Spray-on nanofiber 'skin' may revolutionize wound care - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90365782/this-spray-on-nanofiber-skin-may-revolutionize-burn-and-wound-care <comment><USER2> I love it !

There are some great scams in the wound healing market.

[https://www.polarityte.com/products/skinTE- providers](https://www.polarityte.com/products/skinTE-providers) is another great example.

"PolarityTE's Many Deceptions Sep. 11, 2018 8:32 AM ET|Includes: PolarityTE, Inc. (PTE) Summary PolarityTE is a biotech company claiming to have its own patented regenerative medicine platform which is capable of regenerating ten different tissue types.

Its financiers and some of its ex-officers are notorious pump-and-dump scammers who were recently sued by the SEC.

In this report we detail a number statements by management which range from things unlikely to be to true, to outright lies and securities fraud.

We back up everything with extensive evidence and research.

We do not believe the company is trustworthy, especially given the extraordinary claims they make about their product pipeline and their unwillingness to answer questions."

[https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/49608862-research- noir/52...](https://seekingalpha.com/instablog/49608862-research- noir/5210078-polaritytes-many-deceptions)

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it does sound wonderful. Could be bollocks, though.

There is spray collodion aka nitrocellulose. It's just old-school molecules, though.

I love Band-Air Hydro Seal (hydrocolloid) bandages and 3M Tegaderm film. They work _far_ better than absorbent bandages.

I once stuck a finger in a running high-speed axial fan. Maybe 2-3 mm got shredded. So I just wrapped the fingertip with hydrocolloid bandages, and forgot about it. Maybe two weeks later, it had completely healed, with no scar.

<comment><USER4> Do you still feel touch the way you used to?

<comment><USER3> Yes, totally.

It wasn't _that_ much, really. And very little flesh was actually missing. Just cut in ragged ways. So I just trimmed off the shattered nail, washed with warm water, and then peroxide. After patting dry with sterile gauze, I applied two small hydroseal bandages. First around the dorsal (nail) side, and then around the ventral side, with a little overlap. I used a small Skin-Flex bandage, with the gauze pad removed, to prevent the hydroseal bandages from coming off. And used methyl methacrylate to glue the end of the outer bandage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Okay - this would be incredible for so many reasons, but if it exists today and is in use in hospitals, why not show footage instead of Tim & Eric-style marketing fluff?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Don't get me wrong: I want this to exist, yesterday. But can we see a bit more live use, please?

<comment><USER6> Agreed. There is no footage of actual skin, just too much focus on the device itself and at 00:01:06 to make things weird, they declare it as "transparent skin". I suspect it is in testing probably and will need more trials on actual humans first or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> MD here: perhaps as an alternative to outpatient wounds but we've been using glue for 10+ years now. It works when you have a clean wound but often you need to reconstruct messy wounds and then glue doesn't get the job done. You need to be able to pull the skin and with glue you will just end up gluing your glove onto the wound (yup, personal experience).

In the operating theater I don't really see it happening. We've been discussing using glue there but then you need an additional layer of sutures which usually take longer to do (intracutaneous). Anything that takes time in the threatre is usually a deal breaker.

There are probably use cases outside my field but even for burns I'm uncertain if it is a good fit. Most wounds are not sterile and encapsulating bacteria under a layer of fiber seems like a recipe for pushing the bacteria deeper and generating a more severe infection.

<comment><USER8> 10+ years? Hm.. super glue has been used by hikers to treat wounds for as long as I can remember (20+?)

I wonder if this is a case of necessity inventing it and medical practice following

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I remember some spray version when I was a kid. The 10+ is how long I think it has been present at my particular hospital.

The interesting thing is that it hasn't really caught on. We don't have any financial pressure or other external factors, it is really convenient, yet I'm pretty sure that only 10-20% of the doctors use it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it safe? When I hear nanofibers, I think of previous articles I read comparing nanofibers/nanotubes with asbestos. So however handy it seems I'd rather avoid it until there are data on its long-term health effects. I don't want it on my wound. I don't want to be nearby potentially breathing in the spray. I definitely don't want to be the health care professional repeatedly exposed to it.

Not the exact articles I read, but a similar theme:

[https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/articles/are- car...](https://www.technologynetworks.com/genomics/articles/are-carbon- nanotubes-a-new-asbestos-298901)

[https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/carbon-nanofibres- linked-...](https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/carbon-nanofibres-linked-to- mesothelioma)

<comment><USER10> It might be structurally similar to asbestos fibrils but asbestos is directly carcinogenic. Carbon microstructures _probably_ aren't (unless it's carrying something that is).

It might still donk your lungs up if it can't be absorbed. Functional inflammation, COPD if you inhale a lot. Abrasive cancers in long term, repeated exposure.

Aerosolising it seems, I agree, far too risky. A sheet or liquid alcohol- evaporative application makes more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> What happened with the 2012 "spray on skin" treatment?[1]

[1] [https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/spray-skin-cells- heal...](https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/spray-skin-cells-heal-wounds- fast/story?id=16921765)

<comment><USER12> I don't think it is, but sounds similar to Avita Medical (AVH.ASX) and AVMXY. Their recell product has great results for burns, Vitiligo and diabetic skin lesions.

Avita have been at it for quite a while and are now in 28 America Burn Association Burn centers and look like they are increasing that number significantly this year.

Strong patent portfolio, focused on skins and a couple of other indications at the moment.

Disclosure, I am an investor.

Their lead researcher is really fun to listen to. I have a lot of respect for her [https://www.youtube.com/embed/ujqxB-I2rdM](https://www.youtube.com/embed/ujqxB-I2rdM)

The company is this one [https://avitamedical.com/about- recell](https://avitamedical.com/about-recell)

<comment><USER12> Decent overview here - from what they presented at this year's American Burn Association conference [https://www.marketscreener.com/AVITA-MEDICAL- LTD-8777378/new...](https://www.marketscreener.com/AVITA-MEDICAL- LTD-8777378/news/AVITA-Medical-Announces-Presentation-at-ABA-Meeting- Highlighting-Results-of-Study-Using-RECELL-Sy-28367306/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Smells more of marketing than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER14> This reads like it was written by their PR firm, light on details and high on marketing fluff and hype. Most of the author's lastest articles look like fed submarines to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why does the video at 0:36 mention _cannabis_?

Is it a painkiller? Does this thing double as a bong?

<comment><USER16> Cannabis is an analgesic.</comment></comment>


30 day challenge: meditation - <AUTHOR> http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/30-day-challenge-meditation/ <comment><USER2> Too bad Matt didn't get some actual meditation instruction-- I think it would have been more interesting (and beneficial) for him had he done so. Unfortunately, his description makes it clear that he didn't really know what he was doing:

 _First, it was difficult (impossible?) to turn my brain off. I'm accustomed to using my brain all the time, every day. I don't like to turn my brain off. I definitely struggled with that all month._

Meditation is _not_ about "turning your brain off."

 _Someone recommended counting, for example counting leaves on a tree, as a way to help. That worked very well, but it also felt like counting was keeping my mind busy rather than clearing it out._

Some meditation traditions use counting-- but not like that. Counting the leaves on a tree might be a nice thing to do, but it's not meditation (at least according to any tradition I've ever heard of-- and I'm reasonably well schooled on the subject.)

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agree with you. This seems like an excuse for a blog post rather than something that he was actively seeking to truly learn. I'm sure if he'd even read a decent book on it that he would have benefited much more. For anyone reading these comments who is interested in meditation, check out these two free books:

Happy To Burn - <http://www.sankhara.com.au/shop/products/displayFree.html>

Mindfulness in Plain English - <http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma4/mpe.html>

I found these to be very useful as I started exploring meditation. I also found a yoga teacher that also taught meditation - enough to make a difference in my life, both working and outside of work.

<comment><USER2> I don't know "Happy to Burn", but Bhante G's "Meditation in Plain English" is an excellent book.

However, I think that learning to meditate from a book is a bit like learning to swim from a book-- I'm sure it is possible, but it's definitely not the easiest (or most efficient) way to learn.

I'd recommend that anyone who is interested try to find a center to visit, and take some in-person instruction.

<comment><USER4> There are also audio guided meditations available online from established teachers.

eg, <http://www.dharma.org/ims/mr_audio.php>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A while back I made one of the calming and relaxing decisions I ever made: I decided to not meditate.

Before that, every time I saw an article like this I would feel pressured and hounded into meditating. But now I'm totally relaxed about it, because I know I'm never going to start meditating, and this detachment from the nonstop you- must-meditate-to-be-happy pressure fills me with a feeling of bliss.

I highly recommend not-meditating to everybody.

<comment><USER6> I guess you're eating it for the humor here, but I pretty much agree with you at this point in my life.

I've tried meditating several times, once every day for a month or so, and I feel like it's hype. Probably because I never fully "got it" but at the same time I wonder why successful figures in history aren't known for meditating.

I feel like like such a beneficial and simple practice would have developed in parallel throughout many cultures and we'd have our own analog- if it was actually beneficial.

<comment><USER2> I'm certainly not going to push meditation on anyone, but I don't think the "it wasn't developed in parallel" argument is a poor one-- meditation practices are pretty much ubiquitous throughout all of Asia. That's not nothing. Furthermore, besides the obvious Buddhist and Hindu traditions, there _are_ meditative traditions (albeit minor ones) within Christianity.

I'm quite surprised to hear that you tried meditating every day for a month or so, without "getting it"-- to me, that sounds like you had a terrible meditation instructor.

Anyway: feel free to not meditate, if that's working for you, but the "not invented here" argument seems pretty weak to me.

<comment><USER7> Prayer itself _is_ a form of meditation, it's not at all just minor traditions.

<comment><USER2> Not all forms of prayer can be construed as meditation (as it is generally considered.) Some can, but these are not the dominant form in most Christian traditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been doing Transcendental Meditation (TM) twice a day for 38 years. I am not suggesting that you do TM. But I have some practical guidelines:

Be regular. Absolutely do not miss sessions. Regularity establishes a base line to your day.

Find some group or guru who can help you discuss your experiences. Over time you will need to talk about what occurs during your meditations.

Meditation is a different way of thinking not non-thinking.

Meditation is the high point of my day. If you are not enjoying it or fulfilled by it, you are doing something else.

</comment><comment><USER9> One of the best books I have read on meditation is: "Being Nobody, Going Nowhere: Meditations on the Buddhist Path"

</comment><comment><USER10> I am helping a serial entrepreneur who has the exact same problem of "turning his brain off". The best thing we have found is the pranayama iPhone app by saagara.com.

Try it for 15 minutes, everyday, either in the morning, or before bed.</comment>


VimSpeak - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AshleyF/VimSpeak <comment><USER2> People. On your front page, you _must always_ say what your thing is. Referring to some other thing that I've also never heard of is not telling me what your thing is.

This drives me insane.

<comment><USER3> I wrote a description and made a pull request to fix this: <https://github.com/AshleyF/VimSpeak/pull/1>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The VimGolf example is incredibly cool.

<http://toogl.es/#/view/qy84TYvXJbk>

<comment><USER5> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy84TYvXJbk> noscript blocked your link for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is so freaking cool. Don't know if I'd use it all day, might end up switching RSI for a sore throat, but sure is cool.

Maybe on a smart phone… without the virtual keyboard, the entire screen is free for displaying code. And typing on that tiny thing isn't that great anyway.

The thought of using Vim while laying on the couch is also enticing. Your significant other may think you finally lost your mind after hearing you speak to your editor, though.

<comment><USER7> Or combine with Google Glass and code while walking in the woods :)

<comment><USER8> This is exactly the sort of nightmare Glass gives me when I dream of it.

<comment><USER7> As a replacement for walking in the woods unaided it'd be terrible, but as a replacement for sitting in a cubicle it might not be so bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The README should really say what VimSpeak is. I don't want to have to watch a video about another similar application just to figure out what this is.

</comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEBMlXRjhZY> for the lazy

</comment><comment><USER11> For everyone thinking this is a text-to-speech plugin for vim (boring): _it is not_. It's a _voice controlled vim_ (quite cool).

</comment><comment><USER12> A similar project using Emacs and really clever use of Python and Dragon Naturally Speaking SDK was my favorite presentation at PyCon this past year.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI>

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow this is timely for me, yesterday I was thinking about doing exactly this. I had no idea it could be done in so little code.

I'm thinking along slightly different lines: a short syllable for each key, optimized for easy pronunciation in frequent combinations, so I can speak the commands really quickly. I figure it won't be any harder to learn than Vim was in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER13> I always worried how I would code if suddenly lost the use of my hands. This gives me hope it wouldn't be a life-ending disaster!

</comment><comment><USER14> How can I make this work on Windows and Linux? Is the code F#?

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's F#. I just got it running in Visual Studio. I suspect the speech recognition library is Windows-only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Speech recognition is cute as a tech demo, but I doubt it'll be very useful in the Real World.

<comment><USER7> Tavis Rudd is using it in the real world, and says he's faster with it than typing. There's a link to his presentation on the github page.

He advocates it for anyone, but for people with RSI it'd especially be a godsend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's awesome! Tavis's emacs setup is amazing!

</comment><comment><USER17> Amazingly awesome!

</comment><comment><USER18> The 80 year old editor that just will not die. Which reminds me I need to fill my lamp with kerosene. Wouldn't wanna adapt to electric powered lighting.

<comment><USER19> You got downvoted because you criticize something which you obviously have no clue of. The reason why vim, in its various incarnations, is still being used is because vim is not an editor, vim is a highly powerful text manipulation _language_. The main implementation of said language being Vim, with implementations for lots of other editors (Sublime, Xcode, Eclipse, even Emacs).

If I'd find a better _text manipulation language_ than vim, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I've yet to find one.

<comment><USER18> Please. vim is an editor. Whether vim is a language, which has an implementation known as vim which is an editor, is irrelevant. I referred to the implementation. And it was clear I was referring to the editor.

You might wanna correct Wikipedia and tons of other sources that all refer to vim the editor. Cuz they are all wrong, per your definition.

<comment><USER19> Yes, and no. I was referring to your criticism that people still use it. See, people do not use it because it is vim, the editor, but because it is vim, the text manipulation language. Really. There's nothing great about the editor itself, it is rather clunky, lacks solid UI abstractions, blocks the UI while it is busy doing something, has an awful scripting language (vim script), and more. If you take away the text manipulation language, nobody would use it.

Another point validating that is that people write vim-layers for all kinds of editors and IDEs. They don't port the editor (i.e. the weird UI blocking, or the text mode, or the other things or even vim script), they port the text manipulation language.

Coming back to what I originally said: You seem to not get vim, and how it allows to easily modify text with a manipulation language (not a programming language!). Say I'm at the beginning of a line: #[exampleObject: obj displayTitle: @"this is the title"]; [delegateDoSomethingWith: @"this is the title"]; Say I want to take the 'this is the title', and change the contents to 'new title. In the vim-language, that's the following code (cursor pos is the #): /@"<CR>2lci"new title<ESC>n2l. or Vj:s/this is the title/new title/<CR> This is a simple example, but for moving around text and manipulating it (i.e. everything _after_ you wrote the initial code / function class / whatever) it is beyond fantastic.

What's not so good, as outlined above, is vim the editor, simply because it is old and doesn't have a more modern UI, etc. There're many projects that tried to address this, but everyone, so far, failed to implement the text manipulation language as deeply as in the reference implementation vim. What comes close is evil for emacs.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you validate an email address from a mobile app - <AUTHOR>

What is the best way to validate a user's email address during signup in a mobile app without sending them a confirmation email that has to be opened in mobile browser <comment><USER2> Two possible approaches:

First, run it through a parser to verify there's an @, a valid suffix (.com, .de, etc), resolvable domain, and just hope that they spelled it correctly.

Second, send it an email (maybe just a "thank you for signing up"), and rather than waiting for the customer to respond, just listen for a "undeliverable as addressed" reply message, which should be pretty prompt, but not always.

Probably not much else you can do, stopping short of a confirmation email request.</comment>


Why isn't 'American' a Language? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150715-why-isnt-american-a-language <comment><USER2> There is no precise and official way to identify something as a "language" rather than a "dialect".

For example: there are five major dialects of Hindi, some of which are mutually unintelligible -- yet few people call them separate languages. On the other hand, standard Hindi is mutually intelligible with Urdu -- they use different writing systems, but as spoken languages are roughly as close as American and British English -- yet they are considered different languages. Similarly, China has a vast diversity of mutually unintelligible languages -- or, rather, what outsiders call "languages", and what the Chinese government insists are merely dialects of a single language: "Chinese".

What's going on here? Max Weinreich's quip that "a language is a dialect with an army and a navy" seems to hit the mark. If Britain and America had not become allies in the late 19th century, then the ongoing antipathy between them would have required their speaking systems to be classified as "languages". But that would have been a political necessity, not a linguistic one.

As an aside -- as somebody who grew up in America and emigrated at age 31 to Britain -- I must say that the oft-cited differences in spelling and pronunciation are the least important areas of divergence. Much more significant (and confusing) are the idiomatic divergences. For example: in the UK, people commonly say "are you alright?" as a greeting, equivalent to the American "how do you do?" or "what's up?". But in American, "are you alright?" is an expression of serious concern -- something you might say to somebody walking around in a state of confusion with an apparent head injury. It was extremely disconcerting when people kept asking me this -- I thought I must be acting/looking really strange to provoke such continual concern!

<comment><USER3> To your "dialect with an army and a navy" point, don't forget that in the US a language is taught called "Serbo-Croatian." In Serbia, it's "Serbian" and is its own language. In Croatia, it's "Croatian" and it is also a separate language locally despite being almost entirely mutually intelligible with speakers of the Serbian form.

(To add to the fun, in the UN it's called "Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin- Serbian", but who's counting?)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_language#Sociopolitic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croatian_language#Sociopolitical_standpoints) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_standard_Bosnian,_Croatian_and_Serbian)

<comment><USER4> My wife studied this language once. The department she was studying it in called it "BCS" (for Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian); she eventually just took to calling it "Bosnifuckit".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> French is also spoken very very differently in various regions of the world... Haiti, France, Quebec, Africa. German too has significant variations. Does that mean each dialect should be considered a unique language? My take is that if two people can communicate with each other in the same "language," regardless of where they are from, then it really is the "same language."

<comment><USER6> It's not that simple, as far as I know Hindi and Urdu are effectively the same language when spoken, with some small divergences but use a different character set. How would regard that?

<comment><USER7> I don't believe linguists consider the writing system as part of the language as such. Multiple languages have shifted writing systems for convenience or political reasons without the language itself changing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The point of the article is not that there is an American language, but that there could have been one if Americans (and the British) chose to and allowed AE to diverge significantly more from BE. People often consciously choose what words to use.

In the end practical reasons - trade, business and mutual cultural influence kept the language from splitting up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Vocabulary constitutes a language "façade" and it is often interpreted as the key differentiating factor between languages. Most linguists agree that the language is based in grammar and rules for creating sentences.

That being said, official AE and BE are pretty much identical and the same rules apply on both sides of the Atlantic. It is only logical that different words are used, because of the different contexts that people live in, but that doesn't mean that AE and BE are distinct languages.

<comment><USER10> There are minor differences in spelling and vocabulary between British and US English, but there are also differences in grammar, so I consider en_US and en_GB to be quite different - enough that I always push for translations for applications, where the differences in grammar are as important as those in spelling and vocabulary.

Here are some excellent examples:

[http://www.onestopenglish.com/grammar/grammar- reference/amer...](http://www.onestopenglish.com/grammar/grammar- reference/american-english-vs-british-english/differences-in-american-and- british-english-grammar-article/152820.article)

<comment><USER11> Slightly related: Is the Oxford comma mostly a BE thing or just a style thing that's used by x% of the English speakers everywhere?

<comment><USER12> It's mostly a thing used by people who don't like ambiguity.

<comment><USER13> The oxford comma does not guarantee a list to be unambiguous. [0]

> But the serial comma can also create ambiguity. Consider the following > adjusted version of the dedication [discussed in the preceding paragraph]: > To my mother, Ayn Rand [,] and God. With the serial comma, the reader could > understand the dedication as meaning either that the book is dedicated three > ways or that the book is dedicated to the writer's mother, who happens to be > Ayn Rand, and to God. Omitting the serial comma makes the latter meaning > less likely.

[0]: [http://www.adamsdrafting.com/the-serial-comma-can-cause- ambi...](http://www.adamsdrafting.com/the-serial-comma-can-cause-ambiguity/)

<comment><USER12> That's not a particularly good example, since you have the same ambiguity between the use of commas to set off non-restrictive appositives and the use of commas to separate list items, it still occurs in lists where the ambiguity is between four (or more) elements with no appositive or three (or more) elements, one of which has a non-restrictive appositive attached.

You can't really eliminate that source of potential ambiguity in isolated excerpts, only in larger works or bodies of work by adopting consistent practices that go beyond whether or not you use the Oxford comma (mostly, structuring sentences so that if one or more items in a list needs a non- restrictive appositive, it is either just the last item -- which is already set off with a conjunction whether or not it also has the Oxford comma preceding it, so the following appositive is unambiguously not a list item) or using parentheses rather than commas for non-restrictive appositives attached to list items (which is clearer even for two item lists, where item-separating commas, Oxford or otherwise, don't actually come into play.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> American English and Brittish are not different languages, 99% of the words are the same or similar.

<comment><USER15> A source for that? I would be surprised it was actually 99%.

<comment> yoz-y It is probably even more.

<comment><USER16> Depends on how you count, if you count all words, then it would be much much more than that, like 99.99% because of very specialized words like "mononitrate" and the like.

But in common use I wouldn't be surprised if it was 98% or less

consider words like "pissed", "pants", "suspenders", "fag", "chips", "bisquit", "jelly", "pavement", etc.

they mean different things in British and American English, even though etymologically they come from the same source

<comment><USER17> >> But in common use I wouldn't be surprised if it was 98% or less

I would. One bit of evidence against this is the amount of the Extra's script Ricky Gervais had to rerecord for an American audience. Most of the change was for unshared cultural references (local food brands etc.) and only a couple for words (fanny).

Due to the level of exposure, I believe the difference between generic Brit and generic US is less than the dialects within the countries e.g. older generations of Yorkshire vs. Cornish, Glaswegian vs. Cockney etc. can suffer great difficulties understanding each other.

The number of unshared words is much higher, methods of denotation and sentence construction are different and even the pronunciation of shared words become unrecognisable (I'm not a linguist, so open to correction). I'm sure there are similar extremes in the US.

<comment><USER18> There's also the fact that, due AE being all the time in the TV, the average Brit can understand it much better than the other way around. A lot of americanisms are favoured by not-so-young people.

They were complains of American fans not understanding Peter Capaldi as the new Doctor, as he has a (VERY understandable) Scottish accent.

<comment><USER17> I wonder to what extent American dialects are objectively easier to understand because they are the younger result of synthesising existing languages\accents rather than a UK dialect that has diverged due to isolation.

<comment><USER16> They're easier to understand because of Hollywood. If the United Kingdom made all the movies, everyone would think American dialects are really hard to understand.

Besides, nobody understands Southerners anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> For the same reason that Argentinian, Mexican, Colombian, Canadian, Ghanaian, Singaporean, Australian, Ivorycoastian, Nigerian, Brazilian, etc are not languages, but dialects.

Regardless of what Max Weinreich may have said (which was more of a political/philosophical statement than an academic one, and he didn't even coin the phrase), the variation between english dialects is not enough to call it a language.

Some pidgins are considered languages: they're spoken as lingua franca by large populations and is quite different from English.

<comment><USER11> From my limited knowledge Brazilian Portuguese seems to be a lot more different from European Portuguese than AE differs from BE.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I dont know about English, but there was not common French language until 20th century. Several dialects were united during WW I and latter with radio and television.

</comment><comment><USER21> When Czechoslovakia split into Slovakia and the Czech Republic, they also split the languages into two, even though they are virtually identical.

<comment><USER16> That's not true, otherwise it wouldn't be called "Czechoslovakia" \- the name itself implies there's a Czechia and a Slovakia

<comment><USER21> What isn't true? That the two languages are incredibly similar? There's less difference between them than between American and British English. Some words are pronounced differently, and they have different words for certain things, but it's no different than Americans saying elevators and British people saying lifts. Same thing.

<comment> yoz-y This is actually not true. The two languages are incredibly similar but nevertheless quite different. Quite more so than American and British English. They are different to the point where many young Czechs do not actually understand Slovak very well (well, this is a bit exaggerated, however I was surprised by kids that were just staring at me until I started speaking in Czech when asking for directions). Slovak people tend to speak Czech somewhat better because they are (or at least were) exposed to the language more. At least in my time no movies, books etc. were translated to Slovak.

Czech and Slovak have also quite a lot of differences in grammar (for example Czech have one more case in their declination system).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Considering the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and "European" Portuguese, it makes more sense to ask "Why isn't Brazilian a language". Then again, there are recent efforts to make all Portuguese languages around the globe more similar

</comment><comment><USER23> Well, if every colony will have it's own language - how many will you have for no good reason?

<comment> iso8859-1 "Good reason"? It is a question of definition. If your reasoning makes you define it as a dialect and not a language, what have you gained? It doesn't matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems the counter-example to the old "What's the difference between a language and a dialect? A language has a navy" observation.

</comment><comment><USER25> Thanks for submitting the interesting popular article on a perennial topic of discussion. The subheading of the article begins with "Britain and the US share a common language – but English is spoken and spelled very differently on each side of the Atlantic." Spelling, first of all, is largely irrelevant, because native speakers of English all over the world often coped without standardized spellings and sometimes still do, and anyway can usually read one another's spellings with understanding. How "very different" the speech of the United States is from the speech of Britain is a matter of distinguishing how different is different enough to be a problem.

I read the other comments here before typing out this comment. As several of the comments say, distinguishing different varieties of speech as "dialects" rather than "languages" is often a matter of politics rather than a matter of linguistics. It happens that I was one of the Wikipedians who was active in updating the Wikipedia article "English language"[1] earlier this year so that it is now a "good article" by Wikipedia's article rating criteria. For years, there were all kinds of stupid edit wars on that article by editors who didn't bother to look up or read any sources, but when several Wikipedians agreed to look up sources together and check what the sources actually say, we reached consensus about how to improve the article. The main point about the English language is that it has a very large speech community with high mutual comprehensibility spread all over the globe. The spread around the globe came first from trade, migration, and colonization, but even after the British Empire dissolved, the spread of English has been maintained by telecommunications, travel, broadcasting, film, book publishing, study abroad, and the efforts of many national governments of non-English-speaking countries to promote knowledge of English through formal schooling and government administration. The majority of people who use English day-by-day now are not descendants of English settlers who live in the "inner circle" of English- speaking countries. When we consider that railroads, the telegraph, the telephone, voice radio broadcasting, passenger airplanes, and talking motion pictures were all invented in English-speaking countries, and were used in international communication as early for United States-to-Britain communication as for international communication between any other country pairs, it is not surprising that English has stayed remarkably homogeneous across the vast territory of the United States and has even stayed mutually comprehensible despite the political separation of the United States and Britain. Like the majority of my ancestors (I have only a little English ancestry, from which I gain my family name), most Americans are descended mostly from people who did NOT speak English when they arrived in North America, but who learned English to communicate with one another as residents of the United States. My two maternal grandparents were both born in Great Plains states of the United States, but their schooling (only primary schooling) was conducted entirely in the German language, and they learned English as a second language as native-born United States citizens to interact with neighbors.

There were earlier comments in this thread about Chinese. Absolutely, positively the different Sinitic languages are distinct languages, not mutually comprehensible, and it does violence to the English usage of the term "dialect" to refer to Mandarin and to Cantonese as "dialects" of Chinese. I speak Modern Standard Chinese fluently and have worked for many years as a Chinese-English interpreter. I have also studied Taiwanese, Cantonese, and Hakka (listed in decreasing order of proficiency). Mandarin and Cantonese are more distinct, in several respects, than English is from German or than French is from Spanish. Calling both Mandarin and Cantonese "dialects of Chinese" is simply a matter of the politics of China denying linguistic reality.

The distinctions among Sinitic languages as distinct languages apply even if you write them down in Chinese characters. Chinese characters still represent speech (not ideas or abstract concepts) and do so in a way that is specific to the particular Chinese (Sinitic) language that one speaks. The long story about this can be found in the books _The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy_ [2] or _Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems_ [3] by the late John DeFrancis or the book _Ideogram: Chinese Characters and the Myth of Disembodied Meaning_ [4] by J. Marshall Unger. The book _Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of a Human Invention_ [5] by Stanislas Dehaene is a very good book about reading in general, and has a good cross-cultural perspective.

I'll give an example here of how Chinese characters reflect speech more than they reflect meaning-as-such. Many more examples are possible. How you might write the conversation

"Does he know how to speak Mandarin?

"No, he doesn't."

他會說普通話嗎?

他不會。

in Modern Standard Chinese characters contrasts with how you would write

"Does he know how to speak Cantonese?

"No, he doesn't."

佢識唔識講廣東話?

佢唔識。

in the Chinese characters used to write Cantonese. As will readily appear even to readers who don't know Chinese characters, many more words than "Mandarin" and "Cantonese" differ between those sentences in Chinese characters.

Many other examples of words, phrases, and whole sentences that are essentially unreadable to persons who have learned only Modern Standard Chinese can be found in texts produced in Chinese characters by speakers of other Sinitic languages ("Chinese dialects"). Similar considerations apply to Japanese, which is not even a language cognate with Chinese, and also links Chinese characters to particular speech morphemes (whether etymologically Japanese or Sino-Japanese) rather than with abstract concepts.

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

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Language-Fantasy-John- DeFranci...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Language-Fantasy-John- DeFrancis/dp/0824810686/)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Asian-Interactions- Comp...](http://www.amazon.com/Visible-Speech-Asian-Interactions- Comparisons/dp/0824812077/)

[4] [http://www.amazon.com/Ideogram-Chinese-Characters- Disembodie...](http://www.amazon.com/Ideogram-Chinese-Characters-Disembodied- Meaning/dp/0824827600/)

[5] [http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso- orange.fr/intro.htm](http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm)

</comment><comment><USER26> Well, "Asian" or "European" or "African" are not languages either. Why would "American" be? ;)

<comment><USER27> The accepted English demonym for inhabitants of the United States of _America_ is American. It has been this way for 200 years. We call ourselves American, and every English speaking country calls us American.

The only measure of correctness for language is use, and when speaking in English, American is only commonly used in one way--in English, American is almost universally unambiguous. No other country name contains the word America, and no one else commonly refers to themselves as American _in English_.

I don't go around telling Colombians they can't call themselves Colombians because Columbia is another name for the Americas. It's also not a problem here because we don't recognize one American continent.

Who refers to themselves by continent anyway? In what sense is it useful to identify to yourself as someone who lives somewhere in _the entire western hemisphere_? There is also no common language, race, ethnicity, or culture that unifies North and South America.

<comment><USER28> >Who refers to themselves by continent anyway?

 __ _satori99_ __Waves hello from Australia :)

<comment><USER27> Ha :) But are you really referring to yourself as being from the continent or the country?

By the way, do people from New Guinea get on your case about calling yourselves Australian (since it is part of the continent), like South Americans do to us?

<comment><USER28> I haven't ever met anyone from PNG, but I'll be sure to ask when I do!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IE9 will support VP8 and H.264 video - <AUTHOR> http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

<comment><USER3> "when the user has installed a VP8 codec" is an interesting caveat they made sure to mention twice. Is the user going to have to download something additional? If they have another browser installed with VP8 support does that install it in a way that IE will use it? If it doesn't ship with the browser, its nice that they will support it, but it's not as big a deal as shipping with support built-in.

<comment><USER4> Does it mean that IE8 would be unable to play a given video even with the proper codec installed?!

This is absolutely insane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as > VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows._

In other words it will work just as well as any other codec that requires support to be installed?

<comment><USER6> Just last week they announced that IE would _only_ support the H.264 codec. They didn't get into details but it was clear that even if you had e.g. Theora installed they wouldn't use it for HTML5 video tags.

This appears to be a partial reversal of that so that VP8 will be whitelisted and played as long as it's installed, but other random codecs won't. Which is probably a sensible security precaution.

<comment><USER4> > Which is probably a sensible security precaution.

Why not sandbox the video codec? It's not like it needs to even read more than a single given file. Heck. It's not like it even needs to read a file - <USER2> only needs a data-stream from where to read compressed frames and a callback pointer so that it can give them to whatever displays them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "As we said at MIX recently, when it comes to HTML5, we're all in." Canvas too?

<comment><USER8> As soon as I read that sentence, I wondered the same. Sadly, no news yet, at least according to [http://www.osnews.com/story/23229/IE9_HTML5_Video_Will_Be_H2...](http://www.osnews.com/story/23229/IE9_HTML5_Video_Will_Be_H264_Only).

>HTML5's features are rather broad so whilst no word on HTML5 Canvas has been mentioned yet, Microsoft did commit to HTML5 Audio and Video which were demonstrated at their developer's conference MIX10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was an article earlier on HN (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1361442>) that talked about there still being patent concerns with the new codec and so it seems like Microsoft may wanting to avoid being named in any potential suits by requiring the end user to install the codec rather than providing it by default.

</comment><comment><USER10> What are the implications of "when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows"? Does this mean users will have to install the codec for VP8 videos to be playable in IE? If so, that seems like a half-measure...

<comment><USER11> The implication is that Microsoft realizes that some people, believe it or not, might want to use VP8 in a context other than web video, and so the proper place for the codec is installed as part of the system, where it can be used by all video playback software, instead of built into the browser where it is only useful for web video.

<comment><USER12> If that's what they want to do, they could still have the IE9 installer install the codec system-wide, but it doesn't sound like that's what they intend to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The IEBlog (and all other MSDN blogs) is down for maintenance and cannot take comments, which is why the post is on Windows Blog. People can voice feedback via the comments on the blog post should they choose to :)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for posting this to HN Ravi!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Obviously a desire to avoid being sued for patent infringement. But, with google shipping VP8 as part of chrome, wouldn't any patent holders go after them as well? Doesn't google provide some form of air cover for other browser makers that might want to include VP8 in their browser?

</comment><comment><USER15> Am I crazy or is the absence of a single mention of Google in that post completely conspicuous?

<comment><USER16> It's standard for any communication from Microsoft to never name their competitors if they can avoid it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My sneaking suspicion is that the video element in IE 9 will happily play any video for which a codec is installed. It'll of course guarantee H.264 since the codec ships with all supported versions of Windows, but there's no real reason for it to refuse to play a video it has a codec for.

<comment><USER18> MS has said that IE 9 has a codec whitelist so it will _not_ use any random codec you have installed. [http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/html5-video- in...](http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/html5-video-in-internet- explorer-9-h264-and-h264-alone.ars)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> If it requires an install it will be irrelevant because Flash will support VP8 and is already installed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Both Adobe and Microsoft seem to be talking about VP8 only, not the full WebM stack including Vorbis audio and Matroska containers.

It smells like they are leaving room for their own media streaming formats and servers, and only nominally claiming some kind of support for VP8 without audio or file/streaming support. WebM needs all three to be an open platform for creating, streaming and consuming video content.

</comment><comment><USER21> > In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as > VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

Idea for next blog post:

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support canvas, svg, css3 when the user has installed a Google Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer.

</comment><comment><USER22> This says that they'll support VP8 as an installed codec, but this doesn't tell us much about WebM. What about the container format, Matroksa? Vorbis audio support?

<comment><USER18> They'll have to support all three or it won't work. I'm guessing that Google is actually writing the code so all MS has to do is add Google's Media Foundation components to the IE 9 whitelist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They'll say anything to grab some headlines away from Google today.

So predictable...

</comment><comment><USER23> Will it also support "HTML"? Maybe even "CSS"?</comment>


Ask HN: Utility for syncing a folder across two devices? - <AUTHOR> I basically want to make my own Dropbox, but with my own drive (probably on a Raspberry Pi) as the server. Is there an existing daemon that will just keep a pair of folders on different computers in sync? I know there are things like SMB, but that doesn't leave you a local copy when you go offline. <comment><USER2> Syncthing: [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/)

<comment><USER3> Agreed with syncthing. I replaced Dropbox on my devices, but it's not as simple to set up, for sure. But it works, when you get it up.

<comment><USER4> this. it looks like it works great but needs a really easy way to set it up. and the docs are really lacking. (is there a way to add a device from the command line without opening the web server port?).

<comment><USER2> > _is there a way to add a device from the command line without opening the > web server port?_

Not directly. Devices and folders are contained in the config.xml file. If you don't want to use the web UI, you can just edit the config.xml file and then restart Syncthing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unison: [https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/](https://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Resilio Sync: [https://www.resilio.com/individuals/](https://www.resilio.com/individuals/)

</comment><comment><USER7> lsyncd: [https://axkibe.github.io/lsyncd/](https://axkibe.github.io/lsyncd/)

</comment><comment><USER8> rsync</comment>


Ask HN: what would be in your ultimate information manager? - <AUTHOR>

I'm building a web-based information manager.
Basically, I got fed up of not being able to find important pieces of information, when I needed them.  So I'm building a web app (still in closed beta) around the idea that I should be able to store anything to do with my life (notes-to-self, ideas, to-do's, bookmarks, and, eventually, pdfs, photos, music etc).  And then I should be able to find any of my stored info, in about the time it takes to do a Google search.
So this is what I've come up with:
* A windows explorer-like layout.
* Search-as-you-type
* Quick creation of notes and folders.
* Nested labels: any note or folder you create, can be in multiple parent folders.  So you can use a hierarchy-like structure to store your data, or a flat label-like structure, or a combination of the two, depending on your mood, etc.
But, I was wondering: what kinds of features would you like to see in your ultimate information manager?  iPhone app?  A calendar?  GMail plugin...? <comment><USER2> I had the same issue and found Evernote. It now fills the roles you mention (well, I would't put music or photos in it as I use iTunes/Spotify and iPhoto/Flickr for those, but you _could_ ). So, perhaps I'll just say what about Evernote makes it awesome for me, and what, in a new thing, could make me switch..

I use and need a reasonably flat-form environment with tagging. I don't care for folders, hierarchies, or whatever, because I'm too impatient and have a bad memory for structure. I just want to throw stuff in and have it use tags or similar to figure out my intent. When it's time to get stuff out, I'd rather type in a query than go digging through folders, for instance (the Google vs Dmoz/ODP approach).

Separate to tagging, though, I want to also search all content Google style, but with tags and filetypes having extra "weight." So if I search "pdf gasoline receipt", I want PDF files tagged with "receipt" and containing the word "gasoline" to come up higher than, say, the text of this comment (if I archived it.) Evernote doesn't _quite_ get this right, but it's OK.

I almost don't care about the layout as I don't want to live in the app. I want to do two things: get info in and get info out. Other than that, I don't want to see anything. So I have it globally hotkeyed and then do one of those two things.

A _very_ important matter is that I can create notes easily without getting bitched at constantly that I've "forgotten" to fill out a field or whatever. Evernote gets this right. Once I click "New Note", I can tab through title, tags, and then I'm in content. There I can drag whatever I like, type what I want, and it's indexed. It needs to be as simple, yet flexible, as possible.

Lastly, and Evernote gets this _very_ wrong.. I don't want an information manager changing my info! Evernote's rich text editor keeps screwing up my formatting and fonts.. even on "plain text" stuff. I wish they could just let me have a totally plain text view without any of the rich stuff.

Oh, and make it sync somewhere - preferably through the file system so I can use Dropbox to sync it across computers myself. In fact, if you did that (and recommended users use Dropbox), then you solve the backup issue too and could use Dropbox's affiliates thing ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed re "get info in quick, get info out quick". That's been a driving principle behind my app, (<http://www.folderboy.com/index.htm>).

Re creating notes, folders, what I've done with FolderBoy is (1) made it easy to create a note or folder: type in a text-box and press <enter> (2) essentially dropped the distinction between notes and folders...any note you create can be turned into a folder by expanding it. E.g., if you make a note "book restaurant", then you can bust that open and put in the restaurant details.

I tried Evernote before deciding to create FolderBoy. What I didn't like was that I couldn't create folders and notes and drag and drop them around real- quick. Maybe they've fixed it, I haven't checked. Apparently they have good iPhone app, and OCR.

Yup, definitely using Dropbox API would be sweet. MVP at the moment :).

<comment><USER2> On the Dropbox point, I actually prefer apps that let me choose the folder they use, and I can just set that someplace in my Dropbox folder - no hard work needed :-) 1Password does this and it keeps my passwords synced everywhere.</comment></comment></comment>


CivilHub - <AUTHOR>

CivilHub is an innovative social network enabling people to suggest and implement changes in places where we live. We join people by concentrating them around the local communities to make the world a better place. <comment><USER2> You are using the wrong format to show you work (see that there is no link?).

Instead submit a "Show HN"; basically submit your CivilHub link, with a "Show HN:" at the beginning. Read guidelines here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> 5 points, no link, submitted incorrectly; and from a disposable account? LOL

<comment><USER4> That's a mean way to treat somebody. Please don't be mean on HN.

The interface here isn't always easy for newcomers. The last thing we ought to do is pile rudeness on top of that.

All: please give others the benefit of the doubt on HN. That's part of being civil. It's too easy to seize on whatever details make the other person look worst.

<comment><USER3> "That's a mean way to treat somebody. Please don't be mean on HN."

If that's your standard for meanness here, then everyone has been mean to me since I joined.

<comment><USER5> No, everyone hasn't.

<comment><USER3> Hence, my point. My preceding comment was pretty par for the course as far as HN comments go. To call it "mean" is to exaggerate its impact and it significance.

<comment><USER6> How many comments in the past 1000 on [https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/newcomments) or in [https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sarciszewski](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sarciszewski) are as mean as that one?

<comment><USER3> Do you really expect me to read through 1000 comments to enumerate which ones exceed a minimal threshold for snark?

If that's a prerequisite for being considered civil, fuck civility. I value my time too much for that.

Furthermore, my suggestion of "everyone has been mean to me" was intended as absurd hyperbole. The worst thing I've dealt with from HN is silent down-votes without an explanation of what they didn't like about my comment, which isn't even in the same league as, say, Youtube comments. (To be explicit, the preceding sentence is NOT a complaint.)

Sometimes I make ironic statements to make a point.

Disclaimer: I'm _normally_ an asshole. I don't think pointing things out and merely appending "LOL" is in the same league as, say, telling Comcast that all their lobbyists should commit seppuku to make the world a better place. Which I did this morning.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can python be even more pythonic? - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/avilum <comment><USER2> Quoting: "A list-like type with fun functionality. Extends the builtin list with .NET's Language Integrated Queries (Linq) and more. Write clean code with powerful syntax. Forget about messy loops, conditions and nested filters. Multiple filter/map/list-comprehensions, aggregating on one another, are not pythonic at all. I love python, but sometimes - python can be SO NOT PYTHONIC. Some of the methods might look rediculous for a single call, comparing to the regular python syntax. The whole idea is is to use it for nested, multiple filters/modifications :)."

Sounds reasonable to me.. what do you think? i wouldn't add it as a dependency but it's nice.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think based on the title and other comment that the intent may have been to link specifically to [https://github.com/avilum/linqit](https://github.com/avilum/linqit) rather than all of avilum's repositories?

Not sure though, just a guess.</comment>


Minecraft videos – why are they so addictive? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-32736808

<comment><USER2> The article is a bit of beat up and seems to omit a lot of features or aspects of the game and it's community that make it so rich.

>"The underlying creativity is baked into the program - the combinations, tools and materials - so the players have only one task to complete: design ever more complex structures. Though this seems like the pinnacle of an imaginative play experience, the kids we studied said they felt edgy and irritable after Minecraft sessions."

>The game, said the researchers, becomes "less about open-ended play and more about working to complete the never-ending stacks of buildings."

A bit surprised they seem to have ignored red stone, command blocks and modding. These seemingly complex concepts are not out of the reach of children. I don't have direct sources on hand but I've read many a programmer and parent (even on here) use it as a gateway to introducing computer science topics at a young age.

>but spending hours mindlessly watching others playing it represents a whole new level of obsession.

There are a lot of quality content creators with long running series' that have a narrative focus to some degree. I would rather my kids watch the likes of Etho, BdoubleO and Zisteau for instance over Yu-Gi-Oh, or some Transformers clone. Mostly so I can watch too.

</comment><comment><USER3> > the game that allows children to build worlds made out of blocks

It's so weird to me that Minecraft has become a "children's game". _Nobody_ thought of it that way in the beginning, when the alpha started getting really popular on Reddit and elsewhere. That perception must've started some time after the 1.0 release, in 2012.

Nothing about the game changed to make it more kid-friendly. That's just the culture that developed around it.

<comment><USER4> My experience is that us grownups got over it, but the kids can't let it go.

<comment><USER5> Call me crazy, but a game where kids build stuff, communally or individually, is about a bazillion times cooler than games where kids just zap each other with twitch reflexes.

<comment><USER6> I don't even mind the twitch reflex games. I just get frustrated that it's so hard to filter out the fourteen year olds screaming abuse at me.

<comment><USER7> Playing on PC mitigates a lot of that, IME. Also, co-op. Left 4 Dead is still fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I first _discovered_ Minecraft through a YouTube video. I started playing it a few months after it was first released and it was essential to watch videos and hit the wiki to figure out how to even play it. I stopped playing regularly when they "broke" cart boosters but occasionally watch videos to "keep up" on the game.

Amongst the people I know who watch a lot of Minecraft videos, there seem to be a few key elements: staying "seeped" in an environment they love, picking up new approaches and ideas for their own play, and also getting a vicarious gameplay experience they can't get in real life (because they don't have enough MC playing friends or they're not "into" the game enough).

</comment><comment><USER9> > Minecraft, the online world that most parents simply don't understand, is > now officially the most watched game of all time on YouTube.

It makes sense for the third-highest selling game of all time where Tetris is #1 and Wii Sports is #2. Those were both bundle with hardware.

</comment><comment><USER10> My little boy loves Stampy Longhead videos, detailing his adventures with Minecraft. What I love is that Stampy has recently started a series called Wonder Quest, which is an educational series, that my boy watches with equal passion. It's lovely to hear him come put to me and talk about Galileo and telescopes all learned from Wonder Quest.

[http://youtu.be/UC1Uupn45p8](http://youtu.be/UC1Uupn45p8)

</comment><comment><USER11> > The game, said the researchers, becomes "less about open-ended play and more > about working to complete the never-ending stacks of buildings."

Spoken like someone who hasn't spent much time with kids playing Minecraft. I've run a MC server for my niece since January of 2014. There are around 15 of her friends who play regularly on the server. "Never-ending stacks of buildings," would bore them to tears.

In addition to stacking blocks, Minecraft has:

Redstone: A set of blocks and items that can be used to create (electrical- like) circuits.

Server Commands: A complex set of commands that can be used to manipulate the environment, spawn creatures, and move the player around.

Command Blocks: Special blocks that can have commands stored in them, and are triggered by Redstone.

The Minecraft server I run also supports something called mods, which extend the standard functionality of the game, and in the case of my server, allow the kids to create multiple worlds within which they can transport themselves and create different types of play environments.

There are two world types that go far beyond stacks of blocks. The simpler of the two are arenas. They've built an arena with a community-established set of gameplay rules. You can compete alone or as a team. The arena master controls the spawning of enemies and the difficulty of the game. It is fascinating to watch a new arena master learn how to balance difficulty. Make the arena too hard and no one wants you to be arena master (a job that is appointed in impromptu elections). Make it too easy, and everyone gets bored and moves on to other areas of the game. There are complex social dynamics at play. As the sole adult on the server, I've spent plenty of time counseling 7 to 12 year olds on the subtleties of _not_ abusing your friends when the opportunity presents itself. They learn quickly.

The most advanced world type, and the one that really blows my mind, are the "adventure" worlds. They combine structures they build with command blocks to create interactive adventures. You press a button and you're transported to the inside of a cottage. From there, a stream of messages orient you, and you're tasked with some objective: solve a puzzle to escape the house, locate an item hidden near by, find tools to fight off an incoming wave of zombies, survive long enough to reach a far away destination. The possibilities are endless, and the kids exhaust them all.

Minecraft is so open-ended that the types of play are no more bounded by the game than outdoors play is bounded by the laws of physics.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Right now, they probably watch more YouTube than regular TV.

That must be tough.

</comment><comment><USER13> Minecraft looks like a very engaging game. However, I've never sat down and tried playing it, and I'm having a difficult time understanding why people would routinely rather watch videos of it than play it themselves (which the article suggests happens). Is this really true for a subset of players? Can someone help me understand, maybe with an analogy? I certainly can't imagine wanting to watch professionals build legos to the near exclusion of playing with them myself, or to watch people perform Halo jump tricks and not play Halo myself.

<comment><USER14> There's an element that many people who are frequent gamers don't usually see and it's that watching a video of a game being played covers the gist of the game in a less involved manner. Basically, you aren't setting yourself up to be enthralled by the game and dedicated to it for hours, but instead appreciate what the game covers, it's visual aesthetic, it's gameplay, all without devoting a large chunk portion of time to it. There's also the benefit of skipping around a video during boring/slow (and setup) parts of a game that you simply can't do when you're playing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I used to watch the ones by Keralis a lot on youtube. I think it had more to do with his energy and personality than Minecraft itself, but I watched tons of them.

</comment><comment><USER16> > It bears out earlier research from YouTube video research firms Newzoo and > Octoloy, which found that Minecraft material notched up more than 3.9 > billion views on YouTube in March 2015 alone.

Notched!</comment>


Rescuing Aristotle - <AUTHOR> http://scientiasalon.wordpress.com/2014/10/03/rescuing-aristotle/ <comment><USER3> It is worth remembering that many of Aristotle's works begin by covering the whole field as it existed in his time, and it is often difficult to untangle what Aristotle himself thought vs what he reported others thinking. The "standard" translations of Aristotle's major works--particularly Metaphysics-- by Sir David Ross are also heavily influenced by Ross' neo-Platonism, so they can be quite misleading given the number of gaps and ambiguities that need to be filled.

It is also worth remembering that we know today that Aristotle's physics accurately describes human experience. If you inquire into the physical beliefs of non-physicist college students you will find they give accounts that are Aristotelian to the core. The degree to which Newtonian physics is bizarre, abstract and counter-intuitive is often forgotten by people who bash Aristotle. He was often wrong, but the problems he was working on were fiercely difficult, and the tools he had to bring to bear on them incredibly crude by modern standards.

<comment><USER4> One of the things that was emphasized to me when I was studying the ancient greeks was that I should try to step outside my own mindset and try to read the text as it is, rather than to try to interpret it from my own cultural or modern perspective. I think this is an important step to take when you study these kinds of texts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you for this post! Loved it.

I feel like this is part of a larger bias among scientists to view the history of science as a clear progression from worse methods of explanation to better. This pernicious misreading of history seems to lead many scientists to view philosophers as proto-scientists rather than the more complex thought pioneers and concept creators that they are. Notable exceptions to this would include Albert Einstein who cited inspiration from and exhibited a competent understanding of Spinoza.

<comment><USER3> Philosophers are proto-scientists in the same way that alchemists are proto- scientists. They were both pursuing a goal that we now know is both impossible and uninteresting: turning base metals into gold in the case of alchemists, and certain propositions in the case of philosophers.

As a scientist who has studied philosophy seriously, I am comfortable saying this is generally true of everything philosophers do: it is based on a fundamentally mistaken approach to understanding the world that vastly over- states the role of introspection, the fidelity of the senses, common-sense, memory, and the human perspective. The arts are an appropriate place for such explorations, and they should be understood as what they are: studies of human experience, and nothing else. They can't teach us anything about the way the world actually is, or what are the optimal principles to govern our behaviour, or any of the other things that philosophers claim to this day is their unique subject of study. There is a role for natural philosophy as the foundations of science, but the rest? Un-natural philosophy has neither place nor use, and Einstein's modest affection for Spinoza was almost completely irrelevant to this actual science.

Philosophers have been trying to claim "inspiration" for the work of scientists for centuries (there used to be a significant contingent of Aristotelians who claimed Newton was inspired by Aristotle, which is almost completely without empirical basis.) It's kind of sad, seeing a several thousand year exercise in wrong-headedness finally meet its inevitable end, and of course there will be a few who insist on soldiering blindly on, arbitrarily privileging the human scale and human senses, blissfully unaware they are spouting gibberish, while the rest of us feel rather sad for them, and try to keep them away from sharp objects and the reins of power.

<comment><USER6> 'gibberish', eh?

Ouch.

I refute it thus: science itself cannot tell us why I should believe the claims of the astronomer over the claims of the astrologer.

The moment you try to explain why the belief system of the former should be privileged over the belief system of the latter you have left the realm of what science itself claims it can do.

I have no problem with scientists thinking they have displaced theologians with their better explanations of the natural world; I reject totally that science can in any way replace the inter-generational philosophical project, I reject that the proper place for the philosophical project is the arts, and I reject that the philosophical project has in any way come to an end.

Also, your insults do you an injustice. And didn't anyone ever tell you that pride comes before a fall?

<comment><USER7> The object of science, in the final analysis, is the collection, evaluation, and‒if the stars align‒acceptance as truth of sufficiently explanatory evidence. It is laughable to assert that the astrologers have better assisted us in this endeavor, or even that their contributions are on a par with those of astronomers. If you cannot adopt this perspective, you are simply lost to logical discourse; what evidence could possibly be provided to you to convince you to value evidence?

For what it's worth, you might like to know that it's destruction which pride precedeth.[0]

0: [http://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm](http://biblehub.com/proverbs/16-18.htm)

<comment><USER6> Yes, I'm aware of that. I'm not asserting that there is any kind of equivalence between astrology and astronomy, I'm asserting that it is not science itself that can draw the distinction between the claims of the two but rather it is the philosophy of science where this takes place. that was my rebuttal.

I never knew (obviously) that 'pride comes before a fall' is a common misquote but I do now! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think that any of the scientists/philosophers/mathematicians mentioned (not even Hawkings) can _damage_ Aristotle that much. Aristotle is kind of _far and away_ in terms of _perceived importance_. Perceived because I don't know the body of work of all the people mentioned in the article.

IMHO these ancient scholars from whom western civilisation started, will be read and re-read from the original text, studied and re-studied much more thoroughly and many more times in the years to come than Russel of Hawkings. Maybe unfortunately so, maybe not. I'm not able to judge any of the names mentioned in the article. That's just a feeling, only time will tell.

As other posters already pointed out, when science comes at play, we have to understand the dynamics of ancient Greece at 400 BC, with their lifestyle, beliefs and lack of knowledge (in any science: physics, chemistry, etc.).

However the most important body of Greek philosophy is the questions/answers surrounding men, existence, purpose (in life), knowledge (inherited or learned?), etc. Because these are universal questions that any human being with acceptable intellect will have to confront in his lifetime.

Off-topic: I've read an essay some time ago - can't find the link :-( - <USER2> that especially today the difference between the body of knowledge of a _top notch scientist_ and average peasant Joe is chaotic. Might be, but thinking how Aristotle, Euclid, Newton or Gauss would have felt in their era when talking to a peasant is a lot more scary to me.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think people commit a grave error when they try to pick out absurd-sounding beliefs that ancient people may or may not have held. The larger point is that Aristotle and Plato gave us ideas and concepts that we still think _with_.

To give some perspective, at the time these guys lived they were still inventing alphabets and didn't put spaces between words. Reading was still a crude and unpolished form of communication, most people (Plato included) were illiterate.

Their ideas are rudimentary but fundamental so it's easy to nitpick technicalities but completely ignores their most important contributions.

/rant

<comment><USER10> Can you back up this claim of an illiterate Plato? That sounds like the sort of assertion this post complains about. Plato's dialogs do have Socrates complaining about book-learning.

AFAICT literacy rates in classical Athens are uncertain. I recently read [http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Lives-Ancient-Greeks- Peoples/...](http://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Lives-Ancient-Greeks- Peoples/dp/0313385718) which left me with an impression of relatively high rates for male citizens, but I don't remember anything concrete. Searching turns up [http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical- stud...](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/classical- studies/ancient-history/literacy-and-democracy-fifth-century-athens) which says the orthodoxy is for low rates, but argues against it.

<comment><USER9> In my hasty reply I wrote Plato but meant Socrates. In fact Plato was most definitely literate. In fairness this was also only unsubstantiated rumor. Socrates upbringing was supposedly poor so it's possible he could have been. However my overall point was that this isn't important in light of his larger contributions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So people misquote Aristoteles, so what? His philosophy is over 2000 years old, and severely outdated. Even if he didn't say a bunch of the non sense that is often attributed to him, he still said a lot of non sense. Perhaps not his fault (I'm sure in the year 4000 Bertrand Russel and Ludwig Wittgenstein will be considered obsolete gibberish). The point is that attributing truth value to authority is bad. Western science halted for many centuries because truth value was given to what Aristoteles said (or didn't say). I suppose that the OP has learned her/his lesson by not trusting Bertrand Russel on the claims. But he/she is then just re-iterating Russel's point. Don't base truth on authority.</comment>


AI Being Used to Bust Those Netflix Account Moochers - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicolemartin1/2019/01/10/ai-being-used-to-bust-those-netflix-account-moochers/#1e36c8711172 <comment><USER2> What a waste of time and money, they already charge an extra few dollars a month for more simultaneous streams and still that is limited to a family- sized quantity so it's unlikely anyone can share with even 10 people let alone 100s or 1000s as with torrents. I think if sharing accounts was prolific most accounts would probably still need to be paid or everyone's Netflix would be constantly complaining there's too many people watching during peak hours.

The natural next-step would be automatically sending a letter to the IP addresses they feel are pirating content demanding a one-time payment of a few hundred bucks instead of litigation, then lobbying to have the ISPs decide who to send letters to.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you differentiate between hacker, artist, craftsman and engineer - <AUTHOR> I am looking for various views on how you would define and differentiate between a hacker, artist, craftsman and engineer. I have some thoughts, but in order not to influence the discussion i will not post my own definitions until some time has passed.
The question again:
How would you differentiate between a hacker, artist, craftsman and engineer?
I have drafted some questions based on my own thinking. Feel free to use these to answer.
x = hacker or artist or craftsman or engineer
How does a (x) see the world?
What character traits does a (x) demonstrate?
Why does (x) do what they do?
How does (x) do what they do?
What does (x) actually do? <comment><USER2> Hacker: someone who solves problem quickly. Maybe it is or it is not the most elegant solution but it gets job done.

Artist: someone who creates something that stirs emotions. My friends and I used to debate if ads are truly art form or not, I lean towards that they are. But some of my friends argue that art product should be the product, not make you wish to buy another product.

Craftsman: I haven't thought about craftsman much. It seems recently there is a lot of romanticizing of craftsman in the Western hemisphere but back home there are tons of craftsmen who seems to struggle financially.

Engineer: someone who builds something using well established principles, with a lot of formal processes, communications, and most likely in a team. They may work on artistic projects such as video games or art installation but their part of project is not artistic.

<comment><USER3> WRT the artist: I think it depends on the ad. Some people will argue this, but I don't think making money from your art makes you a "sellout" or less of an artist. On the other hand, there are usually a lot of constraints to what you can put in an ad and most of them, although quirky or pretty, are kind of soulless if you think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hacker: someone who finds the shortest route. Root word hack, meaning to break into something with an axe.

Artist: someone who extracts meaning out of something. Some extract meaning from the meaningless, some extract it from something already existing, like a different form on music or a perspective on war.

Craftsman: someone who makes high quality things.

Engineer: someone who finds the optimum solution to a problem. The hacker religiously follows the shortest route, the engineer considers various trade offs.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd argue they value different things.

A hacker values novelty.

An artist's values aesthetics.

A craftsman values quality.

An engineer values discipline to ship.

These are all spitballed, but there are a high number dimensions to think about.</comment>


Show HN: Cross SaaS Search Made Easy with Fetch - <AUTHOR> https://getfetch.io/ <comment><USER2> i've been looking for/considering building something like this. signup with github is kind of odd though, considering.

<comment><USER3> Hey!

Would you prefer a direct email based sign-up or perhaps more options for which integration to sign up with?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Launching a Psychedelic Chat Community - <AUTHOR>

A powerful and intriguing experience inspired me to create a Slack community for Psychedelic researchers, therapists, shamans and the curious.
Check it out here: http://psychedelicchat.com
Looking for feedback and ideas to help make it a highly collaborative, engaging and supportive community. <comment><USER2> When it first loads the youtube video takes up the whole window and I can't scroll with two finger scroll on the youtube video. If I were you I would move the youtube video maybe to the bottom of the page? Not many people are interested in watching a video anyway (imo).

using firefox on linux btw.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for checking it out. That video is normally the background of the page. It's not intended to be watched directly.

It seems to load normally in Firefox on Mac and PC. I'll check it out on Linux and fix it asap.</comment></comment>


Tweet Compression - <AUTHOR> http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/tweet-compression <comment><AUTHOR> Since tedu often makes fun of the quality of other people's code, I wondered how his own code would look like for a non-C project. So I had a look at this small utility.

And to some degree of surprise, there are indeed several strange bits in the implementation.

One example:

        document.getElementById("wrapped").innerHTML = w.replace(/&/g, "&").replace(/</g, "<")

Are we really so used to unsafe APIs that we prefer escaping even if the safe API is actually shorter?

        document.getElementById("wrapped").textContent = w

Also, this is declaring a global variable "i" for no reason - probably forgot a "var i"?

        function burrito() {
            var c = ...
            var w = ...
            var u = ...
            for (i = 0; i < fillings.length; i++) {
               ...

Finally, the preference for unsafe APIs continues, treating plain text as regex, this time without proper escaping:

        var fillings = [
        [ "Th", "Þ" ],
        [ "th", "þ" ],
        ...

           w = w.replace(new RegExp(fillings[i][0], "g"), fillings[i][1])

While this is non-critical from a security perspective (because the replacement list is hard coded into the program), this begs for bugs. Good luck if you want to put something into your replacement list than contains a ".", "+" or similar. At least a small warning at the top of the list would be a nice service to the future self.</comment>


SHOW HN : Highschooler made a platform to help people learn code - <AUTHOR> https://domecode.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> DomeCode is an application that helps you learn and practice code with the appropriate tools and a curated list of resources through the philosophy of practice. It's a single workspace where you can advance your coding journey with compiled resources to learn programming concepts, take notes, plan tasks, practice coding problems, discuss interesting stuff on the Forum, meet other developers and most all have the musical element with all of it without ever leaving the single workspace to navigate to dozen platforms. Essentially, get more with less hassle. Would appreciate some feedback, also looking for people to come work on this with me.</comment>


India's economy surpasses United Kingdom - <AUTHOR> http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/for-the-first-time-in-nearly-150-years-indias-economy-surpasses-that-of-united-kingdom/articleshow/56064690.cms <comment><USER2> With all the massive, extreme poverty in India this only shows how meaningless GDP is as a mean to illustrate economy's condition.

<comment><USER3> Not to defend the GDP overall, but you could just use a per capita GDP for that sort of comparison.

<comment><USER4> GDP per capita is better than raw GDP but it still doesn't factor in wealth inequality, purchasing power parity etc.

You can see the issue with a Representative economy here (UK)

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/UK...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/UK_Equivalised_Income_Distribution.png/600px- UK_Equivalised_Income_Distribution.png)

Of course the Government always uses Mean since it sounds a _lot_ better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The phrase "economy surpasses" gives a very different impression. The only thing I can take is that India is now generating more income. I'm not sure what to make of it because if one were to look at the income/wealth distribution numbers where the richest 1% hold nearly 60% of India's wealth [0]. It would be interesting to see if this income is enough for India (under equitable distribution assumptions), to make India "unpoor". IF so, it would mean that India does not lack the money or resources. It lacks the means to distribute its resources.

[0] [https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about- us/research/resear...](https://www.credit-suisse.com/us/en/about- us/research/research-institute/news-and-videos/articles/news-and- expertise/2016/11/en/the-global-wealth-report-2016.html)

<comment><USER6> Yeah and how is that number skewed in the US... India has a much better distribution than most Western countries. The problem is that it's divided over a billion people. UK has a significantly smaller population.

<comment><USER5> > The problem is that it's divided over a billion people. UK has a > significantly smaller population.

UK also is significantly smaller in size too. Just in case, the population density of England is higher than that of India.

<comment><USER6> dunno how area or population density affects economic output other than perhaps for agrarian economies that need the land. maybe real estate, but you can build up you don't need tons of land for that.

<comment><USER5> More people, more services and more goods produced - more GDP.

<comment><USER7> true.Indian GDP is not based on exports but rather Indians producing goods,services and selling to Indians which has a population of 1 billion is pretty much the backbone of our business which contribute to GDP. Each state in India is the size of an European country Competing each other to surpass the growth level are the driving factors of Indian economy..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> India still has a long way to go on a social level (as does all of humanity in a sense) but I think things are really improving there at least, especially compared to Pakistan and Bangladesh.

<comment><USER9> You say it like there was ever a comparison here since just after independence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _" Owing to Britain's recent Brexit-related problems.."_ \-- I'm not aware of any Brexit-related economic problems. On the contrary, all news I've seen since has been positive, to the surprise, and disappointment, of many.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=B-lXWP3BD6Ti8AeIu6i4BA&...](https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=B-lXWP3BD6Ti8AeIu6i4BA&gws_rd=cr#q=pound+to+dollar)

This might help you see some problems.

<comment><USER12> All central banks continuously print money because they consider their currency "too strong" and say this will hurt exports.

At some point the exchange rate falls and suddenly no one is happy with it either. Recent examples are China, GB, Brazil, Venezuela.

The truth is - as with your comment - a surging/falling exchange rate is neither good nor bad. It has positive and negative effects and things will balance out.

Or to say it differently:

 _An exchange rate is never low, nor is it high, it is precisely where it should be._ \- Gandalf the Grey

<comment><USER13> If you print money, you are in control and you do it because you believe that you currency strength is harming your economy somehow: that's like a Sales because you want to get rid of stock to introduce a new model for example.

In this case the other countries are dumping GBP because they think the UK economy will become weaker. That would be like a Sales because your product is flopping.

Same effect, difference cause. One is voluntary on the country/company term, the second is forced by the other actors of the market. The fall of the GBP is significant. The rest of the World is shorting the UK right now and that in itself can be what pushes the UK economy in danger zone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A country as large as India, with over a billion citizens, ought to have a bigger economy than a small island nation that has turned its back on its historical engines of wealth and power.

<comment><USER15> > its historical engines of wealth and power.

slavery, rum, tobacco, wool, sugar, coal & sea power

<comment><USER14> Certainly sea power. Also steel, armaments, shipbuilding, shipping, aeronautics, and all manner of other tangible goods and trade.

Having 80% of your economy[1] tied up in parasitic service sector make-work and financial services smacks of decadence and decline.

[1] [https://www.ft.com/content/2ce78f36-ed2e-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc...](https://www.ft.com/content/2ce78f36-ed2e-11e5-888e-2eadd5fbc4a4)

<comment><USER15> I live in the North, it used to be a powerhouse of textiles, coal and steel.

Now it's just a shell of the glory days, there is no growth. It was no surprise the people here voted for Brexit. The SE sucks the wealth fro mthe nrest of the nation, taking the best investment with it.

And we're only 200 miles away. Imagine Orlando having a baseline of $1m for a 3 bedroom house and Miami full of boarded up buildings.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Link Audit – remove Google penalties - <AUTHOR>

Www.linkaudit.co.uk This service will analyse your sites back links and detect toxic links and then get them removed. The service is Fully automated. Taken a few years to build. One developer. <comment><AUTHOR> Http://Www.linkaudit.co.uk</comment>


Microsoft woos disgruntled Google users with full-page newspaper ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2012/microsoft-courts-disaffected-google-users-fullpage-newspaper-ads

<comment><USER2> Microsoft is one of the biggest investors in facebook. That's weird, isn't it?</comment>


Cross-platform development with Xamarin (reddit chat) - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/androiddev/comments/5gkyjs/crossplatform_development_with_xamarin/ <comment><USER2> If you are looking for a great user experience, maybe you should think well before you start with Xamarin.

<comment><USER3> I don't agree. Just in case the project is too small, maybe it's not worth. But for the rest of the projects is a very good option, mainly if you have to work with different platforms

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone else find it odd that this is a comment thread on a comment thread?</comment>


Ubuntu Desktop will eventually (16.04?) switch to Snappy packages by default - <AUTHOR> http://www.webupd8.org/2015/04/ubuntu-desktop-to-eventually-switch-to.html

<comment><USER2> Direct link for those wondering what Snappy packages are: [http://www.webupd8.org/2014/12/canonical-announces-snappy- ub...](http://www.webupd8.org/2014/12/canonical-announces-snappy-ubuntu- core.html)</comment>


How the Hough Transform Was Invented (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~mignotte/IFT6150/ComplementCours/HoughTransform.pdf <comment><USER2> Yet still no mention of the Fast Hough Transform. Not the randomized approximate one, but fast as in FFT, n²log n fast. We've been using it a lot in, e.g. the automatic vehicle classifier [0, 1]. It has been recently contributed to OpenCV [2] by my colleagues.

The title of the paper (by my company's CTO) "Hough Transform: Underestimated Tool In The Computer Vision Field" [3] still holds true. It describes the FHT algorithm rather well.

[0] [http://visillect.com/en/avc](http://visillect.com/en/avc)

[1] pdf [http://www.scs- europe.net/dlib/2015/ecms2015acceptedpapers/0...](http://www.scs- europe.net/dlib/2015/ecms2015acceptedpapers/0521-is_ECMS2015_0089.pdf)

[2] [http://docs.opencv.org/3.1.0/d9/d29/namespacecv_1_1ximgproc....](http://docs.opencv.org/3.1.0/d9/d29/namespacecv_1_1ximgproc.html#a401697bbdcf6c4a4c7d385beda75e849)

[3] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228573007_Hough_Tra...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228573007_Hough_Transform_Underestimated_Tool_In_The_Computer_Vision_Field)

</comment><comment><USER3> For those interested, here's a little toy Hough transform visualizer: [https://liquiddandruff.github.io/hough-transform- visualizer/](https://liquiddandruff.github.io/hough-transform-visualizer/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Anyone with domain knowledge cares to TL;DR the significance of the Hough Transform and its applications? Never heard of it before...

<comment><USER5> The Hough transform is used in computer vision (2d and 3d) for the recognition of edges and lines as one stage in a large processing pipeline.

Its competitor is RANSAC.

Compared to linear or orthogonal regression it has the advantage that it has quite a natural way to cope with multiple lines. Each line is represented by a high value in the Hough space. The next line can be found by removing the current maximum.

It is generalizable to more abstract shapes, but the Hough space becomes high dimensional. It is nontrivial to represent hierarchical objects, for example line segments AND the square it forms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's a slide on it [https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.udacity- data.com/courses/ud...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/content.udacity- data.com/courses/ud810/slides/Unit-2/2B-L1.pdf)

Basically, it's used to find parameters to a model with sample data.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very concise explanation!

Posted this before - had to implement Hough circle detection from scratch in JavaScript in case anyone is interested:

[https://github.com/alexanderconway/Hough-Circle- Detection](https://github.com/alexanderconway/Hough-Circle-Detection)

<comment><USER8> I'm wondering if the Hough transform can also be used to detect shapes that look like circles (but are not necessarily circles). And if so, what are the limits, i.e., what is the worst "circular" shape still detected?

Also, can it be used to detect circular arcs?

<comment><USER2> It is called Generalised Hough Transform [0] (google and wiki also know it), the problem is, even circle space is 3-dimensional (x, y, r), and therefore cannot be computed faster than O(n³). Even that cannot be achieved without some magic since the circle perimeter is O(n), making a naïve solution O(n⁴). So we can hope for something like O(n³log²n).

Our lab has done some research on fast GHT using general-purpose computation scheme optimisation, but I cannot find any publications in English from that distant period. For 3D Hough transform, there's an efficient solution for finding the argmax (3d line), also by my colleagues [1]

[0] pdf [https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~silvio/teaching/EECS598/papers/B...](https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~silvio/teaching/EECS598/papers/Ballard.pdf)

[1] pdf [http://www.scs- europe.net/dlib/2016/ecms2016acceptedpapers/0...](http://www.scs- europe.net/dlib/2016/ecms2016acceptedpapers/0227-is_ECMS_0075.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is the Hough transform basically a maximum likelihood estimate?

<comment><USER10> There is a "strong relationship" between the two concepts:

R S Stephens, A Probabilistic Approach to the Hough Transform [http://www.bmva.org/bmvc/1990/bmvc-90-012.pdf](http://www.bmva.org/bmvc/1990/bmvc-90-012.pdf)</comment></comment>