Mio: A High-Performance Multicore IO Manager for GHC [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/hask035-voellmy.pdf?haskellworkshop <comment><USER2> I've been wondering about garbage collection in pure functional languages lately. It is often said that statically typed pure functional languages allow the compiler to do a lot more correctness checking. Shouldn't the same formal reasoning features also enable much better garbage collection algorithms? Or would that be asking for a solution to the halting problem?

<comment><USER3> With a purely linear type system, memory management could be handled statically, negating the need for traditional GC. The underlying behavior would be closer to C-style just-in-time {de-}allocation, or C++ RAII. LinearML is an attempt at this: [https://github.com/pikatchu/LinearML](https://github.com/pikatchu/LinearML)

<comment><USER4> That's awesome! Any good pointers to interesting articles about that? I found this: [http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~lwittie/research/space04.pdf](http://www.eg.bucknell.edu/~lwittie/research/space04.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Don't know of any articles, but there are a number of papers on linear logic and linear type theory. Most are pretty dense, but the first few pages of Wadler's "Linear types can change the world!" give a very readable overview of the area. [http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/linear/linear.ps](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/linear/linear.ps)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The file also states that "Mio will be released as part of GHC 7.8.1", which is scheduled around October if I recall correctly. Neat

<comment><USER6> Painful to hear about such wonderful developments when you are a Debian Stable user :(

<comment><USER5> Installing GHC manually is not hard, the website even provides pre-compiled binaries. I started doing it for different reasons, but was surprised how painless the process was. After doing it multiple times, I wrote together a file that guides me through the process, which you can find here: [https://github.com/quchen/articles/blob/master/install_haske...](https://github.com/quchen/articles/blob/master/install_haskell_platform_manually.md)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for that nice guide! I was actually expecting to install GHC by hand eventually (for now, 7.4 is sufficient).

<comment><USER7> Since you're on Debian you can use the awesome Update Alternatives to install Haskell, which is an even better way in my opinion:

[https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/blob/master/install/h...](https://github.com/byrongibson/scripts/blob/master/install/haskell/README.md)

Tons of advantages to doing it that way, including the ability to easily maintain multiple versions of both GHC and Platform on the same system and swap between them with a single command. Also doesn't clutter up _/ usr/local/_ with binaries not managed by apt or dpkg.

More generally, _update-alternatives_ is a godsend for Stable users. It's like RVM or RBENV in the Ruby world - lets you install and manage multiple versions of the same platform and easily swap between them with a single command, including the system version from repos if you want. It frees you from out of date software in the repos while still providing a system to manage the complexities of it all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know why functional programming languages are so much favored by research teams over other types of PL ? Every time i hear someone doing PL research, it's always on some kind of functional programming language such as Haskell or ML.

<comment><USER9> It's not about functional programming languages per se, it's just that a lot of core/academic PL research often focuses much more on _concepts_ than on _implementation_ , and languages with strong type systems (all of which are functional, in part also because OO/subtyping is hard to reason about formally) are ideal for encoding these concepts.

There is, however, a lot of research about _implementation_ going on using other languages as well. Most GC research, for example, is done using JVM and Java programs. For this particular paper, it would be really hard to choose a different platform, though, because GHC is one of the rare industrial runtimes that offer lightweight threads.

<comment><USER10> > _(all of which are functional, in part also because OO /subtyping is hard to > reason about formally)_

OO/subtyping is _NOT_ orthogonal to functional, nor is it inherently at odds with formal reasoning. OCaml has both imperative and functional objects; Haskell, Mercury, and Coq (a formal logic language) all support typeclasses, which subsume most of OO and provide subtyping.

Additionally, strong typing has little to do with formal reasoning as well (see: Lisp/Scheme/the lambda calculus). What makes functional languages amenable to formal methods is that they are _functional_ and therefore _referentially transparent_. Mathematical proofs carry no implicit concept of "state"; hence if you are trying to prove anything about code in, say, C, you need to augment the code with explicit state and remove all non-local effects. (See: the Why language, which attempts to bridge this gap.)

Algebraic/generalized-algebraic type constructors used by most functional languages don't hurt either, as they allow programs to construct complex terms without relying on lower-level stateful abstractions such as memory allocation.

<comment><USER9> Not inherently, no, but practically, yes. The type system of, say, Java, isn't even formally sound; overridden functions can be covariant in parameter types, which would not be permissible in a proper subtype-based type system such as OCaml's.

<comment><USER10> Ah yes, I forgot about Java's failings in this area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's going to be interesting to revisit techempower's benchmarks when this comes out. [http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/](http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/)

<comment><USER12> First of all you have to write a C20M-capable client to replace ab.

And high concurrency tends to break MySQL easily. DB is always the bottleneck here, always.

<comment><USER13> So maybe it's time for a SQL database written in Haskell to take advantage of these new developments? (both Mio and Intel's HRC)

<comment><USER14> Probably not, the limiting factor for most database systems, even of the plain old boring scale-up not scale-out SQL kind, is disk IO. Before SSDs and virtualized storage, it was all about having cabinets full of disks (usually in expensive SANs) for fast database applications. Enterprise hard disk drives only gave you low triple digit IOPS, I think the highest I've ever read in a 2.5" HDD is about 450 IOPS.

If you wanted data resiliency, you used RAID60 or RAID10 or some exotic variant that would usually give you on the order of a 30-50% reduction in capacity and sometimes as much as a 75% reduction in write IOPS - it's always been the writes that have been killer, that's the stuff you need to make sure persists. RAID6 with a crappy controller or on an overloaded good controller would make you pay the write hole tax.

Commodity SSDs give you up to, if you're willing to take peak numbers, on the order of 45,000 IOPS. To get to that kind of performance in the last decade, you'd need a cabinet with between 200 and 400 2.5" HDDs, depending on everything involved.

Now, that's all 2000s era stuff. The future is bright, thanks to virtualized storage arrays turning commodity storage into massive virtual SANs with tiered storage on consumer SSDs being used like race tires, consumables replaced periodically to maintain top performance, and so on. Even so, the biggest benchmarks I've seen for enterprise systems with multiple 10GbE adapters running raw disk IO has been on the order of 1 million IOPS. I'm sure exotic systems will put out higher numbers, after all there are machines that support over 100 physical CPUs, but they aren't attainable and certainly aren't a broad market.

All of those words were said to essentially say that databases have almost always been constrained by disk IO. The SDN controller in the paper? Limited if any disk IO. A SQL database? It probably could be written in naive, pre- java.nio Java and still IO limitations would dwarf the overhead of the language. (There are exceptions, I'm ignoring certain overheads, etc.)

Maybe a NoSQL solution in Haskell would scream with this new IO manager, but I suspect it's going to be correctness rather than performance that drives anyone to implement their database in Haskell right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this a research paper, or a currently available library where I can download somewhere?

<comment><USER16> The GHC release containing this is scheduled for release in 1-2 months. You can already build it from source though.</comment></comment>


100-year-old watch ring found in undisturbed 400-year-old Ming Dynasty tomb - <AUTHOR> http://holy-web.blogspot.com/2008/12/archeologist-joked-saying-whoever.html <comment><USER2> Professionalism among time travellers has gone downhill since the Temporal Cops got unionized and stopped doing their jobs in 6700 A.D….</comment>


How A/B testing helped a price comparison app increase revenues by 28% - <AUTHOR> http://appiterate.com/how-appiterates-mobile-app-ab-testing-helped-reviews42-improve-monetization

<comment><USER2> So one of the tests' result was that the control version returned more hits. Do you think too many variations can spoil the broth?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would tend to look at it this way:

Because the control version was part of an experiment, the result is statistical proof that the control version is indeed better than the variation.

It kind of reaffirms your belief that you had when you developed the app. This reaffirmation happened only because you put it to test with another variation!!</comment></comment>


CES: Worse Products Through Software - <AUTHOR> http://hypercritical.co/post/39953666887/ces-worse-products-through-software

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the current smartphone wars are a great example of how hard it is for companies to expand their products outside of their "core competencies".*

Watching Apple try to tackle web services, most handset makers try to tackle software and pretty much anyone other than a web company trying to tackle social (even Google seems to have real trouble here) leads me to believe that most companies optimize in hiring and organization for a limited skillset that makes it almost impossible for them to succeed in most other domains. I'd be willing to bet everything I can buy, steal or mortgage against even one traditional television hardware vendor managing to create a successful software platform, much less more than one.

*I'm so sorry that I wrote that phrase. Please forgive me</comment>


The Dispiriting Saga of a Private Cul-De-Sac in the Bay Area - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/presidio-terrace-san-francisco-street/547925/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> The only _legal_ power I see for the retaking of the property would be through eminent domain, which should require fair-market value compensation. But this is S.F., where law often doesn't apply.</comment>


Fast Natural Language Date Parser using Lex/Yacc/C - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kmussel/Moment

<comment><USER2> Cool, reminds me of this chronic <https://github.com/mojombo/chronic>

I've been looking for a JS version. Perhaps this could be a starting point.</comment>


Silicon Valley's 'unicorns' have regulators worried - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/04/01/why-silicon-valleys-unicorns-have-regulators-worried/ <comment><USER3> Regulator with power for regulating public companies warns of the grave danger in companies not being public. They could be escaping their benevolent oversight!

<comment><USER4> Bahaha yes.

"White echoed the concerns of some industry insiders that these tech start-ups are missing out on the market discipline public companies receive by being accountable to the whims of public shareholder."

Really? Being accountable to _whims_ is a good thing?!!

<comment><USER5> It puts the fear of the markets and investors in the mind of the CEO and makes him or her work like a dog. As it should. There is definitely something to that. Don't meet analyst expectations and get burned. Yes that keeps you performing rather than doing your thing. At least in the short term it does some thing. In the long run we don't know how it rolls.

<comment><USER6> We know how it rolls in the long run. Terribly - for everyone but the shareholders.

<comment><USER5> And that's the only one who matters. The owner of the capital. At least that's how our system is set up.

<comment><USER6> No, that's not how our system is set up. It's how our >marketplace< is set up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Mark Cuban points out that the SEC should be issuing clear guidelines instead of vague threats[1].

>Cuban argued the SEC should make clear rules so private companies and investors know where they stand with regulators ... "The one thing that could make the whole thing go backwards instead of forward is uncertainty," he said.

[1] [http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/01/mark-cuban-heres-the- problem-...](http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/01/mark-cuban-heres-the-problem-with- regulators.html)

<comment><USER8> But "clear guidelines" would mean that some would clearly be within the rules while some would be clearly breaking them.

It's a much stronger negotiating position for regulators to use a vague "well, we're not sure..." and leave themselves room to maneuver and potentially punish _any_ of the 'unicorns' at any time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > __these tech start-ups are missing out on the market discipline public > companies receive by being accountable to the whims of public shareholder __

Wow, you mean the type of accountability faced by GM, Ford, Exxon Mobile . . .

how can this man say that with a straight face ?

<comment><USER10> Enron's accounting fraud was only discovered because they're a public company and forced to disclose those records. Once someone _actually looked_ at what Enron was up to, the shorts took over and hammered them until they folded. Only then did regulators actually take a look.

By being a public company, Enron couldn't hide its fraud. I have concerns about the lack of similar checks on unicorns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Haha. This reminds me of the Simpsons where Homer takes Mr. Burns's boat out to international waters (to circumvent local drinking laws) and the coast guard tells them to come back so they can be under their jurisdiction.

        Bart: [through a bullhorn] Hey, Coast Guard!  Try to stop us now, you lousy Americans.
        Coast Guard: [through a loudspeaker] We can't hear you!  Come three hundred feet closer!
        Bart: Nice try.  You're not going to nail us.
        Coast Guard: But we just want to party.
        Bart: Oh, really?  Then play some rock music.
        [Man on cutter mimics the guitar riff from "China Grove"]
        Homer: [joins in] Come on, Bart!  The Coast Guard's covering the Doobs!

<comment><USER12> Isn't that the episode where they get hijacked by pirates and the coastguard sit back and laugh at them? An interesting analogy, certainly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was a predictable effect of increased regulation of public companies, (SOX) etc, and awareness that a founder can move more strategically without being concerned with quarterlies and accountability to shared owners.

Politically it's unsustainable. If we see a half dozen more unicorns with household names people will tie completely private ownership to concerns about inequality: no way for the average person to buy a share and participate in growth.

<comment><USER14> You could buy shares in GS or any other public company investing in private companies and/or underwriting IPOs, so there's that. That said, the idea that public capital markets are widely considered to be a way to increase _equality_ , of all things, is stunning to me. I thought/think that people supporting capital markets view them as a method for companies to raise capital in exchange for a share of future profits, and that people opposing capital markets view them as casinos, pyramid schemes, etc., and that the point of extra regulation for public companies is to protect investors, while the point of having less-regulated private companies is to lower the cost of raising capital for those ventures that can make do with a small number of rich investors.

Even if people widely consider the stock market to be an "equalizer", it doesn't seem obvious that adding more early-stage small-cap stocks to the market serves that purpose, because these companies are more likely to go bust, with a small fraction of them capturing most of the growth, and an index with a share in all those companies is not unlikely to underperform a large- cap index. (Incidentally, this is related to the reason that widespread stock ownership seems to me more likely to increase rather than decrease inequality - the prices of these things have a high variance; taxing and redistributing wealth and/or capital gains sounds like a surer path to equality, if that's what you want.)

<comment><USER13> > That said, the idea that public capital markets are widely considered to be > a way to increase equality, of all things, is stunning to me.

Never underestimate the power of spin. Private just has to look worse than public on equality, and it does. I wouldn't be surprised to see an article about this in the next few weeks as journalists compete for eyeballs.

<comment><USER14> I've already seen such an article, but I still can't imagine hordes of protesters fighting for the privilege to invest in unicorns, especially now that much of the bubble has popped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Some, probably most, "unicorns" aren't really private. They have shares held by "qualified investors", which can include mutual funds. Fidelity and T. Rowe Price funds own sizable chunks of Uber and Space-X. Fidelity Contrafund owns Uber stock, and anybody can buy shares in Fidelity Contrafund. So, in a sense, ownership in the company is already publicly traded. The SEC allows a mutual fund to put up to 15% of its capital in illiquid securities such as Uber. This was intended as an exception to provide capital to small companies, not a way for a company with a $60 billion market cap to avoid disclosure.

That's what concerns the SEC. When a "private" company gets big enough to be a significant part of mutual fund portfolios, should it have to start reporting as a public company?

</comment><comment><USER16> Be at the whims of activist shareholders who demand short-term profits over long-term strategy, and in exchange you get "discipline and oversight." Oooh where do I sign up?

</comment><comment><USER17> These unicorns are in a unique position to tell the _shareholders_ \-- whom are, let's face it, increasingly acting like a cartel across wide swathes of the economy because there are fewer and fewer of them each fiscal year -- to tell them to _fuck off_.

And that scares the regulators because they're paid to keep "everybody in the fold" by extolling the virtues of being publicly owned.

Here's a useful tidbit: the mysterious market forces -- the "shareholders" as they're known -- are actually a small group of individuals or groups that pull the levers of the economy. The _regulators_ rely on these lever-pullers to play ball when need be.

Frankly I think these unicorns are right to fear buying into the US economy by going public, the overt assertions of power by the US government are definitely something to avoid.

<comment><USER18> Surely you're joking? The "shareholders" OWN the companies in question. Of course it is their right to demand whatever they want from the company - <USER2> own the thing. No company can tell its shareholders to fuck off, because it is subservient to them.

<comment><USER19> This depends on the structure of control in the companies. Anyone familiar with Facebook and Google knows that Zuckerberg pulled some fantastic manipulation of board seats and Brin and Page created a new class of voting shares that are 10x more powerful than regular shares. In such set-ups, the co-founders have permanent control of their companies without having to hold too many shares.

I imagine that many of the co-founders of the "unicorns" were smart enough to replicate Zuckerberg and Brin/Page and are subservient to no one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why would I want to sell a company that I enjoy running to a bunch of people who want to turn it into cash?

Public markets seem to be for people who want to take on some debt or are tired of being responsible for the future of their business.

<comment><USER21> Isn't that true for all forms of investment? Including VC?

<comment><USER20> To some extent, yes. But if the company is private, a minority shareholder can only sue a majority holder under the terms of the sale. In a public company they can sue under the terms of the SEC. If the company is private, the majority shareholder can act against financial interests if they like.

Public companies are trying to box out specific areas where they might legally do that: C-corps, mission-based exemptions during public sale, etc

But—and this is full on opinion now—I suspect when the chips are down, the courts will rule that Google can't just burn a pile of value because "we like Science" or somesuch thing. They'll get away with it as long as the pile of money is growing. And hopefully that's "forever". But maybe forever isn't as long as we think it is. The world is changing. Snapchat cometh.

<comment><USER15> _I suspect when the chips are down, the courts will rule that Google can 't just burn a pile of value because "we like Science" or some such thing._

That's when stockholders file lawsuits alleging violation of director fiduciary responsibility. This can happen with a startup if the management proposes a funding round that's a significant lose for existing shareholders. The directors have the obligation to act in the best interest of the stockholders, not the management.

It also comes up when a company has assets and is losing money, and the stockholders want to liquidate and get some money out, while management wants to burn all the cash out to the bitter end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not sure what's wrong with this. In the article the only issue I could find was that when companies are subject to the whims of public investors they get "market discipline" whatever that means.

If they are profitable (most aren't) I don't see why that discipline is necessary.

</comment><comment><USER23> If I ran a business (or invested in one) that was already successful and had a promising future then I wouldn't make it public. I can understand Uber and Airbnb staying private, less so for Snapchat.

</comment><comment><USER24> The whole situation is a bit confusing to me. A bunch of people have given a disproportionate amount of money to a few companies and those companies now have massive valuations. If the people giving them money shared the regulators concern, it seems simple enough to just, well, stop giving them money. And yet Slack gets $200 mil just a few days ago.

So what is happening exactly? Is there unrealistic optimism happening here or are people being suckered out of their money. Is the government concerned about the eventual pop and so is telling the very people who would benefit the most to quit it? Seems like they should be telling the _investors_ to stop, no?

<comment><USER25> These are not real valuations. The more realistic valuations are for common stock.

Most of those deals are really a debt disguised as an equity.

It just a way to give companies loans, which should be repaid via either cashflow or future IPO.

When reading news headline just replace: "Uber raised another $1B round" with "Uber took another $1B loan".

One of the unicorn CEOs said:

 _We need to be worth a billion dollars to be able to recruit new engineers. So we decided that was our valuation._

If you are issuing options to employees based on valuations fabricated to attract them, you are pretty clearly committing securities fraud.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/04/01/sec-chief-warns- si...](http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2016/04/01/sec-chief-warns-silicon- valley-unicorns-about-the-horn-wagging-the-tail/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem is:

"Public pension funds—the state-run investment pools responsible for the retirement benefits of nearly 20 million Americans—have quietly been funding the recent boom in venture capital."

Then when it eventually turns out the unicorns aren't worth all those billions it will be your pension money burnt. At least when things float you get a reasonable estimate of their actual value.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-23/are- public...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-09-23/are-public- pensions-inflating-a-venture-capital-bubble)

</comment><comment><USER27> The federal government wants Silicon Valley's largest private companies to go public. The official reasoning is that this will allow these giant companies to build better governance models, and become more transparent. But what's wrong with private companies, and do they need to be public to have more reporting requirements?

</comment><comment><USER28> Uhhh doesn't a VC need to close out their position eventually? And mark a return on their fund? If you take VC money you can't be private forever, you need to be acquired or go public.

<comment><USER21> Not entirely true, the other option is that other people buy the VCs out of their stake in the private market. In sharply profitable companies, a company could in theory buy itself back from its own investors without needing to be either acquired (it acquires itself, essentially) or doing an IPO.

Of course, your company actually has to be making money to do this. Which for most unicorns is something of a problem.

All investment is essentially debt. At some point either someone else chooses to hold it at a value that is mutually agreed on, or the company buys itself back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Dear SEC, Reduce the costs and risks related to going and staying public - you'll easily get your wish!

<comment><USER30> How would the SEC reduce "risks related to going and staying public?"

<comment><USER29> For starters, make the rules for the first 365 days after the IPO the same as being private; which would include limiting the first year of the IPO to qualified investors.

<comment><USER31> Doesn't that defeat the purpose of an IPO? The P does stand for public after all.

<comment><USER29> Doing it this way would remove a lot of risk for the general public after he 365 days passes. Have a better idea?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The real problem with these unicorn technopolies is they centralize too much power and control over various aspects of our society. They take on pseudo- governmental roles. Whether they are on the stock market or not is mostly a concern for rich traders.

The solution is going to be moving away from proprietary platforms created by technopolies to decentralized open platforms.

<comment><USER33> #Bernie2016 #420

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> What natural right do these regulatory agencies (or group of thugs known as government) have to regulate free people who choose to associate freely? What they are doing is deeply immoral.

<comment><USER35> What "natural right" do people have to free association?

(hint: the answer is none, because there is no such thing as a "natural right")

<comment><USER36> Natural rights are those rights given to you by god.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Icon in title bar broken? - <AUTHOR> http://drop.io/bsiyizn

<comment><USER2> Not for me. Can you browse <http://ycombinator.com/images/y18.gif> ?</comment>


Ask HN: A web site that is vulnerable to a good competitor? - <AUTHOR>

I have been thinking about how lots of successful web sites were late to the market, but were cheaper, or better designed.  (stack overflow, plenty of fish, all the 37 signals products, etc.)  Can you think of a site where a lean competitor could steal market share?<p>I have been thinking about survey monkey. <comment><USER2> TVRage.com, or even TV.com, are both sites which are very good at certain points. TVRage mainly: having up-to-date episode listings. TV.com mainly: relevant news to the navigated page, extensive bio/episode description archive, respectively.

Both sites have forums. Neither of which are particular active. TV.com's forum takes the lead in that area, however it seems the audience for tv-serie forums are located on fan-site forums instead.

Both sites use userbased contributions (to some extend). TV.com seems more professionally handled (also endorsed, so obviously has an advantage), whereas TVRage summaries, bios etc., seem more random and not necessarily added to complete a show's info.

Perhabs a better ranking/modding scheme could make for a TV.com/TVRage competitor? I haven't given it much thought, but taking something simple and easy to use like, say, up/down voting (which web users of today are familiar with) as an aid to moderate the info on the site could be an idea.

An advantage of TVRage is it's open-ness and (willingness to have an) API. I've used this many times, and in a web-age where people want to present stuff at their own website how they want (kind of like a new-age "embedded link" or "widget"), APIs are a great way to show that your core speciality is information, and the accuracy of this, and if someone wants to present it in a blue/yellow website so be it, as long as people know where to go to get to the source: you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wufoo (YC 06) is essentially a better designed Survey Monkey. <http://www.wufoo.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> That site does have great design... it's a little cartoonish, but well done. There are a lot of competitors in the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well Plenty of Fish seems like a good target, bad design/UX makes it vulnerable

Vault and eBay are another two examples.

What these all have in common is requiring a critical mass of users to work, which gives them a barrier to entry that allows them to become complacent.

</comment><comment><USER5> Microsoft HealthVault</comment>


Parallel – A command-line CPU load balancer written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mmstick/parallel <comment><USER2> Further overloading this overloaded utility name screws up packagers and hinders usage of any of the variants. Rename it please.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. GNU Parallel does something similar and this is confusing.

But this does claim to be a reimplementation of much of GNU Parallel's functionality. If it's compatible, maybe there isn't too much of an issue.

In the interest of silly UNIXism, I hereby vote for the name "serial" instead. It's just like "more" and "less", right?

<comment><USER4> I believe it intends to support a subset of GNU parallel and be command-line compatible with that subset. And "perpendicular" would be a far better joke name, IMO. :P

<comment><USER5> Hitachi already made your theme song: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7II](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb_PyKuI7II) :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The code is more complicated than it needs to be. It spawns N threads, then each thread forkexecs child processes. These threads communicate through an atomic int.

There is no need for threads. Just spawn background processes:

        echo 1 &
        echo 2 &
        wait
        echo 3 &
        wait
        echo 4 &
        ...

The key is that the wait() system call will hang until _any_ child process finishes.

<comment><USER7> I doubt that will make it measurable more efficient. Threads are cheap.

<comment><USER6> My point wasn't optimization. Just that the author was making it more complicated than was needed.

It's like discovering that "ls" is spawning 5 threads for internal communication.

<comment><USER7> In a language with good threading support, internal threads are typically making things easier rather than harder. I tend to spawn lots of threads in Rust just because I can and it simplifies the code a lot over having to do some async callback mess.

In particular there is no sane way to async waitpid() on POSIX.

<comment><USER8> pselect / self-pipe / etc. on SIGCHLD, and on receipt of SIGCHLD, loop through all known child processes with wait(WNOHANG).

... I'm not sure I can disagree with "no sane way".

<comment><USER7> The only thing you can do from a signal handler is flipping a static and only one signal handler can be set. Good luck making this reusable.

In fact, I challenge you to solve the problem "spawn process; waitpid for 15 seconds; otherwise kill hard" in Rust (or C++ if you feel like) on POSIX once with threads and once without threads by sticking to what's permitted in the standard and so that multiple processes can be waited for.

Then also measure CPU impact :)

<comment><USER9> > The only thing you can do from a signal handler is flipping a static and > only one signal handler can be set.

This is false, you can call any async signal safe function. Incidentally write is one of them.

Another trick is the close-on-exit pipe.

<comment><USER8> "Async-signal-safe" is a C concept (from the POSIX world where C is your interface to the system, and library calls vs. system calls are behind the abstraction layer), so it doesn't directly apply to Rust. But the underlying semantics of signals are simple to describe: you get interrupted at some instruction pointer and jump into a new function. You can do whatever you want provided you uphold safety, correctness, liveness, etc.

If you change a variable, it has to be one that isn't prone to being cached in a register or the stack by the main program. POSIX's sig_atomic_t does this; in Rust you can use the normal atomic types. They are a tiny bit _too_ careful if this is thread-local, but an ordinary thread-local variable is permitted to be cached within the same thread, and signal handlers break that.

If you take a lock, you have to do something reasonable if the lock is already held, _including by the code you interrupted_. So you probably shouldn't lock at all. The biggest reason for a POSIX function not to be async-signal-safe is because it wants to call malloc, which takes out a lock (at least a per-thread or per-CPU lock) on the heap. If you get signaled during a malloc, and the signal handler tries to malloc, you deadlock.

But anything that does not risk liveness or correctness problems is fair game. In particular, basically all system calls are fair game, since they're just sending a message to the kernel. C's fprintf() will want to buffer in userspace, which involves an allocation, but write() will at most buffer in the kernel, and the kernel-side code doesn't have the problem of having flow control interrupted while you're in a signal handler. Even if you were previously in a blocking write() when you received a signal, the kernel will return from its implementation of write before delivering the signal back to userspace, so there isn't a re-entrant call to the kernel-side write code. libc's fprintf() doesn't have that luxury.

(And yes, the concept of Rust on POSIX is a bit ill-defined, because POSIX is a set of C-language APIs, which can be implemented in any valid way in C, including header macros. Rust threads use pthreads, yes, but inter-thread communication doesn't involve whatever sig_atomic_t is typedef'd or #defined to.)

<comment><USER9> Note that the lock is a red herring. A single threaded malloc wouldn't be async signal safe either unless explicitly designed to be so which is hard. In fact anything that touches mutable state, including thread local state is a problem.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, good point. The weird part is that it _almost_ introduces a new thread, in that it introduces a new flow of control (and, if you ask for it, a new stack), but it doesn't count as a new thread in all the usual ways, like thread-local variables or PIDs. So any code called from a signal handler must be "thread-safe", but that thread-safety cannot rely on assigning an identifier to the thread, because you're using the same identifier as the parent thread.

<comment><USER7> > Yeah, good point. The weird part is that it almost introduces a new thread, > in that it introduces a new flow of control (and, if you ask for it, a new > stack), but it doesn't count as a new thread in all the usual ways, like > thread-local variables or PIDs.

Worse: most signal handlers that do anything other than setting globals destroy errno in one way or another and when you go back the code that was interrupted has a good chance of malfunctioning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks like a perfect real world complete useful application that a beginner in rust could look at.

<comment><AUTHOR> A rust beginner could also look at Jonathan Turner's lessons from solving first 12 Project Euler problems.

[0] [https://www.jonathanturner.org/2015/10/lessons-from- first-12...](https://www.jonathanturner.org/2015/10/lessons-from- first-12-euler-problems-in.html)

<comment><USER11> >The owner of www.jonathanturner.org has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website.

I added an exception as I pretty much always do but in case the owner of the site is around here, they might want to investigate this.

<comment><USER12> website owner here: odd, what configuration of firefox gives you that warning. When I connect with a recent OS X version, it seems to work okay.

<comment><USER13> Firefox on Windows here. Looks like it's getting the certificate for github, but throwing an error because your domain isn't listed in that certificate. [https://imgur.com/a/UeXtC](https://imgur.com/a/UeXtC)

<comment><USER12> Yeah, it's not set up for https. Do you see the same thing with [http://www.jonathanturner.org/](http://www.jonathanturner.org/)?

<comment><USER13> Nope, that's fine. Not sure why 0xmohit posted the HTTPS link in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I always tended to autogenerate a makefile with fake goals like:

        g1:
            job1

        g2:
            job2

and then one goal to depend on them all and I used make -j 4

<comment><USER15> parallel is awesome for when you want to want to run a number of jobs unknown in advance, such as using it as an xargs replacement:

      find . -type f -name | parallel --jobs 5 process_file

That will run "process_file foo" for ever file in a directory with 5 processes running in parallel.

<comment><USER16> Not being a jerk, but what does parallel bring to the table that xargs doesn't?

      find . -type f -name | xargs -I {} -n 1 -P 5 process_file {}

<comment><USER17> You can have remote workers with parallel (not sure if you can do that with xargs or not).

        parallel --progress --wd '.' -S 'firstname.lastname@example.com,email@example.com,2/:'  "./complicated_command --param1={1} --param2={2} ::: $(some_shellcommand_to_generate_param1_values.sh) ::: $(some_shellcommand_to_generate_param2_values.sh)

It's very flexible, become my go-to for speeding up parallelizable work. Next step up would be Celery or Spark or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not comparing it with the simpler, better moreutils parallel is really unfair.

<comment><USER5> I hope you wont take this the wrong way, but can you elaborate on why you feel Tollef's parallel (from moreutils) is better than GNU Parallel?

<comment><USER18> It was addressed elsewhere in the thread. My take is: 1/ it's written in C. 2/ it doesn't suffer from feature creep.

The code is 427 lines of C. GNU parallell is 10k+ lines of perl. Considering mmstick compares the loading times, it's easy to see where the difference comes from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wrote a go utility that is not designed to be direct replacement, but rather nicer CLI tool that does something quite similar. My version is quite a bit more limited, but totally meets my current needs.

[https://github.com/amattn/paral](https://github.com/amattn/paral)

</comment><comment><USER20> Why this can be faster than GNU parallel?

<comment><USER21> One possible reason is that GNU parallel is a perl script.

<comment><USER22> a version in C that I think was first released before GNU parallel is in "moreutils" [https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/](https://joeyh.name/code/moreutils/)

A few years ago, debian made GNU parallel provide the "/usr/bin/parallel" executable, instead of moreutils. The maintainer of moreutils had some interesting things to say about that: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=597050#75](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=597050#75)

<comment><USER23> > It is 5143 lines of code, and the anthethesis of a simple, clean, well- > designed unix command.

Only 5k? :D

But, yes, the criticisms are valid. I recommend moreutils.

<comment><USER24> He lost me at the point when he complained that GNU parallel "includes the ability to transfer files between computers". For me at least that is _the_ feature of GNU parallel that actually makes it really useful. Which I guess is the problem with all these discussions, one persons useless bloat is another persons nr. 1 killer feature.

<comment><USER25> But in the spirit of Unix, shouldn't parallel exec some file transfer program?

<comment><USER24> The actual Perl code calls out to ssh and rsync (or can be configured to use something else) when it's time to actually connect and transfer files. It just does it in a way that is nice and reasonably transparent to the end user.

It felt like his complaint was that that was 'bloat' since Real Men can achieve almost the same thing by just piping some output through some bash scripts they just hacked together.

<comment><USER5> And it is exactly the hacking part that GNU Parallel tries to help with: A lot of the helper functions in GNU Parallel could be done by expert users (--nice, --tmux, --pipepart, env_parallel, --compress, --fifo, --cat, --transfer, --return, --cleanup, --(n)onall).

But non-expert users will invariably make mistakes (e.g. get quoting wrong, not getting remote jobs to die if the controlling process is killed, or re- scheduling jobs that were killed by --timeout), and why not just have small wrapper scripts built into GNU Parallel that are well-tested, so the non- expert users can enjoy the same stability as the expert users?

<comment><USER24> Having written my fair share of those hacky wrapper scripts before I discovered GUN parallel I certainly am very happy that they offer everything I need in a single easy to use command.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like headlines that are questions (answer: "no"; next), I tend to skip over headlines that say "written in $language". Usually means they've copied something that already exists, or it doesn't have much else distinctive about it than being written in that language.

</comment><comment><USER27> I often use make to run jobs in parallel. It is nice to be able to continue after an error or breakage, especially when working with large workloads.

<comment><USER5> Using Makefiles, however, depends on the results being files. If that is not the case, make cannot tell how far you got.

GNU Parallel has --joblog and can continue from where it left off or retry all failed jobs again.</comment></comment>


Snapchat's Influencers Are Fleeing to Instagram for Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-07/instagram-embraces-the-influencers-snapchat-spurns?utm_source=wanqu.co&utm_campaign=Wanqu+Daily&utm_medium=website <comment><USER2> I shared your skepticism of Snapchat (I use Instagram pretty often and browse Facebook multiple times a day - rarely post on it). I recently hopped on the Snapchat bandwagon and here are a couple of things I really liked:

> Less focus on metrics. There is no likes and you only see views if you > really want to. This is bad for influencers but I have to give it that it is > a good break from Instagram/Facebook where people are conscious of likes.

> Its fun. The filters and emoji are better on Snapchat. The maps feature is > cool - I used it to browse snaps by Harvey/Irma victims. The Discover > section has crappy publications but there is NYT, Mashable, WSJ, etc. I pay > for WSJ but I still like to read news in the Snapchat format.

On the downside, the app is buggy and does crash pretty often for a 1.8k strength company.

<comment><USER3> Would you feel like sending snaps if none of your friends sent you snaps or even replied to them by text message?

<comment><USER4> Yup. I like being able to share without anyone being obligated to see it. Sharing on Facebook carries, for me, some social burden--I don't want to pollute friends' timelines with things only I find fun. But on Snapchat, if you're watching my Snaps, you chose to swipe left into them. (I really hate messaging on Snapchat, in part due to its lack of end to end encryption.)

<comment><USER5> I share this sentiment. I dump almost daily photos on whatsapp statuses. I won't do it on insta or fb(except on their analogous stories/status feature). I like posting updates but since I don't like when people clutter my wall with a lot of updates, I don't do it to others. The only people who see my updates are people who explicitly click on it to see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> m-masa Snapchat to me is sharing your shaky drunken escapades at 3AM with your friends to let them know you made it home and survived the night. Instagram seems more like an endless observation of copy-and-paste, superficial things and people and places. It's evolved more into a (usually inaccurate) portrayal of status than anything else.

<comment><USER6> insta has always been the status platform. the pictures are permanent. you only post your best pics and need a history of just the best. "this is who I am"

snapchat is fleeting. the quality can be lower. no one is gonna care. and the fact you have to take the picture then is more exciting than posting any old pic you found online. "this is what I'm doing"

I can snap you my beer, I'll insta the edited GoPro footage of me cliff jumping

<comment><USER7> This is getting downvotes but it reflects very closely to what I see. I don't use insta but I go on to browse occasionally of people I follow on snapchat and it's a stark contrast of what you see on the two. Insta pictures are all perfect, perfect posing, perfect lighting, and some bs quote or string of text. Snapchat is the mundane, the normal side of people that I see. People taking videos in the moment.

I don't use fb live or insta stories so I'm not sure how those end up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's got to be a middle-ground between not going after the money as hard as Facebook, and their customers having no idea whether their spending is achieving anything. They're living in la-la land if they think they can keep the latter up, especially with the bad rap a lot of online advertising has been getting over the last few years. Advertisers need to have some idea of what's going on in the system, and with Snapchat's novelty fading they're not going to get away with "trust-us" much longer.

<comment><USER9> The question is if that middle ground can support the $20bn SNAP valuation.

I would put my money on no. Snap seems like a worse version of Twitter IMO. Less value from a financial and social sense that was ridiculously overvalued at the IPO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _> He credits Axe body spray with getting him out of the "friend zone."_

This makes money? It can't die fast enough.

<comment><USER11> >enough to get paid six figures a year

six. figures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder what will happen to a generation obsessed with idols who don't contribute anything to society aside from memes, hot bodies and various rants.

But I guess I'm just old and grumpy.

<comment><USER13> You mean like movie stars? We've had at least four generations now obsessed with movie stars. It's also been the century of greatest achievement for humankind.

Correlation isn't causation though. :)

<comment><USER14> > You mean like movie stars?

Looks get you in the door here, but the large majority of movie stars are experts in a legitimate art form -- acting.

<comment><USER15> What do you think social media celebrities are doing?

<comment><USER14> So you don't see a difference between, say, kim kardashian's instagram feed and what a top hollywood actress does?

<comment><USER16> > So you don't see a difference between

Nope. There is no difference. @jonknee is right. I once met this camera grip boy at a boxing fight watch here in San Francisco. He worked at various sets in L.A., very close to the filming. He would say how he was on Kim Kardashian's "Reality Show" and how the whole thing was completely scripted for shock effect, drama etc. He said "They'd sometime do retakes and tell Kim - "This time yell at your sister louder, and then throw in a I hate you B*tch at the end."

They are all actors. The only difference I see is hollywood actors are elite level, having gone to school, and experienced and top notch, whereas the likes of Kim Kardashian, that Jersey Shores girl are low end trash, but both types make a ton of money on 2 different medium - the former in big screen, the latter on fake "Reality TV shows", and social media (where they get paid to promote crap).

<comment><USER17> Interesting tangent here. The growth in "reality" TV was driven by the desire to ditch a very particular kind of skilled, unionised talent: writers. The writers' strike caused a wave of these improvised shows that were pretending not to be acting, they became popular with the public, and the rest is history.

Kim Kardashian's ethnicity is highly relevant as well. Hollywood is a very white place. There really aren't all that many opportunities for black character actresses. Or for people who want a black star to look up to. Kim fills that gap in the market.

<comment><USER18> "people who want a black star to look up to. Kim fills that gap in the market."

? Not sure what you mean. She isn't black.

Do you mean because Kanye is on there?

<comment><USER17> .. good point, I can't remember why I thought that; almost certainly to do with Kanye.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Influencers are leaving Snapchat? Fantastic!

Influencers are just advertisers.

<comment><USER20> Yeah. I really hate marketning newspeak.

There exist well-known words that describe this occupation perfectly. Advertisers. Salesmen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Wes "Wuz Good" Armstrong has almost 700,000 followers on Instagram, enough > to get paid six figures a year to promote

Can anyone with insights into Instagram marketing confirm? Do 700k followers make you min. 100k a year?

<comment><USER22> $7 per follower seems insane- and a certain percent of those accounts are brands or other non-human?

Edit: had the numbers flipped

<comment><USER23> Sorry, wouldn't it be $1/7 = 14cents per follower?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not sure why people keep comparing these apps.

Snapchat is a much more person to person app whereas Instagram is a person to world app.

Not a surprise that money would go into instagram.

<comment><USER25> Snapchat started out as person to person app but at some point decided they will become person to world app (via snapchat stories), and it was doing well, to the point where most users use the stories feature more than the 1:1 feature.

Then came Instagram and ate their lunch. Now they can't go back because they have already IPO'd with the ad-driven business model (instead of somehow capitalizing on the ephemeral nature of the medium, which would have been much harder for FB/Instagram to copy).

So yeah, this is why people keep comparing these two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Couldn't read whole article because of paywall but I agree, Snapchat has done certain things to not become Instagram, it will be harder to monetize but it doesn't disrupt the Snapchat personal feel as compared to Instagram's "Social Media" feel where your life is always on display.

Moreover, I've started an app, did some questioning and first-year university students don't even add new friends on Facebook anymore when they come to university as compared to those who did this the year before. However, they add each other on Snapchat and follow occasionally on Instagram.

<comment><USER27> Here is a summary of the article ... [https://summarybrew.com/posts/snapchat- s-influencers-are-fle...](https://summarybrew.com/posts/snapchat-s- influencers-are-fleeing-to-instagram-for-money)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think people want person to person as it's more intimate. Then you can have world to person as well. However it becomes harder for early adopters to scale out and become mini celebrities etc... but for friend or small groups? Dunno seems like there is a market.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm sorry for posting this here, in advance. However, this Like/Peer Approval culture has indirectly contributed to one of the worst wildfires in Oregon's history.

> A woman who was hiking over the weekend in the Columbia River Gorge said > Tuesday that she happened across a teenager who threw "a smoke bomb" into > Eagle Creek Canyon, igniting the now 10,000-acre Eagle Creek fire.

Liz FitzGerald, 48, of Portland said she's fairly certain that she heard the teenager's friends -- including a boy who was video-recording with his cellphone and some girls in the group -- giggle as the firework dropped down a cliff and into the trees below.

[http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/2...](http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest- news/index.ssf/2017/09/witness_teens_giggled_as_they.html)

<comment><USER30> I don't think kids have only started doing stupid things when they discovered Snapchat/Instagram...

<comment><USER29> I agree and I want to clarify that Snapchat/Instagram/Twitter have created an amplification such that while kids may have done stupid things in the past, they are more likely to do it for an audience of their peers. The most mainstream example being YTers like Jake Paul who has taken MTV's Jackass into the New Media age. The less common examples being kids who are so self absorbed in their own world that they fail to take responsibility for what their actions incur. It is possible these teenagers who started the fire will escape consequences and (modern fire prevention techniques aside) the true tragedy is that the actions of a small group of individuals have affected the larger society irreparably. Like a jackass motorcycle rider weaving between cars on a major highway at 100+ mph, it is when your actions affect innocent bystanders that you are no longer just "selfie expressing".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Facebook has become a yahoo. Too confusing and the ads are so "intrusive." A couple days ago, I clicked on what I thought was a photo which turned to be a daily-mail news story!!! It was confusing. I never used spapchat, but it kinda sounds like the old facebook which was fun and had a moderate amount of ads.

</comment><comment><USER32> With this, plus Apple ARKit should people start to short SNAP?

<comment><USER33> $SNAP is already heavily shorted with ~17% short interest.</comment></comment>


Liquid Breathing - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing <comment><USER2> The critical bit for many interesting practical applications is this:

        A significant problem, however, arises from the high
        viscosity of the liquid and the corresponding reduction
        in its ability to remove CO2.[3][20] All uses of liquid
        breathing for diving must involve total liquid
        ventilation (see above). Total liquid ventilation,
        however, has difficulty moving enough liquid to carry
        away CO2, because no matter how great the total pressure
        is, the amount of partial CO2 gas pressure available to
        dissolve CO2 into the breathing liquid can never be much
        more than the pressure at which CO2 exists in the blood
        (about 40 mm of mercury (Torr)).[20]

This has been a known issue since the 50's and shows no sign of going away. The paragraph is a bit muddled--it's the diffusion coefficient, not the viscosity, that is relevant--but the inability of oxygenated liquids to carry away CO2 has so far been the major impediment to doing any of the really cool things this technology has promised for so long.

</comment><comment><USER3> What I instantly thought of was `The Abyss`. It was referenced towards the end and it appears the rat -and not the actor- was submerged in this fluid. Very cool! [http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/06/movies/film-the-abyss-a- fo...](http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/06/movies/film-the-abyss-a-foray-into- deep-waters.html)

<comment><USER4> For me it reminds me of the LCL in anime series Evangelion. I have seen it pop up a few times in modern sci-fi.

<comment><USER5> Same. NGE is actually referenced in the "Fiction" section of the wiki entry, along with others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How would you return to breathing normal air after having your lungs flooded with this liquid?

<comment><USER7> From memory when they do it with babies they just let it evaporate out.

<comment><USER6> In babies, I would guess that some of the amniotic fluid is also absorbed into the blood stream. Both that and evaporation seem much less likely to work with perfluorocarbons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Forgive me for being a bit too simple on this subject - wouldn't having a liquid in your lungs, throat and mouth really make it difficult or impossible to talk?

Not sure using it for diving or space travel is a great plan if that's the case. Sure you could have a text or flashing lights method of talking but there's no communication method faster than yelling "HELP!" into your radio that I can think of

<comment><USER9> Divers don't talk that much, actually.

See, there is an air intake in your mouth - and trying to talk under water does not exactly result in the noises you expect when you're talking into air.

The sign used by divers to alert others is banging your knife against the air tank. There are actual hand signs for 'I'm in trouble' or 'I'm out of air'.

<comment><USER8> Fair enough, like I say I'm not familiar with the subject but curious. I was more picturing the masks that look a bit like gas masks that have radios in them. My extent of diving knowledge is limited to movies and Mythbusters, I'll admit.

Thanks for that information :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> While I find this kind of stuff interesting, I still don't see why it is being posted here.

<comment><USER11> People like you finding it interesting is literally the definition of what should be posted on HN.

That said, I would love it if the OP game some additional context on why they submitted it - is this a response to something? Was there a new advance here? Just something cool they saw?</comment></comment>


Mark Cuban - The Future of TV - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ZH49mX4_PTU#! <comment><USER2> TV is broken. This is why we've create <http://watchlaterapp.com></comment>


Hall Design Tour – From 0% to 30% Weekly Retention - <AUTHOR> https://hall.com/blog/hall-design-tour-from-0-to-30-weekly-retention/

<comment><USER2> Focusing on creating the single page app and forgetting the pretty factor really was a key to increased retention. I feel like that was a huge learning for us. Form follows function.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hopefully these learnings will help other early startups.</comment>


New Gmail features - <AUTHOR> http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en-GB/about_whatsnew.html <comment><USER2> Speaking of the emoticons feature, am I the only one to absolutely prefer good old text emoticons over image ones? The silliest are the so-called "next- generation emoticons", they're so silly-ugly.

<comment><USER3> You're not the only one. A colon and bracket text smiley means a very different thing to a big yellow smiling face as far as I'm concerned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These are really old. Colored labels have been out for a while.

</comment><comment><USER5> i think the list should be this one instead: <http://mail.google.com/mail/help/intl/en/about_whatsnew.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> When are they going to add a To-Do list? Either in gmail or calendar. This would be really helpful.

<comment><USER7> check out remember the milk. Their FF plugin integrates nicely with GMail (and then there is Twitted and even voice call integration). Pretty slick service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to see segregation of attachments (should probably put the suggestion to the team). My brother's wife always sends photos as attachments. I have to download them manually if I want them in picassa which is tedious.

<comment><USER8> Never mind, Zenbe beat them to it: <http://www.zenbe.com/>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> These aren't new. When something's new it usually get announced on the blog and there is some sort of red new link in the upper right.

<comment><USER3> That link is showing up for me right now on gmail, probably explains why this got posted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish I can edit attachments via Google Docs and send it back out again.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you think that people at work like you and enjoy your presence? - <AUTHOR> Or is it purely by interest that they keep you around? Does it matter to you?
How would you know/(figure it out) if it did/does? <comment><USER2> When I was in 6th grade, I went on a field trip, and the teacher handed out awards to all the kids for what they did on the trip. Most of the kids got things like "most athletic" and "best teamwork skills" and "best singing voice" and things like that. Mine was "muddiest person" or something like that because I had slipped and fallen in the mud one day. Even back then, I felt like it was mildly insulting.

In my career, the "awards" I get are kind of similar. I get the "Funniest Slack GIFS" awards where everyone else gets praise for releasing good features and fixing the most bugs and giving the best presentation. I do those things very well too, but somehow the public perception of me is that I'm a klutz or a goofball, even though I try to be serious and professional.

It's kind of frustrating. So to answer your question, no, I don't think that people like me and enjoy my presence. And I don't know how to be better.

<comment><USER3> Well.. I have yet to post a GIF to my work Slack. I don't even allow emoji.

<comment><USER4> I try to use emoji as little as possible myself, but one thing that I find genuinely useful are emoji reactions, because they don't generate notifications. When someone writes "I'm gonna $do_thing if that's okay with you", I can send a :thumbsup: reaction and they won't be disturbed by the notification, yet they can immediately see if I answered. Or when someone has a baby and posts the obligatory image to the team channel, people can pile up those reactions without my phone going pling-pling-pling-pling.

(To be fair, the same can be said about threads, but in my experience, people are way more consistent about using emoji reactions than they are about properly threading their conversations.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Likes/Dislikes, unlike facebook clicks, are very personal and they vary with interactions, communications and level of trust in between you and your colleagues.

I would like to recommend this small exercise based on the game theory called "Evolution of Trust", [https://ncase.me/trust/](https://ncase.me/trust/)

At the end of this exercise there were three findings: 1\. Repeat Interactions 2\. Look for a possible win-win situation 3\. Low Miscommunication

Definitely, as I said in the start, there is a lot more than a few factors that affect a colleague likeness/dislikeness towards you. The biggest lesson from above exercise in response to your questions would be:

"In the short term, your environment defines how people like you, but in the long term, it is you who defines the environment. So, do what you can do to improve conditions necessary to evolve trust, build relationships, communicate clearly."

If it is important that you want people to like you, then communicate clearly.

Ask them, "Have you ever thought, Why do you think any colleague should like you?". Tell them, what are the reasons you like them professionally and personally, and ask the favor back.

I do it every time whenever I have a question of like/dislike related to a colleague.

<comment><USER6> That's a pretty cool game. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Old guy here who understands what you're getting at.

My thoughts on how you do it:

1\. Be a genuinely good person.

2\. Be a team player. Always credit the team. People will figure things out.

3\. Do small, nice things for people without the expectation of reciprocation. They shouldn't require a major time or money investment from you. Just little things.

4\. Show up on time. Don't be the first to leave.

5\. Don't overwork. Overworking leads to negative effects on your health.

<comment><USER8> If everybody listened to advice 4 it would conflict with advice 5

<comment><USER9> I don't follow 4. I get in early and leave early. This is the 2010s not the 1810s.

If that means I'm not liked, I'll pay that tax.

<comment><USER10> I think op means to not just do the bare minimum and be the guy who leaves when everyone else is working.

<comment><USER4> I know what you're getting at, but this language upsets me. There are a ton of valid reasons to leave when everyone else is working:

1\. doctor's appointment

2\. picking up the kids from daycare

3\. being an early bird and coming in way earlier than everyone else

4\. working part-time

Just from the top of my head.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Surely there's a middle ground?

I'm almost certainly not the person my co-workers would choose to be friends with or go out of their way to have present when not at work. I'm totally cool with that. The feeling is mutual.

But I'm also fairly certain that (while even our best friends always have _some_ habits we find irritating) for the most part they find me pleasant enough to be around and interact with.

It matters to me that my colleagues find me pleasant and easy to work with, friendly, and not grating. It doesn't matter much to me whether they particularly like me as a person as long as our interpersonal relationship is good enough to effectively facilitate our professional relationship.

On the other hand, if I find you frustrating to work with on a professional level, it doesn't matter how pleasant you are to have a beer with. I'm going to resent you and wish we didn't have to work together.

</comment><comment><USER12> Several random unrelated answers:

It can be pretty hard to know whether work friendships are genuine. It's worth assessing what you want, and whether it actually matters to you. It's much easier to get what you want when you know what it is.

Also turn the question around and ask yourself whether you care about others at work, and whether you like them and enjoy them. Are you letting them know in verbal or non-verbal ways? How often are you putting yourself in a place to be judged? For example, do you invite coworkers to your place for drinks/dinner/games? Some indicator might be whether people will do things with you outside of work, if you want that.

Work relationships, like school, usually are happenstance. You're all employees making a living and the company controls making a living. It should be expected that some work friendships are a matter of employment or situational convenience and not deep lasting bonds.

Personally, I do feel somewhat liked at work, but it's starting to matter less to me. I do usually try to be likable and also contribute, and those things do help. They way I actually know whether people liked me usually comes much later, often after I've left the company. The way I know is by finding who's interested in catching up with me on social media, or getting together to hang out or reminisce, or even start a new side project.

Seeking out some people with shared interests outside of work can help. At one company, I started a mountain biking club, and made some friends by welcoming newcomers and helping people learn how to ride.

It has in the past felt like more people liked me when I've been a manager. That also fades faster and becomes apparent that it's more often 'purely by interest' as you put it.

</comment><comment><USER13> No, people at work don't like me, and they don't enjoy my presence, but that's okay. I act professionally, I do my best to make good technical decisions, and I assist others when asked for help. I'm generous with my time. I receive positive peer & manager reviews, but when all is said and done only one thing matters: no one keeps in touch with me after work ceases to be the shared medium within which communications usually take place.

It's difficult to estimate how many people I've worked with. I've built good rapport with dozens of individuals throughout the years, but I'm still in touch with only one person.

This doesn't bother me, as my personality has nothing to do with work. My opinions, to which I'm entitled, are equally upsetting to both sides of the political divide. I don't take part in office parties, and I'll never join my colleagues on a company-sponsored beach retreat. My personality is my own, and liking me isn't a prerequisite to working productively together towards shared goals.

All this is to say: work isn't life, and life isn't work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Turn the question around and ask the same thing about your coworkers. Now take the average of your opinions about all your coworkers. That's likely how people view you. The truth probably is that other people just don't think of you all that much, so I wouldn't worry about it. As long as you avoid the bottom 10% such that you don't stick out, then it's all good. And frankly if you are asking this question, you probably aren't.

</comment><comment><USER15> This line of thinking can be detrimental to your mental health. Since you're posting on Hacker News I'm assuming you're not in politics — possibly the only career where likability matters.

Just make sure to keep your boss happy, and keep your coworkers and/or reports from literally hating you and you're fine.

Trying to do anything more than that could lead you to developing social anxiety. There's no way to truly understand what's in someone else's mind, so unless someone comes to you with a specific, actionable complaint don't worry too much about what they think of you.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, I'm even close friends with a few. You know like you know in any other context. People usually tell you and show you. I've made many friends at work over the years.

The thing is, you have to care about people for them to like you. Be genuine with them, be there for them and don't be a dick. Have integrity. Allow them to know that you're a human being that makes mistakes, that you're imperfect and that's fine and you're comfortable with that in you (and others).

Ask for help when you need it, and offer it when you have it. Specially around things people really care about.

Also, and this is the hard part, work on yourself, on your self-esteem, on being better at dealing with your own emotional state. This transfer to others too and makes all the other stuff come easier.

</comment><comment><USER17> I am not very social generally, but this goes away after you've been around people for long enough. What I am is very courteous and respectful. I generally help people as much as I possibly can, I only provide suggestions instead of acting like I necessarily know better. I give props to people and recognise when they're doing good work.

People generally seem to like working with me, and I could easily consider a lot of my current and past co-workers good friends.

</comment><comment><USER18> At my last job, I finally ended up working at a company with around 150 employees on-site.

I set a few ground rules for myself before joining: No social media interactions with people from work. Invitations can be deferred until after you no longer work together. Don't get suckered into talking about politics or other divisive topics. Keep it professional and always do the right thing.

With that in mind, to answer your questions:

Did people like me? Heck yes they did! It was easy! I'd walk right up and introduce myself to everyone I didn't know whenever the opportunity presented itself. I'd learn about them as much as I could and tell them about what I did and hopefully we'd be able to help each other. I'd ask people how things were going and try to hang out with people as much as I could during lunch / coffee breaks.

But more importantly, did they respect me? It was clear to everyone why I was there. I was there to make my team succeed despite everything that was going on outside my team. This meant that there was plenty of work to be done beyond what my title suggested.

</comment><comment><USER19> Listening and genuinely caring about others goes a long way. Honestly though, you have zero control about what others think of you. If you do good work, and are kind, compassionate and respectful I wouldn't worry about it. If you feel you have some specific deficit there are certainly professionals you can pay to help you fix it.

<comment><USER20> how to make friends and influence people. Funny old book, take from it what you will, but it espouses what you said.

Improv skills help, if (like me) you aren't brilliant at conversations, treat them more like a game, "yes and" to keep things flowing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Everyone is one bad quarter or Jack Welch style manager from being kicked to the street. When you think about it, none of this really matters.

</comment><comment><USER22> I think at my former work place people were somewhat confused about me.

I am Deaf and they sometimes didn't know what to do with me. I lipread but have difficulties in meetings. I also avoided joining social gatherings, for example coffee breaks, because lipreading is, well, exhausting. Still, I delivered code and the company was satisfied with my work, and sometimes they were surprised about that.

So people perhaps tried to like me and enjoy my presence, but probably felt unconfortable instead pitying me and asking themselves how they would manage if they were Deaf.

</comment><comment><USER23> A few years ago, the company I worked at was switching from offices to an 'open floor plan', and the noise and anxiety dropped my productivity to near zero, so I tendered my resignation. It was the longest I'd ever held a job (and still is), so I didn't enjoy leaving, but I had no choice.

My coworkers held a little going-away party for me, and gave me a custom trophy they'd had made with my (IRC) name on it -- just for being me.

So I feel confident in saying that, back when I worked in software, my coworkers enjoyed my presence, and management put up with me.

</comment><comment><USER24> Outwardly, strive to be a professional. Inwardly, strive to not give a damn about what others like or dislike.

</comment><comment><USER25> idgaf :) I try to be polite, be a good team member, and keep personal distance. My coworkers shouldn't have much information to (dis)like me or have much personal idea about me. I don't want to be a full person with them - we're professionals. Works well.

</comment><comment><USER26> I think it is mix of interest and "likeability(?)", and I like that way.

I like that people have their own self interests and will put themselves before me, because that leaves the space for me to do it when I find useful as well. And I need it, because I have a team which I need to keep it well balanced. In the end make they happy with their environment(compensation, challenges, pressure... etc).

</comment><comment><USER27> I've had jobs where I was told I was well liked and people stopped by to have conversations with me every day.

I've also had jobs where my name brought with it a reputation for expecting results and answers without hearing the life story behind it. It was best to e-mail me for a quick reply and if you see headphones on, don't wave in my face.

I did my work. I did it well.

I was honest good or bad.

I taught rather than bragged.

</comment><comment><USER28> Off topic, but I believe this thread was posted a few days ago but has reappeared as new (currently says 4 hours ago) after a delay. OP originally posted it two days ago, visible from their submissions page. I noticed this happen a few days ago as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I feel like they do. Outside of work I get text, calls and invites to go out with others. I've even received holiday cards from their families.

I try to be as genuine and forthcoming in helping those around me learn and grow with anything I learn as I grow.

</comment><comment><USER30> when i worked in a workplace i always assumed they didnt but thankfully my skills are good enough that it doesnt get me kicked out. i can gel with a few people but its pretty rare.

does it matter to me? nope but im autistic so its not really a strange situation for me, i generally assume people only speak to me if they need something, on the rare occasions where they dont i start wondering what sort of ulterior motive they have, which is probably why i dont really have friends save for a few people ive known decades

</comment><comment><USER31> Yes, I receive praise and promotion even though I feel like i don't actually ship anything. I can only deduce that people like me and so they speak well of me.

<comment><USER5> It might be possible that you are too harsh on yourself. Are you familiar with Imposter Syndrome?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Do people come directly to you for information on your area of expertise? For me it seems they haven't done as much than I'd expect, but I can't say for sure if that's because they don't like me or because my expertise is less respected than I imagine it should be. Either way it does matter to my career prospects as well as to my feelings.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think so. I get worried I ask too many questions some time (newest hire of a small team of vets) but we have a lot of good conversations and learn from one another, aside from friendly chats and making one another laugh from time to time.

Humor is always good, really it just comes down to recognizing your surroundings and acting accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER34> My stupid questions and comments make people laugh sometimes, so I assume they do, but I would never want to know peoples truest thoughts about me anyway.

In the end, you're just another person in their life, just like they are another person in yours, so it doesn't matter as much as you think...

</comment><comment><USER35> This kind of theory-of-mind thinking was important when we were stuck with the same 300 person tribe. Now, not so much. Do good, be personable, mind your own business.</comment>


What the inside of a container data center looks like - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/?p=291 <comment><USER2> It seems like black would be a bad exterior color choice for heat purposes. Also, if I were to buy one of these, I would want it in a plain white container so as to not advertise that I have hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of computers inside of a highly mobile unit.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure that the stuff on Sun's website is just the "omg cool" marketing version; the real version probably has a less "awesome" color scheme. But you do bring up a good question... where do you store these containers? Do you just rent a warehouse and have them delivered?

<comment><USER4> You put them on a train that doesn't stop moving around the country to hide your whereabouts as you use your servers to facilitate your data-hungry conspiracy needs, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.sun.com/products/sunmd/s20/specifications.jsp>

Nice big power outlet, and don't forget to hook it up to the water as well. I'm guessing it is water cooled.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting. How do you power one of these things? And how is it ventilated?</comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone unironically refer to themselves as rockstars/ninjas? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone unironically refer to themselves as rockstars/ninjas?
This question applies to programmers, designers, lawyers etc. I am not asking if popular musicians call themselves rock stars, or if assassins who wear black call themselves ninjas.
I am asking because I wonder if everyone feels embarrassed by these terms, why do people use them? Surely, it must work on some people. <comment> knight-errantry so, i started at a new company last year, and a second person in the same role (customer success) started the same day. when we were doing icebreakers (we were 2 out of a big group starting that day) my team counterpart explained that leading up to current company he's been a 'startup ninja,' building teams and establishing processes. I thought to myself: "that's strikes 1 and 2 right there"

I could be wrong (or just self-centered) but I feel like the 'ninja' self- designation is more common in sales and marketing roles because we're all making stuff up as we go anyway; I feel like you'd have to be an exceptionally formidable technologist to use the ninja moniker without quockly having to shows examples of work that prove it.</comment>


Teen fakes pregnancy as school project - <AUTHOR> http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20110421/NEWS03/704219784

<comment><USER2> Brilliant.</comment>


MIT Seeks Skilled Web Developer for Climate Change Project. You? - <AUTHOR> http://careers.peopleclick.com/careerscp/client_mit/external/jobDetails.do?functionName=getJobDetail&jobPostId=5599&localeCode=en-us <comment><USER2> What stack are you guys using?

<comment><AUTHOR> MySQL, Java (Liferay, SpringMVC, JSF), jQuery, Vensim (a climate modelling environment) and a couple more :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool!

</comment><comment><USER4> this is very cool.</comment>


Show HN: PrintReddit.com Send Postcards of Top Reddit Images Lob/Stripe/Reddit - <AUTHOR> https://www.printreddit.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We made this hack for fun because we thought the Lob API (send mail by hitting an API) was a cool concept, and we wanted to build something to try it out.

Enjoy it, and let us know if you have any questions about what the experience was integrating with the APIs!</comment>


Ask HN: Why have graphical programming languages never taken off? - <AUTHOR> There's been many efforts, but why are all developers still writing code using characters?
I come from an engineering background and naively imagined plugging software components together like Lego. But in reality, you can never seem to get away from writing code... <comment><USER2> In my experience, because they don't solve the real, hard problems, slow down work, and make it harder to view a good chunk of code at a time.

Typing is not what makes coding hard, it is coming up with the proper algorithms, data structures, architecture (e.g. coupling), tests, etc.

Typing is faster than dragging icons and filling in properties.

Text is denser, so you can view more of your program at once, and in an expressive language can be quite descriptive.

</comment><comment><USER3> See: Visual Programming - Why it's a Bad Idea [http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2018/10/visual-programming- wh...](http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2018/10/visual-programming-why-its-bad- idea.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> What a great article, that explains the feelings I've had perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A graphical linking of function blocks is commonly used to configure process control systems, historically DCS style systems but now with IEC 61131 one of the five languages used by PLC's is function block diagram.

Some of these systems can be reasonably complicated, we are talking oil refineries, LNG processing plants, large mineral processing facilities, chemical plants etc.

The reasons they are programmed this way are many and varied, many historical/legacy, but essentially much of it boils down to limiting variability of the language and creating a "bridge" language that the specialist engineers focusing on the chemistry of the process can more easily discuss and work with.

This probably isn't changing in a hurry as the industry is also very slow to adapt. The sort of facilities are plant worth tens of billions of dollars and multi-millions of dollars lost per trip or hour of downtime. Owners are understandably risk adverse to experimenting with a new paradigm that may work a little better, but may also create problems.

Additionally, plant owners factor in availability and decades of experience in the existing pool of labor that has the specialist skills related to optimisation and real time control of the process as the primary value add.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are lots of successful domain specific graphical "programming languages". FME, Dynamo, UE Blueprint, Pure Data, LabView, various shader constructing tools etc.

The problem is that general purpose programming is too abstract to fit nicely into a visual metaphor, but as long as you can narrow your scope enough there is plenty of room graphical programming.

</comment><comment><USER6> My personal guess coming from my experience with pd/maxMSP:

this is what I'm talking about: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2kQ8ETzdyw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2kQ8ETzdyw)

In generative music these are actually very popular.

\- it's great for simple small things, here it takes out the complexity of the flow of information because it shows it with lines

\- input is more work. you still have syntax and everything you can't type you have to click together or even search in a library of elements

\- nesting and object orient programing is difficult to depict, you loose more than you gain. You can use a lot of containers and that's what people who are good at it do, but I think it's still not as elegant as reusable functions.

\- i personally don't like to have to do screen estate management

<comment><USER6> big pro i forgot: these have real-time input for free, e.g. a slider for some ranged number you can quickly fiddle around with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's too many possibilities. You need a narrow field of options for graphical programming to work. Blueprints works for Unreal because it is focused only on video games. [https://docs.unrealengine.com/en- us/Engine/Blueprints](https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Blueprints)

</comment><comment><USER8> I spend far more time reading code and thinking about code than I ever do writing code. Writing code using characters is no more an issue than writing email using characters. Language is a powerful, appropriate technology.

Problems simple enough to be solved by plugging software components together are also simple enough to be solved with a few lines of code, but that's not where the actual work lies. Writing code is effortless compared to the work of thinking out the design of the code that needs to be written, and that work would need to happen regardless of the interface.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are a few successful examples of graphical programming languages used by engineers and scientists everyday. Simulink and Labview are what I'm thinking of, there may be a few other similar ones I don't know about.

I actually don't like using these tools too much personally, and yes I suppose they are relatively niche. But there are some people that swear by them, and they really are powerful and useful in their problem domains.

</comment><comment><USER10> It isn't for nothing that we often describe programming as "talking" to a computer. Programming is a language, and as the alphabet replaced pictograms in human languages, so characters and words continue to be a useful and above all compact way of representing computer languages.

</comment><comment><USER11> There is no common symbol system that would facilitate tooling, interchange formats, common idioms and other ways of exploiting network effects. So the text based world has built a far away lead in inertia and value from network effects over the last 70 years or so.

</comment><comment><USER12> speed > ui

programming with a graphic interfaces is good for visual feedback but slow at developing as it requires a mouse and then some laying out which is more of a designer tool.</comment>


Bacteriophage phi X174 DNA a message from extraterrestrial intelligence? (1979) - <AUTHOR> http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1979Icar...38..148Y

<comment><AUTHOR> To all the comments about how the answer is no: I agree, and the reason I posted this is not because of the answer to the question, but because the premise and reasoning are very interesting to read.

Also, I got this link in a comment in the following thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8675078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8675078). Thanks `jonmrodriguez!

</comment><comment><USER2> Here is the link to the actual journal article.

Absolutely disgusting that it is so obfuscated and so difficult to acquire. Information is free if we all help make it available to everyone:

[https://mega.co.nz/#!O1ok1L4T!e06uUlxvYkRf0JVgpf1dvnQWQrhlSM...](https://mega.co.nz/#!O1ok1L4T!e06uUlxvYkRf0JVgpf1dvnQWQrhlSMs8w29ZP8jRDlE)

</comment><comment><USER3> From the abstract: "No significant patterns have been observed".

So I'd say the answer is "no".

<comment><USER4> It could be that we haven't detected the interleaved frames and the audio subcarrier.

or

Maybe we're just not thinking like a "Vega"n would[1].

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SbKE_U4b7U&spfreload=10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SbKE_U4b7U&spfreload=10)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an interesting premise but one that's almost impossible to verify. DNA would inevitably evolve in the billions of years of adaptation, rendering the message incomprehensible. Even with all relevant techniques (probability analysis, error correcting codes, ...), it's at best guess work. Despite the problems with implementation, it's still a very interesting idea that has a few good reasons supporting its logic. Any advanced life form that reaches a new planet will almost certainly analyze the planet for life and it's genetic makeup. I'm not sure we'll be able to validate or completely dismiss the idea until we explore other planets.

<comment><USER6> An interesting followup study would be to explore techniques of encoding information in DNA to reduce the error rate over generations. Could shed some light on how long a message would remain comprehensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The funny part of the 1979 paper is that its Fig 3 of NA codes just looks like QR code of 2014:

[http://i.imgur.com/AR0OhAF.png](http://i.imgur.com/AR0OhAF.png)

</comment><comment><USER8> If there's a way to access this article from the link you submitted, I'm not seeing it. If there isn't a way, I wonder why you submitted it at all.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know what would be interesting? Doing this on our own DNA. What if that 0.1% difference between us and chimpanzees, was caused by such a capsule injected into a chimp by an extraterrestrial intelligence, and our key to interstellar travel, Dyson sphere, etc. has been hiding within us all along?

Would make a cool movie.

</comment><comment><USER10> you should add "(1979)" to the title.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried, but looks like the max field limit was hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> When a headline ends with a question mark the answer is always no.

</comment><comment><USER12> I didn't click on the link but I'm pretty sure the answer is "No".

</comment><comment><USER13> I find the premise offensive. It's exactly the same as evolution-denying creationists: the idea that something is so complex that it couldn't be created by evolution because that would imply some degree of randomness, or whatever misunderstanding.

<comment><USER8> The scientific method has no regard for which premises you or anyone else find offensive. If the research is sound, both the question and the results are worthy of attention.</comment></comment>


My love for Opera - Why Opera is so much better than Firefox - <AUTHOR> http://rutsum.com/my-love-for-opera

<comment><USER2> Opera needs a better logo. I find their current one rather uninspiring. Wait. Am I hypothesizing that their logo affects their adoption rate? Yup, probably more than we assume.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Submitted for rant^Wdiscussion reasons.</comment>


Dropping Acid - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2008/11/09/style/t/index.html#pagewanted=0&pageName=09cecchiniw&

<comment><USER2> I like to experiment with mixing drinks, and have always been a bit frustrated with the lack of sour ingredients. You basically have lemon/lime and bitters which are hard to find in variety and often citrus flavored anyways. So this should be pretty good to add variety, akin to making my own syrups and liqueurs. Awesome!

<comment><USER3> Try pure citric acid. It's the best (only?) way of adding sour without any unnecessary flavor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nytimes can screw themselves. Try hitting the page from an iPhone and you get a prompt to install flash. When are people going to get a clue.

<comment><USER5> Same prompt on a desktop computer running Firefox with Flash intentionally de- installed.

I de-install Flash because it tempts me to waste time, and even when I do not give in to a temptation, resisting the temptation expends mental resources (namely, executive function) I could have put to a better use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I thought I was reading Hacker News?

</comment><comment><USER7> Your title was very misleading. But the information that you wrote about was mildly informative and entertaining. Try to write about something really interesting and intelligent.</comment>


Show HN: Did The [NBA team] Win Last Night? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davewalk/did-the-nba-team-win-last-night/

<comment><USER2> Could you make just a small change to the app to show who will win tonight?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, although this makes me think that I could at least try to put in the odds...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks really nice, did you build it for yourself / to scratch your itch?

Thanks for sharing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! Yes, just a small pet project.

I can't watch my favorite team (Cavs) most nights because I am not in the area. So when I wake up in the morning I want to see who won the night before. Usually I'll go to ESPN to get their wrap-up, but I would much prefer getting a lot of recaps, video and stories, all in one place.

Hopefully others will find it useful and I designed it to be fairly easy to fork for your own team.</comment></comment>


GitLab.com down - <AUTHOR> Also their status page https://status.gitlab.com/ seems to be down? <comment><USER2> They're having some trouble with their latest deployment it seems: [https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/829677552314810368](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/829677552314810368)

edit: It's the Redis cluster: [https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/829680989538492416](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/829680989538492416)</comment>


How to Make Remote Team Collaboration Work - <AUTHOR> http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/how-to-make-remote-team-collaboration-work/ <comment><USER2> Obligatory link to one of my own side projects: <http://shoptalkapp.com>

Basically designed with _exactly_ this use case and these issues in mind.</comment>


Alexis Ohanian to be blamed for chaos instead of Ellen Pao - <AUTHOR> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/reddit-ex-ceo-says-co-founder-alexis-ohanian-be-blamed-instead-ellen-pao-chaos-1510700

<comment><AUTHOR> Original post:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0t...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1ecxv)</comment>