Is the Breakthrough Advertising book worth $400? - <AUTHOR> https://capitalandgrowth.org/answers/2980858/Is-the-Breakthrough-Advertising-book-worth-400 <comment><USER2> The guy's answer is straight from the pages of the book! How do you get someone to pay $125 for your book? Have someone ask if it's worth $400. Answer and say it's well worth the price and then mention you found it on sale for only $125.

</comment><comment><USER3> The article is an informative and educational review. Highly recommended! A++++ merchant!

But seriously, read the article.</comment>


Scientology says it's received $5.7M from Google in ad grants - <AUTHOR> http://tonyortega.org/2014/09/16/scientology-says-its-received-5-7-million-from-google-in-advertising-grants/ <comment><USER2> Hey, if the IRS recognizes them as a religion[1], not doing so in your non- profit/religion grant system is likely to get you sued by them. In truth, that's probably how it should be. In this case, a lot of us may dislike it, but if it was reversed and Google wasn't recognizing the EFF as a nonprofit a lot of the same people would likely be in arms. It's a lot like freedom of speech, we uphold it for all not because we believe everything that is said, but because when we allow individual judgement on the matter we descend into a morass of argumentation based on peoples differing concepts of what qualifies, and the ideal is too important to allow that.

1: Yes, I know the IRS was browbeaten into it. That actually supports my initial point.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe that getting recognized as a religion by the IRS gives you the right to receive grants from a private company that are awarded on a competitive basis.

Google will happily refuse your ad or your business for a very large number of reasons, many of them quite opaque. Google hasn't refused Scientology, and has actively encouraged them to spread their message. That's a choice they've made, not one forced on them by any law. They should accept the praise/blame for that action - they've earned it.

<comment><USER2> I'm not interested in Google becoming in arbiter of what is and is not a religion. I think it's entirely acceptable to fall back on what your national government has defined as religious and non-profit organizations, for exactly the reasons I outlined in my original comment. Similarly, I wouldn't want them making distinctions about political non-profits. I am happy they don't censor some ostensibly Democratically leaning health organizations, and I'll accept that they don't censor the NRA at the same time as the price of their neutrality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be a lot more newsworthy if Google refused to give promotions or sell advertising to a non-profit based on public perception / the organization's reputation.

Assuming Google gives similar offers to other potential new customers, this means nothing.

And anyone who suggests Google should refuse to do business with Scientology on the basis of their personal feelings is advocating trampling all over egalitarianism.

<comment><USER5> The definition of egalitarianism suggests that people, not organizations, are held equal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mostly off topic but slightly related:

If you get a chance and want to try something crazy try to visit their Celebrity Center in LA.

We were bored visiting some friends at Caltech and decided to do it. It was probably 10-15 years ago. We made up fake names, addresses, history, background story. When we got there they made us watch their recruitment video. But then the tour was pretty nice.

Even just seeing the people hanging around there, listen to the absolute batshit crazy worldview. Yeah the people seemed just a bit off -- spoke just a bit too slow and seemed a bit too robotic. Enjoyed seeing the architecture of the building, the explanations about how Ron Hubbard is going to come back from Saturn (or is it Neptune) and so they his office ready. Saw the saunas downstairs, where they supposedly "detoxify" people. The one sad thing there was a little old Korean lady. She didn't seem to speak English well and looked confused as they were telling her she needed to go back into the sauna. But then the best part, when night fell we got to go to the top level (or maybe the roof?) -- it was pretty nice view of the city.

The trick is to of course not give your disbelief away and don't act mean or condescending. We pretended to be ignorant young people who "heard good things" and just nodded and smiled. One of us couldn't resist making a sarcastic commit, we had to signal him to cut if off as he could have gotten us kicked out too early.

<comment><USER7> Funny, as of 5-10 years ago, I heard they refuse to entertain anybody affiliated with Caltech due to repeated trolling incidents. I guess you didn't cut him off soon enough.

<comment><USER6> Oh wow. Sorry everyone.

We were good nerds, but not very good con artists I suppose. We shouldn't have told them we were from Caltech (well I wasn't, I was just visiting a friend there) but the background story was that we all were.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > In the Bay Area a representative of Google was introduced to Scientology and > our 4th dynamic campaigns through the Stevens Creek Ideal Org. This > representative connected us up with the department responsible for non- > profit advertisements. And as a result, Google awarded us a $10,000-a-month > grant for free online advertising.

Scientology is a non-profit? is not founded as a company?

<comment><USER9> All religion orgs are considered non-profit; the funny thing is that "religion" is purposefully vaguely defined by the IRS, related: Jhon Oliver televangelist bit [https://youtu.be/7y1xJAVZxXg](https://youtu.be/7y1xJAVZxXg)

Organized religions including televangelists are one of the best business around, in a more cynical world I think there would be VCs and accelerators for creating new of them.

<comment><USER5> 1\. Create religion 2\. ... 3\. Profit!

<comment><USER10> "You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion." —L. Ron Hubbard

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The same website from which the thread-opening post comes has page about the reason L. Ron Hubbard founded Scientology as a religious organization--to make money.[1] That page includes an interesting account of knowing Hubbard by science fiction author Harlan Ellison.

[1] [http://tonyortega.org/2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting- wit...](http://tonyortega.org/2013/02/16/scientology-mythbusting-with-jon- atack-making-a-million/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Youtube shows religious advertisements to children.

Youtube removed "related content" videos section for official Scientology material. This censors critique videos and breaches the principle that Google was founded on:

\- To offer a search engine in the academic domain, where ranking is not decided by advertisers, but by link-weighted popularity.

As a comparison: A mobile phone manufacturer pays Google to remove the "related videos" for their videos, because one of those related videos talks about the dangers of driving while using a mobile phone.

Youtube embeds content hosted by Scientology on their Youtube profile page. This gives the Office of Special Affairs the IP (personal information) in their visitor logs. Scientology also places a cookie while surfing on the Youtube site. No confirmation is asked.

Scientology gets around the "all comments vs. no comments at all" by removing any negative or critical comment, and only allowing positive and astroturfing comments.

Even though religious advertisements used to be against their policy, they have since then taken money from religious institutes.

Advertisements are against Adwords TOS, when:

\- Sites with content that incites or promotes hatred against a group or individuals.

\- Content that encourages others to believe that a group or individual is inhuman or inferior

Scientology.org has content that promotes hatred against medical professionals. They vilify doctors for prescribing drugs for ADD. Factual quality of the content is low, while impact on the life of someone who believes all information there is high.

There is freedom of speech, and there is suiting advertisers. Google really needs to refind their balance. And be consistent in enforcing the rules, for instance their link-farm makes blackhat SEO's pale.

</comment><comment><USER13> so long as it's a non profit religious organization I don't see google discriminating against it. (please correct me if i'm wrong)

<comment><USER5> As a point of discussion, the German government doesn't consider it to be a religion.

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

<comment><USER14> The German government is on the right side re: Scientology. That's not to say Scientology has taken it lying down. It is an insidious organization.

[http://home.snafu.de/tilman/krasel/germany/stat.html](http://home.snafu.de/tilman/krasel/germany/stat.html)

<comment><USER15> I am not going to get sucked into Scientology or any other organised religion, but I expect consistency from governments. I find it despicable that governments get to pick and choose which insidious organizations get their blessing. Of course it is a religion, more or less as bad as any other. Either support religious freedom, or don't, but picking your favorites is something for individuals to do not governments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The place to fight this is with getting the IRS to recognize that this is a money-making business masquerading as a religion for financial gain.</comment>


How to Spot Toxic Software Jobs from Their Descriptions - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-spot-toxic-software-jobs-from-their-descriptions-c53cf224417f <comment><USER2> I saw one recently with "regular push up competitions" for a C++ software developer. I was very tempted to apply just to see what was going on there, but figured it would keep me awake nights.

</comment><comment> non-entity > A clear, concise summary of what you would be doing in this job without > excessive use of buzz words

Sadly I almost never see this from job postings.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd like to believe a lot of job descriptions end up copying each others formats, so how could we differentiate between those that are copying toxic jobs' descriptions and those that actually are toxic jobs?

Unless we're putting them in the same category.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Who desires to refactor someone else's bad code?

Sounds great, where do I sign up? Can I also improve the run space/time?</comment>


Pinstagram - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/rawfile/2012/05/pinstagram/

<comment><USER2> "We thought it would be hilarious to combine them because they are two of the hottest and most valuable companies on the planet"

Sigh. Are we really that lodged inside of our own startup bubble?

<comment><USER3> If by "we", you mean you valley people, then yes.

<comment><USER4> I see what you did there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure why people are so upset about this.

It's a pleasant mashup, nothing more, nothing less. Like sticking Craigslist and Google Maps together. Not going to change the world, but useful to some and a weekend project to show off. The developers themselves are tongue-in- cheek about it, as you could tell from the name alone.

<comment><USER6> Pek (creator) here. Thanks. We didn't see this as world changing nor are we claiming it is. For those of us who don't use Pinterest or Instagram, of course this will not be useful, but I'm a heavy Instagrammer and was always frustrated that there was no good web interface. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was actually solving my own problem when we made this as a joke.

<comment><USER7> I've never logged in to Pinterest, but this is a mighty fine (and incredibly unclunky) web UI for Instagram. Love it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's actually really funny how throwing two of the hottest startups together works so well. If they can pull off the "this is just a parody and we're not going to make money" angle to avoid a trademark lawsuit, this might be telling us a very similar message to those mashups of California Gurls and [random other trashy pop song that fits the beat perfectly]---that a lot of the more successful startups in the Valley are no longer marks of technological innovation but rather schemes to get rich quick off of the public's inability to sit still without pretty pictures or Farmville type games. I do hope enough of SV is still heading in the SpaceX direction though.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit Pinterest's "famous waterfall layout" makes me want to vomit into my own hat. Am I alone here?

<comment><USER9> I find it pretty effective for rapid consumption of content for which there's no "lossiness" penalty. I can miss or skip images and there's little or no consequence.

<comment> jack-r-abbit My brain processes things linearly, left to right, top to bottom. If I go left to right on row 1 and then left to right on row 2, I do not expect to find elements of row 1 hanging down into row 2. I don't mind tiles and I don't mind liquid layouts that realign tiles depending on page width. But when nearly every tile has a different height, it really messes with my brain. Even the two column Facebook Timeline makes me angry. Both cause my eyes to scan the page in a way that goes against what I've been doing for 30-some-odd-years now.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you on Facebook's Timeline. That UI doesn't work for me at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article, "Here's a recipe for success: Take two of the hottest, fastest-growing websites in the world and mash them together."

That's not a recipe for success. Perhaps a recipe for getting a Wired article.

<comment><USER6> I don't think we are claiming any sort of success here. Getting written up is nice. Is it a successful company? No. Is it a successful "business" no, but then again many companies here in the valley don't seem to be too worried about making money. Was it a good way to spend a weekend? definitely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting that no one's really thought of approaching Instagram's lack of web presence as an opportunity. I suppose it seemed like a bit of a foregone conclusion, like it was one of those products where that solution would be superfluous, but seeing all of the images in the waterfall layout makes a lot of sense, more, arguably, than it does in Facebook or the Instagram app.

<comment><USER11> You don't have to look far to find similar services that are built on Instagram's API:

* <http://instacanv.as>

* <http://statigr.am>

* <http://web.stagram.com/>

* <http://instagrid.me/>

* <http://instagre.at/>

Pinstagram may be new and interesting, but it's hardly the first one to tackle Instagram's lack of web presence...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The name seems like a trademark infringement suit waiting to happen.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reveals two things:

1) There's not much unique about any given social site, what drives it is the users and what they post. Sure, delicious is social around bookmarks, reddit is social around links, pinterest is social around visual content, flickr is social around photos, so they have their niche, but the "secret" sauce is the users.

2) The layout, theme, or visual identity of a site is completely arbitrary. There's reason to make it unique as part of branding and (minor) differentiation, but they are just uniquely laid out views of the same (user generated) content.

The ease at which sites can be re-skinned to look like another is the physical manifestation of the "we are the X of Y" start-up meme.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's interesting to note the change in the tone of comments between a Show HN post and this Wired article:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3919135>

Yes it's derivative, but it's a fun project that actually is pretty useful. I've logged in a couple of times since I saw it first posted because the way it presents Instagram images is quite engaging. I _rarely_ revisit any of the Show HN projects. This one was an exception.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure why there is so much hate for this today as well. To me it seems like a fun simple project that actually manages to make something easier for some people, namely view instagram on their desktop.

I'm curious if this partially comes out of some residual hate on HN for both instagram and pinterest since they are booming at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> famous waterfall interface of pinterest? Isn't it just jquery masonry?

</comment><comment><USER17> I recall from Economy 101: the economy is moved by incentives..

Incentives in a wanted area cause that area to prosper, taxation causes an unwanted area to slow down.

If a sipmle photoshop-plugin-like application like Instagram is worth U$ 1 billion, then of course you are bound to see 250 clones/mashups/whatever by thursday next week, because U$ 1 with nine zeroes is one heck of an incentive.

The question on my mind is: are these websites worth this? Is a photo sharing app like tens of others out there worth this much? imgur is worth how many billions if instagram is worth a billion?

<comment><USER18> Give these successes extra thought and you will see like I have that the significance of these services is obvious in a non-obvious way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The _Sign in with Instagram_ button doesn't work.

Makes me wonder if they actually got their Instagram API key revoked, the Instagram's license terms at <http://instagr.am/developer/> clearly say: _You cannot use the Instagram name in your application._

<comment><USER19> I can log in without any problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> God this is getting tiring. So. Utterly. Tiring.

</comment><comment><USER21> You're going to get sued by not one, two, massive startups for violating their trademarks...

</comment><comment><USER22> Brilliant! So many examples of innovative, clean and user friendly interaction design the last days. First swiftype.com, dragondrop (<https://shinyplasticbag.com/dragondrop/>) and now pinstagram.co.

</comment><comment><USER23> Verbiage criticism aside, This is actually pretty awesome.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

<comment><USER24> Hi, what technology stack/frameworks did you guys use to build pinstagram?

<comment><USER6> I blogged about it here: [http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2012/05/01/pinterest- instagram-p...](http://blog.pekpongpaet.com/2012/05/01/pinterest-instagram- pinstagram/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is smart.</comment>


Ask HN: DigitalOcean Droplet Issues? - <AUTHOR> So one of my droplets in NYC1 region was not responding to pings and had 100% packet loss. Anyone else had this happening around 40 mins ago ? <comment><USER2> Internet is miami is borked in general right now. strange</comment>


Why I'm Missing the iPhone gold rush - <AUTHOR> http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2009/03/why-im-missing-iphone-gold-rush.html

<comment><USER2> The media (and some of us) tend to focus on the big hits, and I think the real money (monthly, _potentially_ recurring income) is in a suite of small iPhone apps.

This developer inspires me:

"I have 41 cheap and simple (but useful) apps on the App Store right now and have been growing my catalog since late July. Each app took me less than a day to do. Some days I've cranked out five apps (and no, they are not the stupid "Countdown till Easter, Countdown till Christmas" apps). I easily have pulled $10k/month for the last 6 months in a row, quit my day job, and now do iPhone stuff full time. I have no employees, no costs (besides tax), minimal no-cost marketing, and no time schedule. I work MAYBE five to ten hours per week on this stuff."

[http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page...](http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=621564&page=3)

<comment><USER3> Don't fool yourself, once your app is off the charts — sales are virtually zero, there's very little trickle revenue. It will become increasingly difficult to land (and hang on) to top chart positions as the appstore triples in size this year, especially since the charts are governed by sales within 24-hour period.

I did a little research because I keep seeing that quote posted (which is from Dec. 08, before another 10k apps were on the store). I found his company and products:

<http://www.ethanproductions.com>

Mostly random saying generators, annoying sounds, picture shows, and a bunch of useless shit that's just not sustainable in the long-term. It's obvious to me his #1 intention was to rush a bunch of junk to the store simply to turn a sale, and nearly every app is rated 1 or 2 stars. He may have been getting $10k a month off unsuspecting customers in the past, but I highly doubt he'll see annualized sales over $100k. And I doubt he's still getting $10k in revenue.

If this is something that "inspires" you, then maybe you should reconsider your priorities if you have hopes of being the type of entrepreneur/hacker that wants to make a meaningful impact in the world.

<comment><USER2> The idea of building a suite of modest revenue-producing apps is what inspires me, not necessarily the implementation. Thanks for taking the time to do the research to find his AppStore alter ago. (Yes, I double-posted the quoted comment again).

I think inspiration does not always have to take 100% of the original story - part of it can do it (e.g. it's hard to replicate someone's exact formula) - this reasoning is along the lines of if you compare yourself to another person - you should compare everything, not just the job, etc. (e.g. making it logically absurd to compare yourself to another human being).

<comment><USER3> We've bootstrapped our company since August of 08, so I can absolutely relate to the desire of wanting a healthy, low maintenance revenue stream; sometimes I'm awoken at night by nightmares of raising money. One of the reasons we are bootstrapping this is because 1) we generate cash immediately, and 2) the upside is a VERY NICE revenue stream (no dilution) if we can manage to make, maintain, and keep our place as a premium app developer.

This is something that takes time to build and structure for true sustainability, period. You have to plan for more than a years worth of work if you're really interested in having that type of stream from the AppStore as it matures and pollutes. There will be cases of one-hit wonders for indie shops (especially in video games) and the major blogs will cover it, but make no mistake about it — it takes work.

The developer who was making $10k a month is likely no longer making that amount. He also has a reputation of producing 'junk' applications by his former and future customers (star ratings mostly 1-2), and will have an extremely difficult challenge in the coming months IMHO. So in a sense, his greed and desire to cut corners has poisoned his long term sustainability.

My company and partners are looking at the upside of our product revenue across 3-5 years, not 3-5 months. We're maintaining 4 premium apps (+ 1 junk app), and have roughly 4 new apps we'd like to introduce this year. Our existing products have features that will take over a year to build in and mature, but we're in this for the long haul. This seems to be in line with the thought and actions of the companies that inspire us such as TapTapTap, AppCubby, Polar Bear Farm, Tapbots, Tapulous, and Smule to name a few.

It's two different approaches to building a revenue stream, I know our approach will last longer once it's well established.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A request:

1\. Make a multi-player, network enabled version of Risk.

2\. Point me at the technologies I'll need to make it myself.

Currently, the only Risk in the market is called Lux Touch. As such, it's great -- but there's a lot of room for improvement. It only supports a single player vs computers, doesn't save game states, and only has the generic Risk map.

<comment><USER5> Lux Delux exists for both PC and iphone (Lux DLX). The PC version is multiplayer, networked, variable AIs, user generated maps. I think most of that's true for Lux DLX. You have to pay for it, but it is worth it if you're a risk player.

<http://sillysoft.net/lux/>

<http://sillysoft.net/lux/touch/>

(I am just a periodic addict)

<comment><USER4> I must have missed that. I'll see how it is before embarking on my own quest :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I just bought an iPod Touch. I intend to get a developer license and _at least_ make back the cost of the device and the license... but I don't have any great ambitions of making a _living_ out of it. At best I can hope that I come up with a simple but appealing idea in my spare time that will be catchy enough to make some good money on the App Store. I also fully intend to give away some of my work, since I'm really doing this _all_ for fun anyway!

</comment><comment><USER7> What I really want to know is: Who's going to be the Levi Strauss of the "iPhone Gold Rush"?

<comment><AUTHOR> Pinch Media, perhsps. [http://www.slideshare.net/pinchmedia/iphone-appstore- secrets...](http://www.slideshare.net/pinchmedia/iphone-appstore-secrets- pinch-media?type=presentation)

Or, more likely, one of the ad networks.

<comment><USER8> Yup, ad networks and analytics are pretty straighforward platform plays. Facebook had them too. On the web, Google owns one of each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's true, the iphone gold rush is missing gold in essense. There are tons of farting like apps, but very very few of any value. And again, casino always wins.

</comment><comment><USER10> If you're developing Age of Empires for the iPhone then maybe you're missing the boat, but for pong, pacman, collapse, tetris et all it is a great way to make a buck in a week, so you have plenty of time to develop more games instead of a couple of years and a huge team to develop the next Quake or duke nukem.

The iPhone is the best platform to develop games right now and it will get better.

Early settlers will get the best land.

See you in a couple of years looking for a 500 sqft one-bedroom flat in iPhone land.

<comment><USER11> I think you may have missed the point of the article. This guy specializes in making one very specific type of game, and he's pretty good at it. It earns him enough money to live on. He doesn't think his genre will work on the iPhone, but he believes it will continue to work on desktops, so he's going to keep writing for desktops.

Where is the evidence that "early settlers get the best land"? To the contrary, iPhone apps seem to be largely hit-driven; their revenue streams dry up once they fall off the charts. I'm guessing that the author's contention is true: that most iPhone games do not pay off for the time invested.

<comment><USER12> I like your point here. It sounds like Apple's MO for content sales to be hit- driven. I suspect that the billboards built into iTunes drive a lot of music sales too. The parallels between music revenue and app revenue might make a good post.</comment></comment></comment>


Xilinx Vitis and Vitis AI Software Development Platforms - <AUTHOR> https://www.eejournal.com/article/xilinx-vitis-and-vitis-ai-software-development-platforms/ <comment><USER2> Note that all of this is predicated on High Level Synthesis (HLS) becoming real, after many years of industry over-promises and under-deliveries.

A jaded RTL engineer may fairly ask, "what's different this time?" I'm convinced it's two things:

1\. These chips have scaled to the point where the toolflow isn't just annoying, it's crippling. (I say that as an RTL designer who likes Vivado, believe it or not.) Making effective use of the largest FPGAs in traditional FPGA applications is difficult enough. Plus, the marginal cost of baking e.g. ARM cores onto an FPGA is now so low that these parts are quickly becoming heterogeneous SoCs and it requires extensive cross-domain knowledge to get a modern design off the ground. More importantly, though, Xilinx is trying to expand FPGAs beyond traditional FPGA markets, and it can't do so without expanding the pool of available talent to program them. Finally, new FPGA applications (e.g. AI) come with their own technical arcana and finding FPGA designers who are proficient in all of these domains is only growing harder. It is necessary for the tools to help, and Xilinx is amply incentivized to pour money into the R&D programs necessary, even if the new tools are simply bundled alongside the old ones.

2\. This may be a surprise, but LLVM. Doing HLS correctly is a forced march through every conceivable corner of compiler, language, and RTL design, and to date, that's been much too difficult for EDA companies. I believe that LLVM as an accessible compiler workshop has been instrumental to Xilinx's success to date.

I hope Xilinx does genuinely open-source some of the pieces. (Not the synthesis flow, in this case, but all the stuff built on top of it.) The open- source EDA community is small but motivated and talented, but it's crippled by balkanization caused by the commercial EDA market. This might be an interesting shot in the arm.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious: why is FPGA tooling so poor? I used a Spartan-3 over a decade ago for a simple project, and as cursory look it doesn't seem like things have changed much despite the devices becoming significantly more diverse and complicated.

<comment><USER2> It's not quite fair to say the tooling is flat-out awful. Vivado is much better than ISE. The place/route algorithms matured (analytical placement rather than simulated annealing), and the software it's wrapped in grew up (it's now tcl-driven and much more script- and revision-control-friendly.) Vivado was a heroic effort and Xilinx deserves credit for taking software seriously, and getting so much of it right. If you don't believe me, try hiring an FPGA engineer today to work on an ISE project. You'll get an earful.

That said, a solid, open-source, mixed-language simulator with good SystemVerilog and VHDL-2008 support would change my life. Bonus points if I can embed it in C/C++ code a la Verilator. And, while I'm asking, can it simulate encrypted IP too?

This is one of the places where HLS may sideswipe the traditional RTL market: if you can effectively develop FPGA designs in C++, the entire approach to development/testing/integration changes completely. It may sound like a detail, but it touches every single pain point associated with a complex FPGA design.

<comment><USER4> I'm using Vivado right now. Things I hate about it:

\- It's sluggish. The underlying algorithms may be fast (they handle huge designs), but even with an empty design it's sluggish. I'm not sure if this is from the Java or the TCL. On the other handle Altera/Intel Quartus is faster.. (it also uses Java and TCL..)

\- I hate TCL. This whole concept of an integrated extension language in a massive tool is terrible. It's the standard way in the EDA world, but it's not good at all. I prefer simpler tools tied together with Makefiles..

\- I hate the schematic-like block designs. I just want a single Verilog file that represents the design, no XML. The block designs are difficult to integrate with git.

\- I hate projects. They are difficult to integrate with git: you have to export project tcl, then regenerate the project from this checked in file. It's aweful and breaks when the design gets complicated.

\- I'm using Zynq Ultrascale+ and I hate eclipse. The EDK is eclipse-based. I just want a command line tool to generate a project from the hardware description so that I never have to open the Eclipse. True, once your hardware is stabilized, you can avoid it (it does generate a Makefile). I've not tried Altera's SoCs, so not sure if better.

That being said, Xilinx did a good job with the BSP software and the Linux support. At least it's better than what we see on some embedded processors (Nvidia, ugh..)

Also I recently ported a design from Zynq (32-bit) to Zynq Ultrascale+ (64-bit). Not bad at all.

<comment><USER5> You can generate the sdk including the makefiles from the command line. I don't think I have opened Eclipse on my latest project.

They also do have some articles on preparing the projects for git which work OK, but yeah there is a lot more to be done.

I'm not sure how you would replace the tcl scripts with makefiles. Most of them contain functions to wire together not build targets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The adoption of FPGA technology in the market has always been limited by the severe learning curve required to take advantage of it."

I vehemently disagree with this. FGPAs and their toolchains are notoriously expensive and proprietary. I have no doubt that if tool chains were opened up and an average person could program for it, you would see much more.rapid adoption because then an average person could start the learning curve much easier

<comment><USER4> I also disagree. The main problem is much simpler: they cost too much for fundamental reasons. The die-size for an FPGA that would have equivalent power of an Intel CPU or Nvidia GPU would be huge and expensive.

<comment><USER7> What does "equivalent power" even _mean_? It's completely useless without any qualifiers or specific metrics/goals.

My Nvidia GPU also doesn't run x86 programs at the speed of my desktop, but I never expected it to. It's true in the vacuous sense only.

<comment><USER4> They are all Turing machines, all that matters is can I run my algorithm at higher performance than equivalent priced conventional solutions.

<comment><USER8> This is incredibly naive. There are algorithm where CPU but GPU easily. There are also algorithms where a GPU beats a CPU easily. There are also algorithms where an FPGA beats a GPU and a CPU easily. You simply can't say x is better then y in general. They all have their own domains.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why The Boycott Apple Movement Matters; Why It's Not Dumb - Muktware - <AUTHOR> http://www.muktware.com/3871/why-boycott-apple-movement-matters-why-its-not-dumb?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+muktware%2Ffeeds+%28Muktware+Feeds%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> I have so many issues with this post I barely even want to respond. The movement is dumb, plain and simple. The idea that anyone is going to boycott apple because some android users on google plus started a "movement" is ridiculous. The only people taking up the cry of #BoycottApple are people that are android users who wouldn't buy something from Apple in the first place.

Every sentence of this article is inflammatory. Claiming that Apple thinks that they won't be able to innovate is laughable . Apple slow plays features, they do it they way that they want to.

If you're going to talk about the number of things that Apple stole from Android you should probably mention the other side of this two way street.

I suggest that the author step outside the echo chamber that is the tech media and ask anyone if they know who Apple is suing or who is suing them. Ask them if they care that Apple is suing people over stupid patents. Ask them what their next phone is going to be.</comment>


More Like Widening HTML5 Gyre Amirite? - <AUTHOR> http://modcult.org/read/2010/2/15/more-like-widening-html5-gyre-amirite

<comment><USER2> His pmarca vs TBL point is way off, IMHO.  vs  is a matter of syntax, not semantics; for Mosaic to have changed their IMG support to use A instead need only have affected their parser (depending on how far they retained the specific DOM nodes into the presentation graph).

It wasn't a case of pragmatic engineering trumping academic idealism. TBL's suggestion actually makes more engineering sense to me than an IMG tag, as it wouldn't necessarily be limited to images, would be more future-proof for e.g. automated downloaders trying to discover everything needed for a cached copy of a document (all A with REL including EMBED) etc.

Finally, I find this bit incredibly disingenuous:

"I don't know anything about this masinter guy, but he sounds like a normal, non-dick, reasonable engineer:

"'I think progress of HTML5 in W3C could be faster if the subsections on graphics and metadata could (if not now, then eventually) be moved to separate subgroups [...]'"

The crucial bit being that "this masinter guy" works for Adobe. If it were up to me to try and sabotage HTML5's graphics support, suggesting that moving it out to somewhere else would "speed things up" would be exactly how I'd go about it.

<comment><USER3> I dunno about you, but I can always remember , whereas anything more complex than the basic  completely fails to stick in my head.

From a simple usability point of view  wins.

<comment><USER2> Syntax familiarity is proportional to usage. IOW, I'm pretty sure that if you had to use a different form to insert images, you would remember it just as easily now. Even with IMG as it is now, you have to remember to use src, rather than href as used with A.

<comment><USER3> Except that remembering the image source is much easier than remember the "A", which ISTR is the Anchor, but that never made sense to me either, as I'm not anchoring anything.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How South Africa can become a competitive startup nation like the USA - <AUTHOR> https://www.iafrikan.com/2018/09/06/south-africa-startups-investment/ <comment><USER2> Perhaps they shouldn't scare off their most productive citizens.

<comment><USER3> They should start by not seizing private property.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenzomontanari/2018/08/31/sou...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenzomontanari/2018/08/31/south- africa-land-seizures-begin-economic-decline-accelerates)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seems like they would need to figure out the food and water situation first.</comment>


Elon Musk to make James Bond submarine car a reality - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/17/autos/musk-bond-sub-tesla/ <comment><USER2> _It 's a so-called wet submarine, meaning that it fills with water when submerged, so the driver has to wear a wetsuit and breathe air from a tank. (The dry passenger compartment shown in the movie was a set.) It has no steering wheel or other automobile controls and is instead controlled with levers. The fins on the outside are not retractable, but permanent._

So, the title is false. Or at best, misleading. He is going to take a james bond movie prop and get it wet. He is not going to make [the] "james bond submarine car" a reality. This is somehow increasingly typical of Tesla stories that make it on HN.

<comment><USER3> Are you sure Musk isn't planning on massively upgrading the thing to transform and be an actual "dry submarine"? The article says that the car he bought is just a prop that doesn't even transform, but that he wants to make it transform. That sounds to me like his goal is to recreate the functionality the car had on film, including having a dry interior when submerged.

<comment><USER2> The reportage is in quotes (italics). [1]

[1] From wikipedia: "Musk plans to install a Tesla electric powertrain in the submarine S1 and make it transform into a road-going car. [6]" There is nothing in the story that say it would be a dry submarine. What it appears is that the <wet submarine> would be able to "transform" into a road-going car, in other words, just what wikipedia quote also says. CNN, viz: _" I was disappointed to learn that it can't actually transform," Musk said in a statement provided by Tesla. "What I'm going to do is upgrade it with a Tesla electric powertrain and try to make it transform for real."_ But a power train is not a pressure hull([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_hull#Pressure_hull](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_hull#Pressure_hull)), which is what would be required for a dry sub.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pure novelty.

Subs are not energy efficient. Water is 1,000x more dense than air, & moving through it takes far more energy.

And, hybrid (land+water) is going to require far more hardware, driving up the price & weight (& thus efficiency) of a vehicle.

But, it's cool & he has the budget & gumption for it, so THANKS Elon, for keeping us entertained!

<comment><USER5> It seems to me like this is his equivalent of a hobby or week-end project. So I wouldn't try to read too much into it.

Yet.

<comment><USER6> Even Linux was a 'hobby weekend project' at one point.

<comment><USER7> didn't he started that for university credits?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I never thought Elon Musk would try to disrupt the Duck Tours business.

<comment><USER9> Hopefully his vehicle will be safer than theirs is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Top Gear also made a Bond submarine car:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfOwSTXP-3o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfOwSTXP-3o)

<comment><USER11> Most of Top Gear's submarine cars weren't intended to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Elon Musk can do anything i am waiting for the day when Elon Musk launch Robots like Pacific Rim and transformers. Initially i don know about this person but one of my friend inform me about Tesla,space x and Elon Musk. I got surprised and think that what i am doing or others are doing. From that day Elon Musk name give me Positive boost. You can do it sir. We are waiting...

<comment><USER13> _> Elon Musk launch Robots like Pacific Rim_

Sarcos had the technology for full-body haptic feedback harnesses of the type that were somewhat portrayed in Pacific Rim, and they had this in the 90's, if I recall correctly. DARPA had arm/shoulder/head haptic feedback projects even back in the 70's and 80's.

The problem is that the human form factor is quite complex, and it will always be cheaper to make a simpler specialized tool. Humans are scary good at controlling things, even without haptic feedback.

Transformers: Just physically impossible for anything more functional than a movie prop. (Ok, maybe Monster Truck rallies.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> _" I was disappointed to learn that it can't actually transform"_

This is after spending a million dollars on it (literally).

<comment><USER15> Not sure if you are serious. But I would assume he meant that he learned this before and later decided to buy the car either way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So, I submitted this same thing earlier, but it looks like HN automatically kills gawker submissions.

[http://jalopnik.com/zomg-elon-musk-to-turn-lotus- submarine-i...](http://jalopnik.com/zomg-elon-musk-to-turn-lotus-submarine- into-working-bo-1447469023)

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if Elon actually has the resources to make a functional dry submarine car with capabilities as portrayed in the movie? With some consulting from marine engineers, his people could probably fabricate such a prototype out of aluminum. He and his companies probably couldn't afford to take the resources away from R&D to actually do this, however.

Top Gear made their submarine car Lotus, but it was considerably compromised as both a car and a submarine. Can't really be debonair when a stream of water is squirting onto your tuxedo trousers. It only held water out of the cockpit by having air pumped in at a high rate.

</comment><comment><USER17> Spaceship, submarine car... has anyone heard anything about Musk planning orbital laser weapons, by any chance? It would be the next logical super villain move.

<comment><USER18> If he starts cloning Persian cats we have to be really worried - Btw is it true that space X employees have color coded jumpsuits and hard hats as uniforms :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wish more people dared to dream like Elon Musk does. He's a modern day Howard Hughes (minus the fingernail and pee thing).

<comment><USER20> just reading a Howard Hughes bio.

Howard Hughes was no Elon Musk. Musk is way more impressive.

Hughes inherited a fantastic business from his father and made a lot of terrible business decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I don't think so. The amount air in the vehicle would require a very heavy car that would not perform on the street.

Rinspeed design tryed it and the closest they got was the scuba concept that is open for exactly that reason.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E4q7p6R3Og](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E4q7p6R3Og)

<comment> a-priori From the article: "It's a so-called wet submarine, meaning that it fills with water when submerged, so the driver has to wear a wetsuit and breathe air from a tank. (The dry passenger compartment shown in the movie was a set.)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not really sure why he needed to buy the prop. He has a car company, why not just make a submersible Tesla. :)

<comment><USER23> Because it gives him positive press. Plain and simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This can be used to cross the Bay without bridges, ferries, or BART. Between Tesla cars, the hyperloop, and this, perhaps he is solving Silicon Valley's transportation troubles after all.

<comment><USER25> Wouldn't you need a special(shallow angle) entry point to the water.

<comment><USER26> Like a boat ramp?

<comment><USER13> Specially tuned Trebuchet?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When are we finally going to admit that this guy is a real life bond villain? We need to stop him before he relocates to a volcano lair and threatens the earth with a space-based laser beam.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is Musk buying these things like this submarine car and an actual submarine as just a patron or does he actually need them for research purposes?

</comment><comment><USER28> The shape of that windshield seems sub-optimal for holding back any significant water pressure. Could the prop actually be submerged at all?

<comment> T-A Yes, but with water on both sides of the windshield (it was a "wet" sub, no airtight compartment).

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rather have a flying car than submarine car.

</comment><comment><USER30> Jesus Christ.

</comment><comment><USER31> It's for the hyperloop.

</comment><comment><USER32> Another example of the media stuffing the mythology of Elon until it's as fat as a Thanksgiving turkey.

Then, when he falls out of favour with the press, they'll eat him alive.

All these bogus stories of Elon the superhuman mega genius aren't good for him in the long run. He can't live up to it and he shouldn't play up to it. He's being set up.

EDIT: Paradoxically, I think it's about time an Engineer gets treated like a star. He's a great role model for kids.</comment>


What is the best place to host and learn node.js? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking at exploring node.js to build websites.  I need a place where I can host work for multi-user apps.  Also looking for the best material out there for ramping up on this technology. <comment><USER2> For the learning part:

VM booklet in progress <https://github.com/visionmedia/masteringnode>

Dailyjs.com series <http://dailyjs.com/2011/01/03/node-tutorial-8/></comment>


Why Developers Hate Coding Skills Tests (and What You Can Do to Change That) - <AUTHOR> https://www.qualified.io/blog/posts/why-developers-hate-coding-skills-tests <comment><USER2> This is interesting, I definitely have a few good buddies who can't stand when a company sends them a HackerRank or Codility test, maybe a platform like this makes more sense to keep us and hr happy lol

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely tough when you feel like you're receiving assessments that don't really correlate with the work you'll be doing on the job. The more companies can use language specific testing frameworks and assessments based on unit tests, the more the assessments will mimic the actual programming they'll be doing on the job. Better yet, customer assessments can be built that actually reflect real problems or challenges companies have within their own code base.</comment></comment>


Facebook threatens LinkedIn with job board feature - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/07/jobbook/ <comment><USER2> Sad announcement for the creators of those job listing tab apps, although they are already rather tricky to support, as you cannot go to app tabs on mobile.</comment>


Show HN: My first 5 minutes in a VPS and beyond, in scripts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/drkarl/install-scripts

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, this is a set of scripts to run in a new VPS, to install some basic stuff that you'll need on every server, to create a new user with sudo powers, to disable root admin, install etckeeper, install and setup ufw firewall and then, as a user, somesupercharging like zsh with presto, clones your dotfiles, tmux... Finally a set of optional scripts to install additional software which doesn't install with a line-liner (apt-get install) but requires some combination of download, untar, compile (cmake or ./configure, make, make install...), or add a new repo and download...

Both suggestions to improve and pull requests are welcome.

<comment><USER2> > some basic stuff that you'll need on every server

That's quite a stretch.</comment></comment>


Show HN: We measure classroom confusion - <AUTHOR> http://blog.classmetric.com/post/10279085541/postlectureview <comment><USER3> Just to point out -- whether it's relevant or not -- I remember reading recently that confusion is often a good sign, i.e. confusion often means that one mental model is being replaced by another, which can be an indicator of learning. For example, in the process of replacing a common-sense model of physics with a Newtonian one, there has to be a "confusion" stage somewhere in-between, and an absence of such stage could indicate a failure to acquire the Newtonian model.

<comment><USER4> Certainly, although you have to differentiate between confusion, which can be beneficial as you say, and being completely lost, which hampers learning.

The subject matter being obvious and well understood can look a lot like the subject matter having no meaning at all because the learners are completely lost.

Particularly, asking 'any questions?' and then moving on (often rapidly) when no questions are forthcoming is another sign. It's hard to tell if it is because there is full understanding or almost no understanding. Instead, try giving more time for people to think of questions, and ask 'what questions do you have?'.

I've not had a chance to try, but in a similar vein, having an IRC chat running along side a lecture could provide similar useful feedback, and an avenue for questions without making learners feel stupid.

I like the direction they are taking with this tool. Good, honest, and especially timely feedback is one of the difficult challenges of education. Without it you are flying blind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you reconcile this with the observation that the most confused people are the ones who understand the most? <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2931518>

<comment><AUTHOR> The crucial thing is that students can now give some feedback - if it turns out that having students more confused improves their learning, then professors can purposefully drive the red line higher. As PG has said, you improve what you measure. Professors have a powerful way to measure confusion now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> As a fairly recent graduate (just over a year now) I'd like to say, please stop giving us things to distract us in lectures.

</comment><comment><USER7> That's actually my lecture that ClassMetric broke down in the blog post. From a (first time) instructor's perspective, I don't see the tool as a distraction to students. I'm not punishing students for using it, and students have another way to communicate to me that they don't understand something in lecture. I only lectured for one hour a week, the TAs spent the majority of the time with the students. In my case, Class Metric allowed me to touch on the big ideas of the week during my lecture, measure confusion on topics, and figure out how TAs should structure their discussions and labs to be the most useful to the most students. The message posting system also allowed TAs to participate directly during lecture as well, answering questions and addressing confusion as it appeared so students could better keep up with the lecture material. Yes, it may be distracting to have knowledge coming from two channels, but students can still refer back to that channel later when they are reviewing the whole lecture material.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you think about it, the way we teach now is really primitive. So much feedback could be gathered and incorporated so easily, and greatly increase the effectiveness of the whole process. Imagine something like this incorporated with the Kahn Academy. Also, imagine the feedback being used _not only_ to help the teacher improve the lecture, but also in a "stack overflow" sense to cause the best lecture videos to "rise to the top". I am very excited about what is going to happen in the field of education.

</comment><comment><USER9> This looks pretty interesting. I actually would be more interested in using it for curriculum design, not really for real-time classes. I think I'd get a group of students and a BETA version of one of my books, teach a class with it, then use this to review which exercises are working and which need to be redone.

If it also included metrics on improvement in understanding over time and across instructors it'd be even more powerful.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would be great to have you give it a try - email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we can get you hooked up with the alpha version.

ClassMetric actually started as Bookxor, where the focus was on document analytics and discussions. We showed teachers which pages students were reading and how long they spent on each page. The system also let students post questions and have discussions in the margins of the document.

Over the next couple months we'll be bringing some of these ideas back to ClassMetric. Maybe these document-centric features would be more useful for you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think this is ok, but not nearly as good as: < <https://learningcatalytics.com/> >.

<comment><USER11> Hey p4wnc6, welcome to Hacker News. I've downvoted your post - here's why.

The comment isn't particularly insightful. It espouses your opinion (totally OK) without any reason or rationale (not OK). Why is it better? What could this company learn from Learning Catalytic's product? Is this just observation, or are you uniquely qualified to judge these two products?

The link is completely superfluous. It goes to a login page and doesn't tell me anything about the company or product. Also, a note on style, links are typically just left inline <http://google.com> or in parens (<http://google.com>) but that's orthogonal to what matters - <USER2> comments.

I hope that's helpful!

<comment><USER10> (a) I am a grad student who works with Mazur and the post-doc who founded Learning Catalytics, so I think I am in a position to make a useful comparison. (b) I only intended to offer my opinion because, as the other commenter mentioned, some people feel Learning Catalytics is very different and I don't. I specifically wanted to avoid a lengthy back-and-forth about the nuances between the two. My two cents is that anyone who would use this product would be better served by Learning Catalytics. (c) The web link was just to alert you to the the existence of Learning Catalytics. If you want details, search harder. (d) I don't care about link style, especially not in a one-line comment. My comment wasn't hard to read or obtrusive, so why are you splitting hairs about the formatting?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just an idea:

[http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-18-10-1076...](http://www.opticsinfobase.org/abstract.cfm?uri=oe-18-10-10762) \+ <http://www.khanacademy.org/> \+ www.classmetric.com

</comment><comment><USER13> As a university instructor, I want to find out more about it, but your page makes it harder than it should be. The "home" icon links to the blog, the one on the right does too. No links for more information, status of the project, or cost involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woops - our apologies. We're currently testing at MIT and Boston University, but we'd love to talk to you more. Shoot us an email at email@example.com or head over to <http://classmetric.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As someone who've taught before (I was a TA at Berkeley during grad school). It's awesome to monitor the classroom and see if what you are saying even makes sense to the class or not. Kudos!

</comment><comment><USER15> Anything that requires extra work from students is no-go.

</comment><comment><USER16> Very cool! Helps turn a one-way learning experience into a dynamic one.

<comment><USER17> Guys, please don't do this. You submitted your startup. The submission got popular, and will now be discussed. Do we really need obvious sock puppet accounts created 10 minutes after the initial submission, commenting with enthusiasm and marketing speech?

<comment><USER16> Antonio, don't be so quick to cry foul.

I am one of classmetrics founder's brother, and run my own company out in Philadelphia area called LeanServer.

If you need my papers, I will be more than happy to fax them to you.

Best, Mike

<comment><USER18> > I am one of classmetrics founder's brother

In which case, although you may not be a sockpuppet in the literal sense, what you did is frankly not much better. Sorry to be the bearer of disagreeable news, but that's how it is.

It's not just that you'll get downvotes for this. I don't know about anyone else, but my opinion of the likely value of ClassMetrics went _down_ when I saw your comment, and further down when it was confirmed that you were indeed basically spamming HN. That's probably not the outcome you were looking for.

[EDITED to fix a typo.]

<comment><USER19> On Wikipedia, the term for accounts like that is "meatpuppet".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


For Women to Think Mathematically, Colleges Should Think Creatively - <AUTHOR> http://chronicle.com/article/For-Women-to-Think/131547/?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

<comment><USER2> Significantly more Women graduate with a BS from US collages than Men. Is that yet another gender imbalance that needs to be addressed by schools? Or is that a societal issue and having collages focusing on increasing Male admission and graduation rates a waste of resources?

<comment><USER3> "Significantly" is an exaggeration. The numbers i found ([http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&...](http://www.acenet.edu/AM/Template.cfm?Section=News_Room&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay.cfm&CONTENTID=38683)) said that women earn 57% of all BS degrees.

I imagine it'd have to get closer to 75% before people actually started worrying about men's graduation rates.

<comment><USER4> People will only start worrying when the ratio is closer to 3 women graduating per male?

<comment><USER3> Let me rephrase. Using 75% implies a certain level of authority I don't have.

"I think it will take a bigger imbalance before people start worrying about a gender imbalance in favor of men."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> meta-coder With all due respect, I think it is in the DNA. Looking at our evolution during the past million years, may be women were dominated by men. They might not have had enough freedom to follow their curiosities until several thousand years back. So it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at. Have we done enough comparative studies of men's and women's brains?

<comment><USER5> _it will take more time to have their brain evolve to levels that current men's brain is at_

Wait, did you actually compare women to cave men or half monkey? Maybe that's why blacks aren't represented well in highly technical or high paying jobs, cause they only came down from the trees recently?</sarcasm>

OK I'll bite: The problem with your 'evolution theory' is that men and women aren't separate species and interbreed, a lot. Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man comes from a woman. If "women DNA" were 'stupider' than "man DNA", then (like lots of genetic traits (e.g. skin colour, height)), you'd see it evening out over the generations. If there was a "dum dum gene" that only lived on the X or Y chromosome, you'd have to explain why it doesn't seem to affect people who don't have XX and XY (some men are XXY, some women are X, etc.)

<comment><USER6> > Half the DNA in each women comes from a man, and half the DNA for a man > comes from a woman.

See: <http://www.psy.fsu.edu/~baumeistertice/goodaboutmen.htm>

      Recent research using DNA analysis answered this question about two years ago.
      Today's human population is descended from twice as many women as men.

Will look for sources.

<comment><USER5> It's entirely possible for both things to be true.

In a village of 1 man and 10 women, and that man impregnates each women, resulting in 10 babies. If you look at that set of 10 babies, then each baby will have half their DNA from a man and half from a woman. However of the 10 babies, the set of male ancestors is 1 person, but the set of female ancestors will be 10.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article mis-states their case: women earn 52% of chemistry undergrad degrees and 41% of straight-up math degrees. The problem is not math itself but the culture surrounding Engineering, Physics and Computer Science in particular.

<comment><USER8> As far as math is concerned, not even close to 40% of advances in the field are fostered by women.

In fact it seems that even though more women get Bscs in math, actual cutting edge research in math continues to be made by 10% of women at best, roughly the same ratio as a generation ago.

Still not a single Fields medalist is female (despite the tremendous backstage games to change that) and that is not because of bias, very few (if any) women currently deserve it.

<comment><USER9> Women are good and average and safe (genetically speaking).

Men are more distributed in the extremes: both extremely bad and extremely good.

Just think of this: Why the number of people in prison is mostly males instead of half male and half female? Should we try to 'correct' this too?

This is not a problem of society, but a consequence of different reproductive strategies.

<comment><USER10> I don't know that there is any reason to think these social outcomes are rooted in genes. It looks to me like it's rooted in something else. Care to share where/why you got the idea that it is genetically determined?

Thanks.

<comment> barry-cotter What is the maximum number of children a man can have? What is the maximum number of children a woman can have? What does this imply about the best strategy for maximising number of descendants for men and for women?

Male mating strategies exhibit far higher skew than female ones. Men have higher variance than women in every trait I know of, from heighth to IQ scores to income. Men take more risks.

Here's[0] where you'll find the most convenient counterarguments or pointers to same. Here's[1] the best book I've encountered on the general topic. The introductory chapter is excellent.

[0][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psych...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology#Ethnocentrism) [1][http://books.google.com.hk/books/about/The_Handbook_of_Evolu...](http://books.google.com.hk/books/about/The_Handbook_of_Evolutionary_Psychology.html?id=esDW3xTKoLIC)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Article does not pass the smell test. College is not where people go to decide if they are mathematically oriented or not. Everything that precedes it does.

<comment><USER12> The article is in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

It's speaking to an audience of Educators at the University level.

Naturally, the context of their solutions will be one in which those Educators operate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do bias, discrimination, and biological differences not drive preferences? Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

Why is this a mystery to the authors?

Referenced Quote from Article: "While bias, discrimination, and biological differences may have some secondary influence, they found, women simply prefer careers that don't involve math over careers in engineering, physics, mathematics, operations research, computer science, and chemistry. Why this is so remains unanswered."

Some Related Material: Podcast interview by Scott Hanselman on this same topic([http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in- tech...](http://www.hanselminutes.com/303/improving-diversity-in-technology- with-kimberly-bryant-from-blackgirlscodecom))

<comment><USER12> > Kids internalize the bias of the culture around them at an early age.

How are you determining the weight and timing of causative factors in order to make a nurture over nature proclamation like that?

<comment><USER3> I wasn't making any sort of proclamation like that.

I'm asking why the authors think that nature and nurture is not a sufficient explanation for the preferences of college age adults.

I brought up cultural bias specifically because it's something that people are used to trying to change, as opposed to genetics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some thoughts about the coder culture and how it relates to women can be found on this really interesting blog post. [http://www.infoworld.com/d/application- development/the-ugly-...](http://www.infoworld.com/d/application- development/the-ugly-underbelly-of-coder-culture-190618)

I can't say that I agree with all of it, but it's definitely worth reading to understand certain social and cultural dynamics.</comment>


I sometimes can upvote twice...bug? - <AUTHOR>

On the main page, I upvoted a story and then opened the comment thread and I could upvote it again.  It only worked on some stories.  I then went to 'new' and tried it there, and there too it worked on some only.  I haven't tried the other way around (first upvote from comment thread and then from the list of stories). Is this a bug? <comment><USER2> The http request for the first vote was probably still being processed when the second page was generated, so it still produced the up-arrow. When you clicked on it, though, the second vote would have been ignored by the server.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not in my case, I gave the new two points.

<comment><USER2> The Javascript on the page always seems to increase the score. You have to reload to be sure if it did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, yeah. Not a bug then :P

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can everyone trying to check do so on this comment? It would be much appreciated :)

<comment><USER4> Well, downvoting works.

<comment><USER3> now that its confirmed that downvoting works, maybe you should try upvoting like OP and check</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Village – Everything to know about Toronto, in your inbox - steve-benjamins https://www.itsonvillage.com/ <comment> steve-benjamins Hi HN, I'm posting this specifically for feedback.

You can see a sample of the newsletters here: [https://mailchi.mp/224bac98aac1/saturday-edition- june-15-260...](https://mailchi.mp/224bac98aac1/saturday-edition- june-15-2604689)

I was inspired by Jessica Lessin (The Information) who's been adamant that the secret to building paywalls is building a great _product_. Village is my attempt at creating a great local news product.

In the last 2 months I've been able to sign up a little over 100 subscribers— but they were all previously subscribed to a free version of the newsletter I ran from 2016-2017 (it had over 4,000 subscribers). I've already emailed the free version list 3 or 4 times so I'm reticent to keep selling to it.

Newsletters take me about 13 hours each week (10 hours curating / writing and 3 hours taking photographs around the city).

My biggest challenge is marketing. I've priced it at $3 / month because that's what a price-point people have told me they are comfortable with (which I know, conventional wisdom is INCREASE your price). $3 / month makes it hard to get a positive ROI on things like Facebook Ads (though even at $3 / month I'm not having much success converting cold leads to warm leads).

Would love to know your feedback.</comment>


We redesigned and open sourced our landing page. Looking for feedback - <AUTHOR> https://stormkit.io <comment><AUTHOR> We would like to receive your feedback in terms of design, usability and content.

Additionally, we have also open sourced the landing page and documentation so that the community can help with examples and keep the docs up-to-date.

Here is the website: [https://www.stormkit.io](https://www.stormkit.io)

Looking forward to hear your feedback. Thank you very much

<comment><USER2> Feels sluggish and scrolling is painful on my galaxy s6. It might be an old phone, but even so I can't recall any other websites being this slow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your feedback. We did not catch that, because we mainly focus on Desktop. Your point is added to our issue list. Really appreciate it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Scrolling is not sufficient consent to tracking/a privacy policy. Even if it were, the cookie box triggering, shadowing the entire page, and then having the only option on the box be "Okay, got it" wasn't a great user experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much for this feedback. We will/have to change the banner, but do I understand you right: You just scrolled down and it automatically accepted the cookie? If yes, we also need to fix this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Disliked the lazy load speed on mobile. Clicking through the feature tabs with the videos left me waiting for them to load (which I didn't know would happen).

A placeholder with the "sheen" type effect might work so I know something is loading.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for testing and your feedback. We will include this in our issue list

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well first impression, I just navigated to the page in Safari on my MBP 2015 i7 2.2GHz and scrolling was incredibly slow...

This could be a Safari thing, as things are pretty smooth in edge for Mac.

<comment><USER6> The entire section above the fold re-renders on every scroll event, probably some non-gpu accelerated CSS property is changed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for your observation. We are checking on how to fix this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Your website is not GDPR compliant.

Tracking must be opt-in (even for analytics) and consent must be _freely_ given (so you can't nag/pressure users into giving consent because declining is too hard).

<comment><AUTHOR> Ou wow, not sure how we missed this. Thank you so much for your feedback. We will fix this asap.</comment></comment>


The Washington State Measles Outbreak - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/it-will-take-off-like-a-wildfire-the-unique-dangers-of-the-washington-state-measles-outbreak/2019/02/06/cfd5088a-28fa-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html <comment><USER2> Quote from a mom on the fence in the article

"On one side, they make you afraid, and the other side they make you feel stupid, and you get stuck in this middle where you feel beat up by both sides," she said.

Not trying to be condescending but this frustrates me even more than anti vaxers who have an identity in supporting their idiotic parade.

This woman is sincerely trying to figure out what is best for her child and she couldn't do it until she had a 2 hour one on one conversation with her doctor. She has no agenda. And she can't figure it out with honest effort even with the internet. Our society lacks clear trusted authorities on important basic issues. And our citizens lack critical reasoning skills. Why is she so bad at this? serious question. How is our general population so poorly equipped?

I'm glad she did go have that 2 hour conversation, but that feels like the kind of solution we can't reasonably provide to all people. It shouldn't require that.

<comment><USER3> My theory? The virulent strain of anti-intellectualism / anti-elitism that has run through American society in the last 20 years. "These fancy educated people in their ivory towers telling me what to do with my children...".

There's a point at which you should simply defer to the critical mass of thousands of people with doctorates in the subject matter, such as about 99.9% of epidemiologists on the planet.

<comment><USER4> But it begs the question. What's underpinning that as the root cause for what we're now seeing?

My money's mainly on the loss of prestige surrounding the teaching profession, and loss of the elite status of high education. It's simply not valued as it once was, and as a result everyone's 'highly' educated while simultaneously quite poorly educated, at least outside of stuff that is scored on tests. As the parent post says, 'Critical' reasoning/thinking skills are demonstrably lacking.

Reading back what I just wrote, I'm certainly entering 'old man yells at cloud' years of my life it seems :)

<comment><USER5> I think the reason is the vast change in communication technologies (i.e. the internet) in the last 20 years. People used to mostly be exposed to only the pro-vax side which was available from their doctor, in person. There simply wasn't an efficient avenue for anti-vax sentiment to spread. Now any yahoo with a Facebook account can post their zany ideas. In fact, these technologies are almost tailored to spread the zaniest ideas. People are exposed to these ideas often in social media, making them believe they are also common. This breaks down the barrier which might have previously prevented people from believing in fringe ideas: they are now exposed to them frequently.

As for the 'average citizen', I don't think the general public has EVER really had critical thinking or reasoning skills. I would bet only 5-10% of the population has the scientific literacy skills to really make sense of the statistics and scientific reasoning which so strongly supports vaccination. Without the ability to make sense for themselves, many are left with appeals to emotion or authority for guidance. As authority loses ground in a sea of new voices on social media, only emotion and fear (much of it unfounded) remains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not to downplay measles, but wait until mumps start spreading. The 10% male infertility rate and enlarged scrotums might change some parents minds.

<comment><USER7> My wife and I were watching Boardwalk Empire, when in one scene one of the children contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed. My wife was in tears and turned to me to ask how we can make sure the kids don't get it. "Luckily, the kids are vaccinated against that. It's one of the very first shots they get."

Little things like that educate parents. Most of these traumas have disappeared from movies and TVs because we've most eliminated them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a simple fact that vaccines are safe and perhaps the best medical tool we have along with antibiotics to prevent mass death. Only 0.0001% of vaccination doses result in significant complications (roughly 3,800 compensated injuries out of 3.4B doses over ~30y, something like 5,600 total filed injuries [1]). It's also true that they work in part through herd immunity, the concept that if most people are vaccinated, diseases can't spread to those who aren't or can't be.

Still, enough people find this controversial, resorting to conspiracy-minded thinking. It's another example of how science doesn't seem to sink through, and repeating facts doesn't seem to help. Maybe figuring out how to communicate more empathetically through people's perceived values can help [2]. But honestly I'm at a loss, and it's deeply tragic to see so much needless suffering.

[1] [https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine- compensation/data/index.html](https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine- compensation/data/index.html)

[2] [https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/antivax-measles- outbrea...](https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/antivax-measles-outbreak- moral-foundations-theory.html)

<comment><USER9> I think the only reason the conspiracy can exist is because of the effectiveness of vaccines - we don't routinely see or know people with the disease anymore.

I read that in poorer countries where vaccines are hard to get and the disease is still common people will travel far distances to get to clinics in order to vaccinate their children.

<comment><USER10> This was the case for our grandparents generation as well. When they grew up, kids commonly died of childhood diseases, so when they had kids and vaccines became available, they fucking rushed to have their kids vaccinated, because they had seen the bad effects of the diseases.

I was born in the 1970's, and noone from my generation or younger in the west has really seen the bad effects, noone we knew died of measles or got paralyzed by polio, so we have no fear of the diseases.

And that's why the fears of the anti-vax movement are so strong, there's no counter-balance to them. Everything is a risk, having a vaccine is risky, but if people value the risk of the diseases as 0, of course some people are going to object to the vaccines, because they think it's the bigger risk.

<comment><USER11> > "having a vaccine is risky"

That risk is for all practical purposes, zero

<comment><USER10> Yes, but it's not actually zero, even if you remove all the false vaccine side-effects like autism and mercury poisoning. And that's where the irrational fear of vaccines attach itself.

But the actual non-zero risk of death or other horrible side-effects from the diseases, they have nowhere to attach to. We don't get regular stories in the media of kids dying of measles, because we almost eradicated it.

So given this, some parents weigh one risk incorrectly way higher than 0, and the other risk incorrectly at 0, and then they make the _rational_ decision not to vaccinate their kid.

And I think it's important to understand that anti-vax parents actually don't make irrational choices, they make rational choices, but they're made on the grounds of an incorrect and horribly wrong risk analysis.

Hopefully, news stories like this increase the general awareness that measles is a terrible disease, which then can change the risk analysis that people are doing. It just sucks that a bunch of kids have to suffer needlessly because of stupid fearmongering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> got me to learn about the oldest known record of measles symptoms [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Zakariya_al- Razi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Zakariya_al-Razi)

</comment><comment><USER13> Measles is especially pernicious, too.

Not only is having measles deeply unpleasant at best and fatal at worst, surviving it leaves you more susceptible to other knock-on diseases for something like two or three years. Widespread measles vaccinations cratered the measles death rate, obviously, but it _also_ cratered the deaths from pneumonia and the like.

Per [0][1][2], the epidemiological data is suggestive of this -- but sequencing the virus and poking around at its RNA is starting to figure out exactly how sneaky of a thing the virus is.

[0][https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/05/07/4049634...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/05/07/404963436/scientists- crack-a-50-year-old-mystery-about-the-measles-vaccine#.WO0uRq8Zu-0.facebook)

[1][http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694.abstract](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6235/694.abstract)

[2][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/)

<comment><USER14> Yes, this is something I was unaware of. Essentially, after getting the measles, you end up needing to be revaccinated for just about everything. Nobody had ever mentioned that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was in the Seattle Childrens ER this morning (unrelated issue with my son, hes fine) and chatted with a pediatrician about the outbreak. He said the ER has been inundated with parents bringing (unvaccinated) kids with related symptoms to rule out measles, and STILL refusing to vaccinate at that point. At a certain point public health needs to take priority. Vaccines need to be treated like any other basic norm around health/hygiene that we have societal and legal expectations around.

</comment><comment><USER16> At some point you should not be able to opt-out of preventing an epidemic. When will we stop coddling the stupid?

</comment><comment><USER17> This has been all over the local Portland news for weeks.

Here are a few more details (but from memory so I could be slightly off):

About 50 kids in Clark County have come down with measles so far.

49 of kids with measles were unvaccinated.

1 kid with measles received one dose of the vaccine. SOP is for two doses.

No kid that received both doses has contracted measles.

I haven't seen any reports of adults contracting measles.

One vaccine dose is about 93% effective, 2 doses are about 97% effective.

In Washington State (not sure if state as a whole or just Clark County) about 22% of kids aren't vaccinated.

In Oregon about 11% of kids aren't vaccinated.

\---

When I was a kid smallpox vaccine was very common and polio vaccine was coming into use. People took vaccination very seriously. Read some history of those two diseases and you will quickly understand why.

In various settings (e.g. family doctor, various school nurses, etc) I probably received 2 doses of injected polio vaccine and 5 doses of oral vaccine. At least that I can remember. The number was probably higher. That's how serious the effort was to prevent polio. One high school teacher (polio victim) needed some metal contraption around his leg to help him walk. I.e. there were visible reminders of how serious polio was.

Smallpox vaccine was easier to keep track of. It left a slight scar on many peoples upper arm. So if you had the scar, it meant you had the vaccine!

</comment><comment><USER18> When my daughter was born four years ago, the anti-vaccine movement in SF and the north bay was in full swing. Despite living only 40 miles south, she didn't go to SF for the first time until after she was one.

She went to Budapest at 7 months old. I felt more comfortable taking her to Eastern Europe than San Francisco.

</comment><comment><USER19> As I was reading, I started thinking, "What if all insurance plans budgeted 45 minutes for a Primary Care Provider visit instead of 15?"

(To be clear, I don't know if '15 minutes' is hard-codes anywhere, I just know that most appointments I've gone to are budgeted that much time.)

I say this, because of the multiple mentions of doctors spending multiple hours talking with patients.

If there was more time budgeted for PCP visits, then there would be time to have these conversations, and maybe address issues (real or perceived) before bad things happen.

<comment><USER20> It's not a good use of a doctor's time to educate the public about how vaccines work. That is high school biology stuff. And if you didn't learn it in high school, visit the CDC website or watch a Khan Academy video or just try getting your information from somewhere outside an uneducated person's Facebook page.

<comment><USER21> That's true. But what about the people that never do take the time to educate themselves on their own? Could it be worth the extra expense to society to have a (presumably) trusted individual take a bit of time to explain some basic concepts about health?

I don't know the answer, but I do think it is an interesting question.

<comment><USER22> The problem are the people who do educate themselves and after reading the CDC decide to try and get a "balanced view" and fall down an Internet hole into the antivaxx Upside Down. If they hadn't educated themselves and just done what their pediatrician recommended it wouldn't be a problem.

<comment><USER23>
      decide to try and get a "balanced view"

I think this is myth. Nobody weighs opinions in search of a "balanced view" in other realms of medicine: "treat cancer, yes or no?" "Smoking bad, yes or no?" "Meth bad, yes or no?" "Splint and cast broken bone, yes or no?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We currently have a 3-year old who's vaccinated and a 5-month old who isn't because she can't be yet.

We also live near the epicenter of this outbreak, and it's enormously irritating how grossly irresponsible both lawmakers and people in the community have been around this issue.

Some of the kids at our eldest's preschool weren't vaccinated, which by proxy put all the families who also have much younger children at much, much higher risk. Thankfully a responsible amount if peer pressure was able to cajole those families to get their kids vaccinated finally.

But, the waves of anti-science BS that we're all wading through are growing in frequency and amplitude, and it's not clear how to ebb it.

<comment><USER25> I've heard that a 5 month old child can be vaccinated (it's just not standard practice) so in a situation where there are serious concerns about infection you are not without options.

<comment><USER21> This is true with regards to measles. It is also true that babies tend to have some level of immunity for the first year (assuming their mother is), which is why the vaccine isn't given until the 12 month mark.

[https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens- health/...](https://www.nhs.uk/common-health-questions/childrens-health/how- long-do-babies-carry-their-mothers-immunity/)

<comment><USER23>
      (assuming their mother is)

Is that conveyed en utero or through the mother's milk? If the latter, that would depend on being breastfed, wouldn't it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > "It shouldn't be called an outbreak," Seattle-area mother Bernadette Pajer, > a co-founder of the state's main anti-vaccine group, Informed Choice > Washington, said of the measles cases, arguing that the illness has spread > only within a small, self-contained group. "I would refer to it as an in- > break, within a community."

This person has a serious lack of understanding about how outbreaks and epidemics work. All it takes is one plane ride, one cough at a public place, and you can infect dozens of people. Even if you infect just two people, this can grow _exponentially_ over a few days, especially given that you are highly contagious four days before symptoms and four days after.

> I would refer to it as an in-break, within a community.

In-break with an _unvaccinated_ community.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like a problem that can be totally cured by insurance agencies raising premiums on unvaccinated children.

<comment><USER23> The ACA (Obamacare) made that illegal in 2010.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I was living in Orange County (CA) when my son was born. It would have been _very_ easy to find a midwife and a pediatrician that were totally fine and all-in on "alternative vaccination schedules." I can't speak for all other metros where this has played out, but I suspect the same is true in many places. Lack of knowledge (or holding on to provably false beliefs) isn't something that physicians are immune to.

<comment><USER20> I would say those physicians are selling out. I don't see how one can make it through med school and ignore the mountains of evidence for vaccination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't know much about this outbreak but in some parts of the world you are required to have your vaccinations up to date if you want access to public services.

Can't that be implemented at a state/local level?

<comment><USER30> I think it's really weird and sad that this comment and another pro-vaccine comment were downvoted to almost dead within minutes of being posted.

<comment><USER31> I did not downvote and will not, because the post is phrased as a question. But, I do oppose compulsory vaccination because it harms bodily integrity.

<comment><USER32> By that criterion, you should support vaccination because as scientific research has shown over and over again, individuals who serve as vectors of disease end up harming the bodily integrities of their communities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> > In fact, health officials say the virus is so contagious that if an > unvaccinated person walks through a room two hours after someone with > measles has left, there's a 90 percent chance that an unvaccinated person > will get the disease. People can spread measles for four days before the > rash appears and for four days after.

Yikes!

<comment><USER34> Seriously. I'm an infectious disease epidemiologist, and measles is _amazingly_ transmissible.

<comment><USER35> As an infectious disease epidemiologist, could you elaborate on that? What is it that makes it so contagious?

<comment><USER34> A couple reasons:

\- While it enters via the lungs, the virus emerges in the trachea, which positions it really well to be aerosolized through coughing. This aerosol and droplet transmission is _really_ efficient.

\- Measles is relatively stable in the environment, so lingers for a fair amount of time.

\- It also appears to have a relatively small infectious dose.

Other highly contagious diseases, like norovirus, share fairly similar properties - you make a lot of virus, it hangs out for awhile, and you don't need to come in contact with much of it.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4997572/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fuck, if only a bunch of clueless helicopter parents hadn't decided that Jenny McCarthy was an authority on vaccine safety, and had listened to the advice of every immunologist and epidemiologist on the planet.

You want to see the result of not vaccinating your children, en masse? Go visit a poor part of Pakistan, where you'll see people still afflicted by polio.

</comment><comment><USER36> Is there anyone here on HN who reads a story like this and wonders to themselves, even if for a brief moment,

"Hm, the software system I get paid to develop just _might_ be making a situation like this worse..."

Genuinely curious.

</comment><comment><USER37> Having grown up in the Seattle area (now in SF since after college) I can't say I'm surprised the Pacific NW is where anti-vaccination parents would cluster to create an epidemic. There's the right mix of pseudo-intellects, granola hippies, and helicopter parenting to make it all so unsurprising

<comment><USER38> What's granola hippies?

<comment><USER39> Pejorative.

In context I'd say they would take magic mushrooms, because they are natural. But they would avoid lsd, because that's chemicals.

Sorry for the definition by example, can't think of an obvious definition, but hopefully gets the idea across.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Maybe it's because it's taboo to say so, but I haven't even seen it speculated that the rise of these diseases be partly, or even mainly attributed to illegal immigration.

How many anti-vaxxers are there compared to those illegally crossing the border? There's a battery of vaccine requirements for any immigrant[1], but if tens of millions of those living in America skipped that part, it seems like a huge potential source of the problem.

1\. [https://www.uscis.gov/news/questions-and- answers/vaccination...](https://www.uscis.gov/news/questions-and- answers/vaccination-requirements)

<comment><USER41> Looks like you got downvoted by the usual anti-science politically-correct contingent here on HN, but you're right to investigate that possibility. Here's an analysis of the last major outbreak in the early 90s that shows how huge a factor unvaccinated undocumented Hispanics were : [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001675.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001675.htm)

<comment><USER42> It's a bit ridiculous to call people who downvoted an incorrect and unjustified statement "anti science"

If the original post had contained the link yours does, that would be one thing entirely. Instead, neither post invites discussion (tip: insulting people is a bad way to start a conversation)</comment></comment></comment>


The iPhone Threat to Adobe, Microsoft, Sun, Real, BREW, Symbian - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/879DD82D-5595-4746-BFCE-524BBA7C7A85.html <comment><USER2> If I were Steve Jobs, I'd get Adobe and Microsoft into a bidding war over whether the iPhone will run Flash or Silverlight. If (a) the two are close in power, (b) all browsers can run either, (c) the iPhone runs only one, and (d) the iPhone is very popular, then the one the iPhone doesn't run dies.

(a) seems to be true, (b) is currently true, modulo install, and (d) looks likely. So if Apple decided to make (c) true, they could probably anoint a winner.

<comment><USER3> What marketshare do you think iphone needs to make such an impact?

And why do you think it will gain that huge marketshare?

Its the first "nice looking internet in your pocket". But is that enough to take over the mobile world? Couldnt other companies create type-on-screen devices with round edges?

First Mover = guaranteed success?

<comment><USER2> 5%. iPod. It's more. No.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good article. One thing it says resonates with me--the part about developers choosing to avoid flash since the iPhone won't support it. Our app has reporting and charting as a main feature and some of the best charting components are flash-based. I've already decided to find something else (JS/CSS/whatever) so that it can run on the iPhone.

<comment><USER5> We're generating svg graph files with AT&T's open source graphviz product. Graphviz is really impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately I tested the iPhone Safari -- it doesn't support svg right now. Safari for Leopard is supposed to support it so I imagine it will come in an update.

<comment><USER5> That _is_ unfortunate. I'll send an email to my friend on the Iphone sw team about it right now.

<comment><USER5> My friend from Iphone sw: "I have no idea when this will be available."

 _sigh_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't think what the iphone supports will matter much in the long run, it's what devices like these nokias that will have the biggest impact on the future of mobile <http://www.nokia.com/A4405104>

</comment><comment><USER7> The most pointless article ever. Mobile phones are not new things! iPhone is just another mobile phone.No one is going to stop developing in Flash or Java just because it doesn't work on iPhone. Those who wanna cater to the iPhone market will make a "watered down version" of the app. Just the way an m site is developed for mobile browser.Thats it.

<comment><USER8> The iPhone is more than "just another mobile phone". It is a paradigm shift in the wireless industry by a very influential company.

It is widely gaining acceptance so as a developer, supporting it is a very important consideration. Simply "watering down" your app is not always possible when you are trying to do things besides serve simple HTML with no hardware interaction.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you, iPhone is not just a mobile phone..its a LOT more than . But how much has the mobile phone industry influenced the formats targeted for desktop till date? Just because of the fact that Apple dont want Flash or Java on their device doesnt mean its the end of these formats.

If another device maker come up with a cheaper phone with a more powerful browser, with support for Java and Flash, things will change. Always, the fittest will survive. Flash and java are necessary evils(if you think they are evil).

 _I dont care about the Apple logo. As of now N800 is far more better than the iPhone. And no, i dont care if you dare to call your mp3 player "ipod"._

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So it will take 1 (one) must-have application written in Flash or Java to make iPhone buyers look like fools? Sounds okay to me.

<comment><USER10> If it's really a must-have application, writing it in Flash/Java leaves you open to a competitor starting off with ~1 million affluent users just by rewriting it in JS.</comment></comment>