Telescope That 'Ate Astronomy' Is on Track to Surpass Hubble - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/science/nasa-webb-space-telescope-hubble.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront <comment><USER3> One of my friends works at the STSCI on various visualization and simulation tools (all web-based, written in a modern stack!) for planning missions for this thing. It's a really really neat project.

The telescope itself is "scriptable" using a (truly ancient) version of JS via a really old implementation that I've seen referenced but can't find right now. There's a lot of open information about the JWST, but it's not widely reported on. Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in space, technology, and the systems we actually deploy into the void!

Some papers: [http://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf](http://www.stsci.edu/~idash/pub/dashevsky0607rcsgso.pdf)

[http://arc-test.aiaa.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2514/6.2006-5747](http://arc- test.aiaa.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2514/6.2006-5747)

<comment><USER4> Oh lord, JavaScript goes to space. You thought losing the MCO because of Imperial units was embarrassing? Just wait until this $9 billion telescope explodes because [] == ![] or something.

(This was supposed to be humorous, just making sure)

<comment><USER5> Seriously though, considering how deeply every other aspect of this project was deliberated (presumably, given the cost involved) - how they could possibly end up going with Javascript is bizarre. You'd think there would be a preference for arbitrary precision and against undefined behavior.

<comment><USER6> I can't find the evaluation paper they cited in the second linked paper, but it looks like it's using Javascript because they wanted a COTS script engine (as opposed to running compiled code) that was compatible with VxWorks, and the particular Javascript engine they selected (ScriptEase) was presumably the best option they found back in 2003. I'm not really sure what all options they would have had in 2003 though.

<comment><USER7> They should have hired Erann Gat to do it in Lisp.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can understand the sense of "we just spent 8.7 billion dollars on this thing; we'd better not screw it up", but I wonder what the replacement cost would actually be if they had to launch another? Assuming they spent most of the money on R&D, it might actually be relatively cheap. Maybe we could even launch a couple smaller versions just to have backups and do the science tasks that don't require a full 21' mirror.

There's an interesting contrast between NASA's and Elon Musk's idea of what space exploration should be like; the former spends most of its efforts on one-off projects, whereas the latter is focused on making things cheap and repeatable and achieving reliability by iterating on a design rather than getting it perfect the first go-around.

Both approaches are needed, and certainly NASA paves the way for others to come along and do the same thing cheaper once it's been proven.

<comment><USER9> Hubble design was designed to be compatible to some extent with military spy satellite. Perhaps here it is again the case ?

<comment><USER10> I can assure you that there is very little design commonality between JWST and surveillance satellites. JWST is a very unique mission that is completely different from that of spysats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Last week Dr. Michael Ressler at JPL gave a talk about the Webb telescope, mostly focused on the mid-range infrared imaging sensor:

[http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=201...](http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures_archive.php?year=2016&month=11)

If you happen to be in the LA area, JPL hosts these talks once a month at their facility in Pasedena. They're free and open to the public, and they're always interesting. And if you can't attend they're also posted to the JPL website.

<comment><USER12> Is there a way to get email notifications when they're holding an event?

<comment><USER13> [https://visualping.io/?url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/le...](https://visualping.io/?url=http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/events/lectures.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > A House subcommittee once voted to cancel it. Instead, the program was > rebooted with a strict spending cap. ... The major change, said Jonathan P. > Gardner, the deputy senior project scientist, was to simplify the testing of > the telescope.

Ugh, that does not sound encouraging. Organizations love to cut testing and QA. After all, all they do is cost money, cause delays, and 'create' problems. Cutting them is an obvious way to bring a project under budget and on schedule.

Does anyone know what changes were made to testing?

We're going to be unhappy, and the advancement of astronomy delayed a long time, if something goes wrong. I don't see the next President and Congress wanting to raise revenue and spend more on science.

<comment><USER15> I believe the initial estimates for the budget were extremely optimistic. I believe after Congress almost cut funding on it, they came up with a very realistic budget and schedule and have been following it very closely since. I know people who are working on the testing, and it seems like they aren't cutting corners. So I wouldn't worry more than normal for deploying a 6.5 m telescope in space.

<comment><USER14> Thanks; that informs the discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Ate astronomy" means it costs more than all the proposed big ground-based telescopes combined. The Overwhelming Large Telescope was considered too expensive at $1.5bn.

It's the F-35 of astronomy.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've never been able to wrap my head around the scientific premise of hoping to observe radiation from the early universe. I studied physics in university but I was very crap at it and never graduated, so that might explain it.

The reason I can't is because I assume that the EM radiation that resulted from the Big Bang happened before we did (we as in our neck of the cosmos), and that radiation left the epicenter of the Big Bang before we did. Assuming that radiation has been moving radially outward since then, how can we hope to observe it yet it has a head start on us?

The Big Bang is not an event that happened in the universe. It's the event that brought forth the universe.

It's possible for us to observe, say, a supernova that exploded even before our solar system, for example, existed. But that supernova was an event in the universe, and it's light may take billions of years to reach another part of the universe and for entities in that part of the universe to now observe it, even if those entities didn't exist at the time the supernova exploded.

That I understand. But the Big Bang? Isn't that different? Isn't trying to observe the Big Bang a bit like trying to observe your own birth?

<comment><USER18> Disclaimer: I Am Not A Physicist.

The Big Bang didn't happen in a specific location some distance from us - <USER2> created all of spacetime; the epicentre was at every point[1] in space.

[1]: for want of better phrasing, given that we don't know if spacetime is discreet or continuous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [http://spacenews.com/op-ed-the-approaching-battle-over- the-j...](http://spacenews.com/op-ed-the-approaching-battle-over-the-jwst- budget-wedge/)

This article contains a graph of the JWST programme's appetite.

While I'm looking forward (eagerly!) to that telescope's imaging, I am also really looking forward to what other projects become possible once it is no longer on the teat. (And the sooner the ISS burns up in the upper atmosphere the better for the exact same reason).

</comment><comment><USER20> The deployment of the telescope looks quite a complicated process.

<comment><USER21> Yeah, honestly, I think I got anxious for the engineers just watching it. If any of that unfurling just hits one minor snag, it's 8.7 billion up in smoke.

Does anyone with more information about the telescope know how they are able to keep such tight tolerances given how the telescope deploys? For example, I remember the original Hubble telescope had a spherical aberration that amounted to less than the width of a human hair. Surely the way the side mirrors deploy, and the way the front mirror unfolds into place, can't have tolerances that tight. How does the telescope account for that potential variance?

<comment><USER22> The Hubble's problem wasn't tolerances but the mirror got produced with the wrong numbers. For the wrong numbers it was within tolerance :-). But yes, I am not sure if I could handle the stress on working on something like this for years and then watch it deploy without any possibility of fixing problems. This must be incredibly stressful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Please use a _safe_ rocket to get into space. That would be one stressful rocket ride for the project scientists on earth.

<comment><USER24> I was thinking the same thing - JWST is slated to ride an Ariane 5, which has had something like 75 consecutive successful launches.

<comment><USER23> As much as I admire SpaceX...not the job for them yet.

<comment><USER24> Not this satellite. Not yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> well, you can't put a price tag on knowledge and discovery :)

<comment><USER26> 8.7 billion USD.

<comment><USER27> and beyond!

<comment><USER28> So, 8 nuclear submarines, give or take? Or a couple dozen F-35s?

I'd say it's a better investment.

<comment><USER29> I know you're being facetious but the program to create the f35 was $55bn and that doesn't even get you a jet off the production line. And we've build jets for decades.

NASA must be doing outstanding work for what they get out of the money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This may be obvious to everyone else, but today I learned that [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_E._Webb) is not the same person as 2016 Democratic primary candidate [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Webb)

I feel a little better know. I was wondering why we would name a space telescope after that guy.

<comment><USER30> Perhaps we should start naming space telescopes after politicians, so that NASA's budget has an easier time in congress.

<comment><USER31> This is precisely what happened. Edwin Hubble was an astronomer, James Webb a NASA administrator.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to stay focused? - <AUTHOR> There are a lot of distraction to stay focused and be productive today.
Some tends to "cheat" with smart-drugs like Modafinil to be on top of performance.
What's your tip to avoid this non-productiveness? <comment><USER2> Having enough sleep so that you wake up refreshed helps. Imagine trying to develop the next google/facebook/whatever with lots of toxic chemicals floating in your brain!

Drink some of water when you wake up to hydrate yourself. We often mistake thirst for a desire to eat or restlessness. So eating or moving around often does not fix it. Keep a bottle of water nearby always.

Exercise also provides a great start to your day but o ly if you are well rested.

If there are lots of ideas circling in you head, it is time to pull them out and put them all on a list. Then prioritize what you need to do first. This removes mental clutter and give you room to work. It helps a lot if the last thing you the at the end of the day is to plan for the one thing you will do next day. This way you will wake up knowing how your day is going to be. This avoids decision fatigue early in the day. The todo should ideally be one or two and no more than three.

If you still find yourself distracted, it is because of some uneasiness that stems inside you. Find its source. Maybe the task you are supposed to be doing is vague or daunting, or you do not believe what you are doing is the best approach. Or the project is not what you expected it to be and you would rather spend your efforts on something more deserving. Whatever it is, identifying it is half the problem. Even a single step in the direction of fixing it can give you hope and energy to chug forward.

Meditation is also recommended as a great way to practice focus and introspection but I have not made a habit of it yet. Maybe soon.

<comment><USER2> Another thing you could do is keep two different logins in your laptop. One as a work profile in which you only work and another as an entertainment profile. So when you log in to your work profile, that becomes a ritual for you to get into work mode and browser new tabs and the title bar don't give you suggestions that can distract you. (Though hacker news falls into both for me and trips me)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I'm determined to do something I believe making a list is the most effective way to get work done. If I can make a concise, well-divided list of tasks I want to complete for the day I almost always complete it before the day's up. I personally just use a notebook and pen and write the list everyday. There are times when a list item is way beyond the scope of what you originally imagined and that's okay. Do what you think is a good amount for the day (sometimes nothing), and continue it the next day (split up into smaller tasks).

In addition, there are other 30 minute work 'sprints' to keep you focused (I don't know these 'gimmicks' but they seem to be very effective for many).

</comment><comment><USER4> * Write out your task explicitly. Break things down into steps explicitly

* Write out the "why" of the task to help you efficiently resolve ambiguities.

* If it is a complex task, take some time to just spend writing down and resolving ambiguities explicitly.

* Pair program, or at least work alongside others who are working.

* Get 9 hours of sleep on a regular schedule.

* Exercise for 30 minutes in the morning or when you feel frazzled.

* If feeling frazzled, meditate. Sit down comfortably and focus on your breath and nothing else. When you notice yourself thinking about something else, gently guide your mind back to your breath.

* Block distracting websites using [https://selfcontrolapp.com/](https://selfcontrolapp.com/) or [https://freedom.to/](https://freedom.to/)

</comment><comment><USER5> "Eat the Frog First"

Knock out the most daunting/hardest/most stressful task first. For me that usually involves phone calls (yay social anxiety). First thing I do every morning is make sure all my phone correspondence is taken care of, that way I don't keep putting it off all day.

For general focus trouble - meditation works wonders. After getting the basics down you will be able to clear unwanted thoughts from your brain as easy as you swipe-up to close iphone apps.

Also this is personal so YMMV, but I realized my morning coffee was more habit than useful. Since I started skipping my morning cup I'm less jittery, less tired after noon, and the one cup I do drink makes a much bigger difference.

</comment><comment><USER6> What about actually just remaining committed to one thing, that type of focus? I feel like a different person every day / week. As if my brain just completely resets and everything I thought I planned last week now seems foreign and I start all over again.

That type of focus, not energy / fatigue related focus, I struggle with.

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't find modafinil (or the non-prescription adrafinil) to help with focus, per se, but nooopept certainly does. Beyond that, I say embrace the distraction and indulge in it fully, then pretty soon it loses its luster and it's easier to get back on track later.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not clear that procrastination is bad per se. Drugs and escapism might be. But imagine the future and work to it.

</comment><comment><USER9> Chanting, self-reflection and developing my inner purpose.

With chanting comes the wisdom to exercise, have enough sleep and live a healthy, lifestyle while also being able to declutter my mind and build my inner core energy.

That for me has been the single most defining activity that has transformed my life. I work full-time, I do household chores and I continue to work on my startup and when many asked how I've been able to do it, it all starts with chanting.</comment>


A Knock at the Door - <AUTHOR> https://siroker.com/a-knock-at-the-door-f7b05bf0c518 <comment><USER2> I appreciate your story, and your effort to write it up. It's debatable whether it's too politicized for discussion on HN. I tend to think it's important enough that it should be here, since (as you point out) lack of discussion has the effect of upholding current policy. That said, I take issue with your assertion that "All the ICE agents could see was that he was a Muslim". I obviously don't know the motivations of these individual agents, but it seems certain that first and foremost they saw someone who had violating American immigration law.

Far from being the "all the ICE agents could see", I wouldn't even be sure that they knew that he was Muslim --- does that show up on documents they have? Yes, 90% of Bangladeshis are Muslim, which makes it likely, but unlike me, I'm doubtful the agents bothered to consult Wikipedia to know this. It's possible they were more likely to enforce the law because of his "color", but in the absence of more information I think you hurt your case by implying this is a clear-cut case of religious discrimination. Yes, it's likely his on the scene pleas "fell on deaf ears", but do you really want our immigration laws to be selectively unenforced based on the snap judgement of agents on the scene?

I think the better question is whether as a country we are "shooting ourselves in the foot" making it too difficult to qualified professionals from certain countries to immigrate to the US. But once we have a law in place, and a clear procedure for legal immigration, if we want to have any control over immigration, I feel we have to enforce the laws we have as uniformly and fairly as possible. What do you think is the best way for us deal with violations of this law? Presuming the details you were told were true, what do you think would be the right approach to this case? And how do you think violators should be treated while the details are verified?

<comment><AUTHOR> You make a great point and I should have done a better job defending my vilification of the ICE agents. They violated his rights by even entering his home without a warrant. Not only that but as a student and being married to a citizen, he had rights that were violated. I don't think the ICE agents were merely "following orders" and do deserve some of the blame for the situation. I don't have great answers to your questions but I do think it starts by adhering to our constitution in situations like this (namely the 4th, 5th, and 14th amendments which apply to non-citizens) and then we can go from there.</comment></comment>


Free programming Courses and Projects with code - <AUTHOR> http://projectmooc.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Here you will get free courses on internet and projects to be done after completing the course for topics like artificial intelligence,digital image processing,big data,java,python,etc</comment>


What Do Job Interviews Really Tell Us? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_05_29_a_interview.htm

<comment><USER2> Gladwell's writing is very seductive but frequently wrong. I like to think of it as speculative non-fiction. It has the same mind-expanding qualities as good SF, and its connection to reality can be just as tenuous.

It is very easy to make up a plausible sounding theory. The harder part is making sure it has no holes in it. The hardest part is proving it. To show how easy the first part is, let me, as a layperson, give an alternative evolutionary explanation for why it makes sense that (some) people can accurately judge others in a short amount of time:

Consider an intelligent social species. When two strangers meet, the ability to judge accurately and to be favorably judged, both lead to better fitness. Lets assume there are situations where intelligence is the dominant quality that is being evaluated. Now if you are intelligent, you want to honestly communicate this, so its in your best interest to aid the judgement of the other person. If you are not, then its preferable to be dishonest and lie. Now the interesting part is that the ability to lie effectively is highly correlated with intelligence, since lying takes more cognitive effort than just telling the truth. So if you aren't intelligent, you also can't lie well enough to fool an intelligent judge. And if you are intelligent, you don't need to lie. This evolutionary dynamic can easily lead to a state where intelligent individuals can quickly judge the intelligence of others, because they don't have to worry about other intelligent people fooling them.

</comment><comment><USER3> The observers, presented with a ten-second silent video clip, had no difficulty rating the teachers on a fifteen- item checklist of personality traits."

I think, as someone who has the consciously think to make a good first impression and defaults to unconsciously not really caring about the impression I make, it freaks me out a little that humans make such snap judgements. I still make snap judgements but I prefer to form an impression of a person over time - interesting until proven boring and even then, as the filmmaker Pedro Almodavar said - 'it's our little quirks that make us human'. And to quote Neo in the Matrix, 'one does not truly know someone until they fight them' - you're not fighting someone until (hopefully) you have an established relationship. First impressions are overrated and I think they can be countered with better n++ impressions. A lot of married people I've met - the wife says 'she wouldn't go out on a date with him - she turned him down..at first'

<comment><USER4> I know people who'll drop $50,000 for software on a "gut feeling", but agonize for weeks about which brand of coffee to put in the break room.</comment></comment>


Virtualization With Xen On Debian Lenny (AMD64) - <AUTHOR> http://www.howtoforge.com/virtualization-with-xen-on-debian-lenny-amd64 <comment><USER2> Why do you post everything from howtoforge.com on here? This is not an inflammatory question - I am genuinely curious since the articles (at least from your submission history) seem to be rarely voted up.</comment>


Show HN: An Actually-Tiny Basic for Arduino - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/trevorjay/atinybasic <comment><USER2> Interesting it wasn't called ATtinyBasic!

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading through the tny.ino - is this the normal way to write a BASIC interpreter ? I've always fancied writing one, but was put off by the complexity... but it doesn't actually look that complex!

Oh, nice project btw! Bookmarked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly? Structurally yes, in that before we had fancy tools like "ANTLR" the standard way to write an interpreter/parser was to in more or less a straight-forward way translate the grammar into something that would process a stream of tokens. No in that "Tiny Basic" is _double_ interpreted. The idea was that instead of publishing a huge listing of "Tiny Basic" for a particular platform Allison instead would publish one written in an intermediate language where it would be obvious enough (at least to his audience) how to implement each of the "op codes" within the intermediate language. I wanted to keep with that tradition of pseudo-machine instructions and so I made way more use of Goto (for example) than you probably should.

<comment><USER4> Yeah a lot of the early computers wouldn't have the grunt to parse into an AST. Instead they'd write bytecode, or interpret the code at runtime pretty efficiently. Storing programs as bytes instead of ASCII wasn't uncommon either. (e.g. "PRINT" -> 0x02, etc).

I wrote a simple BASIC interpreter for golang, and did something a little more high-level, but not by much:

[https://github.com/skx/gobasic](https://github.com/skx/gobasic)

<comment><USER3> Cool! I'm reading your blog post right now:

[https://blog.steve.fi/so_i_wrote_a_basic_basic.html](https://blog.steve.fi/so_i_wrote_a_basic_basic.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CSS Animated Slide Toggle - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/joshnh/evePU/show/

<comment><USER2> Just a suggestion: I was annoyed when I first tried to drag the slider. I figured out you have to click it instead, but some users may just quit first.

<comment><USER3> You can drag it, you just can't end the drag motion outside of the dongle area. Took me a few tries to figure that out myself.

<comment><USER4> I think that's only because then the click is getting registered, not because of the dragging.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very cool... in Webkit browsers. It's a shame few (if any) other browsers allow you to customize a checkbox this way.

Nonetheless, nice work on theming a native checkbox so well. I'd love to use it if it were cross-browser compatible.

<comment><USER6> I wish joshnh would have included a note about webkit or lack of FF support. I toggled it for 30 seconds or so before opening the source, noticing it was webkit, and switching to Chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks nice.

But I think the [x] or [ ] of a normal checkbox are more intuitive than two different colors that may have different meanings in other cultures/countries (and I am not even starting about color blindness).

<comment><USER8> I agree. I think it would go a long way to have the visible side display a red X or a green checkmark, rather than an ambiguous background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For CSS demos, I suggest using <http://dabblet.com> which will automatically add vendor-prefixes. In this case it might not have helped due to the appearance property (which was dropped from the CSS spec [1]), but often only webkit prefixes are used even if properties are supported in other browsers.

1: <http://wiki.csswg.org/spec/css4-ui#dropped-css3-features>

<comment><USER10> This won't actually work in any other engine except for webkit, even if you vendor-prefix the rules. This is because he is using an :after pseudo element on a checkbox, which shouldn't work and is technically a bug in webkit (according to the specifications, you cannot use :before/:after on replaced elements).

<comment><USER9> Oh, didn't notice that. The specification actually does not explicitly prohibit pseudo content on replaced elements.

        This specification does not fully define the interaction of :before and :after with replaced elements (such as IMG in HTML). This will be defined in more detail in a future specification.

[http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/REC- CSS2-20110607/generate.html#be...](http://www.w3.org/TR/2011/REC- CSS2-20110607/generate.html#before-after-content)

In my opinion it would be cool if all browsers supported it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I get a little tired of seeing people override their web form elements this way because they should only be used for gestural interfaces, and even then it can be annoying. Trying to translate it to web just causes confusion for the user -- they don't know whether to click on it (in which case it is too wide and bulky for many circumstances) or slide it (which is unnatural for the web outside of range sliders).

</comment><comment><USER12> What about adding the ability to drag the slider, so that the widget acts as it should act, that is to say as other sliding toggles? It would then be perfect! Rationale : that's again the problem of half-baked UI elements, which confuse their end-users, while the developpers feel satisfied and enjoy long drinks.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thought it wasn't so cool until I checked it out to see that this entire thing is a single <input>, not even an image in sight. Great job. It'd be cool to see as a light-switch that did something with page contrast.

</comment><comment><USER14> You'd probably have a better framerate if you used translate or translate3d instead of a simple transition. Framerate is fine in Chrome but isn't fantastic on iPhone/iPad

</comment><comment><USER15> I've already made something like this some months ago: <http://demos.bfontaine.net/d/icheckboxes>

<comment><USER16> FYI, they don't work at all on iOS 5.1

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> On mobile devices, there is about a 1 to 1.5 second delay before the animation begins. touchstart and js might be a better solution...

</comment><comment><USER18> The best bit about this is that the HTML markup has not been changed for the visual effects. Well Done!

</comment><comment><USER19> That's nice

</comment><comment><USER20> It's really hard to use on the iPad, it doesn't behave how one might expect, click it makes the window zoom, clicking a second time slides the toggle. Sliding the toggle does nothing.

</comment><comment><USER21> looks awful as hell in opera.

somehow it makes the browser render the checkmark behind the checkbox, you can barely see the end of the mark.</comment>


Tim Berners-Lee's original WWW proposal (1989) - <AUTHOR> http://info.cern.ch/Proposal.html

<comment><USER2> "We should work toward a universal linked information system, in which generality and portability are more important than fancy graphics techniques and complex extra facilities."

In other words: standards are more important than features. The utility of the web comes from being open and interoperable.

<comment><USER3> I saw the web in 1991. It didn't look ready to become adopted as a standard. The fancy graphics of NCSA Mosaic helped propel it forward. The img element was created without a standards process.

<comment><USER4> "proposed new tag: IMG":

[http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.ht...](http://1997.webhistory.org/www.lists/www- talk.1993q1/0182.html)

<comment><USER5> Is this meant to be a rebuttal? Or are you supporting the parent? The result of this discussion was no agreement, if I'm not mistaken, leading to mosaic implementing the img tag without a standard.

<comment><USER4> It was neither. It's just a link to the topic at hand. But yes, IMG was implemented w/o a standard.

<comment><USER5> And it was quite relevant. Sorry about that -- I'm used to reading everything here as an argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> Many of the discussions of the future at CERN and the LHC era end with the question - Yes, but how will we ever keep track of such a large project?

That is interesting. The LHC basically triggered the WWW.

Good argument for your next discussion with the annoying "what is all this expensive research even good for" type of people. The LHC gave you Facebook and YP, dude!

<comment><USER7> That's kindof like asking, "If it weren't for this expensive building project, nobody would have ever invented this new type of hammer". If $X buys you an LHC and the WWW, you could spend less than $X to buy the WWW.

I think experimental physics has plenty of its own utility, though it probably won't become relevant to engineering for decades.

My overall point is that you should account for the value of different components properly.

<comment><USER8> On values at CERN:

"The cost [...] has been evaluated, taking into account realistic labor prices in different countries. The total cost is X (with a western equivalent value of Y)" [where Y>X]

source: LHCb calorimeters : Technical Design Report

ISBN: 9290831693 <http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/494264>

Long PR story short: RPC was prevalent, that is how you control(led) your stuff remotely. Like Tim. Today, if you'd ask for a NeXT-like toy, you'd be denied were you an average Eastern. But western equivalent asked for it and got one, and put the gopher link address ptr in the reserved field of the text font properties (where things like bold and italics properties are stored) and voilà. You can also hire a cheap student to actually write the web client to be cross platform (its true virtue/value). Thanks to Nicola Pellow, of whom almost nobody knows about. Would the "web" have just run on NeXT, it would be long extinct, let alone take off.

On linking and hypertext: all post-war era stuff is spin. The real stuff comes from Belgium:

For ADD-ers: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRN5m64I7Y>

The story: <http://www.archive.org/details/paulotlet>

[http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul...](http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/forgotten_forefather_paul_otlet)

"How should we make it attractive for them [young people] to spend 5,6,7 years in our field, be satisfied, learn about excitement, but finally be qualified to find other possibilities?" -- H. Schopper

<http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1127343?ln=en>

The answer is a nice PR story on the web --

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_(public_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Spin_\(public_relations\)#Techniques)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's so interesting to see that the ideas of the Semantic Web came first, even though those aspects have been hardest to find adoption.

<comment><USER10> I see it as a variation on <http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html>. What TimBL had in mind would have been a monumentally more powerful trove of information, but our society doesn't want one of those very badly, so it rewarded the people who were taking shortcuts and making shiny toys rather than contributing to that. (And I'm about as guilty as anyone else of doing what pays.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It amuses me how the initial proposals for what turn out to be great ideas often are so relatively narrow and small. The anecdote about the Xerox photocopier's R&D being justified by adding up the number of secretaries and the number of documents replicated via mimeograph comes to mind. [Sorry, couldn't find link]

What we don't ever see are the absurdly optimistic justifications for really bad ideas. Cuecat? Iridium satellites? The supposed future ubiquity if the Segway? We only know about the flops which because big enough (or were hyped enough) to have gotten publicity. Have you ever seen the abysmal nature of business plans in a local business plan competition?

I almost included Webvan, but I'm not sure that it was an inherently bad idea -- just one which required high adoption levels to achieve positive cash flow. And, I didn't include things like pets.com which I suspect (without justification) were known by their inventors as bad-but-flip-able ideas.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Vague, but exciting.." how prescient.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have this diagram on a cern tshirt that I unexpectedly found in a charity shop.

It is probably my geekiest wearable item, other than maybe my magnifying soldering glasses.</comment>


Ask HN: best-written engineer job posting - <AUTHOR>

I'm writing a job posting for an iPad developer. Does anyone have any suggestions or examples of great job postings that attracted your interests? <comment><USER2> Try to aim for exciting but serious (like kls said, no Ninja talk).

My personal bugbear:

Make sure you clearly differentiate from things you are not prepared to live without (eg. must have written iPhone app currently on sale at the App Store, or must be prepared to relocate to Outer Mongolia, etc) and stuff that you would like but are willing to forego for an otherwise attractive applicant (eg. having already developed on the iPad)

If you aren't specific about the difference between needs and wants, what can happen is that people who do actually have a realistic grasp of their abilities self-censor and don't apply. Then you don't find the ideal candidate and are forced to compromise and hire from a pool of people who think they are object oriented programmers because they took a class in Java once.

Highlight anything that would be particularly attractive to a developer (above average compensation, non-moron project manager - rephrase that one - , partial or complete telecommute, longevity of the position, high end computer/laptop provided, flexible hours, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't use Rockstar or Ninja! OK in all seriousness, For me at least (before I became a freelancer) talking about the work environment, the people and the app would attract me more than the gory details of what you expect. Most everyone that writes apps, knows what is required of them. I would keep it simple, what you want them to do and what level in their career you want them to be at.

As well, I would include what you are willing to pay if it is below market (not that I am saying that you are paying below market) that way expectations are set before time is wasted on either side.

<comment><AUTHOR> Truly helpful thank you. I was considering posting images of the GUI. What do you think?

<comment><USER3> Yep, that would do the trick. It's like porn for some of us. In the end people want to work with other cool people. Hence the Ninja and Rockstar post, when you are not cool, the best way to try to fake it is with some Ninja or Rockstar slang. But in the end posting some shots of the UI and talking about the people / work environment will reflect a more positive light. Then trying to "cool up" your job posting.</comment></comment></comment>


The answer to "Will you mentor me?" is no (2010) - <AUTHOR> http://pindancing.blogspot.com/2010/12/answer-to-will-you-mentor-me-is.html <comment><USER2> This is nice but I like this advice much better:

Ira Glass quote: > Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it's just not that good. It's trying to be good, it has potential, but it's not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn't have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I've ever met. It's gonna take awhile. It's normal to take awhile. You've just gotta fight your way through. <

<comment><USER3> > All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste.

On the whole, I agree with his sentiment that hard work will get you success, but the idea he magically started out with some kind of innate talent for telling whether or not things are good is the same type of illogical thinking he's talking about being discouraging to beginners.

<comment><USER4> I think you're interpreting 'good taste' too narrowly. A sense of the value of things is what motivates people to want to produce them. So if you value nice things enough to want to make more of them, that's 'good taste'. He's not saying taste is an immutable attribute that cannot be refined.

He's not writing an essay on the relationship between taste, skill and creativity and how they feed back into each other. I think he's just saying stick in there. It's tough for everyone in the beginning, and this is one reason why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The most relatable piece of this article, as a college kid in Bangalore, is this

> For some reason Bangalore is crawling with people who first want to form a > community and then start learning/working/whatever. These efforts almost > invariably peter out uselessly. First do the work. Then if you feel like > "communing" talk to others who are also working hard.

<comment><USER6> As someone below noted, there's nothing Bangalore-specific about this. This is coming from a native Bangalorean who moved away about eight years ago.

It's just human nature to want to sit around and chat rather than actually spend hours of your time on hard work which may or may not pan out into something useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's gatekeeping, isn't it (in a good way)? Demonstrating you give a shit (rather than saying it) goes a long way.

I went to a meetup around where I live that was meant for developers on my area. What ended up happening was half the group were practicing developers who wanted to socialize a bit more, and the other half were people who were "super passionate" about programming and wanted to talk nonstop about their ideas. Unfortunately I got stuck with the latter half, due to seating, so I had to field all kinds of "Do you think this is a good idea?" questions the whole time. It sucked.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like every IRC channel ever. The topic is some open source project or programming language, but eventually it just becomes a clique of regulars who stopped caring about the topic a long time ago, and now just tell people who want to discuss it to go read the manual.

<comment><USER9> I mean, we're mostly all programming because it's interesting. Answering the same questions over and over isn't interesting, that's why it's in the manual. Asking an interesting question will usually get an interesting result.

For example, I tried X, the manual said it should do Y, but Z happened instead, what's going on?

<comment><USER10> > Answering the same questions over and over isn't interesting, that's why > it's in the manual.

I have mentored people for many years and I recognise what you are saying here.

This is the part where the person being mentored have to do their homework first. If you want to have useful mentoring advise, you should read books, experiment and even google first. Asking stupid questions (lack of insight) are okey, but asking simple questions (lack of research) is just lazy.

As a mentor, you need to move on to mentor people who you find it interesting to mentor. You are usually not forced to mentor someone, it is your choice. So choose wisely. When you find someone who is thirsty for your knowledge, the mentoring process is very rewarding. It is like being an intellectual parent. You help someone grow, you watch them excel and you feel pride. You grow yourself from the experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There has been a significant devaluation of the term "mentor" over the past 15 years or so. The word used to imply a mutual respect and commitment that it no longer does.

A mentor's counterpart used to their "protege". However, since that word has not been devalued, we've invented "mentee".

I'm not claiming this is a good or bad development, but it's interesting how quickly the meanings of even quite important words can change.

<comment><USER12> The double speak in your last paragraph undercut your post. :(

Be bold and make a claim. Nothing wrong with that. Even if you are wrong, you will be so with skin in the game, so come out knowing. With couched claims, you can always duck behind being right, but not understood. And never know.

<comment><USER11> > The double speak in your last paragraph undercut your post. :(

It's honestly not double-speak. I'm a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. Words are defined by how people use them. I consider it a waste of time to complain that "everyone is using a word wrong" as long as the meaning is clear, which it is in this case.

<comment><USER12> The double speak is the claiming of not claiming it is good or bad.

Words can change. True. Calling the change of some words as important is an opinion. Clearly label in some words imparts a value judgement. To claim otherwise is to try and shift the claim to the receiver. "I'm not claiming it is good or bad, but look at the evidence."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "For some reason Bangalore is crawling with people who first want to form a community and then start learning/working/whatever."

Seattle is the same. Probably the same everywhere. It's easier to talk and drink coffee than to challenge yourself way outside your comfort zone for hours at a time, day after day.

<comment><USER14> I don't think the foundation of this phenomenon is laziness or lack of diligence. I believe people are craving to be part of a community. Humans have always had. But these days your family and your neighbors are not that community anymore (edit: not _necessarily_ , not so much at least), so we look elsewhere. The internet allowed us to look everywhere actually. Then you find a community that, from the outside, you feel attracted to. Often these communities are built around a certain topic or skill. Then you want to be part of the community and say to yourself that you will learn that skill.

I agree with the author though that this path rarely works. A better way is to first you dive into something that interest you and then you go find other people with the same interest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I am being pedantic, but I _hate_ the word mentee. I am not sure if it was made up, but it sounds like it. The proper word IMHO is protege.

<comment><USER16> It's not the same thing. A protege is _one_ person done your are grooming to be your replacement. A mentee is one of _many_ people your are guiding down their own path.

<comment><USER17> This was always my understanding of the word too, but I've just looked it up and apparently a protégé is just "one who is protected or trained or whose career is furthered by a person of experience, prominence, or influence" so in a mentor-student relationship the student could definitely be referred to as a protégé.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I might be a minority but never extracted huge value from mentors. Read books, reach out directly to whoever you want to reach out, and trust your guts' feeling have worked better for me.

</comment><comment><USER19> Developing the ability to be an attractive, as opposed to hapless, mentee is also a skill: [https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- pr...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2010/10/02/how-to-get-your- professors%E2%80%99-attention-or-how-to-get-the-coaching-and-mentorship-you- need/) and it's one that's sadly not taught.

<comment><USER20> Insightful article on how mentors might perceive your actions

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This sounds exactly the same as when you are looking for help in a public mailing list. I usually list everything I've done right or wrong to pick anyone's interest to give me some clues to continue my work.

<comment><USER22> This demonstrates effort, which in turns demonstrates capability. Why waste time on someone who will not try?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't ask "will you mentor me?" just ask a specific question and you've got a mentor

<comment><USER24> I think that advice is buried in the stories the article tells, and I wish the writer had made it more clear.

I spent quite a lot of time trying to help people who were asking for general advice, and my take is that very, very few of them actually did anything with it.

Soon, I realized that answering these question privately is a complete waste of time, and switched to answering them publicly. At least then if the person ignores it, it's still there for someone else to benefit from.

Eventually, I realized that all these questions have been answered hundreds or thousands of times in the same general ways, and that anyone who cared would just use Google and find all of them. The people who are now asking the question either lack the basic awareness to use Google, or think their situation is somehow special and only very pointed advice can help them. They're wrong, of course, which means you can't really help them.

Now, I only answer questions that I feel are actually unique somehow, or that I haven't answered in a while and just want to do a little good and maybe inspire some people.

In no circumstance do I react negatively to them. I just ignore questions that bother me, rather than tell them to "Just Google It" or whatever. If they haven't figured that out, my negativity won't actually help them or anyone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1994998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1994998)

</comment><comment><USER26> This is good advice because talk is very very cheap and by actually doing something you stand out of the crowd. But doing something in a field that is new to you can be daunting and learning on your own is still very inefficient. That is why those Stanford PhDs are still worth something even if all relevant information is online - they had good mentors.

Here are some tricks that I find make learning process less inefficient (as applied to programming of course):

\- Formulate specific questions. This is kind of silly but many times you will have a feeling of being vaguely stuck and will just zone out instead of making progress. Instead try to precisely and succinctly formulate the problem. You can then search the Internet, ask a question on stackoverflow (or ask a mentor :) or you can look through some good open source code and see how the problem is solved there. Formulating the question focuses you. It is important to condense the question as much as you can because this way people will have to do less work to understand it and the probability that you will get an answer goes up.

\- Find a way to test your stuff. I don't mean specifically unit tests, it can be "testing in production" with the real users (it is standard startup wisdom to get user feedback as quickly as possible) or at least solving toy problems with your code, or creating a benchmarking harness and seeing where the performance bottlenecks are. First, seeing that your stuff is actually working is incredibly motivating. Second, your taste (what the Ira Glass quote in the sibling comment talks about) is subjective and can mislead you (especially if you are a beginner) and making your code confront reality is much more objective and is going to uncover problems with your work that you weren't aware of and maybe show that some problem that you thought very important is actually not a problem at all.

\- Watch programming streams. This thing is getting more popular these days. Much of mentoring consists of you observing how your mentor actually does stuff - how they approach problems and what are those little tricks that help them do the work - and then copying it. Watching people programming sounds silly but it is the way to observe those tricks if you are not lucky to have easy access to someone competent.

</comment><comment><USER27> A lot of people out there just go through the motions. They aren't particularly interested in their field, and seek "mentors" just because this is something you're supposed to do. This is a waste of time for both the mentor and the mentee. In 20+ years in the industry I only had one mentee (out of half a dozen), who was not a waste of time. She's a senior manager at Facebook now. Super smart, and very strongly intrinsically motivated. She'd succeed without any mentorship just fine, but hopefully I helped her get there faster.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sure, but you don't get to complain about the next generation of programmers re-discovering every wheel that's been invented in the past 60 years (or worse variations of them).

</comment><comment><USER29> It comes down to trust and expectation. Everyone can _say_ they are passionate, interested, want to do the hard work to make the mentor's investment in them eventually worth it. Those are very weak signals. On the other hand, actually having demonstrably put in a very significant amount of effort already is a strong proof you are being serious.

</comment><comment><USER30> > So in the next email (sent a minute after I received his reply) I sent him a > zipped file of code with an explanation that "this is what I've done so far > which is about 70% of what you want" and he immediately replied saying "Whoa > you are serious. That is refreshing .. '

> So a few days later, I sent along a detailed algorithm that expanded his > idea, with a formal proof of correctness and a code implementation and he > suddenly switched to a more expansive mode, sending friendly emails with > long and detailed corrections and ideas for me to explore.

And then the whole internet stood up and clapped.

</comment><comment><USER31> Despite the assholish title, the blog post actually makes a very good point and it's a pretty good advice. Before you ask somebody to spend them time on you, make sure you put the time yourself.

</comment><comment><USER32> The StackOverflow advice to writing answer worthy questions generalises quite well into all professional interactions where help is exchanged.

</comment><comment><USER33> The only time you can really provide mentoring is if the person wants it and asks for it. It is not yet enough because the person may say they want it but have wrong impression of what it entails (like having expectation of some kind of magical step change in their life), but it is prerequisite IMO.

So, obviously, this answer is wrong beacuse that would mean that there cannot be any mentoring.

Another observation of mine is what is mentoring for. A person that isn't interested in learning something will not learn it no matter if the do or don't have a mentor. A person that wants to learn something will also learn it regardless of whether they have mentor.

The role of mentor is to expedite the process, help avoid dead ends or bad habits and generally make the end result better and faster than without mentor.

I can learn to be Enterprise Architect or play flute on my own, but having a mentor makes it easier for me.

I pay for a flautist to teach me but really I don't want him to teach me. I teach flute myself and the flautist is to point out errors, tips that help me learn it faster, his experience of how he learned it, all to let me reach goals that I set with less effort.

The problem people have is the moment they get a "teacher" they assume some kind of shared responsibility or even expectation that the student will somehow offload part of the effort onto the "teacher". That is simply wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> It is an understandable policy.

The person being asked has no idea where the asking person is at or even if they should be doing that thing at all.

If there is nothing to show.... you have no clue.

</comment><comment><USER35> Anyone who is better than you at a skill or task is a mentor. All it takes is to work around them, ask relevant questions, watch, do and shut up.

</comment><comment><USER36> Offering money or something can go a long way.

<comment><USER37> IDK about the money angle.

I mean, how's a student going to pay the hourly rate of an average mid-career FAANG employee - to say nothing of a CEO, VC or famous coder?

<comment><USER38> Mid-career FAANG employee, I guess it might be ~$100/hr for a one time code review. (Incidentally, About the same rate as getting a chess GM to review your game [1]) Someone might do that if the project wasn't too large. (Although their employment contract might not allow it.) Not cheap but maybe not totally out of reach either. Pretty questionable how useful it would be, IMHO.

[1]. [https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/3hgoip/typical_coach...](https://www.reddit.com/r/chess/comments/3hgoip/typical_coaching_rates/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Never read it before, priceless and true.

</comment><comment><USER40> Nice article. Well written!</comment>


Pentagon Requests $15B for Space Force - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/policy/defense/482373-pentagon-requests-154b-for-space-force <comment><USER2> I'm going to try and be optimistic about this;

10b in research and development? I can't imagine that it's going to be for 'weapons' only right? Some of this has to go into the future of humankind. I would imagine they have to be interested in colonization, as it's generally in the interest of humankind to expand to the reaches of outerspace, and to do so and be confronted with opposition would require such an agency.

I'd like to know too what the overlap in responsibility between NASA and Spaceforce will be. Are they both scientific ventures? Is Spaceforce actually interested in intergalactic safety.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

<comment><USER3> For the record, GPS infrastructure was DoD funded. My point is: DoD funding is not all doom, gloom, weapons dev.

A lot of it is logistical infrastructure that has significant benefit for civilian applications.

Remember, defense funding is what fueld the tech sector's birth

<comment><USER4> I guess it technically isn't (I believe force multiplier would be the term) but GPS is an extremely powerful weapon if only one side has such capabilities

<comment><USER5> Not so much a weapon system as an information and coordination system.

It's like calling the camera that looks at stars for determining position a weapons system. GPS and astro guidance are both part of a redundant navigation system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >> _" Space Force technically only has one member right now, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John Raymond, though thousands of airmen are working for the service on assignment."_

I know this may seem like an esoteric budgeting question, but does this mean that other departments are essentially funding the Space Force and don't expect to recover their labour costs, or will they be accrued and cross- charged back to the respective departments when (if?) Space Force's $15.4B funding is approved?

<comment><USER7> Space force is fundamentally a reorganization. Work that had previusly been done by other branches (mostly airforce) is being moved to its own branch. During the transition, work (hopefully) continues without interuption. As I read the proposal, the airforce will recieve a corresponding drop in funding to reflect their reduced scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think radio or TV discussions of the Spaaace Foooorce should be required to pronounce it like so:

[https://clyp.it/mznwbuxq](https://clyp.it/mznwbuxq)

</comment><comment><USER9> Organizational structure influences policy.

US just created an organization who needs to work against demilitarization of space to stay relevant. Just operating spy satellites for NRO or satellite communication network is is not enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> Whether the Space Force actually achieves its goals remains to be seen (goals which remain somewhat nebulous, though the article points out the following):

> The new service is aimed at protecting U.S. assets in space, such as > satellites, from earthly threats, including U.S. adversaries Russia and > China.

I am no expert, but I'm fairly certain that the Air Force and NASA were charged with the responsibility of protecting government assets in space. It would seem that this Space Force is being created to carry this duty out as one of its core responsibilities (the Air Force is already responsible for a lot) as some countries around the world accelerate their space research and space ventures (not to mention that our own private sector has companies accelerating space research as well). As far as I understand it, China already has an equivalent to the US Space Force - besides China, there are other countries with galactic ambitions and they are not all friends of the US.

That said, claims of the US 'weaponizing' space may be exaggerated, or at least it would seem so to me. The US obviously wants to protect its interests in Space and it doesn't want China getting a strong enough early foothold so that they can operate from a position of greater leverage in matters of space diplomacy.

Again, I'm no expert, but I think what the US needs to do to ensure future prosperity for others in space (both private and state actors) is to pursue diplomacy and establish an international coalition for space governance. Of course, this is easier said than done, but starting on the right path could be the difference between tense confrontations in the future vs. clearly communicated and shared information.

<comment><USER11> > I am no expert, but I'm fairly certain that the Air Force and NASA were > charged with the responsibility of protecting government assets in space. It > would seem that this Space Force is being created to carry this duty out as > one of its core responsibilities (the Air Force is already responsible for a > lot)

Which isn't so odd. During WWII, the US didn't have an Air Force, it had the _Army_ Air Force. It didn't become totally independent of the Army until 1947.

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

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If I were to add a new branch, it wouldn't be a Space Force.

It'd be a cyberwar force.

<comment> duncan-donuts Doesn't this already exist through the NSA and friends?

<comment><USER13> There is a difference between the military and government agencies.

It's like asking why not get rid of military in favor of militia, Hired guns, And police forces?

Who had what authority. Funding. Jurisdiction and related. And plenty of other things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For the first time in my life, I'm excited for a new government initiative. I've realized that the there is a link between home security and military budgets. I'm optimistic about the space force because we the people are bought in to spending on insurance premiums which is a defined margin above calculable risks. And so if we want government funded space exploration we can sell it as insurance and actually make it happen.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can only imagine a French president announcing even 1 single billion for a « space force » project. All he would get is an instant a civil war

<comment><USER16> In other words, he'd surrender?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Quite a boondogle. What's it for? The earth camo uniforms? New letterheads? The space ops are already part of the military.

<comment><USER18> The more and more gets leaked about all this, the more I'm convinced that this is simply a move to set up a policing force - in Space - before the Mars colony really gets rolling.

I mean, when Mars gets colonised, what's to stop Mars from becoming a superpower in the Sol system within a very short period of time? Pretty much nothing.

Once humanity gets its footing on Mars - and it really looks like this is going to happen within the next few decades - there are going to be security repercussions for those of us left on Earth. I believe this Space Force effort is an attempt to make USA not only Earth's police force, but that of the solar system, too.

 _Extraordinary times! To be actually typing this, in earnest.._

<comment><USER19> Given that nothing we put into orbit or on another planet is going to be self- sustaining, you don't need weapons to exert control on any residents of such infrastructure. A simple blockade will suffice

<comment><USER20> For now.

GP comment is speculative in either case.

<comment><USER21> I'd be more wary of a sneak attack from Antarctic insurgents first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like to compare expenses to the interest on the national debt.

Looks like it's about 3% of that:

[https://www.thebalance.com/interest-on-the-national- debt-411...](https://www.thebalance.com/interest-on-the-national-debt-4119024)

Of course, rates are historically low.

</comment><comment><USER23> >The budget documents released Monday anticipate 6,434 active-duty Space Force members

Seems like incredible bloat for this agency to have any sort of 'active duty' military personal at the moment. What are they exactly going to do that civilians can't?

<comment><USER24> Working at:

Combined Space Operations Center, Vandenberg AFB

Missile Warning Center, Cheyenne Mountain AFS

Joint Overhead Persistent Infrared Center, Buckley AFB

Joint Navigation Warfare Center, Kirtland AFB

Joint Task Force-Space Defense, Schriever Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, CO - JTF-SD is responsible for protecting military satellites from aggression

National Space Defense Center - Co-located within JTF-SD, NSDC is a joint effort between the Department of Defense and the United States Intelligence Community responsible for detecting, warning, and defending against threats to military space systems, particularly those of the National Reconnaissance Office

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is interesting, I'd have expected it to be much higher. I know that the Air Force Space Command employed more people than NASA, which has a $20B+ budget. I assume more is massaged in elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anyone know the proposed monicker for someone in the Space Force (granted there's only 1 person right now)? They aren't "airmen," nor are they "astronauts."

<comment><USER27> Space Marines? Space Ranger? Starship Troopers? Defenders of the Earth?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder how long it will be until they decide to reorg NASA under Space Force.

<comment><USER29> I would be more of the belief that by its existence that Space Force will further separate NASA from the military.

It provides much more separation that what NASA currently has, if anything the real question becomes how much will the other branches give up to Space Force. The Air Force has the most to lose; unless of course this becomes something similar to Navy and Marines

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Sounds like they've identified $15B in wasteful spending that they can just eliminate.

</comment><comment><USER31> So just a few F35s worth of funding.

<comment><USER4> About 150 of them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> _> The money, largely transferred from existing Air Force programs, would include $2.5 billion for operations and maintenance, $10.3 billion for research and development, and $2.4 billion for procurement._

TL;DR: who cares.

</comment><comment><USER33> No money for nasa, gold plated ships for the military...

<comment><USER24> The Trump administration calls for big budget increases for NASA to fund Moon- to-Mars program

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21131361/nasa- administrat...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/10/21131361/nasa- administration-president-trump-budget-request-25-billion-moon-artemis)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Is Replacing MapReduce at Google? - <AUTHOR> I was reading the wikipedia for MapReduce today while I was working on a clojure problem and came across this:
By 2014, Google was no longer using MapReduce as their primary big data processing model,[11] and development on Apache Mahout had moved on to more capable and less disk-oriented mechanisms that incorporated full map and reduce capabilities
I'm not sure if I am missing something, but is MapReduce outdated now, and if so, what are the newest big data processing techniques? <comment><USER2> Dataflow + Flume [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/25/google_cloud_platfo...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/25/google_cloud_platform/)

Flume is the batch processing framework that replaced MapReduce and Millwheel + Dataflow added concepts like windowing, sessions etc for stream processing.

Flume is basically a smarter version of MapReduce, sorta similar to Spark in how it handles lazy evaluation.</comment>