't automatically lend credence to others.

<comment><USER13> Yes it does. People dismiss conspiracy theories cause they're unbelievable. When previously unbelievable becomes true it lifts bar of unbelievable. Previous conspiracy theories now become possible even probable scenarios we must guard against.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it does.

People dismiss conspiracy theories because they're unbelievable _and_ exist without any evidence to support them. The set of 'previous conspiracy theories' encompasses literally every assertion every paranoid has ever made about their government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are some very interesting explorations to be had in the places where the sets "things that are legal" and "things that are moral" _don 't_ intersect.

<comment><USER15> Or how about where things that are legal for the government to do and things that are legal for citizens to do don't intersect :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands it." \--Einstein

</comment><comment><USER17> Is this the case that happened in closed Court? Either way, it seems Amnesty wants to take it to ECHR, and if the case is accepted, I doubt it will stick - not that UK seems to care much about ECJ/ECHR rulings. ECJ has also recently declared data retention by carriers illegal, yet UK keeps doing it, while actually trying to make those laws stronger.

</comment><comment><USER18> Of course a low-level court would say that. They are (if charitable) under the same incentives as (if not charitable, they are in cahoots with) the rest of the government. Heck they are the government.

What we need is independent review.

<comment><USER19>
        > They are (if charitable) under the same incentives as
        > (if not charitable, they are in cahoots with) the rest
        > of the government. Heck they are the government.

Ah yes, the old double-bind. When they agree with the Government, they're part of the system, man, and whenever they disagree, it's Judicial Activism. O_o

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dog bites man is not news. Still waiting for man bites dog.

</comment><comment><USER21> Even if a British judicial review finds GCHQ surveillance legal under British law, it does not mean that the NSA can use GCHQ surveillance as their proxy to circumvent US 4th amendment protections. Its very clear at this point that the NSA has been violating the Constitution.

Their lawyers can write all the secret opinions they want to justify and obscure their actions; but it still does not make it legal.

</comment><comment><USER22> Full decision here for any who are curious: [https://www.privacyinternational.org/temporaipt.pdf](https://www.privacyinternational.org/temporaipt.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER16> They knew this trick back in the time of the Roman Empire. Bread and Circuses: bribe the population with free bread and distract them with circuses whilst the rulers do whatever they want.

</comment><comment><USER23> What happened to George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1984 and all that hype about eastern bloc, freedom and that crap. Confused. Maybe, George Orwell was an Indian after all.</comment>