John McAfee arrested in Guatemala - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/06/us-belize-mcafee-arrest-idUSBRE8B504H20121206 <comment><USER2> What a sad situation. Its obvious that McAfee is in a state of mania. Its been widely documented that he has extensive abuse issues with bath salt type of drugs which are about as paranoia-inducing as possible.

Regardless of his guilt in killing his neighbor, he truly needs professional help. Going long periods as he is can have serious long-term effects.

Also, this is not someone to idolize. He fled from the US to avoid a wrongful death lawsuit.

<comment><USER3> For anyone unfamiliar with bath salts, here is a fairly comprehensive article describing the drug: <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/bath-salts/>

Also, here's a quick summary of what the drug does in GIF format: <http://i.imgur.com/P4csH.gif>

<comment><USER4> "Bath Salts" is not a "thing". "Bath salts" is how "research chemicals" (read: drugs) are imported to the United States and sold under the radar of the FDA and DEA.

These things are sold as: lady bug attractant, plant food, or bath salts.

None of these are actually the intended use, unless you think that head shops are now having crossover with bath and body works.

Here is an excellent [but very depressing] story about how some "lady bug attractant" devastated a town:

[http://www.vice.com/read/bath-salts-in-the- wound-0000320-v19...](http://www.vice.com/read/bath-salts-in-the- wound-0000320-v19n7)

<comment><USER5> I wonder what happens if you actually ended up using bath salts as.... bath salts.

Would you experience effects from absorbing them? If so, that would be a pretty lock-solid lawsuit.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately I suspect suing one of these companies would not be worth the trouble. I can't imagine they keep any amount of assets anywhere that they could be seized.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Serious question: Why do so many people empathise with McAfee's plight?

From where I stand he looks like wealthy man who lost direction, turned to drugs and likely killed a man.

<comment><USER8> Techies read a lot of genre fiction with anti-heroes on the run, and that kind of thing. Maybe even some political sympathy, McAfee as an example of "going Galt".

<comment><USER9> Who is Galt?

<comment><USER10> "John Galt is a fictional character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (1957)."

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

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

<comment><USER9> What I meant was: Who is John Galt?

<comment><USER11> A fictional character.

<comment><USER12> Ah, the lesser seen cousin of Poe's Law: any sufficiently confused exchange on the Internet is indistinguishable from an Abbot and Costello routine.

<comment><USER13> If only it were so! Profound confusion would be much easier to spot in a world that worked like that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Although it's more interesting to imagine he was found due to the outing of a VICE photographer's EXIF data[1], it's probably more likely he gave himself up at the advice of his attorney in Guatemala[2].

[1]: [http://www.mobileprivacy.org/2012/12/vice-com-publishes- excl...](http://www.mobileprivacy.org/2012/12/vice-com-publishes-exclusive- with-john-mcafee-reveals-location-in-iphone-metadata-exif/)

[2]: [http://www.vice.com/read/john-mcafee-is-in-guatemala-city- an...](http://www.vice.com/read/john-mcafee-is-in-guatemala-city-and-he-just- hired-the-best-lawyer-in-the-country)

</comment><comment><USER15> This means the VICE metadata of the image the published was correct, and his "I edited the EXIF data" story was a lie: he was in Guatemala (specifically, along the Rio Dulce in Parque Nacional Rio Dulce).

Also, just yesterday he posted saying that he would be meeting with Guatemalan officials this morning: <http://www.whoismcafee.com/guatemala/>

<comment><USER16> He admitted it in that post you linked to:

        Yesterday was chaotic due to the accidental release of
        my exact co-ordinates by an unseasoned technician at
        Vice headquarters.

<comment><USER17> That's a shame.. Vice produces some interesting content. Hopefully this won't cause too much damage to their reputation.

<comment><USER18> I don't think they'd care either way. Vice is gonzo journalism (and I love them for it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Reading about McAfee on wikipedia, I found this one interesting relating to the paranoia point of the story:

"In a 2012 article in Mensa Bulletin, the magazine of American Mensa, he stated that being the developer of the first commercial anti-virus program has made him "the most popular hacking target", adding "Hackers see hacking me as a badge of honor". He added that for his own security he has other people buy his computer equipment for him, uses pseudonyms for setting up computers and logging in, and changes his IP address several times a day."

<comment><USER20> Sounds like RMS...

<comment><USER21> In what way? I'm no huge fan of RMS, but McAffe is in a whole different league of "weird relationship with computers and the internet".

<comment><USER20> Just a few examples:

 _"I sometimes use Google's search engine, and I sometimes use DuckDuckGo. When I use a search engine, it is always from a machine that isn't mine and that other people also use. I never identify myself to the site, of course."_ <http://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html>

_"I am unwilling to identify myself in order to connect to the Internet. For instance, if a hotel gives a user name and password to each room, I won't use that system, since it would identify me. I would need some other way to connect."_ [https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developer...](https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers- public/2011-October/007647.html)

 _"I refuse to have supermarket frequent buyer cards of my own because they are a form of surveillance.

I refuse to have a cell phone because they are tracking and surveillance devices. They all enable the phone system to record where the user goes, and many (perhaps all) can be remotely converted into listening devices.

When I need to call someone, I ask someone nearby to let me make a call.

I absolutely refuse to take Amtrak trains because they check passengers ID (sometimes, not all the time)"_ <http://stallman.org/rms-lifestyle.html>

<comment><USER19> Love that one

"When I need to call someone, I ask someone nearby to let me make a call."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "They say the trial will last 30 days"

<comment><USER23>
        McAffee, trial, 30 days

Haha I see what you did there :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks like it's time to open up another packet of popcorn kernels, this movie is starting to get even more interesting. In all seriousness though, I may have said else-wise earlier but provided John is given a chance to defend himself and isn't killed or framed for the murder before the trial, if he's telling the truth hopefully it all works out in the end.

<comment><USER25> "isn't killed or framed for the murder before the trial"

He could certainly be guilty and the sole source of all this drama, you know. He's been a very unreliable narrator since the beginning.

<comment><USER26> This seems compatible with his being guilty. If he is guilty (and I make no statement either way, really have no idea) then I'd still hope he's found guilty legitimately, rather than being framed or assassinated.

<comment><USER25> Again you push the idea that he's fully sincere and mentally grounded in any fears of "framing" and "assassination". He is not a well man from his writings/behaviors and will hopefully find the care he needs in prison or elsewhere if not found guilty.

<comment><USER26> I really don't think it's related to his mental state. The possibility that he's being unjustly chased by local police is not at all mutually exclusive with the (seemingly pretty likely) possibility that he's mentally unwell.

<comment><USER25> Are charges of murder and running a drug lab necessarily "unjust"?

You've decided his innocence already, the rest of us require something more than his word.

<comment><USER26> > You've decided his innocence already, the rest of us require something more > than his word.

What the fuck, man. I haven't decided anything. I don't know enough about the case to even speculate. Go take your preconceived notions elsewhere, and stop criticizing me for things I haven't even said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> EXIF metadata: ruining people's lives since 1995

</comment><comment><USER28> John was interviewed on the Joe Rogan podcast on Nov. 27 when he was still on the run: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GmwSgCfn38>. It's worth a listen if you want to hear his side of the story (though it's quite cringeworthy).

It starts at about 18:40.

<comment> Aco- This is an interesting interview, McAfee doesn't sound insane at all, in fact this entire interview sounds exactly the opposite, he is rather put together and well spoken.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Great job Vice Magazine! Good Journalism.

(Leak aside, this is probably for the best though.)

</comment><comment><USER30> Why does following the McAfee story feel like watching a soap opera?

<comment><USER31> Because this is the kind of things soap operas are made from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice job VICE magazine

<comment><USER33> I think he went to Guatemala for asylum on purpose

<comment><USER34> > I think he went to Guatemala for asylum on purpose

Doubtful, or he would have contacted the Guatemalan authorities immediately.

What more likely happened: he illegally entered Guatemala, either to hide or to go further into hiding to another country, got busted because he stupidly published a picture with EXIF data in it, got arrested and then claimed he was looking for asylum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> According to his blog, he might not get deported:

> My lawyer just brought a judge to the jail and the judge issued a stay order > until a higher judge can review the case. This effectively stops Immigration > from returning me to the Belize border. So….. the urgency is eased a bit.

</comment><comment><USER19> Not sure how his side of story goes, all news seems to be incoherent: He didn't pay 2M$ to that party, so they made the police kill his neighbor in order to take him for questioning and then kill him?

</comment><comment><USER36> I am impressed that he hasn't died earlier from the drugs - the guy is 67 and looks 50. He must drunk _a lot_ of tea. If they find him guilty, his life is over.

</comment><comment><USER37> Vice footage of the detainment: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWqiVhRa0xI>

</comment><comment><USER38> ...just out of curiosity, what's the worst thing that could happen to this guy if he just comes back to the US?

</comment><comment><USER39> I wonder if he will get a 30 day trial..

</comment><comment><USER40> He should have made a beeline for the Ecuadorian embassy and pulled an Assange maneuver.

</comment><comment><USER41> Well the good thing is that now McAfee has the entire world watching what happens to him - so it's more likely that he won't be killed.

We will see though.

</comment><comment><USER42> I would be pretty angry at Vice Magazine if I was McAfee right now.

</comment><comment><USER43> It's unfortunate he's batshit crazy right now or he could probably get the US Embassy involved and fight his extradition and asked that he be deported back to the US, instead of Belize.

<comment><USER44> He's evading a US lawsuit. He doesn't want to go back to the US.

<comment><USER45> I think I'd rather be back in the US facing a civil action, than on trial for murder in Belize.

<comment><USER44> Wouldn't that be worst of both worlds? Going through civil action and then being extradited to Belize to face criminal trial?

<comment><USER43> Except in very rare circumstances, the United States does not extradite its citizens to face criminal charges in other countries.

@learc83: exactly. if he wasn't having a psychotic episode, he'd realize that. unfortunately his mind is probably telling him that somehow going to Belize > going to the US.

<comment><USER44> > Except in very rare circumstances, the United States does not extradite its > citizens to face criminal charges in other countries.

Wait, what, really? They've been pitching a fit about Gary McKinnon, Christopher Tappin, Assange, etc.

I guess I should pay more attention to the laws of other nations.

<comment><USER25> "They've been pitching a fit about"

The difference is that America answers to no one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for? - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/15/nobel-winner-liu-xiaobo-chinese-dissident

<comment><USER2> A comment from a reader there:

"Oh Barry!

When I google your name, I discover that your main focus of advocacy turns out to be ...

... defending the Chinese Government from accusations that it is doing anything wrong in Tibet.

( [http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie...](http://www.google.com/search?aq=f&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Barry+Sautman#sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=active&q=%22Barry+Sautman%22+tibet&aq=&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=5640bd756f22a93a) )

Well, you live in China. If you wanted to protest about Tibet, you couldn't.

So instead you do this ( <http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=2732> ):

Barry Sautman, Associate Professor of Social Science at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, spoke at UCLA December 2 to defend the thesis that claims of cultural repression against Tibetans by the Han Chinese are greatly exaggerated by Tibetan exiles in India and by the liberal Western press. His talk was met with some skepticism from discussant Nancy Levine (Anthropology, UCLA) and by some members of the audience, but he presented a wide range of data to support his view. The talk was sponsored by the Center for Chinese Studies.

Oh dearie dearie me.

I don't think I like you very much."

<comment><USER3> The point seems to be that if Liu deserved the Nobel peace prize, then surely George Bush deserved it as well.

But looking at past recipients of the prize (e.g. Henry Kissinger, Barack Obama), it does't seem so surprising anymore.</comment></comment>


Nvidia RTX Voice in action – background noise cancelling - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.twitter.com/theGunrun/status/1252789873699745792 <comment><USER2> Offtopic: Anything similar for phone and music ?

Nvidia product page [https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx- voice...](https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/guides/nvidia-rtx-voice-setup- guide/)</comment>


Lizards Show Evolution In Action - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/videos/news-lizards-show-evolution-in-action.html

<comment><USER2> From the guidelines at <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

        In Submissions

        ...
        If you submit a link to a video or pdf, please warn
        us by appending [video] or [pdf] to the title.

Let me explain why I think the guideline is a good one.

I have two monitors. Each has 12 virtual desktops. Each virtual desktop has between 10 and 40 windows, some of which are browsers. Each browser has 10 to 50 tabs. I've just counted.

I tend to launch a bunch of stuff quickly, then methodically track through them, skimming, launching, and closing as appropriate. When a video auto- starts I have to track through potentially hundreds of windows/tabs/whatever, to find the one that's giving me grief.

It's annoying, and I think it's rude not to follow a site's guidelines.

You may disagree, and I'd be interested in an enlightening debate.</comment>


Why there is no Hitchhiker's Guide to Mathematics for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://jeremykun.com/2013/02/08/why-there-is-no-hitchhikers-guide-to-mathematics-for-programmers/ <comment><USER2> While there is no "royal road" to mathematics for programmers who don't care about proofs, there is a programmer's road to proofs for those interested in Math.

In fact, the book is even called "The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming" [0]. It covers mathematical notation, proof construction, and lots of interesting portions of discrete math that should be of interest to programmers. And large portions of the results are demonstrated or used in interesting Haskell programs.

[0] [http://www.amazon.com/Haskell-Programming-Second-Edition- Com...](http://www.amazon.com/Haskell-Programming-Second-Edition- Computing/dp/0954300696/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

<comment><USER3> That book is on my to-read list, yet I don't know what to think of a book that starts like this: [http://i.imgur.com/rSc0fpw.png](http://i.imgur.com/rSc0fpw.png)

<comment><USER4> The validity of that statement depends on your historical perspective.

To the modern eye, we see radically different type systems and conclude they are as different as night and day.

But there was a time when the world was divided into people who thought anything higher-level than C or FORTRAN was stupid and impractical, and those who aspired to build more abstract languages. LISP was one of the rallying cries of the latter group. Haskell clearly falls into that group too.

<comment><USER3> Hm, that makes some sense, the book might be old, that's why.

<comment><USER5> It can't be that old, since according to Wikipedia Haskell itself is only about 23 years old. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_(programming_language)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_\(programming_language\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like how the author mentions having an executable mathematical language might be helpful. Math is a non-standard non-machine-executable programming language which means it's inherently buggy. On top of that, now I need to interpret the "code" while I'm learning and it can be pretty dense.

Much like in programming, I'm sure expert mathematicians may not see why it's so painful, but wait until a more robust language/system is developed for the hobbyist. It will be extremely disruptive.

<comment><USER7> > Math is a non-standard non-machine-executable programming language which > means it's inherently buggy.

I don't understand what you mean by non-standard. I can't think of any language more standard than mathematics.

Mathematical theorems are formally proven. That is a higher form of knowledge than empirical validation (running programs against tests). Another case of empirical validation is scientific experimentation. It validates theories by increasing our assessment of their plausibility, but never up to 100%. Mathematical proofs are the only completely objective form of knowledge. Automatic theorem provers do exist and are employed by mathematicians, but they are inherently limited, as proven by Gödel's undecidability theorems.

<comment><USER8> _Mathematical theorems are formally proven._

It's formal compared to colloquial english, but completely vague compared to computer programs.

There are automatic theorem provers, but it isn't Godel's undecidability theorem that limits them. It's the difficulty of formally writing down our proofs in machine readable format that limits them for practical purposes.

<comment><USER9> Mathematical proofs are completely precise, that is to say, not vague in the least. They are, however, in an extremely high-level language; it's left to the reader to expand the notation enough to convince themselves of the validity.

(And, of course, there can be bugs - that is, mistakes - but there is no ambiguity.)

<comment><USER10> So the underlying ideas are precise, but they're expressed in imprecise language? That's true of all communication.

When I ask my wife for "that thing by the door," I know exactly what I mean, but she has a to do a lot of work to decode it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > To learn mathematics from scratch. The working programmer simply doesn't > have time for that.

I disagree. Most of high school math and calculus can be learned fairly quickly (like weeks). This is what I have been trying to do with my book "No bullshit guide to math and physics." It has been very successful with coders: [http://minireference.com/](http://minireference.com/)

Also on the topic math \cap code, here is an excellent talk by Gerald Sussman: [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Expression-of- Ideas](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Expression-of-Ideas)

<comment><USER12> The problem is that high school math and basic calculus is not much mathematics at all, and it still has the problems of foreign notation and ambiguity.

<comment><USER11> HS math and calc a is _some_ math, definitely not all, but a good chunk of what I would call "applied math"\---the math that links directly to the real- world, meaning the concepts can be understood intuitively, e.g., the connections to physics.

The trick is to covertly throw in some formal proofs to prepare the reader for the more abstract stuff. Going directly into proofs might be too much of a jump for some people, though I agree that, ultimately, this is what mathematics is about.

As for the foreign notation, I wrote an appendix which explains how to read things: [http://mcgillweb.alwaysdata.net/notation_appendix.pdf](http://mcgillweb.alwaysdata.net/notation_appendix.pdf)

<comment><USER13> > HS math and calc a is some math, definitely not all, but a good chunk of > what I would call "applied math"\---the math that links directly to the > real-world, meaning the concepts can be understood intuitively, e.g., the > connections to physics.

IMHO there's little mathematics that can't be applied to the real world rather directly. I even heard mathematicians say that the distinction between pure and applied mathematics is mostly for historical reasons. Especially if you consider connections to physics as intuitive understandability - for example in string theory or quantum field theory you'll find lots of highly complicated mathematics.

<comment><USER14> _I even heard mathematicians say that the distinction between pure and applied mathematics is mostly for historical reasons._

It must have been applied mathematician, for I cannot even imagine pure mathematician uttering anything like this.

I mean, seriously, I know quite a lot of modern pure mathematics, and for most of it I cannot picture even far-fetched connection with anything existing in real world, not to mention an actual application in solving some problem that wasn't created only for this application.

Most of the time, for almost every field of mathematics, the way it works is that for an enormous amount of knowledge, and enormous amount of research happening and results and papers being published, only very, very small amount will actually get applied any time soon (soon as in next 200 years). For some fields, like calculus, or probability, or partial differential equations, amount of applicable stuff is larger (mostly it's just old, one or two centuries old stuff anyway), and for other fields, like say homological algebra, or algebraic topology, or descriptive set theory, the applicable stuff is almost nonexistent - I'll buy a beer to anyone who'll point me to an application of descriptive set theory to any real life problem.

Almost all of the mathematics existing is purely abstract, and not applicable to real world, and I find it hard to even imagine anyone trying to argue otherwise. One can argue that what now is considered abstract and not applicable can become very useful in real life problems in future, and indeed, it happens quite often, but I think it will not be much, since we're applying to real life problems only a small fraction of 200 years old mathematics today anyway.

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's fair to say some idea is not applicable because you don't know of an application. Number theory was like that before the advent of computers, and I'm a firm believer that there are thoughts that cannot be thunk until the right framework comes along to allow it.

That being said, a lot of these pure subjects do have applications. For example: algebraic geometry (the crown jewel of pure mathematics, my colleagues would have be believe) has applications to tons of industrial problems in the form of solving systems of polynomial equations (see homotopy continuation). Algebraic geometry has also been applied to robot motion planning, etc.

Descriptive set theory is applied in functional analysis and in ergodic theory, which in turn is applied to statistical physics. Not to mention that descriptive set theory is the pure-logic equivalent of computational complexity theory, and that there is potential to connect the two fields and resolve some big open problems (though it's doubtful that P vs NP will be resolved this way).

And almost all of modern physics is based on more or less modern mathematics: tensor analysis and other flavors of linear algebra, lie theory, etc. Algebraic topology is starting to find some traction in the subfield of persistent homology, which aims to study high-dimensional data sets in the context of homological algebra. I even gave a talk earlier this year on the concrete attempts people have made to apply persistent homology to real-world problems [1]. It's still an extremely young field, but shows some promise.

I'll give you that mathematics is extremely abstract, because I believe it. But to say that it's not applicable and being applied wherever possible is a bit naive. And to say that it's only 200 year old mathematics is to ignore the most applicable fields which did not exist even a hundred years ago: combinatorial optimization, mathematical computer science, and modern statistics and probability theory.

[1] [http://jeremykun.com/2013/04/27/persistent-homology-talk- at-...](http://jeremykun.com/2013/04/27/persistent-homology-talk-at-uic- slides/)

<comment><USER14> I must have not communicated what I meant clearly, because you missed my point.

Only a very, very small fraction of results in number theory are applicable. Only a very, very small fraction of stuff done in algebraic topology is applicable. While descriptive set theory is indeed sometimes applied in functional analysis, the intersection between these two is not a significant fraction of each one of them, and by the time you apply (a very small fraction of) functional analysis to statistical physics, you're already too far from descriptive set theory to even see it on the horizon.

I'm not saying that none of the mathematics is applicable, because this is obviously not the case. What I'm saying is that the stuff that gets applied to real life problems is surprisingly small, even more so when you're not a mathematician.

When I first started to learn mathematics, I was completely overwhelmed, when I found out just how much knowledge is out there in this field of human activity. The planes of mathematics are so vast, there's almost nothing else in sight when you stand atop of the Mount Bourbaki. I realized that even if I get a PhD in pure mathematics, I will still only be able to learn less 1% of mathematics ever created in my whole lifetime. That's why when I hear people saying that all math can be applied, I think that they must have not realized just how much of the stuff is in there.

I used to specialize in algebraic topology, and when I first learned about persistent homology, I encountered a home page of the professor at some US faculty, who specialized in applying algebraic topology in real life, and the first reaction of me and my classmates whom I have shown his website was not appreciation of his results. We were totally amazed that this stuff can be applied to anything _at all_. Yeah, some of these applications were to the problems that are usually solved in a better way, some problems were very contrived and seemed to actually be tailored so that one can apply algebraic topology to them, but still these were very fine and interesting results, and we were very surprised by them.

The field of algebraic geometry actually makes an interesting example. Indeed, it is considered by many one of the most, if not the most abstract field of the mathematics. Initially, at the beginning of the previous century, people were mostly concerned with studying the sets of solutions of systems of polynomial equations. David Hilbert with his landmark results being his basis theorem and Nullstellensatz laid fundamentals to this field, and because of an essential assumption in the Nullstellensatz theorem that creates a bridge between algebra and geometry, for many decades most of the results concerned only polynomials and sets of solutions in algebraically closed fields, because for anything else, the apparatus was just lacking. Algebraic geometry didn't have a reputation of an extremely abstract field, especially since sets of solutions to systems of polynomial equations are quite natural objects, and it's easy enough to imagine their occurrence in real life problems.

In 1950s and 1960s, though, the field was completely and utterly revolutionized by Alexander Grothendieck and his school, and that's when the field gained its fame of being very esoteric. Grothendieck's methods and approach allowed algebraic geometers to tackle vastly bigger range of problems, and ultimately to efface the distinction between algebra and geometry, at the price of making things much more abstract and distanced from more concrete considerations. That's when algebraic geometry expanded its reach, to encompass a large amount of research in abstract algebra and number theory.

In the meantime, another interesting thing happened in the field: the advent of computational techniques. Things like Groebner bases really pushed things forward and made a lot of theoretical stuff actually doable in practice. This is mainly what made things you mention in your post possible: while many industry problems could be formulated in geometric terms earlier, only rise of computational methods actually allowed us to solve them.

The point here is this: algebraic geometry field consists of two parts, the older and more concrete, which can and is (relatively) frequently applied, and the newer, but more abstract, of which applied is very little -- with notable exceptions though being for instance finite elliptic curves with well known application to cryptography, or Calabi-Yau manifolds which are intimately connected to the string theory. Nevertheless the applied stuff constitutes only a small part of the field, the rest is just pure and abstract mathematics, without any applications whatsoever, though it's still worth noting that algebraic geometry is still relatively very good in the amount of applicable stuff, and fields like algebraic topology, not to even mention descriptive set theory, fare much, much worse with regard to it. For me, a bit naive is to think that big part of mathematics will be applied, when there's so much of it.

<comment><USER12> I'm aware of the categorical revolution, since I'm young enough to have been (mathematically) raised on that perspective. Some of the more abstract algebraic geometry is actually coming back to computational applications. See, for example: [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/226664601_From_Oil_F...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/226664601_From_Oil_Fields_to_Hilbert_Schemes)

To say that something is not applicable is hard to argue. And besides giving examples of when it is applied (and you claiming it's still an unimaginably small fraction of mathematics) all I can say is that the understanding of some object can provide insights and applications in unexpected ways. Dynamical systems inspire computer graphics, Mobius bands inspire carburetor belt design, category theory inspires Haskell... I just don't think it's fair to ask for the immediate applications of any given theorem because the ultimate application is understanding what's going on.

But thanks for the great discussion! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> When I picture a Hitchhiker's Guide to Mathematics, I don't picture a book that actually teaches you mathematics. I picture a book will, on demand, give you just enough information to get by in a particular area of mathematics without blowing off a leg or something. You know, like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy didn't actually make you an expert on a planet, just gave you some tips for having fun and just barely surviving should you find yourself stuck there.

So yeah, a big book of formulas, algorithms and mathematical structures with example applications complete with code snippets and exhaustive indexing. You wouldn't learn anything worthwhile (not Real Math and not really even applied mathematics) but it might get you out of a jam now and then.

It would take heroic effort and probably sell in the hundreds at best, it would be an immense challenge to keep the examples general enough while still being useful, but there's no _a priori_ reason why it couldn't be done.

<comment><USER16> This is a terrific idea -- a math book that avoids the pitfalls of most math books aimed at nonmathematicians.

Such a book could cover many important mathematical ideas without necessarily lapsing into equations and overly technical explanations. For example, it should be possible to describe how compound interest works without falling into an obscure technical explanation, and understanding compound interest is very important in modern life.

Another example might explain why the stopping distance of s car is proportional to the square of the speed -- this is not well-known, and it's important for drivers to know, young ones especially.

Yet another example would explain why each member of the running sum of odd numbers is a perfect square. Expressed in words, it's not obvious that it's true or why it's true, but a picture conveys the reason immediately and intuitively: [http://arachnoid.com/example/index.html#Math_Example](http://arachnoid.com/example/index.html#Math_Example)

Just a few examples. I'm sure one could fill such a book with useful examples that would convey useful information, and make math sound like fun, or both, without being preachy or too technical.

<comment><USER13> > For example, it should be possible to describe how compound interest works > without falling into an obscure technical explanation

I personally find these obscure technical (and highly abstract) explanations often far more easy to understand. I often found "easy" explanations highly illogical - not before I got the rather abstract explanations I found these explanations acceptable (and even this was not always the case - almost always the explanation for this phenomenon was that the definitions given in foundation courses could be abstracted a lot).

How can this be explained? The reason is simple: in highly abstract definitions anything that is not necessary is omitted - so there is _less_ to think about. Additionally in this kind of definitions there is a lot more "internal logic". What does this mean? This is a little bit difficult to explain for non-mathematicians, but you can be sure that anything in the definition has a deep meaning. If this meaning seems strange to you, you can be sure that what remains to be understood often carries a deep meaning. On the other hand: when using "simple" definitions, you always have to worry whether, if something sounds strange, it is because you haven't understood it or if the "simple" explanation was simply bad.

Disclaimer: I'm a mathematician (as may be imagined). But I'm a computer scientist, too. :-)

<comment><USER16> > I personally find these obscure technical (and highly abstract) explanations > often far more easy to understand.

I do, too, but I also know that nontechnical, nonmathematical people are turned off by a quick immersion in mathematical reasoning. I have a theory (not just mine by any means) that if the beauty of mathematics could be presented before the required discipline and attention to detail, we might lose fewer possible future mathematicians. As things stand, the public level of innumeracy is depressing.

> On the other hand: when using "simple" definitions, you always have to worry > whether, if something sounds strange, it is because you haven't understood > it or if the "simple" explanation was simply bad.

Yes, very true, one must be very careful to get it right while making it simple. I personally think a persuasive layman's explanation of something mathematical can go wrong in so many ways, and the more persuasive, the more room for error. Consider all the crazy "explanations" of quantum theory out there -- the more popular ones have no connection to reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The syntax blocker is the biggest one for me. Are there books full of classic proofs and explanations of their syntax and shorthand? I'd be very interested.

<comment><USER18> Yes!

Grab a copy of "Proofs from the Book". It's tremendous.

<comment><USER19> Proofs from the Book is awesome. Another book in a similar vein, but requiring less of a mathematical background and targeted more at the curious layman is "Journey through Genius". Journey through Genius also spends more time giving general background about the players involved and telling the story leading up to the proof.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When you tackle a new problem the hardest part is often just figuring out what you _don 't_ know, but need in order to solve the problem. You might find a paper or book that solves a very similar problem (if you're lucky) but find you just can't understand what you're reading. This is probably because the author assumed his audience would know things you've never even been exposed to. It would be rather hard to write much of anything if authors didn't do this! However, it makes life rather difficult for "foreigners" to the discipline who don't have a good idea of the discipline's city layout and what neighborhoods they need to hang out in to find help.

The ideal solution is to get a local guide to help you, but a map of knowledge covering as much of the city as possible would be almost as helpful if it were any good. Unfortunately, mapping cities of knowledge is harder than mapping real cities!

It would be utterly fantastic if math (or physics, economics, etc.) books and publications came with associated meta-data that would tell you what dependencies are associated with what you're reading. Ideally, it should be possible to trace the map from string theory right back to counting. This map would be your guide to all the rabbit holes you dive into! It wouldn't perform magic and explain quantum physics to you in a paragraph, but it would give you an idea of how much you don't know and where you need to start.

</comment><comment><USER21> I have to disagree to the basic assumption of the article.

Its often not necessary for a coder to understand why math works, but only how to use their results. e.g.:

I've coded fft in 5 different languages, and used it uncountable times. Still it took ages to understand why dft works, and I did not yet took the step to understand how dft leads to fft.

I know dozens of Second Life scripters (including me) who use quarternions regular, still nobody could tell me, why they work so good for 3d rotations.

I've coded my first Markov, 35 years ago, at the age of 12, and Markov was never mentioned in school at all.

I'm using dozens of machine learning methods on daily base, coded a few my self, but I do not care to know why they work, but only what their strong points and limitations are.

Its not necessary to know how to design and build a car, if you just need to drive from A to B. Its not necessary to study bio-chemistry, to be a good cook.

<comment><USER12> The article does not argue that anyone needs to do mathematics. It just attempts to explain why mathematics tends to be hard for otherwise smart and motivated programmers.

That being said, fft is a divide and conquer approach to multiplying the dft matrix by a vector, and it achieves nlogn time by taking advantage of the special structure of the dft matrix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> So could anyone suggest a nice book for a High School student (I know basic algebra, but no Calculus so far) to learn math? The school system is not very good here, so I have to do some of the learning by myself.

I have looked at Concrete Mathematics by Donald Knuth, would that be complicated to understand?

<comment><USER11> Check out my _No bullshit guide to math and physics_ : [http://minireference.com/](http://minireference.com/) [$33], it covers all of high school math, mechanics, derivatives, and integrals.

An excellent free alternative is _Calculus Made Easy_ by Silvanus P. Thompson, which is very good and also funny [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33283)

<comment><USER3> That book looks amazing, I'd love to learn some Physics too, will see if I can get it.

Read the first pages of Calculus Made Easy, looked nice so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If it weren't for mathematics I would've graduated this year, instead I'm still stuck with Algebra and Calculus and what not. I don't know about you, but every time a read a theorem is like getting kicked in the nuts and then punched in the stomach. The fact is, our brains are wired to excel at a handful of things and if math it's not one of them you're out of luck. You can't teach a person to paint, or to write, because you can't teach them talent, the same is true with math. You just have to plough through and hope to get better with time.

<comment><USER12> It certainly took you many years to learn how to read and write, yet here you are.

It sounds like you have a grudge against basic mathematics because you think isn't important, you're afraid of it, and it affected your life in an adverse way. Unfortunately that has little to do with a human's ability to learn.

The truth is that talent means nothing in comparison with practice.

<comment><USER23> > _It certainly took you many years to learn how to read and write, yet here > you are._

Exactly. Most people don't realize how unnatural and difficult written language actually is, yet here we are. There's a great book on the subject called 'Proust and the Squid'[1]; it looks into the history, development and neuroscience of reading and it's quite eye-opening. There's really no reason to believe why math/music/programming/etc should be any different.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Proust-Squid-Story-Science- Reading/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Proust-Squid-Story-Science- Reading/dp/0060933844/)

<comment><USER22> If reading and writing were once unnatural and difficult skills but now are easily picked is just because evolutions has wired our brains to learn it faster, maybe future generations will struggle less with math for the same reason.

<comment><USER12> I don't think you realize how much time you spent learning to read and write, considering that every waking moment you're surrounded by things with text on them.

Also, you have a pretty skewed idea of how evolution works. How long do you think it took for evolution to "wire our brains" to learn to write quickly?

<comment><USER22> The fact that we're continually surrounded by written text only helps explain why we haven't that much difficulty learning how to read it.

As long as the time it took for evolution to rewire our brains, I'd say more than a thousand of years, it's not like writing was invented yesterday.

<comment><USER12> What proportion of the world was literate a thousand years ago?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems like a resonable place to mention that years ago a guy called Tom Henderson in Portland put up a kickstarter project for a _Punk Mathematics_ book, which I funded, but he has taken $30,000, completely disrespected his funders and failed to produce anything at all. If you meet the guy, do (verbally) thump him for me. [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541803748/punk- mathemat...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1541803748/punk-mathematics)

</comment><comment><USER25> > My programs absolutely reeked of programming no-nos. Hundred-line functions > and even thousand-line classes, magic numbers, unreachable blocks of code, > ridiculous code comments, a complete disregard for sensible object > orientation, negligence of nearly all logic, and type-coercion that would > make your skin crawl.

It probably would have been easier to start on a language that's procedural and maybe dynamically-typed. There are fewer traps to fall into.

</comment><comment><USER26> Great read, Khan academy does solve a lot of the headaches that come with Math, thank you Salman Khan! if it wasn't for him I wouldn't have gotten a 3.8 in Calculus.

for those who don't know math or want to learn this will make your life easier, [https://www.khanacademy.org/](https://www.khanacademy.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a big fan of 'black screen with voice over' format. There are much much better alternatives for calculus these days, for example calc1 course on coursera is excellent.

<comment><USER26> On the contrary I prefer his method of teaching more than anything else, it can be quite distracting when there is a face or hand movements on the screen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Excellent read. Thanks for this.

</comment><comment><USER28> > It is an interesting pedagogical question in my mind whether there is a way > to introduce proofs and the language of mature mathematics in a way that > stays within a stone's throw of computer programs. It seems like a > worthwhile effort, but I can't think of anyone who has sought to replace a > classical mathematics education entirely with one based on computation.

...Curry–Howard correspondence?

<comment><USER12> Is quite a large stone's throw away from both computer science and standard mathematical proofs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _I was hit hard in the face by a segmentation fault. It took hundreds of test cases and more than twenty hours of confusion before I found the error: I was passing a reference when I should have been passing a pointer._

That code wouldn't compile, if a pointer is expected you can't just pass a reference, hello static typing. Furthermore, you can't explicitly "pass a reference" to begin with, as in there is no syntax in the caller to signify "this shall be passed as a reference", that would be something that is in the signature of the CALLEE. So his "error" literally makes no sense as it cannot happen. If what he means is that he wrote the callee wrong, that doesn't make any sense either, because the whole point is that you can't reseat (make to point to something else) a reference. So you would know if you needed to use a pointer instead the minute you tried to reseat a ref type.

Also, anyone who takes 24 hours to debug a segfault needs to pick another profession and _quickly_.

<comment><USER30> If you have never taken 24 hours to debug a segfault, you haven't done enough C/C++ programming.

E.g. a rare race condition causes some memory to be freed while there's still a live pointer to it, but THAT doesn't cause a segfault immediately because the memory is immediately reused for some other data structure (in a different thread), so when the dangling pointer is accessed it points to allocated memory that's being used for some other purpose. Some field in the data structure the dangling pointer references is mutated, and then finally in another thread that same memory is accessed via a different pointer (the one that was recently allocated) and part of it is treated as a pointer, and dereferencing THAT causes a segfault.

(Oh and by the way, in real life things can get much more complicated than this before the program blows up with a segfault. In fact, you're lucky if there's a segfault, instead of finding out months down the road that your data has been subtly wrong the whole time.)

Ultimately the solution to this is some iterative combination of swapping in a guarded malloc, then trying things in Valgrind, then trying various Valgrind options, then setting some hardware watchpoints in gdb, then finding that the race condition disappears in the debugger, then adding log statements all over the place, then statically analyzing the code for hours while pulling your hair out, then finally by accident noticing that padding the first data structure with an extra field makes the problem go away, then setting the right hardware watchpoint that actually helps, etc, etc, then piecing together a real story for what's happening, and ultimately making a 2-line fix.

If you think you're somehow "above" this kind of horrible drudgery, and that your immense programming skill will let you avoid it forever, then you are just not very experienced (or you're not working on hard problems).

<comment><USER29> These things are true. Things do quickly get complicated when you're trying to replicate race conditions. What you described, though, is not trying to "fix a segfault" it's trying to "fix a race condition" where the fault is just a symptom. In the example in your OP there was none of that. Even assuming what he meant was that he accidentally mutated a pointer he passed by reference instead of value which caused problems after he returned and things fell out of scope or were freed, you could debug that in 5 minutes just by setting a watch breakpoint on the pointer to see where it was last changed before the errant access. An hour, tops, if that didn't occur to you to begin with.

Tracking down multi-threaded memory corruption is tough, but those bugs are going to be rare. Threading is a tough problem to begin with, but it's certainly not a fault of C/C++. And whatever this guy was describing should not have taken 'hundreds of test cases and over 24 hours'.

<comment><USER30> Why do you say "should not have taken?" Given the fact that he was a student at the time, learning C++, I think it's perfectly understandable that he ran into a "bang your head against the wall" type problem. Maybe it was his first real segfault debugging session. I doubt you solved your first real segfault in 5 minutes.

Sure, I'd expect someone with a couple years' experience to be able to debug a simple segfault relatively quickly. But the only reason they'd be able to debug it quickly is because they've _painstakingly done it before_, and can draw from that experience.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Submarine Cable Map - <AUTHOR> https://www.submarinecablemap.com <comment><AUTHOR> From the FAQ: \- Bandwidth: The new MAREA cable is capable of carrying 208 Tbp \- Length: there are over 1.2 million kilometers of submarine cables in service globally. \- Thickness: a cable is typically as wide as a garden hose

[https://www2.telegeography.com/submarine-cable-faqs- frequent...](https://www2.telegeography.com/submarine-cable-faqs-frequently- asked-questions)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Relate article on CNN: [https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet- undersea-ca...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/25/asia/internet-undersea- cables-intl-hnk/index.html)</comment>


"I've Pair Programmed for 27,000 Hours. Ask Me Anything" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=156LdcEjfhs <comment><USER2> Pair programming works pretty well...just not full-time. I think the optimal situation would be half-days or maybe less depending on the pairs and the situation. Also, some more mundane tasks (bug-fixing) aren't going to be handled as productively when pair-programming.

The ideal situation seems to be at the beginning of a big story. Then there seems to be a natural time into a story(stories) where it makes sense to split up and work alone.

</comment><comment><USER3> In your experience, besides efficiency, speed, stability, scalability, robustness and the like, what is the effect on true innovation or doing something groundbreaking?

<comment><AUTHOR> It should be noted that I'm not Joe Moore (though I'm working with him at the moment). I've edited quotes into the title to avoid confusion.</comment></comment>


Top Ten Most Famous Hackers of All Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.itsecurity.com/features/top-10-famous-hackers-042407/

<comment><USER2> Why is Soviet hacker Linus Torvalds listed as "white hat"?

The man is a criminal. He copy/pastes UNIX code, renames it to LINUX, and styles himself as the purveyor of a "new" operating system.

SCO Group should get all this criminal's assets forthwith, and Torvalds himself should be locked away in GITMO with all the other Soviet spies. This man is a greater threat to American free enterprise than his heroes Lenin and Trotsky. Instead of congratulating this commie, we should lock him and his "comrades" up for the protection of our country, and re-direct his ill-gotten gain back to SCO Group, where it belongs.</comment>


Ask HN: Reporting Users? - <AUTHOR>

I could not seem to find anything about reporting abusive comments in the Guidelines or through some cursory Google searching. How does one go about actually reporting offensive postings[1]? Is it just expected that moderators will eventually find it or is this something unlocked with some higher amount of karma?<p>[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327227 <comment><USER2> This is what the 'flag' link on the comments are for. Along with the downvote link.

</comment><comment><USER3> clicky: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327227](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6327227)

<comment><USER4> testing</comment></comment>


For-profit activism startup in SF - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13031214

<comment><AUTHOR> If you're interested in the intersection of tech startups and social entrepreneurship like I am... check this out. (Disclaimer: I work here)</comment>


"I Contribute to the Windows Kernel. We Are Slower Than Other OS" (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=74 <comment><USER2> >These junior developers also have a tendency to make improvements to the system by implementing brand-new features instead of improving old ones. Look at recent Microsoft releases: we don't fix old features, but accrete new ones. New features help much more at review time than improvements to old ones.

This is true. Windows 7 had an easy way to create adhoc wifi but win 8 removed it. So now I must either use command prompt or install connectify.

WP has too many examples:

Music app has been rewritten multiple times and rebranded almost as many times.

Email has also been rewritten and renamed - new version is slightly better.

The excellent lumia camera has been replaced by a meh windows camera app.

Internet explorer's been replaced by the featureless edge IMO.

Instead of fixing the Skype app (missed notifications, memory consumption issues, performance issues, calls ringing even if the target is OFFLINE, inaccurate notification count...) a bland messaging and Skype video apps were introduced. So we've got three apps for Skype on Windows 10 and windows mobile.

...and many more

<comment><USER3> This statement is broadly true across bigCo industry from what I've found, but I'd assign an "obvious explanation" to why: New features are recognized for promos far more than existing improvements. I wouldn't say it's a new vs old dev thing other than that old devs need "broader impact" to justify promos and thus can't really take low hanging fruit, (although I've certainly seen senior devs ramp up significant projects just so they get "novel visibility" even if it's reinventing the wheel these tend to be slower by their very nature and often not as visible as the more top level feature bloat) it seems more to do with the culture of how career progress is measured throughout industry. (A culture that I personally think is extremely broken, but see very little to fixing outside of starting my own company)

<comment><USER4> "New features are recognized for promos far more than existing improvements."

Seems like the solution is neither in engineering nor product, but marketing- companies need to get better at explaining when a low-new-features iteration is intended for stability and streamlining of existing features.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know about performance but the windows ecosystem sure is buggy inside, or at least stdout says so. One time I needed to work on a driver and I enabled kernel debugging. My console immediately started spitting out a steady stream of warnings and errors which continued forever. This is before I touched anything.

<comment><USER6> This also happens on *NIX and Android.

<comment><USER5> It is strange to work in a field where everything produced is lower quality than desired. My wife is continually amazed that I continue to beat my head against the metaphorical keyboard. I have said that I have always hated computers even though I have done nothing but work on them my whole life.

<comment><USER7> Try metaphorically beating your head against the literal keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BjycjCw...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:BjycjCwTRFwJ:blog.zorinaq.com/%3Fe%3D74+&c=1)

<comment><USER9> thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That was really interesting. Subjectively, two of my friends graduating (Bachelor's) this year were rejected from Google SWE and have since received (and accepted) offers from Microsoft for SDE.

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like any large company - no longer a fast-moving innovation engine. Instead a customer-preserving value-calculating incremental development shop. Just what you'd expect.

<comment><USER12> Having web apps that break my workflow every 2 months, and back end servers that change their API every 3 months, I'm very happy with a company where I can run software (that I still enjoy) 10-20 years later.

<comment><USER13> 20 year old Linux applications work just fine too, and it's still faster than NT.

<comment><USER14> > (You'd guess that 40 year old Unix applications could work too without > recompilation, though I've never tried it)

40 years takes you to 1976, at which point there's no longer any ISA-level compatibility between the hardware we have now and the hardware Unix ran on then. Basically, nothing we have looks like a PDP-11 to software, and Unix didn't run on much else in the mid-1970s.

(Tidbit: 1976 is when the Lions book came out. Full source code, with apposite and useful comments, for Sixth Edition Unix, passed around as _samizdat_ long afterwords due to Bell Labs enforcing copyright on the Unix source code not long after.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lions%27_Commentary_on_UNIX_6th_Edition,_with_Source_Code)

<comment><USER15> With DOS, win98, linux all running in asm.js inside browser, it should be long before PDP11 code or to run in here too?

BTW, I love to use original Lotus 123 with DOS inside asm.js if someone can use their supper power to make that materialized.

I still remember those "/FS" keystrokes after so many years.

<comment> david-given Your wish is my command; preloaded with V6 Unix.

[http://pdp11.aiju.de/](http://pdp11.aiju.de/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As is noted, this was from 2013. I've worked at MS on and off over the years. I only have my perspective, but it is a little different than the posting. While there are certainly things I wish were better, I'm actively doing my part to try and improve things. Microsoft seems no worse than other places I've worked, and in many ways it is significantly better. I came back to Microsoft after several successful startups because it is a company of doers.

<comment><USER17> Was the SHA sum of revision 102 of pagefault.c correct?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > _I 'm a developer in Windows and contribute to the NT kernel. (Proof: the > SHA1 hash of revision #102 of [Edit: filename redacted] is [Edit: hash > redacted].) I'm posting through Tor for obvious reasons._

My Google-fu isn't turning up any non-redacted versions of this line; all I see are the countless copies of this redacted version made over the last 3 years.

It would be nice to be able to note the file and hash references in question in the case the opportunity ever arises to verify this. That would be pretty cool :)

IMO releasing one filename is not really a security issue, and a hash is categorically useless garbage.

<comment><USER19> [https://archive.is/BaZlv](https://archive.is/BaZlv) \- "the SHA-1 hash of revision #102 of pagfault.c is 0cb82a9525a2158e2a87f5eb53d41e5936cee5a2"

(this link came from the Reddit thread in which this article was discussed the other day - [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4amfp2/i_contr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4amfp2/i_contribute_to_the_windows_kernel_we_are_slower/))

<comment><USER17> Nice. Saying "XXX [redacted]" is an even better way to draw attention to something than just writing it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> (2013)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sometimes people take it too serious when you're just blowing off a little steam. It sucks.</comment>


Whois May Be Retired, Says ICANN - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/whois_may_be_retired_says_icann.php

<comment><USER2> I think the privacy advocates have gone way overboard on this one. WHOIS is an incredibly useful database; among other things, it provides a way to find people squatting on your trademarks.

There's a simple solution already in place for privacy within WHOIS... almost all registrars offer private registration, and many of them offer it for free.

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately that's not true, I have domains with two registrars/hosts, neither of which offer private registration at all.

When registering UK domains you can opt not to show private information while leaving the tech/admin details in there, I'd be pretty happy if they introduced something like that universally.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why do many people assume there's no such thing as programming talent? - <AUTHOR> It seems to me rather ludicrous to even think that every single human being is born with the same exactly amount of neurons and everyone has the same exact levels of plasticity in their brain, but that's exactly what's being assumed when people say there's no "talent" involved. Or am I missing something and there's actually no such thing? Wouldn't it be logical to assume that if just those two cases are true, then there indeed can be gaps in learning speed and upper bound levels of comprehension on not just programming, but learning everything else in general?
Isn't it rather logical to assume that we all didn't take care of ourselves as good as possibly others either due to laziness or unfortunate environmental factors? And if that's the case, isn't it logical that that too would have a role in the development of our brains, our ultimate potential as to how "plastic" our brains could be, among other factors? We see immediate differences in people being born with different heights, doesn't it make sense to assume not all brains are created and raised equally?
Just wanted to see what everyone's thought was on this since I practically never see this side of the argument when it comes to topics like "programming talent" and such. <comment><USER2> The ancient Greeks tried to use logic to understand the world. It was a good start. In the Enlightenment we found that experimental evidence was more important. Many of the logical Greek ideas were found to be simply untrue.

I'll start from the top. How do you measure "talent"? I'm not suggesting that there be a scientific instrument - any sort of measure, from "value added profit to a company" to "number of conference presentations" to "number of people in a random sample who say that X is talented".

You suggested that the number of neurons or brain plasticity might be important. We know that the size of the brain is not well correlated with intelligence; Einstein famously had an average sized brain. And while neural plasticity is a useful metaphor, it comes in many forms. Which do you mean, how do you measure it, and how strong is the correlation to talent?

We know that talent is extremely dependent on the environment. Consider Ronald Colman, who was a popular actor in the silent film era but whose career didn't take off until the talkies, when the audience fell in love with "his beautifully modulated and cultured voice", or Lars Hanson who believed that his heavy Swedish accent wouldn't do so well in Hollywood so moved back to Sweden. He was successful in the Swedish film industry, so by one measure of talent - made a living on his ability - he was talented, but by another measure - lifetime revenue - he was less talented than if he were better at English or of there were a higher demand for films with people with a Swedish accent.

Or look at the relative age effect ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_age_effect) ) where talented sports players - defined as those in the upper levels of their respective sports - are disproportionally born in the early part of the year. The hypothesis is that as children these people were slightly bigger, stronger, and faster than the others in their cohort, so were more likely to do better, and receive extra training and support.

There are also systemic issues, which is the only reason I can think of to explain the decreasing presence of women in computing from its peak of 38% of awarded CS degrees in the early 1980s to ~18% now.

How do you disentangle the intrinsic talent portion that you think might have an effect from the large number of known environmental effects?

You posit that "we all didn't take care of ourselves as good as possibly others either due to laziness or unfortunate environmental factors", which does consider some environmental factors. However, the main part of the hypothesis is "we all didn't take care of ourselves". What does it mean to "take care of ourself"? How do we tell if someone is doing a good job of taking care of oneself, in such a way that it does not preclude talent development? If it can only be usefully measured in a post hoc fashion, then it's victim blaming.

(Failing to take care of oneself is an obvious problem. I presume you mean something more than maintaining a basic lifestyle, as many people do that and don't get labeled "talented".)

K. Anders Ericsson, for example, stresses the role of extended deliberate practice on expertise. Is "talent" different from "expertise"? If so, how? And what practices are better for talent growth than expertise growth?

Similarly, if there is talent that is somehow independent of expertise, how do people in general tell? For example, one famous Stanford report finds "that praising effort, not talent, leads to greater motivation and more positive attitudes toward challenges five years later". (See [http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/talking-to- baby-...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/february/talking-to- baby-021213.html) ). The hypothesis is that if a child believes that success at X is due to talent, and doesn't immediately succeed at X then that child concludes that she/he doesn't have the talent for X so doesn't try. When it's more the case that success at X is due to effort and practice, not intrinsic talent.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a pretty dramatic straw man.

I've never heard anyone state that there's no such thing as programming talent. There are many more nuanced ways of looking at programming talent (or really talent in many things):

1) "Programming Talent" is far too general a term to attach to any mechanistic views of brain ability. That is, being "good at programming" has such a broad reach that nearly everyone who is "good" at programming is really good at some very small niche at programming and frequently the skills that make them good at that aspect can be actually detrimental in other niches. This same argument holds about other talents as well. For instance, height is a phenomenal advantage in basketball. But being tall doesn't correlate with eye-hand coordination, agility, or foot speed. Each one of those is also a phenomenal advantage and having all of them at once is exceedingly rare.

2) Another argument is that unlike in basketball where height is a phenomenal physical advantage, the differences between a "talented" programmer and an untalented one are dramatically muted in comparison to other factors such as proper education, proper workplace environment, proper management, etc. So focusing on the talent is not as interesting in programming as it is in basketball.

3) Yet another argument is that we can't identify what programming talent is, so it is a difference without distinction. Is a programmer more productive than their peers because they are talented or because they have better work habits generally? It is very hard to suss out so what difference does it make?

4) Finally, an argument that resonates with me, is that programmer productivity is not bi-modal. That is, for most of the population of programmers they experience dramatic swings in productivity. This swings are more correlated with external factors than any innate ability and you can move along the productivity scale back and forth throughout your life time and talent is largely swamped by these external factors.

</comment><comment><USER4> The same reason the concept of _" street smart"_ exists. People don't want to accept when they are being stupid.

Each an every one of us can clearly identify talent as the ability to do or create amazing things. But because people want to feel special, they twist and turn their perspective until they become special to themselves. _" Intelligent? Well, you didn't make billions, so it must mean you're dumb. Athletic? Well, you didn't score that touchdown, so I could probably outrun you. Good at programming? Please. I could whip up a better solution in minutes if I wanted to learn programming."_

It's basic politics. Skewing reality with faulty logic in order to gain something. Usually feeling good about yourself.

<comment><USER5> Also companies like Facebook and Google simply want to have access to a bigger pool of developers to reduce the compensation costs. Hence promoting the idea that everyone can program: [http://code.org](http://code.org) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Who says that?

Who are 'many people'?

How do they substantiate that assumption?

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't know the answer, but I wonder if 'talent' is really 'love'?

If you love programming then you are more likely to practice and learn for the pure fun and thrill of it. And lots of practice leads to becoming an expert and appearing to others as talented.

On the other hand you can conjecture that talent comes first, and this is what causes the love of the subject.</comment>


A Programmer Evaluates the MacBook Pro (Touch Bar) - <AUTHOR> http://www.2ality.com/2016/12/macbook-pro-touch-bar.html <comment><USER3> The person who reviewed this may have been a programmer, but the review doesn't seem to be in context of programming. I care about how well I can work on it, not now well it works with remotes.

> The MacBook Pro is more an evolutionary than a revolutionary upgrade over my > MacBook Air.

That seems to sum up this review. The macbook pro is a successor to the air, not the old macbook pro.

<comment><USER4> How is a large 15" laptop with a discrete GPU a successor to the MacBook Air?

The problem I have with that statement is that "the MBP" is an ambiguous term. It's a product lineup, and there are products in that lineup that are not in any way the successor to the Air.

<comment><USER5> It is quite hard to make a "Pro" machine targeted at professionals with a product line up of 4 laptop (and maybe 4 laptop total in the whole Mac line) with very little configuration options.

That's the most obvious conclusion of all those MBP review and comment. Apple just serve a small slice of the consumer market that intersect a narrow slice of the professional market. That narrow slice just gets smaller with each major iteration and Apple is not sad about it.

<comment><USER4> I think this is an okay viewpoint, but it forces the conclusion that Apple has never made a Pro machine (because the MacBook Pro lineup has never had that many options and configurations). Personally I'm fine with that conclusion, but it's not consistent with the narrative that this is the first MacBook Pro which is not for professionals.

<comment><USER5> I remember people always complaining about how the MBP was not for professionals.

Lack of ports, lack of DVD reader, lack of configuration options, lack of OSX corporate feature, lack of customisability, lack of Windows, too expensive, ...

<comment><USER6> Most of those "lacks" are relatively recent evolutions of the product line. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago I had a MacBook Pro with a DVD drive, Ethernet port, and expandable memory.

It was a bit bulky, but I really miss some of those features these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A coworker got the new MBP and didn't realize that he wasn't actually clicking the trackpad for two days. If I didn't know better I also would've been fooled. In my opinion the haptic feedback and the huge trackpad are actually the best features of the new MBP.

<comment><USER8> Took me months to realize (on macbook) ... no one believes me until I power it off and have them try again.

Spooky is the word.

<comment><USER9> "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -Arthur C. Clarke

I completely agree though, I checked it out in-store and was far more impressed with the new MBP than the reviews had me believe I would be. People must be very spoiled to downplay it IMO. The keyboard and trackpad are really impressive. I'm debating whether to replace my old desktop with a i7-7700K or pickup the MBP15 1TB with a few dongles to hookup to my existing peripherals. It would be my first Mac ever (I had a Commodore 128 in the 80s) and it certainly seems like a marvel of engineering to me. I'm starting to think the best way to run Linux or Windows would be using either in VMWare under macOS or using Parallels to get the best of every world.

The one thing the Apple folks could've done better is make the tilde key the new escape and make the tilde/grave alt remaps. If I got one that would likely be the first thing I do.

<comment><USER10> I run Linux on my Mac using Veertu, which utilises the apple provided Hypervisor.framework. I've had a lot of success with it performance wise compared to VirtualBox, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My only problem with the keyboard (I actually like it, which surprised me) is that it seems quite easy to get small things like crumbs stuck under the keys, which can render them unusable. I've already had this happen on the new MBP, never experienced it on any other keyboard. Was able to dislodge it with compressed air, but if this happens a lot it could become a serious inconvenience.

I thought about a keyboard cover but I don't think apple left room between the keycaps and display for that when the lid is closed.

</comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone understand the decision to not left align the esc "key"?

<comment><USER13> I believe the screen simply doesn't extend that far to the left (although the touch-sensitive bezel does).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not being able to find volume controls by touch will be infuriating me forever I guess. Although I doubt personally It would much value for me I can see how TouchBar could be a nice _addition_ to a laptop for many people. If they would have just placed it above the current row of function keys... I also read about some issues with the power button, sometimes requiring you to close/open the lid. Can;t find it now, does anybody know more about that?

</comment><comment><USER15> I hadn't considered the removal of the esc key from a vi/emacs perspective. Is this something that can be lived with?

<comment><USER11> For vim either map a key sequence "jj" or "fd" to esc or remap caps lock to esc. Many vim users do that anyway for the convenience.

Not sure about emacs (I use spacemacs). Does esc come in for more than just cancelling commands? If you don't need to use your caps lock for ctrl for emacs, the same remap to esc would work as well.

Anyway, basically boils down to two things: 1) the touch bar escape is fine for occasional use but I wouldn't want to use it frequently and 2) that isn't a problem if you don't mind remapping caps lock and have nothing more important to do with it.

<comment><USER16> Emacs user here, I think I never use escape; I use C-g to cancel a command.

<comment><USER17> The idea behind evil mode in emacs is to not use the control or meta keys for most things, since they are awkwardly placed. Evil mode activates the Esc key just like in vim.

evil-escape module for evil mode adds the 'fd' functionality discussed here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> First they came for the ethernet port, and I did not speak out - <USER2> wireless is ubiquitous.

Then they came for the headphone port, and I did not speak out - because I could still plug into my external audio interface or mixer _when at home_.

Then they came for my keyboard, and NOW I CAN'T ESCAPE!

</comment><comment><USER19> How does a programmer evaluate this machine without discussing at least one of vi and emacs, and the absence of real Esc and Fn keys?

By the way, I visited an Apple store and played with the new 15" MBP. It's even worse than I thought. I downloaded the latest Gnu Emacs, and the Fn virtual keys were not available. And in no case did I see the Esc and Fn virtual keys present at the same time.

Also ridiculous is the fact that the touch bar is not available on any keyboard other than the built-in MBP keyboard. So you now have to choose between the features of the touch bar and the comfort of external peripherals.

It is astonishing how many bad decisions were packed into this one revision of a formerly great machine.

<comment><USER20> >>How does a programmer evaluate this machine without discussing at least one of vi and emacs, and the absence of real Esc and Fn keys?

What percentage of programmers use vi or emacs?

<comment><USER21> Use or say they use? vi and emacs are alot like some programming books people say they have read to show they are a programmer because they think that it what it means. My guess, < 10% with all the IDEs and text editors out there today. On servers or VMs they are common, in actually coding, probably overstated.

<comment><USER22> My laptop's top left corner of keyboard recently stopped working (new one shipped), and well, I've only then realized how much I use vim. I don't use it for programming, but well, it's the text editor I use the most for config files. I had to install a virtual keyboard (onboard) just to be able to press esc. So, while no esc isn't be a reason to not buy the new mbp for me (price, lack of magsafe and the dongle madness are the reasons I don't buy, though), it is still be very, very annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > I miss the half-size left and right arrow keys ... it makes the arrow keys > harder to hit blindly

This little detail is a big problem for me when using any image or music program where I want to quickly find the arrow keys and shift things around.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have Emacs and Atom and Eclipse open all day, plus a byobu session and half a dozen local terminal windows. They all use ESC and F keys in a dozen little ways. I would pretty much have to force the touch bar always to be on F key display. And if I do that, then touch bar seems just a downgrade.

Edit: Just checked Atom, there's not really any F-key dependence there. But I use escape all day long to cancel out of UI dialogs. Just saying there's a lot more affected here than just vi users (and I do use vi all day long too, for git commits and editing smaller param files).

</comment><comment><USER25> He says that the four ports are all the same, but that is not correct. According to [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT207256](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207256): "MacBook Pro (13-inch, Late 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports) supports Thunderbolt 3 at full performance using the two left-hand ports. The two right-hand ports deliver Thunderbolt 3 functionality, but have reduced PCI Express bandwidth."

</comment><comment><USER26> By my count, he bought five adapters and a docking station. This gives a decent "in the wild" report of what is required to get the machine connected to one's peripherals. Thank you for the writeup.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have been using the 2016 MacBook Pro 15'' for more than a week. Overall, I like _most_ things about it. It's nice and thin, the fingerprint reader is a time-saver. I'm also fine with USB-C and the new dongle normal. I'm disappointed about the lack of bump in performance or RAM, but those things are not dealbreakers.

The new touch bar/keyboard combo, however, is. Here are the issues I'm having.

* _No tactile feedback_. Having no tactile feedback for the Escape key is... unnerving. Did I hit it correctly? Did it do anything? Even if something actually _did_ happen on the screen, a little feeling of self-doubt follows, and you feel like hitting it again. It feels wrong. I'm a developer, and I use the Escape key about 10 times per minute as part of my workflow. Yes, I know that you _can_ map it to Caps-Lock, but chalk it up to 30+ years of muscle memory; I want my Escape key to be where it is, and it's hard to switch, especially since you can't turn the fake Escape off, either during the learning period. (Maybe I should try covering it with tape.)

* _Unintended touchbar touches_. I discovered to my chagrin that I have a habit of resting my fingers around the area where the function keys are; my default position for the left hand is above QWERTY, and with my fingers outstretched, they reach into the touch bar. This has resulted in some incidents where the machine seems to have come alive and is doing things on its own, when in fact I was just obliviously holding down on the escape key or some other touch bar widget. Muscle-memory again, but then: It'd be nice to be able to be able to just touch my computer without causing accidents.

* _It 's pretty useless_. As a touch typer, I never look at the keyboard. Not even to touch farther-away function keys like volume, play/pause, previous/next. Having a touch bar that changes its contents might be great for novice users who look at the keyboard all the time, but for me, it's a distracting context switch. The app-specific touch bar widgets are also generally useless (the little Safari preview of your browser's page is particularly ridiculous). I can see where they'd be nice for providing "analogue" controls for things like music and audio editing, but the rest are pretty close to useless. Consider the emoji one — sure, maybe it's nice when you use on of the common ones. But the moment you want a snowman, good luck to you, there's no search (unlike the much nicer Ctrl+Cmd+Space dropdown which probably few people know about). In the end, the app controls got so distracting — and the lack of fast one-click access to things like volume and brightness — that I turned off the app controls altogether. Which gives me the same layout, nearly, as my previous MacBook. In conclusion, while the touch bar is clearly _technologically_ very cool, it feels like a marketing gimmick more than a carefully thought-out feature.

* _Unintended trackpad touches_. Again, you have to rest your hands somewhere. The trackpad is now so big that it's almost impossible not to inadvertently touch it, especially in a resting position. I have now disabled all the gestures so I don't trigger anything unintentionally. It's a nice idea that should probably have received more focus-group testing.

* _The arrow keys_. This is probably one that I'll get used to, but at this stage it's annoyance. While the new keyboard is probably objectively better than the old one — I like it very much, at least — Apple changed the shape of the arrow keys, which means that they don't feel any different from other keys. Again, as a touch typer, I'm used to just "finding" that pyramid of arrow keys under my first three fingers, and muscle memory is now telling me that left/right aren't positioned correctly, and I keep hitting the Shift instead of Up. Unlike the Esc key, it's probably, hopefully a passing problem because they are, after all, physical keys.

After migrating to the new machine, my productivity went down a surprising amount, which has never happened with an Apple machine before. If these seem like small gripes, keep in mind that as a developer, all I do is type. I see some comments here that "I got used to it"; but after a week, the touch bar is still as disruptive as when I started. I _like_ learning new ways — but only when they're superior to the old way.

At this point, I'm strongly considering returning the machine and going back to my mid-2015 MBP, based on a simple cost/benefit analysis: The bad/meh simply outweighs the good by a wide margin. I still have a few days to decide. I'd love to hear if anyone else had the same gripes and overcame them somehow.

If Apple comes up with a new machine next year that's faster, has longer battery life (I get about 3.5 hours with this working full-time in VSCode, Terminal and Safari, same as my last MBP) and takes at least 32GB RAM, I _might_ weather the bad touch bar, but at this point I fear (and I mean literally that I fear) that a Linux-based laptop might be in my future. It's even possible that I could downgrade to the 13'', which still comes with function keys. Maybe the performance isn't terrible? But it probably is.

<comment><USER28> Great review, this is more insightful and relevant than the linked piece.

I ended up up buying a 2015 MBP model and know several others who have done the same after avoiding or returning the 2016 MBP. I personally could have probably stomached the various 2016 compromises and nuisances for much improved performance and 32GB/64GB RAM, but as is, just can't do it. Maybe next year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Totally nothing on battery life. Can OP say something about it here?

<comment><USER30> I went from a 2015 MBP13 to a 2016 MBP15 TB. It is shorter, especially if you have the brightness cranked up. If you cut the screen down to 1/3-1/2 brightness I'd say it is close. I have a pretty variable power usage though. I've also been running a couple VMs lately that have been eating power. I use chrome most of the time so that eats power as well.

All told I can probably get 5-7 hours out of it depending on the day. The need to plug it in and out frequently really makes me miss the magsafe jack. Whoever made that call should get fired.

Think there is a market for high end laptops for developers that are maybe 30% more expensive than a macbook? Looking at System76 and Dell they are all bricks. The Razer Blade Pro is probably the closest thing. Even that is huge and heavy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The Pro in Macbook Pro does not stand for "programmer". The device is not catering to the past. The world is not full of UNIX era programmers. Some future programmers are getting their first laptop during the coming holidays. If you think Esc then I is the future of programming tools, I don't know what to tell you.

<comment><USER17> Vi is not just the past. It remains one of the best ways to edit text, period. And it will probably continue this way long into the future. Why do you think so many IDEs come with vim emulation?

<comment><USER4> Just for the record, I use vim all the time on the new MBP and don't have any issues. I remapped Esc in vim ages ago, though. vim was not designed around the current placement of the Esc key.

<comment><USER32> What do you use in its stead?

<comment><USER4> For the past year or so I've been using the key sequence "fd", which I discovered from spacemacs. (I've actually copied a lot of spacemacs keybindings because I found them very ergonomic.)

<comment><USER17> Great tip! I've installed evil-escape in my emacs and now have the same binding. Quite useful.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you listen to when you want to be productive? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Sometimes I like listening to music I've loved since I was in high school, so the album from the movie "Heavy Metal", or other heavy metal bands from that time, sometimes music from bands like Yaz (Yazoo in the UK) or Depeche Mode, or other work by Vince Clark. Sometimes I'm in a Rush or Styx mood.

I have also discovered that there is a category of music called "instrumental heavy metal", but I have not yet done much exploring there. I found out about it through the web comic author Jeph Jacques ([https://questionablecontent.net/](https://questionablecontent.net/)), who also has a one-man-band called "Deathmøle".

In college, I found I could study best by listening to Johan Sebastian Bach pipe organ concertos. But for being productive in a work-type setting, I find that it works better to have more up tempo music whose words I know like the back of my hand.

</comment><comment><USER3> I enjoy silence, but when listening to music it has to be something without vocals. It can be any genre and depends a lot on my mood (ambient, techno, soundtracks, classical, etc) but it can't have any vocals on it. People talking or singing (in a language that I understand) doesn't allow me to think clearly.

For the same reason I can't listen to podcasts when working.

</comment><comment><USER4> I used to listen to instrumental ambient music all the time while working. But know I prefer the silence. Especially when I want to be productive. I think your brain has to process the music in the background and thus use up some of the valuable processing power.

</comment><comment><USER5> both sides of the argument

<comment><USER6> XD</comment></comment>


Is all the hype about drone commercialization clouding our judgement? - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/is-all-the-hype-about-drone-commercialization-clouding-our-judgement/

<comment><USER2> Good look at commercial viability for some of the most frequently touted drone applications.</comment>


Dear Yahoo, I Redesigned Your Website - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/04/dear-yahoo-i-redesigned-your-website-and-took-out-512240-pixels-of-banner-ads/

<comment><USER2> This is not a redesign. He's removed ads and put his product in place of them. It hardly qualifies as a redesign at all - some of the after photos are exactly the same as the before photos above the fold.

<comment><USER3> The goal was to visually represent what Yahoo could look like with no traditional ads, hence the "redesign." Not sure I have the UX skillz to fully redesign Yahoo...the goal here was to make a case for native ads over banner ads, and how rolling out a native ad platform ala Facebook, Twitter, YouTube could fundamentally shift the Yahoo perception and internal culture of innovation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Looks like all that the author did was remove a few ads. Does that really qualify as a "re-design"?

<comment><USER5> Agreed, the other yahoo pages are even less of a redesign. This is an embarrassing "article" even for TC.</comment></comment>


AirBnBootstrap: We Moved Abroad to Lengthen Our Runway - <AUTHOR> https://www.akitaapp.com/blog/airbnbootstrap-moving-abroad-to-stretch-the-runway?r=63

<comment><USER2> Nice piece!</comment>


10 Most Scientifically Relaxing Songs in the World - <AUTHOR> http://infinityhousemagazine.com/10-most-scientifically-relaxing-songs-in-the-world/ <comment><USER2> the songs are mostly inane treacle.</comment>


Bootstrap, a UI framework used by 20% of internet sites, is dropping IE support - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/bootstrap-a-ui-framework-used-by-20-of-internet-sites-is-dropping-ie-support/ <comment><USER2> I don't know how many people are using Bootstrap anymore. Professionally I know that the only time we use Bootstrap, in a medium sized corporation, is if it's already bundled as a dependency for some other package we're using. I would imagine that the 20% of the internet still using Bootstrap is probably going to drop significantly with the removal of IE support. Or maybe not, maybe they're aware of the impact not supporting IE will have and found it to be a reasonable path to go down.

<comment><USER3> Most people are still using Bootstrap ([https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/css- framework](https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/css-framework)).

Things like Bulma and Material offer less features, though bring some conveniences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't as terrible as it seems since many of those sites won't update their version of Bootstrap.</comment>


Just Delete Me - <AUTHOR> http://justdelete.me/ <comment><USER2> Something that should be one of the fundamental human rights in internet (and in fact it is a right in Europe) is so complicated or even impossible sometimes... certainly the companies which don't let you control your account or data aren't bringing me much trust.

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, some of these need to retain some info in order to not give you free trial again and again.

But I still think someone like Netflix could do more. They could maybe store just enough credit card data to ensure it is no longer usable for free trial and then de-associate viewing data from the rest of your account and delete everything not strictly needed for the credit card part.

</comment></comment><comment> e-sushi Just what I happened to be looking for… thanks for the pointer! /* forking while writing this */

</comment><comment><USER4> It would be great if this was automated, like the Suicide Machine. They used to support Facebook, but Facebook C&D'd them. [http://suicidemachine.org/](http://suicidemachine.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Hacker News

IMPOSSIBLE</comment>


So You Think You've Built a Good Infinite Scroll - <AUTHOR> http://adrianroselli.com/2014/05/so-you-think-you-built-good-infinite.html <comment><USER2> I made the mistake of implementing my own infinite scroll once. Wasted lots of time and failed.</comment>