Measuring America's Decline, in Three Charts - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2013/10/measuring-americas-decline-in-three-charts.html?mobify=0

<comment><USER2> Comparing a heterogeneous group to homogeneous groups, in three charts. Broken out, America doesn't look so bad:

[http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography- is...](http://www.vdare.com/articles/pisa-scores-show-demography-is-destiny- in-education-too-but-washington-doesnt-want-you-to-k)

<comment><USER3> And why is that a better way to examine the numbers than the one in the article, exactly?

<comment><USER4> Under the assumption that you're interested in knowing the cause of the problem, gaining insight into the factors that lead to or indicate the problem can aid in understanding.

To speak in specifics rather than generalities: in this case, we see that White and Asian children do not seem to be having problems compared to their peers in other countries. Thus, we can assign a lower probability estimate to the hypothesis that the problem is the American educational system writ large. It seems to be a problem localized in certain parts of the system and population.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but does this give any insight? Examining _one_ factor out of the thousands that could potentially affect this does not strike me as in any way useful, especially since it happens to be a factor that's certain to generate lots of emotion and very little rational discussion.

For example, it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race directly. I don't buy into the PC idea that everybody is exactly, precisely the same, but the differences simply aren't all that large.

What seems much more likely is that it's related to poverty. Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical reasons, and I'd wager that the charts would show just as much, if not more, link between poverty and scores as between race and scores.

But we can't say for certain without a proper analysis of all potential confounding factors. Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the wrong way to do it.

<comment><USER5> > it strikes me as unlikely that these factors are actually caused by race > directly ... but the differences simply aren't all that large.

These are things you _want_ to believe, but they are not true. The reality is that race plays a huge role in intelligence. It's totally unfair, but it is what it is. Ignoring it, and believing otherwise does not make it go away, or make it better. It makes it worse.

> Poverty and race are highly correlated in the US for various historical > reasons

Poverty is also highly correlated with intelligence. More correlated than it is to race.

> link between poverty and scores as between race and scores.

Of course, because poverty is a proxy to intelligence.

> Picking a single one and pretending it's automatically important is the > wrong way to do it.

Pretending that the main one is automatically not-important because it's unfair, and/or huts your world view, is also the wrong way to do it.

<comment><USER3> "The reality is that race plays a huge role in intelligence."

I'm going to need some kind of cite for that before we go any further, you know.

<comment><USER6> In the United States, low income whites perform better than high income blacks on the SAT - it's not a fact I suggest you go around citing at parties[1]

" Blacks from families with incomes of more than $100,000 had a mean SAT score that was 85 points below the mean score for whites from all income levels, 139 points below the mean score of whites from families at the same income level, and 10 points below the average score of white students from families whose income was less than $10,000."

[1] [http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions- test.html](http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html)

<comment><USER7> I should feel free to check my privilege, but this actually seems like an even-handed discussion. Scroll down to "Other Explanations for the Racial Scoring Gap on the SAT."

""" Clearly, one of the main factors in explaining the SAT racial gap is that black students almost across the board are not being adequately schooled to perform well on the SAT and similar tests. Public schools in many neighborhoods with large black populations are underfunded, inadequately staffed, and ill equipped to provide the same quality of secondary education that is offered in predominantly white suburban school districts. """

""" In many cases black schoolchildren are taught by white teachers who have low opinions of the abilities of black kids from the moment they enter the classroom. These teachers immediately write off black students as academic inferiors and do not challenge them sufficiently to achieve the skills necessary to perform well on standardized tests. """

The thing is, we're nerds. We ought to think more critically than "black people are disproportionately poor and perform less well academically, oh well, that's that." Pre-chewed explanations like that ought to be anathema, especially when they're deployed in the service of a cultural agenda.

But there's a disturbing tendency to ignore the US' complex and problematic history with racism. It's lazy. It's a cop-out.

<comment><USER6> There's a disturbing issue not to think seriously about the causes of educational inequalities at all, at least not to the point where people weigh more than one hypothesis.

I've found the writings of a high school teacher under the name "education realist" to be thought-provoking. That's where I got this link from. He may be a Voldemort[1], but he's an honest one.

[1] [http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics](http://www.nas.org/articles/Achievement_Gap_Politics)

<comment><USER3> Yes, I've noticed that as well. Yet no matter how much you try to convince them that this stuff is complicated and many different factors are at work, some people just keep coming back to race as if it was the only thing that matters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's only decline if the US is doing worse than it did in the past. But this data seems to be a single snapshot. It would be good if someone could find past results and see if there has actually been a decline.

<comment><USER9> If you interpret the title as referencing a general decline (as opposed to a specific decline in these metrics) and attempting to explain that decline with the charts presented, then perhaps you'd accept this as evidence of a decline: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+GDP+over+time) ?

 _Edit_ : I realize this is a rather liberal reading of the title. I'd argue the title has been, not unexpectedly, sensationalized.

<comment><USER10> That's not evidence of a decline, see [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+real+GDP+over+time). That would seem to indicate that other countries are catching up, not that the US is declining. Also, in real terms, it doesn't look like the narrowing of the gap is accelerating ([http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+mi...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=US+minus+China%2C+US+minus+BRIC+real+GDP+over+time)).

<comment><USER11> Yes, it shows that other countries are catching up, but every country in the world affects every other country through import/export. If every country in the world were at the economic level of the US, our products would cost much more and every American's purchasing power would go down.

If we put money aside and look at social aspects like education or corruption, I don't think the US has ever topped those charts recently. The Scandinavian countries seem to dominate those types of charts year after year.

<comment><USER10> The global economy isn't zero-sum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of this feels like measuring the results of education with standardized tests. Do they ultimately correlate to economic output/GDP? How does the US maintain it's current level of economic output if it's so stupid?

Maybe it doesn't hurt economically that larger chunks of the population are dumber in the US. Less intellectual competition might allow the best companies/players to rise to the top and multiply their effects.

Study but [http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study- argu...](http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/10/study-argues- us.html)

Where did a large number of our brightest math and physics students end up? Wall St. Their contribution is well known. The US doesn't seem to have enough productive places to stick educated people.

<comment><USER13> The private sector has plenty of places to put PhD level people with technical skills, it's just in roles that in which their expertise tends to be directed toward more risk-averse ventures and their skills tend to be underutilized. The number of physics PhDs I see in low-level software development roles sometimes scares me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Things they actually tested (or at least, a sample): [http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_onli...](http://www.oecd.org/site/piaac/Education%20and%20Skills_online%20sample%20items.ppt)

I was surprised by the quality. These seem like really good tests of general competence. This gives a lot of weight to the results.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, we've been getting our butts kicked in primary education for many decades, and it hasn't killed us yet. Betimes everyone was scared that Japan would take us over because their kids were so much "smarter" than ours, and look what happened to that. Which is not to say I wouldn't love for us to do better on these tests, but it's also hard for me to summon terror over them either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I always wonder when I see charts like this:

How would, say, the top 1 or 2% of each of those countries fare against each other?

</comment><comment><USER16> The author's literacy, numeracy and problem-solving ability seem questionable. Decline means descent: going from a higher level to a lower level, of which the article demonstrates exactly none.

<comment><USER3> There's an implicit assumption that we used to be on top, although it's not supported by data (and I'd hazard that the data would not support it).

It's another form of nostalgia, really. People think the US was so great and wonderful in the past and now it's crap. It was crap all along, really. Happened to be some good crap, and still is in many ways, but crap just the same.

If the USA wants to return to the global domination it had in the 1950s, the answer is clearly another devastating world war that leaves the USA is the sole advanced nation untouched, since that's how we got to that position previously. Not by education or technology or resources or innovation (although there was plenty of that too), but by having all the competitors tear each other to pieces for years. Now the world is enjoying relative peace, and that means we're not so special anymore!

<comment><USER9> I think you're right, but only partially. In addition to being the only industrialized nation in the world left mostly untouched by the war, it was also the prime destination for the world's best and brightest looking for someplace to escape to. Add to that the fact that the US was already in the mindset of trying to prove itself equal to the "traditional" superpowers (England, Germany) and that it found itself immediately after the war in competition with a genuinely scary foe, and the US really had nothing to loose by going all out.

Peace is not the US's only enemy. The US also suffers from that most damnable of afflictions: success. Physical isolation means that the US doesn't have to worry about aggressors on its borders, but it also means that the US feels less of a push from its friendly competitors. Why invest in science or education? Why not just enjoy having the world's largest military by a long- shot? Why not enjoy the land? the natural resources?

That the US will eventually loose its top spot is certain. The problem is, when the US finds itself no long top dog, will it have the means to kick itself back into gear. That, I think, is the real damning implication of these graphs.

Being better educated won't prevent the eventual decline of the US, but it will determine just how far down that decline goes...

</comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady The charts seems a bit strange. What does England/Northern Ireland mean? Is it a combination of the two countries scores? Did they both score equally? Why leave out Scotland and Wales and not plot the UK?

<comment><USER17> It doesn't even list all the OECD countries. This gives the false impression that US is at the bottom. Yep, it's worse than everyone better than it!

<comment><USER18> It does clearly include the average value and the USA value - even if it cherrypicks a few examples from the huge list of countries, these two numbers are enough to see that the impression isn't false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It looks like they're comparing averages from all those countries, when we all know that the population of the USA is largest. Even though the distribution might be different, the number of people that fit into the distribution are very different.

We have some really smart people in Canada, but we also have 1/3 of the population of the US. Even if our average proficiency with problem solving is 10% higher, we still only have a fraction of the people who are proficient as the US.

<comment><USER20> US population = 314M Canadian population = 35M

35M/314M = ~1/9 not 1/3

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and more.

At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles.

<comment><USER22> > People have been lamenting America's decline for my entire 38 years -- and > more.

Well, for most of that time, by a number of measures, America -- and particularly the conditions of the middle class -- has been declining.

> At some point, we have to stop listening to the Chicken Littles.

Repeatedly saying something _is going to happen_ that doesn't is being a Chicken Little.

Repeatedly saying something _is happening_ when it is objectively desmonstrable is not being a Chicken Little. Even when it keeps happening over an extended period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The purpose of a system is what it does.

The school system has two purposes. One of them is to keep the teacher's union going. Union teaching jobs are unequivocally awful -- less than 50% of people who get teaching certificates can bear to work in the field, left with student debt and no income to repay it. (It's a good racket for the union teachers who teach the teacher thought.) They get rapidly discouraged and burned out but at least they get a defined benefit pension... For now.

The other one is to kneecap people... Specifically from Kindergarten all the way to college I was taught that I could be bullied with impunity and never see anybody held to the account.

This normalizes bullying in the workforce, which is exactly what they want because they want you to be weak and controllable.

I'm going through this crap with my son. I went to a meeting with the superintendent and he was gushing over how much he wanted feedback from the mother of a "special" kid and how she was a partner in her education but he didn't care what I thought because there was a new paradigm and don't you know homework is obsolete and spelling too and how my input is definitely not wanted and won't be listened to.

And they wonder why people vote Republican...

</comment><comment><USER24> It seems ironic to me that this story has been submitted to Hacker News, a social news website at the center of Silicon Valley, an extraordinary fount of innovation unequalled worldwide. American "progress" or "success" will be determined much more by the pace of innovation than by the abilities of the general population.

</comment><comment><USER25> We were ever that great, or is everyone else just finally catching up?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm not sure if it is possible to conclude that America is "declining" by looking at three simple charts.

Regardless of the fact that American students are lagging in literacy, numeracy and problem-solving, America has a huge landmass with a vast amount of (still) untapped resources. Not only that, it is also geographically isolated from the so-called "Old World," which gives it significant advantages in terms of physical safety and security.

Does this mean America will continue to remain the #1 world-power? Not necessarily. In fact, it probably won't, as all empires inevitably recede in power and collapse. But if it happens, it probably won't be due to simple differences on a few graphs.

</comment><comment><USER27> Every set of graphs must have a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not in that order?</comment>


Why Blippy Failed - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zuupy.com/why-blippy-failed

<comment><USER2> If you can find an idea that is different and people want then you should probably go for it. The problem with Blippy was that the idea was the bottleneck. Not enough people liked it.

Facebook might have started as a standard social networking site but it innovated fast and innovated differently. It pushed new designs even with loads of complaints, it ignored music which was one of MySpaces biggest features and it had other sites like Bebo scrambling to catch up on them.</comment>


Save $ on gas, reduce traffic jam: share rides (hosted on google app engine) - <AUTHOR> http://www.ride4all.com

<comment><USER2> The implementation kind of sucks but good idea. I'm in Canada but tossed my commute up there to see if anyone wants a ride.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really basic. Not bad.</comment>


Alexa v. Statsaholic: Tim Oreilly weighs in - sympathetic to Alexa? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/04/amazon_sues_ale.html <comment><USER2> Tim sold his soul to Bezos long time ago. Remember when he called for 1-click patent to be overturned? And then Bezos talked to him and Tim dropped the whole thing. And Bezos is now a permanent fixture at O'Reilly conferences.

And now this...

Tim has no credibility with me.

<comment><USER3> Why does he need credibility? Tim's post lays out his whole case. Agree with him or don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What he's saying is "Well, you'd be miffed too if you were in this situation." And okay, I might nod along trying to identify or understand -- to a limited degree. I'm just not convinced, especially with all of Amazon's moves of this nature. This lawsuit is just bad news any way you cut it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15227> page says "12 points by Sam_Odio 11 hours ago | 3 comments" yet there are only two, before I post this one.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15416> <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15385>

Does the root post count as a comment? Even if it does in the code, it would seem to confuse the reader.

<comment><USER6> I think the comment count counts spam comments, but you don't see said spam comments.

<comment><USER5> Looks like you could be right. That's a bug then, I guess. If it's any use to me knowing how many comments there are, it should be how many non-spam ones, ones that I can see.</comment></comment></comment>


Why do Kindle images look so bad? - <AUTHOR> http://andrewhy.de/why-do-kindle-images-look-so-bad/

<comment><USER2> I think Amazon pays a lot for 3g downloads. Perhaps they should charge the publisher less if the user downloaded the ebook via Wifi.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that it makes sense for Amazon to charge for 3G downloads (at least, at a certain size), but it is counter productive for authors to be incented to publish crappy images.</comment></comment>


McDonald's: You buy more from kiosks than a person. So expect more kiosks - <AUTHOR> https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/nation-now/2018/06/07/mcdonalds-add-kiosks-citing-better-sales-over-face-face-orders/681196002/ <comment><USER2> I think that one reason for this is their new fully electronic menu boards. They rotate through _segments_ of the menu, never displaying it in its entirety, and some items aren't even displayed at all in a recognizable manner.

For example, the only way to find the price of an a la carte sandwich like a quarter pounder is to look in the _meal deals_ section and recognize that the lower price displayed at bottom left is the sandwich-only price... and _only_ when that panel is visible during its 1-in-3 rotation.</comment>


Ask HN: How to write off software development cost on taxes - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone offer any advice on writing off the time it takes to research and develop software? Assuming that you're writing and selling your own software, this time must be worth something since it's the sole factor in turning a profit. <comment><USER2> Talk to an accountant. There is an R&D tax credit in the US which substantially every software business is eligible for. However, the amount of paperwork required to qualify for it and rigorously document how you arrived at the number you quote the IRS doesn't make sense until you're closer to a Fog Creek or 37Signals than to a sole proprietor.

A different option is to use the time you've spent on the project as part of the basis for the IP you're developing, and claim a non-zero basis when you sell, thus reducing the amount of capital gains taxes you have to pay versus having a cost basis of $0. Again, this gets heady quickly: talk to an accountant.

Personally, at my scales, I find it easier to bill clients $10 than to decrease my tax burden by $1.

</comment><comment><USER3> Business owners generally cannot count their own time spent on their business as a business expense. Software here is no different than a restaurant owner trying to write off the time it takes him/her to develop a menu, negotiate with suppliers, or manage employees: not allowed. It's assumed that as a business owner, spending your time on the business is what you do, much like as an employee, spending your time on your job is what you do; an employee cannot write off "time spent on my job" from their taxes, and you can't write off "time spent on my business".

One possibility, however, is to pay yourself a salary. Then from the business side, you could write off the salary as a business expense. But now you will pay personal income taxes on the salary. Also, you cannot do this if you're a sole proprietor, and even if you're incorporated, should probably consult with an accountant and/or lawyer to make sure it's legit in your case.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you start with a visual prototype or backend code? - <AUTHOR>

I've started working on a project from a visual prototype before I get into the backend code. I wanted to find out what approaches others use.<p>I find it easier to understand how to hook up the backend code, once I know how the product should work visually. <comment><USER2> I've always built front to back, and yet every job I've worked starts with the database schema's when starting a new project.

To me, everything makes more sense when you work front to back and it's easier to de-couple things when requirements change.

Everyone else seems to enjoy working from the back to the front for some odd reason. I really think it's a if you started with databases you prefer databases or if that's what you've worked with longer you prefer that. I also think it has to do with databases being easier for upper management as they age and move away from programming.

But then again I just spent an hour figuring out a complicated function being used to parse a semi-comma delimited list being stored in a single field by someone with '10 years SQL experience'. AKA SQL anti-pattern 101.

No-one really knows what they are doing dude. Things evolve too quickly. Some people are really great, they end up outside programming. Some people are really good, but age and time still get you. You fall back on what you know intuitively even if it may not still be best practice from 2-3 years ago. It's like CSS. Things just evolve and shift so quickly, it's hard to keep up even with the amount of professional study we do.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good question. I firmly believe that beginning with the visual prototype is the right thing to do. That way it becomes much easier to hash out the requirements with the client (they _always_ change) and let "what is it you want to accomplish?" questions decide how the system should be implemented.

Crappy programmers always start with the frontend first because they don't know anything better. Good programmers often start with the backend, and specifying a huge database schema. In my experience that invariably leads to a rigid system with way too many complicated relations and features no one need or asked for.

One concrete example I've seen a million times is someone making a feature for advanced access controls, privilege levels, user accounts, who can edit this, who can see this etc... And in the end it turns out all users are using the admin account anyway!

</comment><comment><USER4> I attempt to keep the two separate. Designing your back end while keeping the frontend in mind will tend to create tightly coupled code that is hard to maintain.

Even if you're not creating an api, treat your back end as such to avoid that tight coupling.

That's how I approach it anyway. Generally works, there is always exceptions but for the most part it works out ok.

</comment><comment><USER5> I prefer visual prototype, to clear ideas and check if representations match with requirements. This is the case when there is requirement from client. But when we are building new products from scratch.It usually is backend code but front end visuals keep changing with each iteration.

</comment><comment><USER6> It really depends.

In one case, I started with the back-end because I figured that, to make money with the product, I could coast with a minimal front end for quite some time. Then, in another project, I thought the front-end was the selling point so I went with a minimal back-end.

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to build the backend first (for my own projects), but now i create the frontend as fully as possible before any backend. You'll encounter the same problems while building the frontend, you just don't have to alter the backend every time :)

</comment><comment><USER8> I build a visual framework first. It generates momentum for both me and the client.</comment>


Results of Pair Programming Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://blog.elpassion.com/the-pair-programming-experiment-part-iii-the-results/ <comment><USER2> Very interesting. Thanks for sharing. I would like to see something similar relating to design e.g. Pair designing vs. Solo designing. :)</comment>


Startup2Startup: Hot Ticket for a Good Reason - <AUTHOR> http://www.pehub.com/wordpress/?p=2906

<comment><USER2> This was the most interesting point in the article for me:

"If your product is valuable, don't dicker with a free model. Go for the subscription model straightaway.

Games publishers get away with this; everyone else seems to have stopped trying. When Hong asked the hundred of so people in the room how many of them used a subscription model, you could hear the unmistakable din of crickets...seriously."</comment>


Show HN: Nirvana, a WIP programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shreyasminocha/nirvana <comment><USER2> No offence but literally everyone can design a language without bothering to implement it - in fact I am pretty sure that most programmers have done something like that at some point of their journey. I would suggest to post about it again once you have completed its implementation as well as share your experiences on it. If you have not implemented a language before I would suggest that you start with something simpler, such as a stack-based language or a lisp instead and ignore more complex features like exceptions or classes.

As for the language itself, is there any reason why would you want booleans to be primitives? I would suggest to investigate something like haskell's ADTs and move them to the standard library.

<comment><AUTHOR> Alright, I'm sorry, Will look into your suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks very similar to typescript, also...

 _Eventually, I plan on supporting unicode characters like "≥" and deprecating their digraph alternatives like " >="._

I get allowing unicode characters, but you do know that will make it much harder to write and maintain programs, as it's not a key on a regular keyboard...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I realise my mistake.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried Typescript? It's extremely popular now and seems to have all the features you're presenting, it would also be a good place to start if you really wanted your own language.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ok, it's a show HN. But there is literally only a license and readme. I don't get why you would even post this. What language is the interpreter or VM? being implemented in?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I wasn't familiar with HN's culture. I was just looking for feedback on this stage of my journey but didn't realise that my current work wasn't show- worthy. My mistake.

<comment><USER4> Don't be sorry. I didn't mean to be discouraging, if that's the case. You did say a WIP, but often people like to see and evaluate that, especially for implementations of languages. A slightly more informative title would get you more feedback - along the lines of WIP spec, or Nirvana - new language project idea. Good luck on Nirvana, post again soon!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Flat is better than nested That's fine for namespaces, but given the choice > of aggregation (which implies more nesting) or inheritance (which implies > lack of rigor), I'd choose more nesting.

> Errors should never pass silently unless explicitly silenced Yet you > implement exceptions in a language, and don't annotate (or infer) exception > annotations on functions.

> There should be one—and preferably only one—obvious way to do it Should you > write `a + x` or `x + a`?

This smart-sounding babble was made by a person that has no education in programming language theory. Are you sure you want to put it as a basis for your language?

> /* block comments _/ Should it support nested comments?

> string example = "hello world"; I see that you're trying to pursue > similarity to C++ or Java, but I don't see why. Which other type can "hello > world" have in your language? It takes no effort to get computed type of RHS > and set it as a type of variable. Also you should be aware that putting type > in that position makes it hard to keep your grammar without ambiguity, > especially in long-term.

> int x = 1; > float x = 3.21; > decimal y = 3.1416; It was 2018, and we still > thought that we have constant, immutable word size on all platforms, and it > won't change the next year. Come on, even C++ came up with int32 and int64 > types.

> RegEx email = /[a-z0-9_-.]+@.+\\.[a-z]+/ig; Please tell me that you've read > on TCL's regexps, and how they managed to avoid exponential parsing times in > most cases. Regexps inside of a programming language implementation ARE > pain. You essentially enforce your implementation, so it has to be perfect, > unicode support and performance-wise.

> out.println(i); Sure, more implicit type conversions!

> int[...] list = [1, 2, 3, ...]; Magical syntax for array is what everyone is > waiting in 2018. Why keep it simple?

> int[] anotherArray = new int[15]; > int[] newArray = array[2..4]; In both > cases we create some space on heap, and initialize it in some way. It's > something like several constructors of the same data type. Why do they have > different syntax?

> A kitten dies somewhere each time you use this type without a very good > reason. Another Visual Basic programmer is born every time you add unbounded > Variant type into your language. Don't forget support for COM!

> const int pi = 3.1416; Literally THE line of code that defines each and > every programming language developer that didn't care to learn some PLT.

> x = 3 _* 5; Fortran is dead! Use `3 ^ 5` or `3 pow 5`. It's in no way clear > why double multiplication is exponentiation. BTW, is it right-associative?

> Eventually, I plan on supporting unicode characters like "≥" and deprecating > their digraph alternatives like ">=". Try writing a row or two of Agda > without emacs, and you will drop that idea. The problem is that unicode > characters are absent from your keyboard, and there is no standardized way > to write them. So you're essentially putting programmers into a flaming pit.

> x = isOdd and isEven; > x = isOdd or isEven; Now this is actually something > good.

> class HTTPError extends Error {} That's not how a good pascal case works. It > should have been HttpError.

> finally { So every time I have an object that needs destruction \- I have to > write `finally` directive \- I have not to forget to do so \- It's somehow > better than destructors Also Java didn't manage to properly implement > `finally` on JVM, so if you have `finally` blocks inside of `finally` > blocks, you get exponential growth of class-file size. Are you sure you will > be able to handle it properly?

> int restParams (int ...values) {} What about parameters having different > types? What is even the purpose of rest-params that have the same type? > Avoid two extra square brackets in a function call?

> 1\. Write language spec Consider this as "cease and desist" for writing > programming languages until you get formal education in doing so. We don't > need another Python 2, another Python 3, another Ruby or another Go. > Economic impact of bad languages is way too big. Please, accept this harsh > language, feel the offence and just stop.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me start off by conceding that you're more knowledgable and experienced than me (which you inferred from my post and attempt at designing a language anyway) and I am in no way trying to challenge that.

I'll look up all the jargon that went above my head. I'll learn something—thanks for that.

Now let me reply to everything that I understood and have answers to.

> `a + x` or `x + a`

commutativity is a thing in mathematics too. No one will be stumped by seeing this written in two different ways. It doesn't introduce any confusion. In javascript, there is more than just one way to do async—callback, promises, the new syntax sugar async-await. This is, or at least was for me, a cause of confusion. There should (ideally at least) be only one way of doing async functions. I _know_ that I plan to have lambda functions in my language. You might say that I contradict my own example. I am yet to think of a way to counter having two ways of approaching async.

> /* block comments / Should it support nested comments?

Good point, I'll think about it. What do you recommend?

> I see that you're trying to pursue similarity to C++ or Java, but I don't > see why. Which other type can "hello world" have in your language?

I _did_ give this thought but implying the type doesn't make it obvious that the variable cannot store other types. What are your thoughts on this?

> Sure, more implicit type conversions!

User-defined datatypes will be able to define their print behaviour. Also, I don't wish to interpret printing as a type conversion. Even abstract concepts, say a car, have a possible textual description, maybe their registration number. Am I misinterpreting what you're saying?

> Please tell me that you've read on TCL's regexps

Doing. (So sorry I haven't already).

> Regexps inside of a programming language implementation ARE pain. You > essentially enforce your implementation, so it has to be perfect, unicode > support and performance-wise.

Point. Will do some research of my own and consider.

> Magical syntax for array is what everyone is waiting in 2018. Why keep it > simple?

Not array, but list. I gave how to represent list literal some consideration. I came up with this for the time-being. The right side seems natural and intuitive enough to me. What do you suggest instead? Parentheses and angle brackets are options...

> > int[] anotherArray = new int[15]; > int[] newArray = array[2..4]; In both > cases we create some space on heap, and initialize it in some way. It's > something like several constructors of the same data type. Why do they have > different syntax?

The latter is the splicing syntax—shorthand for running a for loop over elements 2 through 4 (exclusive). Yes, it too does does create some space on the heap and initialize it, but I mentioned in my readme that the language's syntax will be dealing in abstractions, not low-level details. It seems a natural enough thing to do, right? I mean I could do the latter in two steps. First initialize, then splice and store. But then we use string an integer literals all the time. I think the two are similar.

> It's in no way clear why double multiplication is exponentiation.

I made that decision when I was planning to include bitwise operations. I'm not sure if I'm going to keep them (probably not, in which case I'll switch to the caret). If I do, I might stick to the conventions that programmers of other languages are familiar with (for lack of better alternatives).

> Is it right-associative?

The plan is to make it that way because of how the visual representation of repeated exponents in math works. Your thoughts?

> The problem is that unicode characters are absent from your keyboard, and > there is no standardized way to write them. So you're essentially putting > programmers into a flaming pit.

I agree. Not going to deprecate >= etc any more.

> Now this is actually something good.

Based on feedback from someone else, I was second-guessing this. Is there any reason I should avoid having too many keywords? I can see why they would suggest that, but what are your thoughts on the too-many-keywords issue?

> That's not how a good pascal case works.

My mistake.

> Are you sure you will be able to handle it properly?

I get what you're suggesting. Probably not today at this very moment. I can learn though (oh wait, but I shouldn't do something if I don't know how to. I'll address that in a bit).

> What about parameters having different types?

I was thinking they would use `* ...values`. But then you mention that ` _` is a bad idea altogether.

> We do not expect random people giving other people drug recipes to become > doctors just from their experience of giving drugs.

Those things are hazardous to people's lives. There are regulations in place to prevent that. I guess you want regulations in place to prevent anyone from creating their own programming languages. Unfortunately for you, that isn't going to happen any time soon. In my (admittedly limited) experience, trying something is the best way of learning. I used to have a habit of going through tutorials, trying to learn things. I realised soon that in the long-term, I wasn't learning anything altogether. It was only when I started making things, experimenting, and, of course, making mistakes, did I actually _learn _. Also, I learnt lots_ along* the way. This is not the final spec (like I emphasized over and over again). In the process of designing a language, I _will_ learn. To be perfectly honest, my biggest objective in doing this altogether is to learn how to write compilers, parsers etc and how to work on large-scale projects. I agree that I am being too ambitious by thinking that others might find my language useful; yet, it gives me encouragement vs working on just a "toy language". I don't have much to say in terms of "Economic impact of bad languages is way too big. Please, accept this harsh language, feel the offence and just stop." I really don't have much to say. Maybe I'll add a screenshot of this comment in my readme to warn the public. I'm not going to stop. I can only hope and work towards not creating a "bad language". And so can you.

Like I said earlier, stuff I didn't reply to is something I either didn't understand or have no answer to. I assume that since your objective is to discourage me from doing any of this, you would rather not explain the stuff I didn't understand. I'll look it up.

Finally, I would have really appreciated it if you would have given me links/references to resources that would help me learn how to write programming languages. Consider this my request for you to do so (although considering the amount of—admitted—aggression you showed towards me, I'm unsure about whether you would do me this favour).

<comment><USER5> > Is there any reason I should avoid having too many keywords?

Yes, a lot of the reasons. Not only users might want to use those words for something else, and not only you make your parser bigger, but you also make a language description bigger. "Operators" are just functions written between their arguments. Just let users define functions that are written between arguments. Of prior art you might look at mixfix notation, or something as simple as Haskell's backquotes.

> I get what you're suggesting. Probably not today at this very moment.

Actually the point was not to implement `finally` at all. It's just a sloppy language design of Java that made it a thing.

> I was thinking they would use star values`

Take a look on C++ and its variadic templates, or heterogenous lists in Scala or Haskell. Variant is never ever an option (unless you're creating a Basic).

> Those things are hazardous to people's lives.

Do realize that bad programming languages are hazardous to people's lives too! Every stupid mistake you make in language design leads to millions of hours wasted by programmers, and even more if the language design bug persists in runtime of resulting programs. The lost time is computed in _lifetimes_. In a proper society this would be a criminal offence equivalent to murder, and yes, I'm serious on this.

> trying something is the best way of learning

Trying is a great thing, but publishing on github and announcing in one of the biggest newsfeeds for programmers is a different thing, don't you think?

<comment><USER6> Sir, now, may I ask you step down from that Ivory tower and stop making grand claims about Haskell the safest and java, Javascript the hazardous.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google Likely to Replace Android With Chrome - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestreet.com/story/11934508/1/google-likely-to-replace-android-with-chrome-os.html <comment><USER2> FTA: "This article was written by an independent contributor, separate from TheStreet's regular news coverage."

And he's smoking crack.

There is only the scantest evidence Google is putting in a wholehearted effort to make ChromeOS touch friendly, never mind telephony-friendly. A few years ago there was a tablet mock-up leaked. It never made it to market.</comment>


Ask HN: Hotel Rates API? Hipmunk, Expedia, Priceline - <AUTHOR> Good day,
I am hoping for some help. I work in a hotel. I created a nifty little web app that used Expedia's API to see what other local hotels are selling at. Believe or not this is usually done by having some one call and ask, but that is there here nor there.
I "lied", said I was a Travel Agent, to get access to Expedia API but they recently did an update and blocked me due to lack of bookings. I have tried to email and call, and will continue to try to hunt down someone who can help.
but........
If anyone has any experience with a travel API or how Hipmunk architecture is setup I would love to do a video chat, phone chat, or live chat if you are in Portland OR.
I've worked in hotels for a decade now and I think there is opportunities to create some custom software. If this sounds like fun, let me know.
All the best, Ben <comment><USER2> Hi Ben,

This what you're looking for in JSON. Just change the date & ID to ping the dates you want to query:

[http://126.96.36.199:5000/booking/us/malibu-beach- inn/detail...](http://18.104.22.168:5000/booking/us/malibu-beach- inn/details?date=2016-04-05)

[http://22.214.171.124:5000/hostelworld/55551/details?date=201...](http://220.127.116.11:5000/hostelworld/55551/details?date=2016-04-10)</comment>


Ask PG: Do you have any plans to record/livestream future demo days? - <AUTHOR>

It would be interesting to see the demos of companies that launch. <comment><USER2> I don't think we would ever stream them, because a lot of the startups say things to investors that they wouldn't want to publish to the world-- e.g. about how they plan to beat their competitors. It might be interesting to record them and publish them later. But so far we haven't had time for such refinements. This was the first time we even had a sound system.</comment>


Show HN: We put an iPhone on the front wheel of a car - <AUTHOR> http://blog.evilwindowdog.com/post/88969373226/extreme-car-experiment-horizon <comment><USER2> I have some serious sea legs and almost never get motion sickness. The fullscreen youtube vid got me. Great experiment.

<comment><USER3> The video did make me feel quite queasy, but it is not as bad as _Descent_ [0].

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_(video_game)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_\(video_game\))

<comment><USER4> I've never been a gamer. Except for Descent. And Descent II. I still have them and every few years play them on an old Mac. The queasiness kicks in every time I start playing them again.

<comment><USER5> Oddly enough I had no problems with Descent / Descent II, but Doom and Doom II wrecked me. I think it may have been because Doom's camera bobbed as you moved to simulate taking steps but Descent's camera was smooth when you moved forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I found this to be really incredible. That is some amazing video stabilization technology. If this app was available for android I think I would use it for every video capture I ever do.

<comment><USER7> This is one of the developers of the app. The Android version will be available in the following month. We are planning on running the experiment on Android devices too!

<comment><USER8> I've done quite a bit of work doing stabilization on Android. I think you'll find the Camera APIs quite lacking. Are you doing image based stabilization or using sensors? The fact you mention the gravity sensor tells me you're using sensors.

Let me know, I'll be glad to help how I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do NOT load from an iphone. Almost impossible to regain control of your browser!!

<comment><USER10> Click url bar... Theyre using the new fullscreen api on iOS which kinda sucks IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the support! Here are 5 promo codes so you can try our app for free! [http://codehookup.com/2291e14c](http://codehookup.com/2291e14c)

<comment><USER11> Absolutely blown away with the demo video (centripetal issues aside) though annoyingly I'm one of those 'other' users, so I have to ask: Anything android related in the pipeline?

<comment><USER12> "This is one of the developers of the app. The Android version will be available in the following month. We are planning on running the experiment on Android devices too!" \- OP.

<comment><USER11> Absolutely immense -will keep my eyes peeled =D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks like something that iOS will incorporate as a native feature. When they do this, do they usually buy the technology? Or the entire company?

<comment><USER14> Or just clone it and put the company out of business.

<comment><USER15> Is that really how apple has been working as of late? It's not like they innovate on the software front all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool experiment, and even cooler visual results!

One thing though - the tilting of the scene from the phone's perceived variance of the gravity vector is not due to centrifugal force, but due to inertia.

In other words, it's the same reason you're pushed back into your seat when you accelerate, and slam your head into the dashboard and spill hot coffee in your lap when you lock up the breaks.

<comment><USER7> We also did an experiment with this: [http://imgur.com/tdnympM](http://imgur.com/tdnympM)

The same problem existed. So it is not inertia in this case. However, inertia could also interfere with the gravity vector.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What would happen if you put the camera closer to the outer part of the wheel, rather than nearly centered on the hub?

Could Horizon still create a stable-ish video out of that (where the position and rotation of the image are both changing rapidly), or does this require a relatively stable position to work this well?

(I have no particular dog in this hunt, I'm just curious.)

EDIT: I see that Kayou asked the same question, probably in a smarter way, here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904992](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7904992) but I don't see a response from petrakeas or stelabouras yet, so I'll keep my question here even if it is a little redundant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Horizon corrects the wrong orientation regardless of the translation/position of the device. Small translation differences along the X or Y axis can be corrected by the stabilisation algorithm. Large translation deltas, however, cannot be corrected.

So, if you put the iPhone on the outer part of the wheel you will most probably get a horizontal video that will end up showing your scene moving up- down, left-right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Bought the app, seems very laggy on my iPhone 5s. Is this to be expected? I wonder if it is doing the processing as the phone is recording or if it is capturing the accelerometer data and modifying the video after that fact?

<comment><USER19> It's doing all the processing on the fly while it's recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A roller coaster might be a good experiment if you're looking for an extreme environment that might appeal to more of a mass market. ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roller_coaster_rankings](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_roller_coaster_rankings)) Maybe skydiving or bungee jumping?

Or you could go a different direction and attach a phone to a cat. I hear people love videos with cats ;)

<comment><USER21> Phones falling off a roller-coaster could be dangerous!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I poked around the website and their projects look awesome, exactly the kind of stuff I'd make if I were more talented. I wish I lived in Greece because I would find these guys and beg them to hire me.

</comment><comment><USER23> A really cool way of showing off Horizon. Good work guys!

</comment><comment><USER24> They kept mentioning 'Horizon', took me a couple minutes to realize they weren't talking about the BBC Series heh.

</comment><comment><USER25> Now this is viral marketing. Great job guys

</comment><comment><USER26> Does anybody know of any software which can do this for videos which were already captured?

<comment><USER27> [http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm](http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm) [http://avisynth.org.ru/depan/depan.html](http://avisynth.org.ru/depan/depan.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great job guys. Hope to see this integrated in the iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER29> That's nausea-inducing.

</comment><comment><USER30> It'd be really cool to see a side by side comparison with, and without Horizon active

<comment><USER31> You can if you go to their website - [http://www.evilwindowdog.com/horizon/](http://www.evilwindowdog.com/horizon/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> will there be an API for this?

</comment><comment><USER33> Kudos to you guys for trying to solve the VVS problem! For your second experiment, may I recommend attaching the iphone to the disc of a variable- speed angle grinder? You'll get a much larger range of speeds, as well as the ability to aim the camera freely. You'll be able to test how your accelerometer algos handle pitch and yaw IN ADDITION to centrifugal force!

<comment><USER7> Developer of the app here. One step ahead of you ;)

[http://imgur.com/tdnympM](http://imgur.com/tdnympM)

<comment><USER34> I hope you're joking. If you do plan on doing this then _please_ do it in a suitably strong wire cage, power it on remotely, make sure it is tied down very solidly and make sure nothing you care about (including you, significant others, co-workers, children, pets, possessions etc) is in the plane of rotation because this will fail spectacularly. Keep in mind that if the grinder becomes dislodged or unbalanced that the plane of rotation may vary rapidly. Too rapid to get out of the way. The iphone will desintegrate due to the forces involved and the shrapnel will cause serious injury.

Please do not do this unless you really know what you're messing with (and if you do then you won't).

On second thought, simply please do not do this. Spinning an iPhone up to 10K rpm or higher is a very bad idea, the label reads 11K rpm max, 850W, those things don't usually have soft-start so it'll just fire up and start throwing things.

Appeal to authority fallacy comes free of charge: I've had a pretty serious metal workshop and have seen several interesting interactions between angle- grinders and various objects in otherwise controlled circumstances, it is astounding how fast things can go wrong. Just having a grinder disc shatter on you can take you completely by surprise even if you know the danger, this is _far_ more dangerous, it is Darwin award material.

<comment><USER35> Really great points. I think that when working around power tools it is sometimes forgotten how careful you have to be.

Everyone innately knows certain things like "don't stick fingers in light socket" but other things aren't immediately obvious. Perhaps because you are juxtaposing something like an iphone and maybe are focused on the worse case scenario as being a destroyed iphone (in other words the money issue) instead of the iphone flying off into someones face.

I was watching an episode of "Property Brothers" (a typical renovate a house HGTV type show) and was amazed that they were having the owners participate in demolition without using practically any protective gear (while using crowbars and sledgehammers etc.)

<comment><USER36> Crowbars & sledgehammers aren't power tools. It seems much more reasonable to use those without significant PPE.

<comment><USER34> Hah.

Wait until you get a nice long steel nail that jumps away on you from the crowbar just as it exits the wood and embeds itself 2" deep in _another_ piece of wood. if you're lucky.

Or when a sledge hits a really hard pebble just off the side of a solid wall and it gets catapulted out.

Sledges, crowbars and pickaxes are _really_ dangerous tools and especially if you should wear goggles at a minimum, and probably a helmet too.

And, no, I'm not from the cradle to the grave coddling department.

<comment><USER36> I absolutely buy they are dangerous, but are they as dangerous as a chainsaw or big angle grinder? I'd take a nail 2" deep in my leg over a chainsaw in my leg any day of the week.

(Personally I'd wear PPE with either type of equipment)

<comment><USER34> How about that nail in your eye?

Really, I can't stress this enough, the kind of energy you can imbue a 4" nail with using a crowbar is something fierce.

Or maybe the crowbar would just fly up and split your head open. 4' of nice steel makes one hell of a spring.

Big angle grinders are actually safer than small ones... until the disks shatter, then you have a real surprise. Circular saws will do fun stuff as well every now and then, they just love it when they get pinched in the cut. So you have to plan how the material will warp before you start cutting otherwise it might cause the dangling part to squeeze shut the cut (when you want the opposite).

Chainsaw in your leg? Not good. Wear ballistic protective covering and you should be fine. The clutch in your saw won't like it one bit but should you ever need it you'll be very happy you spent that money, and a clutch is so much easier to replace than a leg.

With a grinder you want to wear safety classes, _no_ gloves (so you can't get caught). For chainsaws there are as many opinions on safety as there are chainsaw wielders. Even the pros are surprised every now and then, usually not by the saw but by the tree.

The best advice I can give you for saws is don't use one with too little power and keep it sharp at all times (and that goes for all edged tools). Wear a helmet with a screen and ballistic gear (pants, jacket).

If you're super experienced then you can make up your own mind and you'll likely disagree with all of this :)

<comment><USER37> My dad is a builder, and I've worked for him as a labourer many many times. It really gives you a better perspective on how dangerous all this is...

Anyway, circular saws: dad was cutting some pretty nice wood for a fence. Circular saw hit something in the wood, bounced up, then straight down onto his left hand thumb, severing it entirely.

He then drove to hospital. They reattached it, he was lucky enough to have Australia's best nerve surgeon on call at that hospital that day, and now he's got near 100% movement in it. Very very lucky.

Angler grinders blowing, now that's something that will put the fear of god into you...

<comment><USER34> I agree your dad is very lucky. That's about as good an ending to that story as you could possibly have. One day I was cutting staircase support (all those triangles you have to cut out) from a 2" x 12" board, the same thing happened and the saw just jumped right out of the cut. I slammed it down before it could get out of control and it still managed to cut a really nasty gash into the wood before it finally stopped moving. Incredible how fast that went from everything fine to literally fighting the saw. Nobody got hurt that time so all is well but still it gave me even more respect for rapidly rotating disks of steel.

I had an angle grinder disc blow on me last fall when cutting through a rooftile, that too was quite an interesting experience. It would have been less of a problem if it had shattered completely but of course one segment on one side decided to hang on. If not for eye protection that would have ended in the hospital for sure.

The one thing I've noticed is that if you _rarely_ work with tools you are really at risk. Then as you work more more with powertools you get more experience, you become a bit more confident and more aware of the risks. That's good.

Then when you're working with them for a really long time two things will converge in a bad way: all that experience and confidence will lull you into a false sense of safety an then the law of large numbers catches up with you, very rare occurrences will happen to you because you are doing it so often.

If you're not paying attention right at that moment you could very well end up in hospital or worse.

<comment><USER35> "all that experience and confidence will lull you into a false sense of safety"

I've noticed that that happens with many different things in a similar way.

You get confident, you slip up, you work faster, you make mistakes.

When you start out boating (with a new boat) you are oh so very careful.

Then you gain confidence and you start to take more chances. All the sudden things that you could never imagine yourself doing when you start you do. An example might be getting caught in an inlet with a boat during a period when larger boats are all trying to go in or out at the same time and you are tossed left and right.

Programming as well. Say doing a rm -fr foo * in stead of rm -fr foo* and not catching it because you hit return to fast instead of making sure the statement was correct. [1]

[1] I got into the habit of doing for i in foo* ; echo $i ; done and then inserting the rm -fr statement (by using uparrow) just as a precaution to slow me down.

<comment><USER34> > I got into the habit of doing for i in foo* ; echo $i ; done and then > inserting the rm -fr statement (by using uparrow) just as a precaution to > slow me down.

I do the exact same thing only I use 'ls foo*' first, and when doing bulk updates / deletes with sql servers I again first do a select and then modify the select once I'm sure it will hit the right rows.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Drive faster god darnit!

</comment><comment><USER39> oooohh!!! great experiment with great results!!

</comment><comment><USER40> Why not a GoPro on a wheel?

Edit: I just think I should've googled that first.

<comment><USER41> I would guess a GoPro doesn't allow Apps nor has the sensors accessible to perform the experiment with an external computer.

[edit] I do wonder why we haven't seen more programmable cameras with the sensors a smartphone has.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> ...And it's interesting because?

<comment><USER43> Because the focus of the experiment is an app that records videos while compensating for tilt/rotation (it's not just "hold muh beer while I tape my iPhone to a car wheel!"). I have the app, and find it interesting for its ability to eliminate the inevitable angling of the video, despite being on such an unstable mount (my free-waving hand). By subjecting the app to extreme conditions of rapid rotation, subtle flaws in the compensation process are made apparent - specifically, that the iPhone's gravity sensor gets confused & skewed, that the progressive scanning of each frame means distorting the image (the top of the image shows a view 1/60th or so of a second different from the bottom), and the two together result in a bizarre/unexpected periodic warping of the image. Having this video, the experimenters can go back to the software lab and tweak their image processing algorithms to compensate for these errors and create an even more stable image.

"So what?" you mumble. "It's so subtle nobody cares."

Well, that's actually a big part of why VR failed when it was first introduced a couple decades ago, and why Carmack & Occulus are so successful with it now: they've analyzed the subtle nuances that you don't acknowledge but your brain processes & reacts to nonetheless. Horizon is applying the same attention to detail, and will produce a better product as a result (yes, I do notice those sub-frame distortions in various products almost daily, and would appreciate developers correcting them).

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Cool experiment, I just dont get, how that idea came to your mind? \- "Oh, man, look, I have an iPhone. Guess what?" \- "Yeah, we should certainly put it on a wheel of a car!"

<comment><USER45> Starting from the second sentence in the article:

"We all know by now that Horizon shoots perfect horizontal videos, even if you rotate your device while shooting! We wanted to stress Horizon's capabilities by using it under extreme circumstances."

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Better title: "Show HN: We put an iPhone on the front wheel of a car and drove really slowly for less than 10 seconds at a time"

<comment><USER47> 50 km/h is fast enough for this experiment if you ask me.</comment></comment>


Implementations for Gray code encoding and decoding - <AUTHOR> http://leni536.github.io/2019/09/26/Gray_encode_decode.html <comment><AUTHOR> Some time ago I wrote an implementation for Gray code decoding that made use of the POPCNT and PDEP CPU instructions. I thought it was interesting and I wrote up a short article on the topic. I will gladly answer any questions.</comment>


AI and Intellectual Property: Who Owns the Rights and Royalties? - <AUTHOR> http://read.aici.al/ba5ah <comment><AUTHOR> I'm really keen to see where people think the line should be drawn - if a piece of technology creates a creative work - does it deserve protection at all, should it be given to the programmer?</comment>


Relaxed Raises $2 Million From Redpoint Ventures For CouchDB Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/10/stealth-startup-relaxed-raises-2-million-from-redpoint-ventures-for-couchdb-support/

<comment><USER2> Congrats Damien.

For those keeping score at home, this may make Damien the most successful entrepreneur to be rejected from Y Combinator at the interview stage. <http://damienkatz.net/2006/11/how_not_to_pitc.html>

<comment><USER3> In fact, there is <http://cloudant.com/> from YC.

<comment><USER4> What proportion of YC startups have the word cloud in their names?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's true. We had a really great fundraising experience (awesome opportunity to meet smart people, but it's a lot of driving if you live in Berkeley).

We're all about CouchDB adoption, so we'll be working to lower barriers to entry for new developers and potential users. If you are using CouchDB, contact us, we want to hear your story.

There's more, we'll be letting you know in January.

<comment><USER6> What's the relationship between Relaxed and couch.io?

<comment><USER7> J Chris Anderson via <http://twitter.com/jchris/status/6561506408>

"Relaxed, Inc. is the company. We plan to offer CouchDB hosting and other services under the couch.io name."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain CouchDB's advantages to me? From the cocktail napkin diagram on their apache page, it looks like the only major advantages over vanilla replicated Solr would be

1) Better replication architecture (much better?) 2) Convienence layers in javascript for querying

What am I missing? Is the main purpose of the project the replication or the javascript libraries? Is the fact that you can update to arbitrary hosts as well as read from arbitrary hosts the big win? It doesn't look like it's sharded so I can't see any huge scalability gains over Solr..

</comment><comment><USER9> The open source support model is a scary one. Redhat & MySQL feel like the exceptions. It is hard to recall any other "open source support" companies that have really made it in a big way.

<comment><USER10> Cloudera (<http://cloudera.com/>) is doing pretty well. Canonical too, although it's not clear if they're actually making any money.

And there are scores of other, smaller companies which are doing well.

<comment><USER11> I'm wondering how you know Cloudera is doing well? I noticed you work for Smarkets now (and Last.fm before). I'm just curious to know how much money can you realistically expect to make for a pure consulting business like Cloudera.</comment></comment></comment>


Playdar - Music Content Resolver - <AUTHOR> http://www.playdar.org/about.html

<comment><USER2> I'm actually very excited about this. I run a coworking facility in Atlanta (Ignition Alley) and we have a central music system that has just been Pandora for now. But this presents us with new options that we wouldn't have before. Primarily, I can start building out a music voting system to let those in the space vote up music they want to hear from any source available to the system, defaulting back to Pandora, if there's nothing left. It will be like iTunes DJ + Pandora for continual music awesomeness. I'm stoked to get started!

</comment><comment><USER3> Playdar is consuming most of my spare time at the mo :) We're pretty active on the IRC channel (linked from the site) so join and say hello if you're interested in investigating/using/contributing.

I'll be at the boston music hackday in november talking about Playdar too.

</comment><comment><USER4> You featured on newscientist. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18070-innovation- ultim...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18070-innovation-ultimate-net- jukebox-may-provoke-next-shift-in-music.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would love to try this, but the binaries are outdated and I do not care enough to download a recent version of Erlang, or the other libraries it requires. If anyone feels like building it for Intel, I would love to hear about it.

<comment><USER3> There is an experimental OS X package, you'd need to ask on IRC for it atm (mxcl is crafting it). Windows packages will be next.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a go-to JDBC command line client? - <AUTHOR>

I searched alot, but found nothing that seemed to be actively maintained. Should have basic functionality:<p>* Store credentials in config file.<p>* Execute query from file. <comment><USER2> HSQLDB comes with a command line tool called SqlTool [http://hsqldb.org/doc/2.0/util-guide/sqltool- chapt.html](http://hsqldb.org/doc/2.0/util-guide/sqltool-chapt.html)

You will have to setup the classpath manually and specify the jdbc driver. It is pretty basic.</comment>


Ask HN: Modern Hard SciFi - <AUTHOR> Are there any contemporary hard sci-fi authors comparable to Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke and others of their era? I have recently been reading Stephen Baxter and Kim Stanley Robinson and would like to find other comparable authors. The problem I have with modern sci-fi is that it is blurred with Tolkien-style fantasy and it's often difficult to know where a particular book fits on the spectrum. <comment><USER2> I would heartily recommend "Children of Time" (Children of Time #1) by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Another one that stands out over the last couple of years (for me) is "The Book of Strange New Things" by Michael Faber, which has a mix of hard sci-fi with some very thought provoking philosophy/religion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll look out for those.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out Liu Cixin, The three-body problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen that, first of a trilogy I think. I'll give it a go, thanks.

<comment><USER4> I second this. Very fun and many interesting ideas.</comment></comment></comment>


Salesforce Urges Microsoft-LinkedIn Probes Amid AI Concerns - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-29/salesforce-to-urge-regulators-to-scrutinize-microsoft-linkedin <comment><USER2> Glass house... This is a dangerous game for any company with a lot of customer data and a recently launched AI product, which will soon be most companies. Is anti-AI the new anti-trust?</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use an RSS service that emailed you a pdf every week? - <AUTHOR>

For my next venture, I am thinking of building a little web service that sends you a nicely formatted PDF of all the articles published over the week.<p>I have only 3 questions: - Would you use it? - Would you pay for it (and how much)? - Would it be legal to do this? <comment><USER2> Probably not. PDF is not for web IMHO. Plain html or other flexible format would work better. PDF has specific requirement upon screen size, etc. And clicking URL in PDF doesn't feel as fast as in a web page.

If you wanna make it polished and magazine-like, how about making a magazine App in iOS/Android?

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the general idea . . . but I'd rather have the articles formatted for viewing on multiple devices with in your app rather than a pdf.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I want is to get my RSS feed as a periodic digest on my Kindle. I currently do this with Instapaper and it's wonderful.</comment>


Thinking Like a Mathematician (1985) - <AUTHOR> http://news.psu.edu/story/141474/1985/03/01/research/thinking-mathematician <comment><USER2> Does anybody know what this work was:

"In 1975, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at Caltech called Krantz with a problem. Pictures of Venus and Mars transmitted by the Voyager spacecraft had been taken in the dark while the craft was moving, and were, as was expected, horribly blurred. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory had a deblurring technique using an on-board computer that logged the spacecraft's motion, but the technique took a month and Congress wanted to see the pictures now. A researcher discovered a way to unblur the pictures more quickly if he could factor polynomials of several variables in a certain way. He called Krantz and asked him how to do it. "I thought about it for a while, and then I said, 'It can't be done.' Like most people, he just assumed that he had called the wrong person."

<comment><USER3> Funny--I came here for the same reason. My best guess is that they were trying to solve a deconvolution problem the naive way (by solving a huge linear system). I think the reference to polynomial factorization might have something to do with solving the problem by taking the Z-transform of both sides, and then having to divide the resulting polynomials and invert the transform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the demonstration at the end that shows that it is harder to perturb an almost circle into a circle than doing the reverse I would use the perfectly circular rim of a bicycle wheel.

It is easy to make such a wheel "almost round", but virtually impossible to revert that action.

<comment><USER5> That may not be a very good analogy, depending on what the theorem actually says.</comment></comment>


How to make Software Requirements Specification Document? - <AUTHOR> https://cshark.com/blog/how-to-make-a-software-requirements-specification-document <comment><AUTHOR> It's important to have one! An SRS is the most important part of the whole project documentation. This blog article have answers to these questions:

\- How to make this type of document? \- Why it's important? \- What type of information should this document contain?

And probably the most important of them all:

\- How to cooperate with the customer to create it?

Have a good read!</comment>


The first human trial in Europe of a coronavirus vaccine has begun in Oxford - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52394485 <comment><USER2> My partner is taking part in the trial in Oxford. So far there was a bit of an anomaly on her blood work so they're bringing in her in for another round of tests but I'm happy to ask her to share (or allow me to share by proxy) her experience. Obviously she has no idea whether she is in the control group or not.

<comment><USER3> Are they receiving any compensation?

<comment><USER4> Here's the information sheet - [https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial- oxfo...](https://www.covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/participate-trial-oxford)

> If you participate in the study until the end, you will receive a total > payment of between £190-625, dependent on group.

My housemate hoped to take part but was not selected.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The thing i like most about this vaccine is that it's a T-cell vaccine.

Very broadly speaking, the adaptive immune system has two arms.

One arm, humoral immunity, is about detecting foreign substances in the spaces outside cells: B-cells make antibodies, antibodies inspect molecules floating around, a match triggers the B-cells to proliferate and make more antibodies, and then antibodies tell macrophages and various other brutal cells to destroy and eat everything in sight, resulting in inflammation, but hopefully killing the invader.

The other arm, cellular immunity, is about detecting foreign proteins inside cells: T-cells make T-cell receptors, T-cell receptors inspect peptides presented on the surface of cells through some amazing machinery culminating in the MHC I protein, a match triggers the T-cells to proliferate, and the T-cells themselves go round triggering self-destruction of cells presenting the foreign peptides.

(I'm leaving out MHC II and helper T cells here, let alone T-regulatory cells, gamma delta T cells and all sorts of other things i don't know about)

Both wings are useful in response to a viral infection, but ultimately, the cellular immunity is key. Viruses commandeer and replicate inside cells, so to stop an infection, you need to find and kill those cells. Cellular immunity does that.

Vaccines based on injecting proteins or dead viruses can only develop humoral immunity. Vaccines based on modified viruses, like this one, can also develop cellular immunity.

In theory. So far, there are no T-cell vaccines.

<comment><USER6> so, we can say that B-Cell vaccines are good enough coz they have already been working on other types of viral infection, right?

<comment><USER7> They are likely good enough yes, presence of strong antibodies pretty much means there's no way the virus can outpace the immune response, and it often is neutralized so strongly you wouldn't even notice inoculation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is a strong argument for doing a challenge trial, using young people, on this candidate.

<comment><USER9> I think it's ethically unacceptable. We're basically throwing everything we've learned with drug safety out of the window.

<comment><USER10> It is absolutely unacceptable, that's why 2/3 answers to this comment so far use martial metaphors. It violates not the liberty of young men, who have every right to be reckless and volunteer, but integrity of the scientific community.

If the Oxford researchers made trials on Syrian kids in a refugee camp, in exchange for $100, I suppose more people would see a problem here.

<comment><USER11> I'd be willing to do it. It could save thousands or lives. Which part to you object to? Enthusiastic volunteers being able to choose to take a risk? The world has become far too nanny state and arse covering in my opinion.

I find the attitude puzzling that people are willing to value vague abstractions like "integrity of the community" over thousands of lives.

<comment><USER10> I agree with everything you say. If a rogue MD in a nanny state will talk you into a challenge trial, - by all means, let him do it and face the consequences (hopefully, tough). But let's not pretend, that it would be an informed consent.

The reason for the vaccine research protocol we're settled on, is the ubiquity of wanna-be Pasteurs, and dearth of the real ones.

On a separate note. We have deprived ourselves of basic human rights under the premise, that lives are worth any economic outcome of shut down. Where I live, premeditated spreading of the Covid is considered by law an act of terrorism. Officially vetted challenge trials just don't add up.

<comment><USER11> Yeah I'll give you you need informed consent and some common sense about the whole thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WHO publishes a list of the vaccine landscape here - [https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key- action/n...](https://www.who.int/blueprint/priority-diseases/key-action/novel- coronavirus-landscape-ncov.pdf)

As of April 20 2020, there were 5 in clinical evaluation and 71 in preclinical evaluation. I'm a layperson, but very interesting to see the different techniques and testing methodologies used.

</comment><comment><USER13> I get that everyone like to put "we're the first" in their press release but there are already a number of trials, eg house the day before a German company was reportedly starting trials

[https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22re...](https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/22/world/europe/22reuters- health-coronavirus-vaccine-biontech.html)

<comment><USER14> And trials started weeks ago in Norway as well: [https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona- stud...](https://www.regjeringen.no/en/aktuelt/who-global-corona-study-starts- in-norway/id2695532/)

<comment><USER15> Or Russia - [https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html](https://ria.ru/20200411/1569898745.html)

<comment><USER16> (I don't speak Russian, yet)

Given how politicized this has gotten, in general for treatment of this virus, I'm not optimistic that we'll be sharing information. Praying I'm wrong.

<comment><USER15> Basically on 11 of April they started a trial. Up to today WHO approved for trial 9 potential vaccines made in Russia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe there will be a vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, but the one lesson to take away from all this is that if a truly terrible pandemic hits (eg more contagious than SARS-CoV-2 but with a 10%+ mortality rate) a vaccine won't save us. I'm not sure what will. Relying on the source country to quickly identify an outbreak and raise the alarm obviously isn't going to work...

<comment><USER18> I'm not any epidemiologist, so if someone knows more please correct me, but I read that viruses with a high mortality rate are much easier to contain. Mainly because the virus more naturally dies out as it kills its hosts. That was one of the reasons that SARS didn't reach pandemic scale with its 10% mortality rate.

I have to wonder if Covid-19 is in the 'sweet spot' of dangerousness, as it has a mortality rate that doesn't hamper its ability to spread but still kills a lot of people.

<comment><USER19> I suppose that if the incubation period is long enough the virus can have an arbitrary mortality rate and still spread.

<comment><USER20> Incubation period and lethality are usually correlated, afaict.

<comment><USER21> Or, imagine a HIV-esque virus. Super long incubation period, lethal in that it attacks your immune system, and super different than anything we've seen before to effectively find a cure or a vaccine faster than usual.

Now imagine if such a virus was airborne and was already spreading... Who'd know?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know much about the subject - when one of these institutions discovers a vaccine, do the rest just give up and settle the loss of having come second in the race? Do the private companies then automatically switch to producing as much of the successful vaccine as possible to meet demand and turn a profit?

<comment><USER23> I imagine they keep going since side effects could be better, or it could be more effective.

<comment><USER24> A handful of the first SARS vaccines "worked" (in that they led to antibody production), but also had nasty side effects.

<comment><USER25> It's like how there's a cure for HIV that you really don't want.

<comment><USER26> You mean death? Or am I missing something?

<comment><USER24> I would assume they mean the CCR5 stem cell/bone marrow thing.

A handful of patients (2?) have undetectable viral loads after being treated for leukemia. In these cases, the bone marrow or stem cells were from donors with a mutation in _CCR5_ that confers some resistance to HIV. The mechanism isn't completely understood, AFAIK, since people with the CCR5 delta32 mutation have partial, but not complete, resistance to HIV normally.

It's not a very viable treatment yet: the transplant procedure is brutal (a friend went through it) and you need to be unlucky enough to need a transplant, yet lucky enough to find a donor that has the right mutations (which again, are not completely known) AND is otherwise compatible with the patient.

Still, very exciting for a possible mechanism, but also probably not coming to a hospital near you this decade.

Here's one of the studies: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905](https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa0802905)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The comments on that article are something else!

<comment><USER28> There used to be a website dedicated to the ludicrous nature of BBC Have Your Say comments (of which these are the contemporary equivalent), but unfortunately I can't remember what it was called . They've always been ... out there. I can't deal with reading them because I can literally feel the brain cells dying off when I do.

<comment><USER29> [http://web.archive.org/web/20150121193235/http://ifyoulikeit...](http://web.archive.org/web/20150121193235/http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> They tried corona virus vaccines already after the first SARS outbreak. When patients were re-exposed to the virus they had severe auto-immune lung pathologies. Sounds super problematic.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3335060/) [https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201](https://jvi.asm.org/content/85/23/12201) [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch- cou...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23563-threatwatch-could-a-mers- vaccine-make-people-sicker/)

<comment><USER31> Note that in the reports mentioned, the 'patients' are mice and ferrets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So 2 days ago, we received the news that the first human trials on a vaccines by a biotech firm from Mainz have gotten approval by the Paul Ehrlich Institute [1] as well in Germany. Good news, let's all work together to kick this things ass!

Source [German News]: [https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus- impfstoff...](https://www.sueddeutsche.de/gesundheit/coronavirus-impfstoff- deutschland-biontech-1.4884844)

Main source [PEI, English]: [https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press- releases/year/2020/08-f...](https://www.pei.de/EN/newsroom/press- releases/year/2020/08-first-clinical-trial-sars-cov-2-germany.html)

[1] a federal institute for vaccines

</comment><comment><USER26> How exactly are vaccines made? Like how do you make a brand new one? For smallpox, the first vaccine came from cowpox (or possibly horsepox). People didn't know what viruses were, but horsepox happened to be similar enough to generate the same antibodies, but not kill people.

But I've never seen a good documentary on how vaccines are made for diseases today. YouTube just seems to be filled with professor's lectures from introclasses. Are live viruses used and, if so, how are they made inert yet cause the immune system to generate the same antibodies?

Anyone have a documentary with the technical details of any of the modern vaccine generation techniques?

<comment><USER33> Basically, there are three primary approaches to safely introducing antigens to the immune system: you can inactivate (or kill) a virus through methods such as heat treatment; you can attenuate it (make it less well-adapted to humans) by introducing it into foreign hosts until its adaptive mutations make it safe for humans; or you can synthesize molecular antigenic subunits and introduce those on a viral carrier or with chemicals to stimulate an immune response. Experience with inactivated SARS vaccines suggests that protection is incomplete and, worse yet, the vaccines trigger immunopathic responses that can cause serious damage. Most focus is on subunit vaccines, but s-protein- based vaccines in feline coronavirus have been shown to actually worsen the effects of reinfection, so researchers are understandably cautious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm about far from anti-vaxer stance as its possible to be, so please don't think this is where this is coming from, but isn't this crazy quick compared to how long vaccines usually take?

Is the long time to create vaccines not usually to make sure they are safe? What is different now that it can be done quicker? Is it just the sheer amount of effort and cash being thrown at it?

<comment><USER35> So according to In The Pipeline[1] they essentially modified their existing MERS vaccine so that it worked for SARS-COV-2. Their original vaccine had already gone through phase 1 trials and had shown efficacy and no harmful side effects.

[1] [https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-...](https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/23/a-close- look-at-the-frontrunning-coronavirus-vaccines-as-of-april-23)

<comment><USER36> Derek Lowe is terrific in communicating complex ideas in the field to concerned lay observers like me; he's been a great resource for reliable information about the science of this thing.

Just to clarify; the ChAdOx1 MERS prospect hasn't proceeded to a trial demonstrating efficacy in human subjects (as yet).

That's a particularly important distinction here, given the nature of the novel delivery mechanism[1] and prior observation of complications in SARS- CoV-1 vaccine development[2]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viral_vector#Adenoviruses)

[2] [https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm](https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v22n3%20Suppl%204/25.htm)

<comment><USER21> > _Just to clarify; the ChAdOx1 MERS prospect hasn 't proceeded to a trial..._

Looks like it has (for SARS-CoV-2 instead): [https://www.genengnews.com/news/astrazeneca-joins-u-of- oxfor...](https://www.genengnews.com/news/astrazeneca-joins-u-of-oxford-and- spinout-to-develop-covid-19-vaccine/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Germany started trials on April 22nd using a vaccine named BNT162. Apparently with non-infected people first.

</comment><comment><USER38> If one had strong reasons to suspect a mechanism by which a vaccine could actually be deadly or fatal, but this mechanism had not been verified explicitly in literature, would they be ethically obligated to warn participants in advance?

<comment><USER39> If there is reason to believe it presents a material risk to their health and well-being. Yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> COVID-19 is a retrovirus, much like HIV. They both have similar s-protein as well. When discovered in 1983 that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS, it took 12-years for an antiviral to reach the market. In the past 37-years, no vaccine has panned out against HIV. As for COVID-19 "Houston, we have a problem."

<comment><USER41> I believe you are correct. I believe COVID 19 IS in the category of RNA based retroviruses. No one here is saying it is the same thing as AIDS! That's silliness. But tests being rolled out on COVID 19 contain a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). I believe the virus does fall into the retrovirus category; like malaria, AIDS and ebola.</comment></comment>