Liquefaction from the Sendai earthquake – a remarkable video - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.agu.org/landslideblog/2011/03/17/liquefaction-from-the-sendai-earthquake/

<comment><USER2> Even more startling is the liquefaction happening in Christchurch:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WoKu5VxKgs>

Here is an awesome video by a Christchurcher showing how the sediments pouring up through earthquake cracks have the perfect mixture of water and soil to be prone to liquefaction:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KqlAMWMjOE>

<comment><USER3> I spent a week clearing this crap out of people back yards with the student army of volunteers. They estimate 200000 tonnes of the silt had to be cleared.

Here's an example of the silt coming out of the ground minutes after the quake. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_twYpUJl9o>

And here's a good explanation [http://mandenomusings.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/christchurch-...](http://mandenomusings.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/christchurch- earthquake-liquefaction-explained/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those of us who are not familiar with the term liquefaction. In simple terms, I think it means the soil becomes like quick sand because of the earthquake.

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

<comment><USER5> Exactly. Liquefaction is _not_ water coming up from the ground, although that's a side effect of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's the most casual walk through a Japanese park during an earthquake I can imagine.

</comment><comment><USER7> That is really disturbing, and it reminds me of something I just read the other day.

For any Seattle startup folks, just remember that all of Pioneer Square (and then some...) is a liquefaction zone[1]. Also, don't forget that the Viaduct is a death trap, and you really are better off never setting foot (or wheel, I guess) on it.

[1] [http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/03/16/more- sea...](http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/03/16/more-seattle- quake-stuff)

<comment><USER8> > _For any Seattle startup folks, just remember that all of Pioneer Square > (and then some...) is a liquefaction zone_

For that matter, so is a large chunk of the Bay Area.

Whether it's earthquakes, wildfires, bizzards, tornados, hurricanes, etc there is always gouing to be something pretty much wherever you settle.

<comment><USER9> > For that matter, so is a large chunk of the Bay Area.

More specific?

<comment><USER10> Anywhere that's reclaimed infill: The Marina, most of Foster City, Treasure Island, parts of Fremont, etc.

<comment><USER11> Large areas south of market.

liquefaction hazards for SF: <http://gmw.consrv.ca.gov/SHMP/download/pdf/ozn_sf.pdf> other PDFs: <http://gmw.consrv.ca.gov/SHMP/html/pdf_maps_no.html>

<comment><USER5> I found it mildly interesting how the liquifaction areas are colored in a pleasant tone of green.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Quite a remarkable video... a little less so when you get to the end and he informs you of the history of Tokyo Central Park (reclaimed land). Still... unbelievable. Much less dramatic that the Google images of entire communities washed from the Earth... devastating.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been in Tokyo for more than 20 years but I cannot tell which 'Central Park' this is.

Shinjuku Central Park is a well known one and it is surrounded by skyscrapers, but this one doesn't have them.

Any hints?

<comment><USER14> he says it is in reclaimed part of tokyo bay. so wouldn't have skyscrapers ALL around, but should have some in a few of the shots.

<comment><USER13> Ah I didn't notice it as I turned audio off.

Now I managed to spot it. The park is actually Makuhari Kaihin Park (幕張海浜公園) in Chiba, not in Tokyo (that's why I was not aware of it).

And yes it is on reclaimed land, the homepage of the park in fact mentions liquefaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've never experienced an earthquake. As such, the cracks and drifting earth make me doubt the reality of such a video. Does this drifting actually occur at the surface like that? Edit: speeling ;-)

<comment><USER5> I've been in 2 about 20 years ago; both ~5.1. If memory serves there were 2 distict types of shaking. The first was a fairly high frequency vibration that shook the walls and mimic what you see in movies; $#@! flying off shelves, etc.

The second came a few seconds later, and was a slow back and forth horizontal movement of the ground. I remember it being a bit faster frequency than that video shows, maybe about 1Hz, but it seemed like the ground was just moving fairly slowly back and forth a few inches.

<comment><USER15> I've heard many accounts of these phenomena from others. What I'm having difficulty with is the relative motion of the different pieces of earth. I live on pretty solid ground away from active fault lines. If one of our minor fault lines ever acted up, I could certainly imagine the kind of motion you mention. But if my property "cracked," I'd expect to _feel_ the swaying motion and that each piece of my yard would move in the same direction preventing me _seeing_ the motion. On further consideration that the park in the video is built on a former bay, I supposed the quake could be making the dirt float around on the mushy underside.

The first thing I noticed was an oddness about the crack in the sidewalk. It seems to have cracked perfectly along some crack line that's outside of the sidewalk (not likely - just because dirt cracks underneath doesn't mean the concrete will crack exactly where the dirt does) and there seems to be some rubbery surface where the crack ends in the sidewalk (it stretches as the parts of earth move in different directions.) Not like the pure concrete sidewalks I'm accustomed to, but Tokyo is worlds away and maybe it's not just concrete.

P.S. Why the downvoting on my original post? Is it not a valid question?

<comment><USER16> That pavement is most likely asphaltic concrete (commonly, though incorrectly, known as "asphalt"), which is a mixture of asphalt and sand/gravel aggregate. It's fairly flexible, at least compared to Portland cement concrete.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "a sombrero, and a huge clock"

Is this Chuck Norris wielding the camera?</comment>


Winter ISO C++ standards meeting - <AUTHOR> http://herbsutter.com/2016/03/11/trip-report-winter-iso-c-standards-meeting/ <comment><USER2> > The Parallelism TS, a.k.a. "Parallel STL." This includes parallelized > versions of most STL algorithms

I hadn't seen this before now, this is super exciting!

<comment><USER3> Isn't this exactly the kind of thing that should be done by the compiler?

<comment><USER4> Not really. The payoff is low unless it's done in exactly the right place. If I've already partitioned the work into threads the last thing I want is the compiler taking it upon itself to parallise loops that execute in those threads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The default is to continue on the 3-year cycle (aim for C++20 then C++23), but we're also thinking about whether to try out going to a 2-year cycle (aim for C++19, and if that works then C++21 and C++23)."

Fist time I see C++23 mentioned ;-)</comment>


You can build a laptop out of open source components if you want a bad laptop - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/2/3/14501812/olimex-teres-i-open-source-diy-laptop <comment><USER2> Title is basically click bait, and reasonably insulting. The laptop is "bad" by some metrics (build quality/speed) and better by others (open hardware/software/hackability).

<comment><USER3> After reading the title -- before even looking at the domain the link pointed to -- I knew this had to be an article on The Verge.

I'm not sure what's going on over there but it seems that maybe they're A/B testing with these insulting headlines or something.

I thought this recent headline in particular was quite insulting: "Wine 2.0 is out, ready to disappoint you once again" [0]

 _edit:_ Just noticed both articles are by the same author.

[0]: [http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/26/14402028/wi...](http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/1/26/14402028/wine-2-0-update- windows-apps-linux-mac-not-an-emulator)

<comment><USER4> The headlines are not insulting, you're taking discussion about open-source too personally.

<comment><USER5> > ... want a bad laptop

> ... disappoint you...

These are headlines that have a definite negative slant.

They aren't something to foster discussion, but something that tugs on the emotions of the reader.

That's a sure fire tactic for pissing people off.

<comment><USER6> > _These are headlines that have a definite negative slant._

But also definite true one. Wine has always been short of the promise it made (except for specific, select, apps), and the laptop is bad on any metric that matters except the "I can update it to make it have a less bad processor when that becomes available for it".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me, the biggest impediment to the open laptop is people have been conditioned to complain about size and weight beyond the point where it is likely to matter for their use case. Sure there are use cases where the difference in mass and bulk between a Thinkpad X1 and something the size of a Thinkpad P effect utility. Much of the time they don't.

Laptops have evolved a lot since my first laptop...a used ex corporate travelling salesman's Toshiba Satellite with a 386SX. At about seven pounds and two inches thick, it was still somewhat svelte by current laptop standards when I obtained in 1997. In 2001 when I purchased my first laptop, a $1000 would get you about the same...and that was the cheapest laptop you could buy and only if it was on sale. For another grand and a half or two you could knock about a pound and a half off the weight...yes three grand for a four and a half pound laptop. Laptops have evolved quite a bit since then.

But humans and the physical environment have not. Sure, side by side, it's easy to experience the phyiscal differences between a six pound box of electronics and a three pound box of electronics and to imagine how much happier the smaller box will make you. And that's most of the reason for smaller and lighter laptops, someone standing in the store imagining how much happier they'll be and opening their wallet a little wider.

<comment><USER8> You don't spend a lot of time traveling do you? I upgraded my Macbook about a year ago, and shaving off those 1.5 or 2 pounds saved my back so much. When you're moving cities every few days, walking through massive airports and hiking windy side streets to find the hotel your colleague booked that was "right on the main drag" but is actually 200m up the hill you learn to really love even that little extra weight being gone.

The extra space in a bag when you're completely carry on is a huge benefit as well since everything fits under the seat in front of you a bit easier, so you can board faster and sit down quicker.

<comment><USER7> Most people don't spend a lot of time traveling. Some people do. There are different use cases. I spend a fair amount of time processing images. My laptop has 1.7 teraflops and 4GB of Quadro GPU. It's also not a typical use case. That's the difference between a ThinkPad X1 and a Thinkpad P.

As I mentioned, in the early 1990's the magically light laptop for Simpsoning through airports was 6+ pounds and 2" thick. What's changed besides raw compute is expectations not physiology.

<comment><USER8> I'll say that a lot more people spend time with their laptops on their shoulders (every person in NYC, SF, London, Hong Kong, Chicago, Paris, etc.) than use their laptop for large render projects. A Macbook Air can handle even large still photos without breaking a sweat (I've done 1GB photoshop files while playing Spotify no problem). If you're doing 4K video it's another story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Second hand Laptops and notepads cheap now anyway, £60 or less for second hand notepad and around £100 maybe less for Laptop

<comment><USER10> How does that have any relation to being open source? I'm currently using a second-hand laptop, but I specifically paid _more_ for it because it is "Respects Your Freedom" certified (from [https://minifree.org](https://minifree.org) )

<comment><USER11> While I certainly don't want to take business away from Minifree: If you are up for refurbishing the laptop yourself, you can substantially beat Minifree's prices. Especially for older models (that Minifree no longer sells) like the X60 that are easy to install Libreboot on compared to newer models that require a separate SPI programmer.

Also, FWIW, Minifree no longer seeks the RYF certification nor advertises it on existing products. I don't expect them to respect your freedom any less, but because of the FSF/Libreboot conflict they no longer seek the cert.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I got this machine before the current drama; in fact it's an X60, which I bought as soon as it was announced (when minifree was "gluglug"); mostly to avoid installing libreboot myself, since I don't trust myself not to brick things :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Must-have OS X apps for developers and designers - <AUTHOR> http://thetechblock.com/must-have-osx-apps-designers-developers/

<comment><USER2> > Brightness Slider for reducing screen brightness.

I was going to write a little rant about how this should be possible without 3rd party software. Researching a bit, I found that Apple has restored the ⌥+⇧ modifier for volume as well as for brightness (if that was even there before).

So no need to install this; adjust brightness with ⌥+⇧+☼ instead!

[http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19146/is-fine- volum...](http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/19146/is-fine-volume- adjustment-possible-in-os-x-lion)

Edit: Trying it out, it seems the actual brightness level has the same minimum as before, even when the setting is at 1/4 of a square. It only works for values higher than one square. :(

<comment><USER3> I think this is actually a restriction of their current backlight controller. As far as I know the apps that reduce brightness below one square actually do it by placing a black element over the entire screen and adjusting its transparency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're missing Alfred, an awesome application launcher that works on top of Spotlight: <http://www.alfredapp.com/> Definitely worth giving it a chance.

<comment><USER5> Mandatory plugs for Alfred's cousins, LaunchBar and QuickSilver. Each has strengths and weaknesses; the only poor choice is to not use any of the three. :)

<http://obdev.at/products/launchbar>

<http://qsapp.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Tower for pushing code to GitHub. Makes Git simple. Say goodbye to the > command line.

[http://wheningit.tumblr.com/post/32917749004/when-someone- sa...](http://wheningit.tumblr.com/post/32917749004/when-someone-says-a-git- gui-is-better-than-the-command)

<comment><USER7> Not sure why you'd spend $60 or whatever Tower is when SourceTree is free anyway. I'm not sure that Tower does a single thing that SourceTree doesn't.

<comment><USER8> I _love_ SourceTree. I've tried several other guis, only one I keep using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You do not let me zoom your page on my iPad and you limit the font-size to really small. You limit page width to the same tight column when I change to landscape.

Why anger your readership?

I will not read your stinking blog.

</comment><comment><USER10> xScope (<http://iconfactory.com/software/xscope>) is a very useful tool for designing layouts.

</comment><comment><USER11> ClipMenu is a nice free clipboard manager.

<http://www.clipmenu.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Using your DSLR as a Webcam is a great way to destroy the sensor.

<comment><USER13> I second this. Doing this has ruined my friends DSLR. Not sure the technical reasons behind this, but it does indeed have consequencing effects.

<comment><USER14> I've read about this a bit for mods on DSLRs for taking older Canon's and allowing them to record video. If the DSLR isn't designed for recording video the sensor isn't designed for continuous light exposure which will heat up an ruin the sensor. I don't know the differences but I'd imagine using one of the newer DSLRs that have video recording capability as a webcam would be fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wrote a similar post a while ago, recommended for developers: <http://damir.me/posts/essential-tools-and-apps-for-mac>

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm not familiar with AppTrap, but I use Hazel for that and a lot more. In addition to moving associated files to the trash when you move an app to the trash, it also lets you create your own rules for things like sorting & color coding downloads, removing backups older than a particular age, and automatically deleting trashed files over a certain size or that were sitting in the trash for a certain time.

</comment><comment><USER17> I know it's a list of desktop apps, but I just recently launched a quick reference (iPhone) app for iOS devs: <http://www.idev101.com/app/>

The color picker is my personal favorite. It'll convert between hex colors, RGB and HSB. Plus it shows the UIColor code for whatever color you're previewing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Another really useful app is Spectacle, for keyboard shortcuts to dock an application the left or right half of the screen (like winkey+left and winkey+right on windows 7/8).

<http://spectacleapp.com/>

<comment><USER19> Slate is my preferred way of managing windows on OSX.

<https://github.com/jigish/slate>

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> My vote goes to Soulver (<http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/>), which is basically the best calculator app ever. Useful for so many things, from figuring out algorithms to doing taxes.

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the link, they got me at "The trial is smart, and will only end after 10 days on which you have actually used Soulver."

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Cached: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://thetechblock.com/must- have-osx-apps-designers-developers/&hl=en&strip=1)

</comment><comment><USER23> No emacs or vim? Ouch...

<comment><USER24> He did mention Sublime Text 2, which does have this: <http://www.sublimetext.com/docs/2/vintage.html>

As for all the other additional things that emacs / vim does, they're not necessary to his workflow - he was just sharing what works for him.

As a side note, he also seemed to only be recommending bundle-style Mac OS X native .app applications. True, there's MacVim ( <https://code.google.com/p/macvim/> ), but the learning curve is still very steep in comparison to Sublime Text 2.

<comment><USER12> Vintage mode is useless without: <https://github.com/SublimeText/VintageEx>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like CodeRunner for testing snippets of code <http://krillapps.com>

</comment><comment><USER26> Edit with Sublime, then refresh page? I think that's "Web developer & designer".

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure what you're implying with this comment. Are you saying non- designers don't refresh pages?

<comment><USER26> No, I'm not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> totalfinder

<comment><USER29> Or Path Finder.

I guess his dislike for Terminal means no mention of iTerm2, and as a knock-on that there's no mention of homebrew.

I would be sad on any OS w/o some kind of multiple clipboards, on OSX I am pretty happy with ClipMenu, though it doesn't seem to be getting developed much these days.</comment></comment>


John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/13/john-gray-steven-pinker-wrong-violence-war-declining <comment><USER2> There are lots of good reasons to worry about the ability of standard statistical tools to predict the future in the non-linear world of the social sciences.

This article fails to hit its target, though. John Gray mentions other kinds of violence - incarceration, civilian casualties. But he offers no evidence that these are going to be so negatively correlated with casualties in war as to overturn Steven Pinker's thesis. He also talks about proxy wars, but these are included in the war statistics, no?

An actual attack on Pinker's evidence would require getting your hands dirty in the numbers. Instead we get handwavy complaints about the murkiness of official statistics and the opacity of numbers. It's true they are murky, but they are less murky than intuition and anecdotes.

<comment><USER3> The author links to a much better critique of Pinker by Nassim Taleb. The basic idea is that Pinker uses data about very thin-tailed processes, like street crime, to make inferences about very fat-tailed processes, like casualties in war.

<comment><USER4> Pinker's comments on Taleb's critique are worth a read, available here: [http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb...](http://stevenpinker.com/files/pinker/files/comments_on_taleb_by_s_pinker.pdf)

<comment><USER5> ...Which Taleb in turn responded to in the (updated) version of the rebuttal:

 _Pinker's Rebuttal of This Note: Pinker has written a rebuttal (ad hominem blather, if he had a point he would have written something 1 /3 of this, not 3 x the words). He still does not understand the difference between probability and expectation (drop in observed volatility/fluctualtion ≠ drop in risk) or the incompatibility of his claims with his acceptance of fat tails (he does not understand asymmetries-- from his posts on FB and private correspondence). Yet it was Pinker who said "what is the actual risk for any individual? It is approaching zero"._

<comment><USER6> Nassim Taleb has a weak habit of ascribing every argument against him to an ad hominem attack. Taleb does have a point, war could very well become less frequent but more deadly. If the current nuclear stockpile stays where it's at, the next major war could kill all of humanity. However I think Pinker's argument is, barring that, life does seem to be getting better, and I think his argument there is valid. In his chapter "The Long Peace", he goes over how there has never been a period in history where the 500 lb gorillas of the world have been without war in a long time.

<comment><USER7> > life does seem to be getting better, and I think his argument there is > valid.

I think anyone who's protested or supports the #BlackLivesMatter movement might quibble with that conclusion. Making conclusions like that based off crime data is specious if violence is in anyway systemic. Violence doesn't have to be murders, assaults and robberies...incarceration is its own form of violence and incarceration rates are as high as ever. Poverty is its own form of violence and income inequality is as high as ever. And civil asset forfeiture is basically legalized robbery, so if you included those statistics along with reported robbery statistics, you'd probably find that robberies have actually increased.

What I see happening is that some (rich) people have realized that nationalistic bonds no longer tie us together as strongly as they used to. They've been replaced by economic and religious bonds. So yes, the leaders of the largest countries in the world have largely avoided war against each other. But the top stratum of these countries has been very active in colluding against the bottom strata (G8, WTO, TPP, etc). They've largely waged war against the lower classes in all countries for many years now without most people realizing it. Just because the violence is perpetrated under the guise of law enforcement does not change the fact that it's still violence. And we still have "official" (not declared, but acknowledged) wars against religious extremist groups (Al Qaeda, Isis, etc), so there's that too.

In short, the nature of violence has changed, not the prevalence of it. That you don't realize it only reflects that you're not (yet) a target.

<comment><USER6> The nature of violence has not changed. The class warfare you speak of has existed since the dawn of man. It just has been brought to the forefront of our issues now because there are no longer evil tyrants skinning people alive (outside of North Korea). To say otherwise is incredibly ignorant of history. You could take Ancient Rome, for example, as a place where class warfare was entrenched and a major force of change. Marx, of course, thought of the same kind of struggle. People try to portray the Nazis as the cartoonishly evil to explain what they did to the Jewish people but they forget that the 1920s-30s was a ruinous time for everyone except the mostly Jewish banker class who were able to transfer their currency out of the German marks before the hyperinflation. You had a situation where Jewish families were traveling around in carriages while people on the streets were starving to death. Conspiracy theories sprouted up. The National Socialist party (Nazis) were supposed to remedy such differences of wealth, and they did it in the most destructive way possible. The atrocities during the WWII were largely due to class warfare taken to an extreme level. That's why I think you should be very weary when you refer to the situation that presents itself now as "war". Most of violence in history has been moralistic violence, don't fall for it. In any case, no, the nature of violence has not changed, though the costs have increased, which is for the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> While this doesn't invalidate his arguments in and of itself, but it's worth noting that John Gray's core philosophy seems to be diametrically opposed to even the _idea_ of Pinker being right.

Gray's philosophy, at least at the coarse level I understand it, seems to be predicated on the idea that humans are incapable of improving on ethical or moral dimensions beyond their inherent nature [0]. His truck with Pinker is not ultimately about whether it's currently true or not that we are becoming less violent, but whether or not it is ever true. Gray is approaching this from an _a priori_ , non-empirical perspective, rather than attempting to meet empirical evidence with empirical evidence.

I'm not sure if he's ultimately right or not, but I don't find abstract rebuttals to empirical arguments to be particularly compelling.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_%28philosopher%29#Pol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Gray_%28philosopher%29#Political_and_philosophical_thought)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is a bit over the top and has a lot of non-sequitors, but the statistical critique of Pinker's book by Nassim Taleb the author linked to is excellent: [http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER9> And how many Iraqis were killed by UN sactions at the behest of the U.S., the U.K., and Israel? People like Pinker are rewarded for a reason.

> When Denis J. Halliday tendered his resignation from his posts after 13 > months on the job (September 1997 - October 1998) as UN Assistant Secretary > General and UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq where he managed the Oil- > for-Food Programme, and with a 34-year career at the United Nations, then- > Secretary-General Kofi Annan turned to another experienced international > civil servant, Hans C. von Sponeck, to carry on the UN mission. Sponeck had > joined the UN Development Program in 1968. He had worked in Ghana, Turkey, > Botswana, Pakistan, and India, and had become the Director of the UNDP > European Office in Geneva -- an assignment that he had confessed to the > General-Secretary he found "boring." Following his new assignment in October > 1998, Sponeck arrived in Baghdad on November 8, 1998. He did not last much > longer than Denis Halliday. Sponeck resigned from his positions on February > 10, 2000. Like Halliday, who had said that, "We are in the process of > destroying an entire society. It is as simple and terrifying as that," > Sponeck decided that he could not remain associated with the punishing > policies against the Iraqi people that he judged were genocidal in nature -- > policies that had only one goal, regime change. In the years ahead, both of > them worked tirelessly to stop the inevitable march to madness, the March > 2003 invasion of this ravaged and mutilated country.

[http://gicj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97...](http://gicj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=97&Itemid=59)

</comment><comment><USER10> Basically Gray's argument comes down to: human nature hasn't changed. This may be true, but considering the irrefutable real advances in agriculture, medicine, literacy, communication, education and transportation reflected in such things as life-expectancy, infant mortality and various standard-of- living measures, it is certainly debatable.

<comment><USER11> Yes, this is a pet peeve of mine. People assume that because (for example) the human tendency towards selfishness hasn't changed, that "human nature" is a reliable constant. But as philosophers have been pointing out at least since Hegel, it's human nature _to create technologies_ \--and I mean technologies in the broadest sense: language, tools, artistic works, social and political institutions-- _that thoroughly reshape and redirect the influence of innate nature_. You don't have to go all the way to strong social constructivism in order to understand this, but people treat it as an either/or!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The best part about Pinker's book is he actually uses data to backup his thesis. Gray is just rambling and appealing to emotion.

<comment><USER13> Except Pinker's data is problematic, cherry picked in a way to support his thesis. For example casualties in the Afghanistan war were not counted because it was labelled as a civil war. He also defines "less violent" as relative to the size of the world population which is at least debatable.

<comment><USER14> > cherry picked in a way to support his thesis.

1000 pages is a lot of cherry picking. And let's face it, at least his thesis is declared and we can interpret his data selection in that light. Gray offers no quantitative evidence. As far as I can tell, he's trying to cow the reader with a lot of "I read way more political philosophy than any a' y'all." Taleb offers a statistically oriented critique, but again offers no data, and apparently no proof-reading.

If anything, the evidence we have from Gray and Taleb is N=2: 2 ostensibly smart fellows found enough grist in Pinker's work to write a publishable response without gathering any data themselves. That alone suggests Pinker's thesis has merit.

<comment><AUTHOR> From the perspective of historical evidence, Pinker's book is indeed cherry picking. He has a huge number of footnotes but when you actually look through them, you find that dozens and dozens are from the same book, which purports to explain thousands of years of history but wasn't even written by a professional historian. I find aspects of Pinker's argument to be convincing but his use of historical evidence is, frankly, not much higher than the level of the undergraduate students I teach. And since a large part of the book deals with historical change, that's problematic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If someone is chanting about how war is a relic of the past, how humanity has ascended past all that, then one should look to their powder: that is the _exact_ attitude displayed in the 1900-1913 era, just prior to the most horrific cataclysm of violence yet to date. And it was also popular in the 20s and 30s, as a sop to the wounds of the Great War.

<comment><USER16> When was the last time the planet went 70 years without a major war? Maybe it won't last, but it seems like _something_ has changed.

<comment><USER17> Nukes made war more costly. No one is safe from them, not even civilians on the winning team. And in contrast to conventional warfare, technological superiority won't save you either. Nukes don't need to explode near you, it's enough that radioactive dust be carried in by the wind to make your life hell.

<comment><USER18> Ironically, nukes were a substitute technology for large armies. So they were also a cost reduction - for those "advanced" enough to join the nuke club.

Like it or lump it, the logic of MAD is still inescapable. It's a real-life Catch-22 that's led to a large scale peace.

Nukes are only useful if you don't use them but project the ability to use them. As Nash equilibria go...

<comment><USER16> Cheaper peace, more costly war, sounds good!

My worry with nukes is the black swan events. Used to be there would be a big war every few decades. Nukes put a stop to that... but what if instead of a big war every few decades, they just mean there's a _really, really_ big war, once, after a long period of relative peace?

<comment><USER18> You have to make the protocols ...wait for it... failsafe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Lacking any deeper faith and incapable of living with doubt, it is only natural that believers in reason should turn to the sorcery of numbers. How else can they find meaning in their lives?

\- strikes me as a bit of a straw man argument. As a believer in reason myself I see it as rather uncorrelated with living with doubt. People up on reason can often handle probabilities and uncertainties - it's more the religious who have a problem with doubt.

Looking at Pinker's numerous statistics it seems highly probable the world has been getting more peaceful. Gray's arguments implying doing the stats is dubious when you can nit pick some of the details seem rather weak.

</comment><comment><USER20> Auguste Comte, little-known? Le Bon, maybe, but Comte?

The best explanation I've seen for the lower homicide rate in the developed world is that it's mainly due to a more powerful state with better policing, leading to fewer people dying in fight-homicides.

Back in the more "tribal" days of Europe, people's safety depended on their belonging to some sort of group (extended family, today we might call them gangs), because usually the "police" was one guy per village or neighborhood who could do little to stop a cycle of vengeance except by trying to get the involved groups to negotiate. It was also fairly easy to escape punishment by getting away from the area were the murder had been committed.

This meant that fights over minute matters could easily escalate into deaths, and that murder begat murder.

(the classic fight-homicide escalates from an argument over which Pink Floyd album is the best; tempers flare up, the protagonists punch each other, the loser of the fistfight comes back with a handgun)

</comment><comment><USER21> Gray seems to approach his criticism of Pinker from pretty much the same pro- establishment viewpoint, and struggles to make clear the problems.

This 2012 article by by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson demolishes Pinker's book far better and with fewer words: [http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/steven-pinker-on-the- alleg...](http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/12/steven-pinker-on-the-alleged- decline-of-violence/)

I doubt the Guardian will be rushing to publish it though. Gray is much safer.

<comment><USER19> Had a look. Meh. Moans about pinker not going on about the 1%'s economic violence against the 99%, ignores the facts that you're vastly less likely to die in war than was previously the case.

</comment></comment><comment> tek-cyb-org Ask the arab and muslim world how non violent democracy is.

<comment><USER22> This. We portray the USA as a good peaceful nation while it was at war 218 out of 239 years of its history since 1776. On the other hand we portray Iran as an evil danger to mankind while they did not attack any country since 1795 but were invaded several times. Okay, there is IS having people with backward religious believes, attacking innocent countries, torturing and executing people, terrorizing their own people, producing propaganda and deliberately lying to get support for or justify unjust actions...uppps, sorry, that was the USA, too, sometimes I confuse them.

<comment><USER23> > Okay, there is IS having people with backward religious believes, attacking > innocent countries, torturing and executing people, terrorizing their own > people, producing propaganda and deliberately lying to get support for or > justify unjust actions...uppps, sorry, that was the USA, too, sometimes I > confuse them.

Arguments could be made for this in the case of the US, but it's pretty cut and dry as to IS.

<comment><USER24> If you watch pt1 and pt2 of this series, and take them at face value, you'd arguably be hard pushed to see a huge difference in them either? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwboEpZe88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqwboEpZe88) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDeT2tD97s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyDeT2tD97s)

<comment><USER22> Thanks for the suggestion, I just watched this and it's really worth those two hours. Who is looking for a (relatively) quick glimpse at what a complex mess the situation in the middle east was and is, this would definitely not be the worst choice. And it is kind of beautiful in a strange way I can not really pin down.

<comment><USER24> Glad you found them useful, i was mildy surprised mainstream media (the bbc) was publishing them.

There's a digest and comments more eloquent than i can muster from the guardian: [http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and- radio/2015/jan/26/bitter-l...](http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and- radio/2015/jan/26/bitter-lake-review-adam-curtis-afghanistan)

But yes, quite an eye opener and in place beautiful and haunting. If anyone has any similar pieces i'd be interested in them though Curtis himself seems to tackle some quite interesting topics: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis](http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think Pinker is right about violence and war but reductions in those are probably offset by social aggression and surveillance as Gray mentions when he talks about the panopticon and incarceration rates.

We are biological creatures and we should expect that when interests collide there will be aggression. When violence is hampered, it turns into other forms of aggression.

</comment><comment><USER26> A common way to get riled up about your favorite cause is to point to the state of the world and say "See? Look how bad things are." Pinker's argument will thus fall into the cross-hairs of almost anyone with a political agenda.

<comment><USER13> It's the reverse: Pinker's book serves as a justification to ignore or diminish the significance of (western) violence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> "Social scientists should never try to predict the future; they have enough trouble predicting the past." \- Steven Pinker.

From John Gray's:

 _Pinker dismisses the role of nuclear weapons on the grounds that the use of other weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas has not prevented war in the past; but nuclear bombs are incomparably more destructive._

The First and Second World Wars were so shockingly destructive as to make Europe realise that, perhaps, there are better ways of going about things. Like trade.

 _No serious military historian doubts that fear of their use has been a major factor in preventing conflict between great powers._

Well, between two Great Powers -- the former USSR and the USA. Does anyone really think the only thing preventing China, the USA, and Russia from engaging in all-out war is the threat of nuclear annihilation? Everyone stands more to gain from trade.

 _Moreover deaths of non-combatants have been steadily rising. Around a million of the 10 million deaths due to the first world war were of non‑combatants, whereas around half of the more than 50 million casualties of the second world war and over 90% of the millions who have perished in the violence that has wracked the Congo for decades belong in that category._

That's disingenuous. Historically whole villages and towns, even cities, were routinely laid to waste.

Gray's article is sufficiently hand-wavey and cherry-picky to not even bother with.

From Taleb's critique:

 _Loss of the Island Effect: My point now is the loss of island effect, from interconnectedness. The number one danger is a biological agent that can travel on British Air and reach the entire planet. And it can be built in a high school lab, or, even, a garage._

That sounds a bit sensationalist. A biological agent that has the potential to be the _number one danger_ can be built in a _high school lab, or, even, a garage._ Well, ok, sure, given a sufficiently equipped high school lab or garage -now we might as well call it a Biological Weapons Facility- but built by whom? Surely not high school students or me.

Generating a sufficiently virulent biological agent isn't trivial, but that doesn't mean it's impossible. Maybe at some point in the future I'll be able to '3D print' a biological agent with all the right traits. Let's hope that never happens.

Taleb's statement above trivialises biological weapons, and spreads FUD.

 _Nuclear Potential: As I explain in Antifragile, risk management is about fragility, not naive interpretation of past data. If Fannie Mae is sitting on a barrel of dynamite I would not use past statistical data for my current analysis. Risks are in the fragility.(Sensitivity to counterfactuals is more important than past history, something Greenspan missed in his famous congressional testimony)._

Pinker in 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' does repeatedly point out that we can't assume anything about the future based on the past but that there does appear to be a trajectory. Whether Pinker is wrong about that trajectory is beside the point here because Taleb is taking issue with _naive interpretation of past data_ , yet Pinker wrote in the same book "Social scientists should never try to predict the future; they have enough trouble predicting the past."

 _Pinker conflates nonscalable Mediocristan (death from encounters with simple weapons) with scalable Extremistan (death from heavy shells and nuclear weapons). The two have markedly distinct statistical properties. Yet he uses statistics of one to make inferences about the other. And the book does not realize the core difference between scalable /nonscalable (although he tried to define powerlaws). He claims that crime has dropped, which does not mean anything concerning casualties from violent conflict._

I'm half way through reading 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' and that certainly isn't something I'd say about the book. Pinker admits that simple weapons and nuclear weapons are different, but that he focus on death rates in _war_ over time. Pinker treats civilian <> civilian deaths separately as 'murders', so surely Taleb isn't conflating murder and simple-weapon-war- deaths.

 _Another way to see the conflation, Pinker works with a times series process without dealing with the notion of temporal homogeneity. Ancestral man had no nuclear weapons, so it is downright foolish to assume the statistics of conflicts in the 14th century can apply to the 21st. A mean person with a stick is categorically different from a mean person with a nuclear weapon, so the emphasis should be on the weapon and not exclusively on the psychological makeup of the person._

Should it? Why? Saying it should doesn't make it so, and doesn't convince. If we place the emphasis entirely on weapons potential this is most certainly game over. Yet global nuclear (and biological weapons) capacity has _decreased_ since the height of the Cold War, and we're still here. This is one point of 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' \-- that despite our ability we eradicate ourselves we've chosen -so far- not to, and Pinker acknowledges this means nothing about predicting the future.

Now, I can't speak much for that part of the world I know little about, geographically & culturally, and also mathematics isn't something I've studied a lot, so I'll take it as given that Tabel's paper 'On the Super-Additivity and Estimation Biases of Quantile Contributions' is correct, and that Pinker's time series data is shaky.

So good, I've learned something from Taleb, and I think it's important to read criticisms.

Tabel's paper doesn't contain the words _child_ , _women_ , _race_ , _religion_ , _rights_ , _animals_.

Edit: copy paste mistake resulted in only half my comment, corrected within 1 minute of posting.

</comment><comment><USER28> Eh... let resources get scarce and social systems start breaking down. Then we will see if increasing non-violence and altruism is really a trend.</comment>


Show HN: AnonySurfer.com – Distributed anonymous web/HTTP proxy and VPN - <AUTHOR> https://anonysurfer.com

<comment><USER2> Sorry to break your bubble, but you are not going to last.

Man, you are selling PPTP VPN on a $14/year VPS... and no, RamNode will not let you run public proxies either. Nor will do Atlantic.net in your $1/month VPS.

Nice try, but... no.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good site tho you might get in trouble over the anonymous mailer functionality and endup with ips being blacklisted or your service being kicked of from Digital Ocean which you seem to use.

<comment><USER3> ...on further thinking might be a good idea to remove it altogether

The site is a proxy (and a good one it seems) trying to include this anonymous mailer seems like a bolted unrelated feature that does not improve the main service and could if anything harm it

Starting off young programmers make mistakes of just because they can do something they should code it :) but its often best to step back and ask "what is the aim of X and how does it improve Y". Example: web developers adding scrolling text and flash intro pages to sites in 90s/early 00s, not because it was needed (quite the opposite from usability point of view) but because "they just could"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tested on a pretty normal website and was greeted by this warning: "You must subscribe to surf this kind of content! Note, we block pornography. You must subscribe to surf. ".

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for reporting -- i've weakened the javascript a bit on that front. what site did you visit?

<comment><USER5> You seem to simply be scanning the DOM for keywords. The first site I happened to try contained the word "gay" in one of the headlines, and surely enough [http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay](http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay) is also blocked. Doing this on the client side through javascript seems hopeless btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://join.me/665-651-418](https://join.me/665-651-418)

<comment><USER6> What this^ is: A flash widget with a VNC view into a Windows computer running Chrome with the Google Analytics page of anonysurfer.com open

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Web-based proxies are not anonymous. Specifically, Javascript proxification is lacking in all of them, and your IP address will leak one way or the other.

</comment><comment><USER8> alexS, I spotted what might be a trivial bug (or could be a feature ;-) but instead of posting it here, I decided to email it to your founders<at>anonysurfer.com address just to be safe.</comment>


A Day in the Year 2050: Energy & Transportation - <AUTHOR> https://ericvanular.com/when-energy-&-transportation-collide/ <comment><AUTHOR> Imagining the future of energy and transportation naturally leads to a collision of those worlds. I've discussed some of the impacts that I think this might have on everyday life and business. What are your thoughts?

</comment><comment><USER2> Interesting thoughts. I see the future of transportation being owned completely by big tech - Personal Mobility as a Service style</comment>


Stream the current largest item id in Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://lotw.xyz/users/dennis/stuff/see_hn_maxitem.html <comment><AUTHOR> I found out there was a Hacker News Firebase API like one hour (or so) ago, and decided to see if I could integrate it into _Linux on the Web_. Of course, there are many more possibilities in terms of applications (both for the desktop and the shell) than this little jobber.</comment>


Early stage feedback, testing and validation - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuprocketlauncher.com

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit more background ... I have been around startups developing them for over 10 years when the word "startup" wasn't common. The biggest issue during development I found was proper validation and testing especially during the closed/private alpha and beta stage. But my idea also works for seed/series rounds and above. Born was <http://www.startuprocketlauncher.com> ... essentially startups get a chance to tell their story. Early adopters get a chance to try something new. Each day at least one new startup will be selected to send one email to the whole community about their startup idea or alpha/beta project and in return they receive testing, feedback, validation and nice member growth.</comment>


Snapchat's $306,000 Median Paycheck Is Most Generous in Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/ceo-pay-ratio/ <comment><USER2> Paywalled, disabling js doesn't work for this article.</comment>


How To Solve "Not Enough Time" - <AUTHOR> http://gojko.net/2012/05/31/how-to-solve-not-enough-time/ <comment><AUTHOR> Every single team I worked with over the last few years complained that they didn't have enough time. Here are three useful strategies to solve that problem!</comment>


Sony Shuts Down PlayStation Network Indefinitely - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2011/04/26/sony-shuts-down-playstation-network-indefinitely/

<comment><USER2> While it's true that Sony hasn't given a definite promise for when PSN will be back up, I don't think "indefinitely" gives an accurate impression — they're still saying that they're trying to get back online as soon as possible. So there's really nothing new in this article (and it's self-blogspam as well).

</comment><comment><USER3> So does this lend credence to the theory that the attackers compromised the network to the point that they were able to install compromised firmware on users machines?

<comment><USER4> If they didn't I imagine that Sony is afraid that they could have. I'm more curious if credit card numbers etc. were stolen...</comment></comment>


NL-completeness, Graph Theory and Dinosaurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.1060.org/blogxter/entry?publicid=8A30C37C9D7FDE9F7B22724076EB8E0B <comment><USER2> But isn't willfully crippling your curiosity the fastest way to minimize the amount of new stuff you can learn? Shouldn't it be easier to remember stuff about NL-completeness if it is associated with 31m long dinosaurs in your mind?</comment>


Let's make a Teeny Tiny compiler - <AUTHOR> http://austinhenley.com/blog/teenytinycompiler1.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441767](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23441767)

<comment><USER3> That was before it was completed :(

<comment><USER2> That's one problem with these multipart blog posts. It becomes ambiguous whether the submission is "part 1" or the head of the list ("part 1" "part 2" "part 3").

If you want to make a single long version of the page that includes all three parts, I'd be happy to arrange a repost. It would be best to email firstname.lastname@example.com about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm sorry to be negative here, but this article, like most articles about compilers, is bike shedding.

For those not aware of the bike shedding metaphor, it's the assertion that when discussing the design of a nuclear power plant, everyone will want to discuss the color of the shed where the workers store their bikes because they understand it. Meanwhile, nobody will want to discuss the nuclear reactor itself, because that's complicated and they don't really understand what's going on with it.

In compilers, parsing is the bike shed, and code emitters are the nuclear reactor. I've read probably hundreds of articles on "compilers" at this point, and they're all actually just about parsers. I can't point to a single one that actually emitted working assembly.

<comment><USER3> Part 3 is the emitter that produces C: [https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/teenytinycompiler3.html](https://web.eecs.utk.edu/~azh/blog/teenytinycompiler3.html)

<comment><USER4> Ah, okay. It looks like you're taking a fairly C-like language and transforming it to C--I'd call this a transpiler rather than a compiler. You're not wrong to call it a compiler, but it's a pretty noncentral example of a compiler.

Congrats on at least having an emitter, but I'm still searching for an article that shows how to emit assembly of any kind.

<comment><USER5> Instead of outputting c, could you not just output the equivalent assembler?

so instead of

        self.emitter.emitLine("printf(\"" + self.curToken.text + "\\n\");")

you do something like

            self.emitter.emitLine("STRING DB " + self.curToken.text + "', '$'")
        ...
        self.emitter.emitLine("LEA DX,STRING")
        self.emitter.emitLine("MOV AH,09H")
        self.emitter.emitLine("INT 21H")

<comment><USER4> Well, what you just posted already highlights one difficulty: when you come to the PRINT statement, you have to emit the string and the instructions to two different places, so we're already talking about having two different emitters, or some other way of handling this. And we need to generate different non-conflicting names/addresses depending on architecture.

You said in your other post that this can be done with minor modifications, but I can already foresee a few modifications that would need to be made which aren't minor.

And then there's the problem that you may want to target more than one architecture. We can write two completely different code generators, but it would be nice if there were an architecture that could share some of the code.

<comment><USER5> I honestly can't tell if you are just trolling now, and I'm falling for it, but you seem to think this 2000 word set of tutorial on the basics of compiler design (lexing, parsing, emitting) is supposed to be the one and only document you will ever need to create the next C++.

> You said in your other post that this can be done with minor modifications

And it probably can, depending on the flavor of assembly you want to use, there are dozens (hundreds?) of them, i'm sure some will allow you to inline the string declaration. The example I gave probably doesn't even work since I haven't programmed in 8086 in close to 20 years, and I don't even remember how to set up data blocks and code blocks in it any more.

> And then there's the problem that you may want to target more than one > architecture.

This is a toy compiler written by a professor of computer science meant to teach you the basics of building a compiler (lexing, parsing, emitting). This isn't a tutorial on building the next GCC.

<comment><USER4> > I honestly can't tell if you are just trolling now, and I'm falling for it, > but you seem to think this 2000 word set of tutorial on the basics of > compiler design (lexing, parsing, emitting) is supposed to be the one and > only document you will ever need to create the next C++.

That's a fair criticism.

I'm frustrated with the lack of material on emitting assembly, but it wasn't right of me to take that out on the author of this post. I apologized in a different post.

> And it probably can, depending on the flavor of assembly you want to use, > there are dozens (hundreds?) of them

How about one I can run on my machine? There are maybe 5 that are useful targets I can think of:

       * x86 or ARM (depending your machine)
       * LLVM
       * GCC RTL
       * Web assembly
       * Parrot? Maybe the JVM has some low-level bytecode?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Navicat Essentials is launched - <AUTHOR>

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                        24 November 2011
PremiumSoft today announces the availability of the Navicat Essentials family, including:
•	Navicat Premium Essentials •	Navicat Essentials for MySQL •	Navicat Essentials for SQL Server •	Navicat Essentials for PostgreSQL •	Navicat Essentials for Oracle •	Navicat Essentials for SQLite
Navicat Essentials is a compact version of Navicat which provides basic and necessary features to perform simple administration on a database. It supports the latest features including Trigger, Function, View, and it also comes with an Import/Export tool which allow user to import and export data from plain text file formats including TXT, CSV and XML.
Currently, Navicat Essentials is available for MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQLite databases. There is also Navicat Premium Essentials which allows users to connect to all the five databases within one single application. Navicat Essentials is under commercial licensing and is available for purchase at the Navicat Essentials Online Store ranging from US$5.00 to US$10.00.
30 day free trial of Navicat Essentials are available for download at: http://www.navicat.com/en/download/download.html
For more details on the features available in Navicat Essentials, please visit the Feature Matrix at: http://www.navicat.com/en/products/navicat_essentials/essentials_feature.html.
About PremiumSoft PremiumSoft was founded in 1999 and is a team of talented software engineers who develop various applications for Windows and Mac OS X. We're known for producing best of the breeds software and excellent customer support. <comment><USER2> So I'm guessing this gets rid of the free version of Navicat... that's fair enough</comment>


Senate Democrats to force vote on FCC net neutrality repeal - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-internet-vote/senate-democrats-to-force-vote-on-fcc-net-neutrality-repeal-idUSKBN1E92TC <comment><USER2> >> A reversal of Thursday's FCC vote would need the approval of the Senate, U.S. House and President Donald Trump. Trump also backed the FCC action, the White House said Thursday.

<comment> crooked-v The point is to force the Republicans as a whole to take a public stance on the issue, so they can't claim to be uninvolved.

<comment><USER3> Short of a vote there'd be a sudden case of collective amnesia on the part of said politicians the first time voters connected some suboptimal outcome to lack of regulation. It'll be crazy how such a move had occurred when everyone supposedly had concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Chuck Schumer voted for the Patriot Act, supported SOPA, and supposedly opposed the famous 1991 Gore Bill that played some roll in opening up the internet. At least he's supporting a meaningless political vote? Even when Republicans vote it down, their "the FCC isn't where net neutrality should come from" talking point still works.

<comment><USER5> How does that point still work? Where does it come from?

<comment><USER4> Several members of Congress said that they supported the idea of net neutrality but did not approve of shoehorning it into the FCC's duties. This vote would be to confirm the FCC's decision, so if that were your stated view you would approve of the FCC's decision.

<comment><USER6> But the FCC didn't have to roll back Title 2 for another agency or Congress to act.

<comment><USER4> Politicians care about appearance over reality. Pushing for a bill codifying net neutrality would call out the lie, but the Democrats are also more concerned with the appearance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nevermind they don't have enough power in either house. Nevermind that the President would veto the thing. You've gotta wonder what the Dems are thinking. Party of the people? Telecom employs orders of magnitude more voters than Tech. Just for example,

Reddit employs 230 voters

Comcast employs 153000 voters

Imagine if it did pass. Just think of what happens if Comcast cancels a pay bonus due to "burdensome new rules passed by congressional Democrats. Also, we will be bringing in some Silicon Valley efficiency experts to see how we can automate away about 10% of our workforce to cover the gap."

I don't even know what the Democrats are trying to achieve anymore. The whole party seems bent on political suicide.

<comment><USER8> When more than 80% of Americans (according to [http://thehill.com/policy/technology/364528-poll-83-percent-...](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/364528-poll-83-percent- of-voters-support-keeping-fccs-net-neutrality-rules)) opposed something and you can force your opposition to vote against that majority, you can use that in future elections as evidence that they're corrupt. Especially when there's a money linked to how they voted against their constituents. Why do you think there were so many house bills to repeal the ACA when it wasn't possible with the Senate and Obama in office, and so few once they had the numbers?

Same game, different ball.

<comment><USER7> >80% of Americans

Biased poll with leading questions. Ask them if they think the FCC should outlaw unlimited video streaming on T-Mobile Binge On. The 80% evaporates immediately.

>you can use that in future elections as evidence that they're corrupt

Assuming the wild apocalyptic predictions from Reddit turn out to be even half true. If what actually happens is a nothingburger, or more zero rating that people like, then the Dems and Tech companies pushing this lose more credibility.

<comment><USER9> > Biased poll with leading questions. Ask them if they think the FCC should > outlaw unlimited video streaming on T-Mobile Binge On. The 80% evaporates > immediately.

Your potentially good point got lost in how awfully you put it. This wasn't a vote on T-Mobile or Binge-on, so it would have made no sense to ask if they should have been outlawed. But if you do have examples of questions you consider biased and legitimate corrections to them that you believe would lower the bias, I would be happy to be convinced it was biased and would love to hear your genuine improvements.

<comment><USER10> Here's some issues with the poll:

1\. Status quo bias. Ask whether any complicated policy should be changed and most people will say it should not. What percentage of respondents would have supported reclassifying ISPs under Title II in 2015, giving the government the power to dictate prices?

2\. The wording of the introduction is phrased in terms of ISPs providing more access (yayyy!) and being forbidden from charging "extra fees" (booo!). Here is a different phrasing:

"Currently ISPs are forbidden from offering customers discounts if they do not use certain sites or services. ISPs are also prohibited from optimizing latency or bandwidth according to the nature of the content. Removing these restrictions could allow for cheaper Internet plans and faster speeds for some content. Should this regulation be removed?"

One might object that "offering customers discounts" is a hypothetical, but the pro-NN arguments are also hypothetical; the fact is we don't really know what will happen.

<comment><USER9> > 1\. Status quo bias. Ask whether any complicated policy should be changed > and most people will say it should not.

Leaving aside the question of whether net neutrality was a "complicated" thing for people to understand for a moment, I don't even understand how this is an issue with the polling. The subject or policy under question is whatever it is. You can't call the _poll_ biased just because the _subject_ it is polling about is complicated. (And you would need a citation for this too. I would expect the split to be closer to 50/50, perhaps with a _slight_ bias in the direction you claim, but nothing like 80/20.)

2\. The wording of the introduction is phrased in terms of ISPs providing more access (yayyy!) and being forbidden from charging "extra fees" (booo!). Here is a different phrasing: "Currently ISPs are forbidden from offering customers discounts if they do not use certain sites or services. ISPs are also prohibited from optimizing latency or bandwidth according to the nature of the content. Removing these restrictions could allow for cheaper Internet plans and faster speeds for some content. Should this regulation be removed?"

Uhm... you talk about the FCC prohibiting discounts and speed boosts the entire time, and _not once_ do you mention that this regulation also prevents ISPs from charging extra fees and throttling speeds for whatever sites they like. You really think your version of this is _less biased_? Seriously?

> One might object that "offering customers discounts" is a hypothetical, but > the pro-NN arguments are also hypothetical; the fact is we don't really know > what will happen.

IIRC other countries have already tried this and observed its effects. So we have some real-world evidence that would seem to suggest some outcomes are not merely hypothetical. But in any case, you don't get to accuse someone/something of being biased and then bias them farther in the reverse direction. That's just dishonest.

<comment><USER10> > You can't call the poll biased just because the subject it is polling about > is complicated.

My point is the poll may reveal a preference for the status quo, not for the substance of the policy.

Risk aversion is natural of course. But when the status quo gets changed, what you thought was public support for your position may vanish.

> You really think your version of this is less biased?

Of course not. I attempted to make it equally biased for the anti-NN position.

> IIRC other countries have already tried this and observed its effects

Yeah... US Rep Ro Khanna (from my district!) had probably the most viral message on this topic:

[https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088/](https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088/)

But this particular case is terrible for the pro-NN proponents. It turns out people actually LIKE zero-rated services, and the "it crowds out startups" argument doesn't land at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are the important considerations in Lead Nurturing? - <AUTHOR> I have recently started a new startup firm with some great products. As I am new to industry, I want to ask, what are important considerations in lead nurturing? And what are the hazards that I should avoid? <comment><USER2> Can you tell us a little more about your startup? What industry are you in? B2B vs B2C? Enterprise vs SMB? How did you capture the lead to begin with?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are a B2B startup. We have started outreaching to potentials in our niche with emails

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Talk to people in person. Listen to what they say.</comment>


AsicBoost – A Speedup for Bitcoin Mining [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1604/1604.00575.pdf <comment><USER2> AsicBoost is hypothetically an easy 20% win for any miner to implement, but it's patent encumbered, so there's now an attempt [1] by the core developers to fork Bitcoin in order to nullify its effect.

Why fight it? Not just because it's patented. The bigger fear is that because it's patented, no one in the US will be able (willing?) to implement it, while folks in other countries with lax enforcement of IP laws (read: China) will. Since mining is a competitive race, a 20% boost should ensure only patent infringers will ever mine blocks.

[1] [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2016...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin- dev/2016-May/012652.html)

<comment><USER3> This creates a paradox: why would Chinese miners choose to adopt a fork that would eliminate their competitive advantage?

<comment><USER4> A greater paradox is how does a decentralized currency, which relies on computational power for preservation, continue to protect itself from algorithmic advancement?

\- With patents/copyright, the creators make the work publicly available with the expectation of protection.

\- Without patents/copyright, the creators keep it private and can use the advantage to take over the network.</comment></comment></comment>


The TED Talks: Silicon Valley Corporatism? - <AUTHOR> http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/against-ted/

<comment><USER2> The article is full of bold assertions with no (or inadquate) evidence:

"TED is not simply "engaging" and "entertaining" but a specific type of entertainment that is increasingly out of touch and exclusionary."

How do you measure "out of touch and exclusionary"?

"At first, I thought I was laughing alone; however, it turns out that lots of other people are equally unimpressed by the current state of TED. From the feedback I've received, I'm not the only one who does not take TED very seriously or worse, views the whole project as suspect."

Wow so people who follow you agree with you. Shocker.

"So many of the TED talks take on the form of those famous patent medicine tonic cure-all pitches of previous centuries, as though they must convince you not through the content of what's being said but through the hyper-engaging style of the delivery."

Really? Which ones?

"TED attempts to present itself as fresh, cutting edge, and outside the box but often fails to deliver. It's become the Urban Outfitters of the ideas world, finding "cool" concepts suitable for being packaged and sold to the masses, thereby extinguishing the "cool" in the process. Cutting-edge ideas not carrying the Apple-esque branding are difficult to find."

As measured by ???

"At TED, "everyone is Steve Jobs" and every idea is treated like an iPad."

I've learned over time that when people start making universal assertions like this, they're usually lacking in data but full of shit.

<comment><USER3> The article is clearly not substantiated. Personnally, I avoid treating TED as a whole, because the quality can vary from one speaker to another, from one topic to the next. It's not always consistent, it's not always cutting-edge, it's not always new. TED's promise is to deliver "ideas worth sharing", but not all of them can fit that description. This being said, they still do a pretty good job to keep the quality high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. I agree the TED brand has been cheapened a lot by the various TEDx affiliated events (which mainly seem to be B and C list celebrities or wannabes trying to self-promote), but to call it "silicon valley corporatism" is way off the mark.

I guess I don't even understand what "corporatism" is in this context. Is he saying that people who develop and deploy technologies are less interesting when speaking about those technologies and their effects than an academic who studies the social implications of technology?

<comment><USER5> Interesting is not so important. The article says that it's more important to understand the meaning and influence of new things on society.

I'm not sure that the guy who invented something is the one we should ask about how it would affect society. He's probably biased towards his new tech, and doesn't have the historical, political, social and other types of knowledge needed to try to understand the impacts.

And the corporatism is that TED created a false sense of technological optimism within the viewer, a sense that technology could solve all. But at their core, most of our big problems are social and psychological, and many are tied directly to current business structures.

<comment><USER6> Don't neglect the fact that advancements in our technology do have an impact on the socio-economical and cultural elements of our society. The way twitter played a huge role in the revolutions around the world show that. The internet has given each person with access an unparalleled source of information right at our finger tips, and has helped push forward globalization.

I agree that there are many problems that are cultural and psychological, however technology can be part of the solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see the main problem not being the corporatism so much as the emphasis on rather messianic speakers, who stake out stark, very strong claims with few caveats, and claim a giant revolution is happening or imminent.

There's something interesting about that, so perhaps the argument should be against people who watch only TED talks, not about TED existing; it's one way to get one style of information. But it definitely is one style of information; it's a world in which AI researchers are represented by Ray Kurzweil, technology theorists by Clay Shirky, videogames by Gabe Zichermann, etc.

<comment><USER8> "Only grandiose solutions are credible for grandiose problems." I'm not sure who said that but its the feeling I get when I listen to some TED talks.

That being said, thinking 'big' can help break out of ruts you don't know you are in. I've seen it happen with engineers when confronted with a huge unimplementable grandiose architecture say "Well that is great astro architectures but maybe we could ... and fix this other problem." where the ... was something previously not considered. Sometimes listening to an irrationally optimistic person can free your mind from self imposed constraints.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The author of this piece apparently isn't familiar with the correct usage of the term corporatism. It has very little do with with promoting business interests. Rather it is a political philosophy that spawned, among other movements, Italian fascism.

Such ignorance is particularly appalling given that the author couches his analysis in a sociological framework.

Edit: Even worse, the author is listed as a graduate student in sociology. How embarrassing for the University of Maryland.

<comment><USER7> This is pointless pedantry imo; language drifts, and the term "corporatism" in modern American political discourse refers to the influence of business corporations. Etymologically it's perfectly supportable, since "corporatism" is a system based on corporations, of which the 20th-century European corporatist system is one possible one; a system based primarily on business corporations is also quite literally a "corporatist" system, and a more familiar modern meaning, since the term "corporation" in American English is no longer commonly used to describe anything except for incorporated businesses.

More importantly, modern linguistics generally takes a descriptivist approach, and a quick scan of Google News will make it clear beyond any gray area what the term "corporatism" means in 21st-century American English, at least if we're talking about general usage, rather than in specialized journals.

<comment><USER10> The original poster is right to point this out. Outside of the traditional dictionary definition, the term "corporatism" is virtually meaningless. The modern usage which floats around is used exclusively as a pejorative when getting angry about some aspect about the role of corporations, but it's never really defined. Sometimes it's used to mean corporate influence over government. Sometimes it means being "too corporate". Sometimes it just refers to the corporation being the dominant form of business today.

Sure, language drifts, and you are welcome to use the term as they please, but if you expect people to understand you, it's wise to not misuse words.

In the case of this article, I have no idea what the title even means (except that it certainly involves some type of complaining)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I first watched this Leonard Susskind talk about Richard Feynman (link and transcript below), I assumed the sentence: _I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event._ was referring to that entire TED event.

I'm still not totally sure. :-)

But really Susskind was talking about the talk he had just given.. the general pattern of _Paying Humble Deference To A Great Mind._

Of course, the Susskind talk is actually really really great. But there does seem to be a lot of baloney in the TED proceedings lately.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/leonard_susskind_my_friend_richard_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/leonard_susskind_my_friend_richard_feynman.html)

 _So I think I'll just finish up by saying I actually don't think Feynman would have liked this event. I think he would have said, "I don't need this." But how should we honor Feynman? How should we really honor Feynman? I think the answer is we should honor Feynman by getting as much baloney out of our own sandwiches as we can._

</comment><comment><USER12> > At TED, "everyone is Steve Jobs" and every idea is treated like an iPad.

Great quote, that says it all

</comment><comment><USER13> Check out TED 2012 lineup and make your own decision. Did the headline TED event lower its bar? I feel, the answer is YES. The average level goes down, while the program still has a few stars to watch.

[http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/11/ted2012-speaker-lineup- reveal...](http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/11/ted2012-speaker-lineup-revealed/)

<comment><USER14> TED was already beyond redemption several years ago when Tim Ferris and a number of other self-help guru's took the stage.

<comment><USER15> The plural of guru is gurus. Don't use apostrophes for plurals.

<comment><USER16> On behalf of everyone who comes to HN for grammar lessons (and come on, that's all of us, right?): thank you.

<comment><USER15> You forgot the endless sarcasm. What's HN without a sarcastic reply for everything on the webbernets?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This blog post is knowledge hipsterism.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my first reaction, that it was reactionary for reaction's sake. But at the end, he makes a more humanist plea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Meh, some TED talks are good, some are bad, they got watered down as the years went on. C'est la vie

</comment><comment><USER19> "TED's 'revolutionary ideas' mask capitalism as usual, giving it a narrative of progress and change."

I feel like I am out of the loop on something here. Is this person insinuating that capitalism is a sort of masked evil that's propped up as a good thing in our blind western/democratic society? If so what is the recommended alternative?

<comment><USER19> This was a genuine question. If someone feels the need to downvote I would really appreciate their point of view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Agree with other posters, it's not that TED is corporate - it's been suffering from dilution of the brand through TEDx, and (perhaps my biggest beef) is the liberal slant on some talks asking for more public funding or making political commentary. Not sure if others feel this way though, it could be my own bias.

<comment><AUTHOR> Corporatism is not corporate.

Corporatism just means special interest groups leveraging power.

Corporate means relating to a company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> He takes the time to link to "patent medicine" and "swamp root" but not to a single TED talk illustrating his point? Lame.

<comment><USER22> I got about halfway through the thing before I gave up trying to find such an example and decided to read through the comments for insight.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My first landing page (For Agile team training) - <AUTHOR> http://tiny-giant-books.com/scrummaster.htm

<comment><AUTHOR> I designed the page based on a couple of popular HN guides:

[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156354](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6156354)

[http://muddylemon.com/2012/03/creating-effective-landing- pag...](http://muddylemon.com/2012/03/creating-effective-landing-pages/)

There's a third one. Can't find it now.

I decided to try to be as brief as possible, front-load the quotes and back- load the details.</comment>


Seattle Most Expensive City for a Home Cleaner - <AUTHOR> http://seattle.curbed.com/2016/12/15/13973536/cleaning-your-seattle-home-expensive-most-nation <comment><USER2> No doubt fueled by the recent surge in market cap by both Amazon and Microsoft.</comment>


Enhancing Molecules Using OpenGL ES 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.sunsetlakesoftware.com/2011/05/08/enhancing-molecules-using-opengl-es-20

<comment><USER2> I like the writing, it's clear and concise, and goes a long way to understand how shader programming works.

Also, there's one easy to overlook small paragraph that nonetheless caught my eye about how GCD was used to massively, and in an automatically scalable manner, improve performance.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool article. I'm wondering, instead of using 4 vertices to represent the sphere could points have been used instead to do the same thing? Would it be simpler?

<comment><USER4> I don't see how that would work. With the 4 vertices, he defines a square quad that gets "textured" in the fragment shader. If one were to use a point, only one pixel would be sent to the fragment shader.

<comment><USER5> In OpenGL 3+ you can use something called a 'geometry shader'.

Execution flow looks like:

1\. application renders a list of points

2\. those points are transformed by the Vertex Shader

3\. the output of [2] is fed into the Geometry Shader.

(and the output of [3] is additional geometry, created "on the fly", which is then rasterized.)

As a simple example, a geometry shader could turn each point into a square. For each input point, it outputs the four corners of the square: [[ptX-1,ptY-1] [ptX+1,ptY-1] [ptX+1,ptY+1] [ptX-1,ptY+1]]

But yeah that's not coming to GLES anytime soon.</comment></comment></comment>


Do you patent? - <AUTHOR>

How common is it for HN-reading startups to think about patenting their ideas? What's the view on patents amongst the VC-crowd of Silicon Valley? Any thoughts/experiences? <comment><USER2> I've done two startups where I took out a patent. My experience is that the only people that will ever look at your patent is your VC, and he'll only glance over it.

It's a lot of work that could be spent productively doing something else, so I've stopped patenting stuff. I think it just isn't worth it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not in Silicon Valley, I run two companies, neither is a start-up. Neither company uses patents.

We prefer to have things as "commercial secrets" and make them sufficiently obscure that by the time someone reverse engineers them either we have an improvement in place, or we have enough of the market that it's not worth their effort to go through implementation.

If you go the patent route then you have to have effectively full disclosure. To enforce your patent you have to detect infringement, issue "Cease and Desist" orders, then pursue through the courts. If the person infringing is in another country then the only benefactors will be the lawyers. Anyone who infringes will make money, then disappear.

That's for my fields, and YMMV. The only people who have ever cared about patents are those who have money to invest, and don't actually understand the business. They want to see their investment protected, and think patents will do it.

There is now one exception to this, and that's for an innovation that we think can't subsequently be upgraded. You need to follow through the decision tree, with assigned probabilities, and the outcomes. Basically, do some Game Theory.

<comment><USER4> _If you go the patent route then you have to have effectively full disclosure._

In practice when big companies file patents they make sure to leave out enough information to make the patents as unhelpful as possible. If you were trying to replicate my work it would be pretty close to useless to use my patents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> We decided to keep our project in stealth for the last two years until we had our patent filed. We thought that this plan suited our project as we have unique IP with hardly any conflicts in the patent searches. This path has meant it's taken more time to get to the point of having a demo, which is crucial of course, but means that all IP elements of our project are protected before we go live. I think in the end, it comes down to - can you afford to fight any infringement of your patent should someone try a similar product.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for the replies. I agree, this is an interesting discussion. It seems like patents are such a thing that many people who's not entrepreneurs (including VCs) assume you have to do but very few question why. It's like "oh, you have a startup in high-tech, must have a patent, then?".

I would guess the general opinion in the HN-crowd is that ideas are worthless and that execution counts. Well, patents are "just" ideas. So, are they worthless? If so, why does everyone keep asking about them?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is an interesting discussion. We're working on a startup and patenting is something a lot of people with a traditional business view keep asking us.

I love open source and patenting doesn't sit well with me. The idea of a'commercial secret' is more appealing because IMHO its more about competition and as a startup you can always out innovate your competitors.</comment>