Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians - <AUTHOR> http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/gender-bias-101-for-mathematicians/ <comment><USER2> I've worked with a lot of programmers. Some of them have character flaws that make them unpleasant to work with. These character flaws do not affect their ability to "get the job done", but I'd rather not work with them and take steps to avoid doing so when possible.

From a link in the article:

 _Renowned conductors have asserted that female musicians have "smaller techniques," are more temperamental and are simply unsuitable for orchestras_

I think that "simply unsuitable for orchestras" is vague and unquantifiable, but "smaller techniques" and "more temperamental" seem like assertions that could be challenged.

I have a general concept of what "smaller technique" means, is this something that is difficult to measure in a standard audition? Do female musicians in fact have "smaller technique" in general?

Are female musicians "more temperamental" than male musicians in general? Is there a male equivalent of a "diva", if not does that support the assertion that female musicians are more temperamental? Can you determine how temperamental someone is from a blind audition? Is temperament a valid reason to not hire someone?

To me, these senior conductors, scientists, etc. are asserting that, in general, women differ from men in certain dimensions that factor into hiring decisions but are not detectable in initial screening process.

If you really want to end sexism, I feel like these sorts of questions need to be asked and answered. My observation of the subject is that many people have an intuition, gut feeling, opinion formed from personal experience, etc. that men and women in general have innate differences that make men (or women) more suitable for certain functions.

The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist.

On the other hand, if gender differences do exist, then fighting gender bias is an eternal struggle that will never end. It is human nature to min / max and game the system.

<comment><USER3> "The ONLY way that gender bias will ever end is to challenge these ideas and in fact show that these innate differences do not exist."

The problem is that if you really do proper scientific examination of mental capabilities between genders and races you might not like the results. Results might turn out to be ugly and incompatible with the modern democracy. What will we do then?

<comment><USER4> The commitment to equality should not be based on any assumption about 'mental capabilities'. Supposing (against the general scientific consensus) for the sake of argument, that you could show that women had on average less 'mental capabilities' why should that lessen our commitment to fair evaluations in employment or an equal consideration of interests?

We think people should be treated equally not because they are the same, but because they deserve equal consideration. Women are people and they deserve to be treated as such. Frankly the way I see it the cost of dehumanising half the population is far higher than potentially employing people who belong to a group that has on average less 'mental capabilities' than another.

Further unless your study shows that _all_ men have stronger 'mental capabilities' than all women* it still makes sense to evaluate on a case by case bases and not generalisations, even if we only think about hiring the 'best' person for the job. To pass over someone who is talented because they happen to be the same gender as people who had a lower average score in some intelligence test doesn't make sense _even_ thinking only about getting the best person for the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The word "fact" is used extremely loosely in this article. While the first "fact" is in fact factual it then very quickly goes down the rabbit hole of personal opinion/perspective.

By the time we get to "fact 3" the author isn't even pretending any more and the "fact" is just a bizarre "you're a mathematician, you can solve this!!1!" point...

I'm happy to have a discussion about gender politics/equality, this article is just a very poor starting point for such a discussion.

This is nothing more than a rant, pretending to be something more.

<comment><USER6> You might be interested that this is such a common way to derail conversations about privilege that it's made part of 'Derailing for Dummies'.

[http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/derailing-for-dummies- goo...](http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/derailing-for-dummies-google-cache- reconstruction/#opinion)

<comment><USER7> So, that website pulls my least favorite "social justice" trick: pretending that every oppressive action is willful and premeditated. A lot of those issues are very, very subtle from a privileged POV, and it doesn't do a damn bit of good to pretend otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's hard to distinguish bias from genuine preconceptions based on experience - for that one would need gender neutral data that is impossible to obtain. The reverse kind of gender bias could be found in divorce custody cases for example.

Maybe one could do an experiment in online job marketplaces: change the gender of a large number of work providers and observe how payouts change.

In any case this was a shallow and one-sided article. [But suitable for Sunday morning heated arguments over coffee and cookies]

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.174-1617.2000.t...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.174-1617.2000.tb00570.x/abstract)

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230359240457736...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303592404577361883019414296.html)

<comment><USER9> I almost wish the author had included this trope too: "If I begin a conversation about sexism I am experiencing, that means that sexism against men must immediately become part of the focus of the conversation".

It's not that those issues are unimportant, but does it not strike you as strange that the _very first comment_ doesn't discuss the content of the article directly, but does make sure to bring up sexism against men? It's not the first time this has happened, either, on HN or elsewhere.

(And, sure, this may be the first time _you've_ brought it up. But just like the other issues she's bringing up, the "what about the men who are discriminated against?" response is a durable and ubiquitous trend. Check any other HN thread that mentions sexism if you don't believe me. It therefore becomes very annoying to people trying to have a conversation about the persistent sexism against women in technology/maths/science spaces.)

<comment><USER8> No, my main point was that it's not pure bias, there might be real reasons why women get paid less and men are considered bad fathers (personally, i don't agree with both statements, but see the wsj article). I suggest, if we want to get rid of this bias, change the underlying situation that perpetuates it (e.g. not by introducing gender quotas, but by making childraising less time- consuming, or educating men to be better fathers and getting rid of ridiculous stereotypes that are perpetuated in mass culture).

<comment><USER7> You have (I hope unwittingly?) just fulfilled one of the specific tropes she _does_ mention.

<comment><USER8> ... And which she outright dismisses citing an irrelevant study. (I did mention it's a poor article, didn't i?)

      When we talk about real-life statistical evidence, that's
      not conclusive, either, because all differences are
      explained by women having babies, other priorities, etc
     (Except they're not, as the linked document explains very clearly.)

The linked document is a report with some recommendations about how to measure pay gap

Btw, can someone explain the usage of the word "trope" here?

<comment><USER7> A trope is a recurring theme. In this context, it refers to highly predictable responses to particular arguments.

I don't think the post was super well written, but I also don't see how the cited study was irrelevant -- it shows the existence of a gender bias that operates _completely independently_ of the choices of any individual woman:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2012/09/19/scientists- your-gender-bias-is-showing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A couple of background points I had to poke around the site for:

* The author is a professor of mathematics

* The thing about Math Overflow (which as a non-regular reader seemed to kinda come out of nowhere) is referencing another recent blog post: [http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/still-not-on-mathoverf...](http://ilaba.wordpress.com/2012/12/16/still-not-on-mathoverflow/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The average man is pumped full of a hormone called testosterone. This leads them to take more risks and have a generally more aggressive way of doing things. This fact has been scientifically proven over and over again.

In a fast moving market with high competition you need these qualities hence it is no secret why in average males are more employable in tech than women. This is a healthy market response and has nothing to do with sexism.

<comment><USER11> Actually, organizing markets in a way that they favour one gender over another _is_ an instance of sexist bias.

<comment><USER12> An excellent example of structural discrimination - one group both organizes and controls the perception of value in a field. It becomes hard to unless you support the structure - hence women who are forced to act on male terms. "Karen's alright, she's like one of the guys."

Such a structure becomes "sex inclusive" (accepting biological men and women who act masculinely) and not "gender inclusive" (accepting biological men and women who act masculinely or femininely).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> And really, in this thread people apparently come with the intention of confirming everything in this article. The sexism proudly displayed by some here is appalling: most shocking is the "sexism is based upon biology" argument, because you know, so were segregation and apartheid.

</comment><comment><USER14> " The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

\- JFK "

So, you're going to start your blogpost on sexism with a quote from JFK... how does that work?

[http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/timothy-noah/100566/jfk- mons...](http://www.newrepublic.com/blog/timothy-noah/100566/jfk-monster)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny how 'sexism' is used as if it could only be against women. Let's just say it: a white straight middle class young male is a public enemy. Why doesn't she just solve one of those Millennium Prize Problems? That would be a really nice case against anti-women kind of sexism.

<comment><USER15> "Check your privilege!" you hear, after a woman scorned summons her white knights with a simple retweet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> What's missing in the article - what the author wants to achieve.

I mean, I agree with the description of gender bias and the other stuff, I have seen events like this first hand, and I have reflectively noticed my own biases that were unfair, so I'd like to correct that.

But after the article, what would you like me (as a 'dude' in a science field) to do? Your own point #5 states that you do not want just to be 'heard and understood'; so what actions would you like to be the result of this?

</comment><comment><USER17> Gender bias will never cease to exist, and for good reasons, the fight for equality happened many times before in history, and never ended well.

Male and female are very dismorphic, we cannot change that easily, male and female have very specialized roles and purposes.

Yes, I am happy that people now in general have more equal opportunity than ever, and that we can have awesome workers on some areas from any background, but we should not push it too much now, society now is already very different, and failing in some aspects, more equality won't make things better, but can make things worse, much worse.

Understand that past societies were not forced to be the way they were, they just changed until they settled on something that works, and it worked for good reasons.

Why several societies in the world are severely against gays, especially male ones? It is because it was very important on these societies to have children, not having children was unacceptable. Today having children became too expensive, so the focus of relationships changed, and now several countries even allow gay marriage or civil union, but the need to maintain your population don't changed.

Some people will argue about over population, yes, I agree that it is a danger, but we must remember that we are not even replacing our populations, we are outright declining, and the result will be some cultures disappearing, and others with higher birth rates taking their place.

The funny thing about equality seeking cultures, is that they tend to erase themselves and give way to totally non equal cultures to take their place.

People forget that we still live in a world, where in many contexts, might make right.

<comment><USER17> I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted

<comment><USER18> > I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread > again it is already downvoted

Posts aren't judged based on size, but content. And anonymous voting is often completely unfair -- just like life.

I suggest that you take this as useful feedback to improve how you express yourself. Your post has word usage issues (as other have commented), a problem with length versus content, things like that. At risk of quoting a cliche, make lemonade.

<comment><USER17> It was downvoted in the time between me hitting submit and the page loading again, how it was a judgement of content? The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?

<comment><USER18> > The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g > to reload?

1\. Certainly. There are lots of speed-readers out there.

2\. Why do you assume the downvoter was a guy? That's an everyday example of sexism.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Brightwork.io – API Management/Aggregation tool (beta open) - <AUTHOR> http://brightwork.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> CEO/Co-Founder here. If you have additional questions let me know. We will be launching the beta on 1/15 so please sign up using the form on the site. The beta will have some features that include pulling usage information from the APIs you use including private APIs. Next phase will include the ability to see cost so you can look at different APIs to see if you are using the one that is the most cost effective. Then we'll be moving onto giving you the ability to switch APIs on the fly.</comment>


Wikimedia removes the Diary of Anne Frank due to copyright law - <AUTHOR> https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/02/10/anne-frank-diary-removal/ <comment><USER3> Please read this: [https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976](https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2016/pre-1976)

And also look at the graphic on this page: [http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the- mi...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/the-missing-20th- century-how-copyright-protection-makes-books-vanish/255282/)

Copyright serves a legitimate purpose. I doubt there would be many big budget games or movies produced without some degree of protection. The purpose of copyright is to provide an incentive to produce creative works. But it also needs to balance the benefits of that with the costs of restricting works from the public.

I believe that copyright should last 10 years. That sounds really short, but hear me out. The _vast majority_ of works are not economically relevant after 10 years. And the ones that are, have usually earned 99% of their money within ten years. It's a power law, the first year gets vastly more money than the second year, than the third year, and so on. This is especially true for games and movies which are fast paced industries. It's also true for books and music, but the power law curve is a bit less steep.

There are exceptions to this, but they are just that - exceptions. The point is to provide an incentive for creators, not to give giant benefits to the outliers at the expense of the public.

Also originally copyright law had some additional measures to keep it from being restrictive. You had to actually register the copyright, not just grant it automatically, and you had to renew it halfway through. Which cost a few thousand dollars.

I also am very much in favor of derivative works. Fanfiction shouldn't be illegal, making a t shirt with your favorite character on it shouldn't be illegal, etc.

With this system you would be able to use old music, photos, software, books, movies, etc. As long as they were made before 2006.

Also trademark could handle some of the remaining issues. E.g. "Star Wars" could be a trademark of george lucas. You could make star wars derivatives, but you couldn't brand them with star wars. Consumers would be able to tell apart ripoffs from works by the original creator. Mickey mouse would still be a trademark of disney, but you could watch steamboat willy cartoons on youtube.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't even have to be a strict cutoff. The first 10 years might be free and automatic, but the Copyright Office could charge exponentially increasing fees for renewals afterward.

For example, $1K for the next 10 years, then $10K, then $100K... This means that only works that remain truly profitable in the long term will stay copyrighted. If Disney wants to pay $10B to keep Mickey Mouse copyrighted, they are welcome to do so. The extension fees could be put to good use improving the nation's public schools and libraries.

<comment><USER5> I think this is a generally sensible proposal that would garner much public support.

However, I would like to see moral rights retained for longer than 10 years - the right to prevent modification of the work, the right to be named as author, for example. Extending these to life+X years (but requiring free- gratis registration) seems fair to me as well.

<comment><USER6> The ability to create derivative works is one of the primary benefits of works entering the public domain, so no.

<comment><USER5> I think you misunderstood - you can make derivatives, you can't sell the work with your own modifications as if it were the original (you can sell your derivative though). Neither could you plagiarise works under such a system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am more distressed that a work by a German, at the time stateless in the Netherlands, that long ago, and given the global importance of such a work, that the U.S. even has the copyright. The explanation in Wikimedia I understand clearly, but I do not acept it.

<comment><USER8> It's interesting that there's even debate over whether it's public domain in Europe:

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-02/anne-franks-diary- goes...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-01-02/anne-franks-diary-goes-online- despite-rights-dispute/7064328)

<comment><USER9> Because money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just like that silly explanation of the width of railroad tracks starting with the width of a roman horse's ass, the question of "why can't I read the Diary of Anne Frank" starts with "so there was this cartoon for little kids in the '20's called Mickey Mouse..."

We reach this ridiculous situation by serious people taking a series of thoughtful actions a tiny bit at a time. But serious and thoughtful actions only add upon themselves with each step. Ridiculousness multiplies.

<comment><USER11> Was it really bit by bit? In most of the world, the Berne convention - <USER2> in 1886 - implemented a copyright length of author's life + 50 years. This was a massive leap for most countries.

Even in the US, the people behind the Sonny Bono Act (aka Mickey Mouse Protection Act) proposed _indefinite_ copyright - MPAA's Jack Valenti actually suggested "forever less one day" to avoid the Constitutional restriction! The life + 50 years was the compromise they could reach.

<comment><USER5> The contract of copyright is that you'll make works freely available in return for a time-limited monopoly enforced by the people, the demos, through the state.

A perpetual copyright would not be a copyright, there's no reason for the people to support it. If you could pass such an act I think it would show your regime to be something other than a democracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://archive.org/details/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl](https://archive.org/details/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl)

Claims it is open source.

The torrent somebody asked for: [https://archive.org/download/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl/A...](https://archive.org/download/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl/AnneFrankTheDiaryOfAYoungGirl_archive.torrent)

<comment><USER13> The Internet Archive is absolutely fearless when it comes to risk of litigation for copyright infringement. One could fear that it will be their dead.

<comment><USER14> They are indeed fearless. They have put up thousands of copyrighted video games, for example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Lots of rage here against the US government, little rage against the Anne Frank Fonds that actually asserts the copyright.

If you really feel so strongly then go and rail against the foundation who could transfer the book into the public domain with least a million times (literally) less difficulty than it would take to get US copyright law changed to have the same effect.

[http://www.annefrank.ch/qa-en.html](http://www.annefrank.ch/qa-en.html)

<comment><USER16> So today rally against the Anne Frank Fonds. Tomorrow against Disney. Then what? If the law creates an artificial incentive that damages the public good, are you going to separately criticize each one of those who take advantage of that, or to ask to change the law?

<comment><USER17> there can be no public good if you deprive people of their property rights because you somehow take offense at their exercise of those rights.

While there should be some limit on how long you can retain copyright I seriously would not want it to be less than the current and following generation, if not the third.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> That's barbaric. That's why civil disobedience is the only adequate answer to the current overreach of copyright in the united states. It's up to us, technologists, to create and disseminate tools to help out in the dismantlement of an absurd system that is obsolete in the digital age.

<comment><USER19> This logic is the reason why we have so many archaic laws surrounding the technology. Too often our community simply decides it is easier to ignore the law in question than trying to fight it and so we withdraw ourselves from the debate.

It isn't our job as technologist to build tools to circumvent the law. It is our job as technologist to educate politicians and the greater population as a whole why these issues are important. Sure, civil disobedience can be a tool in that fight, but that alone isn't going to change anything.

<comment><USER20> If you think that education, or the lack thereof, of politicians anywhere is the reason for absurd copyright law across the entire globe, you _really_ aren't paying attention.

There is _no argument_ clever enough or convincing enough to overpower the flood of money and bullshit that keeps copyright law the way it is. You may as well argue against the law of gravity. The only solution is to deprive the bad actors of the funds they need to keep the system corrupt, and since most people (rightly, in my opinion) can't accept simply abandoning large parts of their culture to that fight, the only option left is to make piracy widespread, easy, and safe.

<comment><USER21> The average person cannot comprehend the effects of what they do unless it is directly fed back and even then. Thinking macro is hard for the smartest 0.01%: the average Pam and Jim will not understand what happens when the game plays out. Some politicians are above that, most are not. Sounds elitist and maybe it is however I am not saying I am better than that I am saying politicians should be. If they are not and they are not, this battle is indeed lost and not only because of money but simply because someone didn't think long enough and their candy crush was not getting enough attention to keep them focused.

<comment><USER20> In fact, if piracy really had the deleterious effects on culture and artistic expression that copyright advocates always claim it does, I suspect you'd see much more of a social taboo against piracy than exists now. I'm not one to usually rush to the defense of people reasoning with "their gut" but, in this case, I think most people know that the copyright regime is bullshit, and they act accordingly, even if they haven't given it as much thought as the average HN reader.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I find it startling that, with the current terms of copyright, no music I'm listening to today or even in the last decade will be in the public domain before I die.

<comment><USER23> It's life of the author + 70 years so even if Disney no longer extends the copyright it won't be available in the public domain before your children die.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Available on archive.org (and going nowhere):

[http://web.archive.org/web/20160103110123/https://nl.wikisou...](http://web.archive.org/web/20160103110123/https://nl.wikisource.org/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_\(Anne_Frank\))

<comment><USER25> Also at [http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%28Anne_Frank%29](http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%28Anne_Frank%29) , and just to be sure there is now also a copy at [http://archive.is/http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%...](http://archive.is/http://wikilivres.ca/wiki/Het_Achterhuis_%28Anne_Frank%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Then just read "Mein Kampf" instead, its already free.

I could laugh if this wasn't for real.

</comment><comment><USER27> That's depressing. As I'm becoming older, I'm beginning to suspect that the bright sci-fi future isn't really going to come true after all, and we'll have to live in a sad bleak dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why, considering that US copyright laws are ones of the worst, Wikimedia Foundation is still based here? They should move to other jurisdiction.

</comment><comment><USER29> Lawrence Lessig: Re-examining the remix

[http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed](http://www.ted.com/talks/lessig_nyed)

</comment><comment><USER30> But who holds the copyright?

<comment><USER8> I think it's the "Anne Frank Fonds".

[http://www.annefrank.ch/](http://www.annefrank.ch/)

<comment><USER30> Established by Anne's father and editor. Ok. I wonder if the Wikimedia foundation reached out to the Fond. and tried to get permission for posting of the content, or does Wikimedia only do certain licenses?

<comment><USER31> Yes, the only do "free content licenses," with limited exceptions.

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_po...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Is there other story like the Anne Franck one? Why not boycot the museum in Amsterdam, the books and speak of others stories? That's cynical? Not more than the Anne Franck copyright's holders...

<comment><USER33> You are mistaking the Anne Frank Foundation (Dutch: Anne Frank Stichting), which maintains the Anne Frank House and monitors racism (specifically anti- semitism) in the Netherlands, with the Swiss Anne Frank Fonds, which holds the copyright to her diary. It is currently under discussion whether or not the Anne Frank Fonds actually holds the copyright, as it has been more than 70 years since the death of Anne Frank copyright should have expired, but the Anne Frank Fonds claims that Otto Frank (Anne's father) was a co-author of the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This foundation - [http://www.annefrank.ch/](http://www.annefrank.ch/) owns the copyright. It's meant for charity, but I don't think they realizes they are doing more damage by holding the copyright than whatever good the foundation is doing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Ok, I know, first reaction, utter STUPIDITY of the human race. But don't let it down OK? There are some good, smart, people out there that care about it all. They're out there, they really are. Just keep looking. :-)

<comment><USER36> Like the people in the Wikimedia Foundation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> _immediately downloads a digital copy as a matter of principle_

</comment><comment><USER38> This relates to Disney and Mickey mouse as follows, everytime the copyright of mickey mouse was about to expire the copyright law has been extended.

"This law, also known as the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, Sonny Bono Act, or (derisively) the Mickey Mouse Protection Act"

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

Mickey mouse copyright vs works of Jewish girl killed by the Nazis.

</comment><comment><USER39> What a shame.. such stories should be spread widely and rapidly!

</comment><comment><USER40> Wow, that's appalling!

</comment><comment><USER41> but if it entered public domain in NL who can uphold Copyright in US? How can US law overrule dutch if it is of dutch origin?

<comment><USER42> I think the origin of the book doesn't really matter. The copyright was owned by her father Otto Frank, who then transferred it to the Ann Frank foundation, which still owns the copyright and can enforce it worldwide.

<comment><USER43> The idea is that the copyright expires 70 years after the death of the author. It's really sad that the Anne Frank Fonds, which now hold the rights, claims that the diary was (partially) written by her father, Otto Frank.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> So, who actually owns it?

</comment><comment><USER45> Does anyone have a copy of it that we could seed on torrent?

<comment><USER46> [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Good to see the activism regarding copyright. On the other hand, when there is a _real human_ who suffers like, say, Anne Frank, half of HN blames the victim.</comment>


All prisons are private prisons now - <AUTHOR> https://www.muckrock.com/news/archives/2016/aug/18/all-prisons-are-private-prisons-ii/ <comment><USER2> The fed just stated they are going to stop using private prisons. GEO's stock price has plummeted.</comment>


UK Labour party reveals large-scale cyber-attack on digital platforms - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/12/labour-reveals-large-scale-cyber-attack-on-digital-platforms <comment><USER2> No website should ever have to be subject to such DDoS attacks or censorship.

I'm glad that The Guardian went on to mention that it was all thanks to Cloudflare for actually protecting sites like Labour from these cheap DDoS attacks. Unlike the BBC as usual forgetting and glossing over the actual mitigation only mentioning Cloudflare afterwards being used and still giving all the credit to Labour's own "robust" security system [0].

> Labour said the attack "failed" because of the party's "robust" security > system and no data breach had occurred.

[0] [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50388879](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50388879)

Thank goodness Cloudflare exists.</comment>


Thoughts on Scribd's move to HTML5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.marathonmuse.com/blog/2010/5/8/thoughts-on-scribd.html

<comment><USER2> I posted this on the site, but figured it might be of interest here as well:

\--

Trevor,

Thanks for the thoughtful post. You captured some of the interesting aspects and obstacles we had to overcome in order to realize the HTML based viewer. I'd like to add some commentary on the points you bring up:

\- Performance: I'm quite excited about the range of possibilities we have in improving the performance of the new viewer. It's something we discuss endlessly, and it will just be a matter of time before we can implement some more of the ideas we have tossed around.

\- Text Selection: We lose some control on this by handing it all over to the browser; which I like. I see what you mean by Acrobat Reader being the gold standard, but the reality of the range of document types we get means that there is no definite standard of behavior therein. That said, I would love to hear some suggestions for creative/usable spins we could put on this.

\- Search: Another one that us engineers are immensely excited about. We have so much flexibility. While there are technical challenges, the user experience surrounding the search functionality we have planned should be very impressive.

\- Printing: I haven't personally put much thought into the browser based printing, but it should be a simple step with what we already have (as you said). As for flash based printing, I don't know the details, but one of our engineers apparently did some great work on this recently. If you want more details, I can see about putting you in contact with him.

Thanks again for the thoughts. This is an exciting time for these technologies and document presentation.

-Quin

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow! I came to the article expecting a lot of mindless bashing from the flash camp, but this turned out a thoughtful article.

I don't care that much about text selection, but resolving hyphenation on copy sounds like a must-have feature for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very good observations. The feedback will help us.</comment>


Chimp Portraits (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://franknoelker.com/collection/chimp-portraits <comment><USER2> Reading the captions is incredibly saddening:

"She spent the next 11 years living in isolation as a research subject. ... She fell into an extended period of depression and was treated repeatedly for rashes and sores on her neck and wrists inflicted on herself during anxiety attacks. She also suffers from the 'phantom hand' syndrome, which has caused her to bite all of her nails to the quick, rubbing them until there is nothing left." \- [http://franknoelker.com/collection/chimp- portraits#Rachel,20...](http://franknoelker.com/collection/chimp- portraits#Rachel,2002)

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of them look a little cagey or intimidating, but a few of them give off a really friendly, reliable persona like they'd be your best friend in a heartbeat.

Toddy, for example, looks like a really easy-going, reasonable lady:

[http://franknoelker.com/sites/franknoelker.com/files/styles/...](http://franknoelker.com/sites/franknoelker.com/files/styles/work_500/public/images/work/13/toddy2002.jpg)

...kind of a horrible life story, though, by human standards.

It'd be really interesting to interact with them, and see how far away the personality is from the portrait's impression, when interacting with them in real life.

It's hard not to feel guided by an instinct to judge a book by it's cover, when looking at those faces.

Meanwhile, based on the descriptions with each picture, most of them are horribly depressed and traumatized by experiments or isolation. I can't really conceptualize what a couple of hundred "knockdown" experiments [0] with "punch liver biopsies" might be like.

Sounds unpleasant.

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

<comment><USER4> "Knockdown" doesn't refer to gene knockdowns: [http://www.releasechimps.org/research/overview/knockdowns](http://www.releasechimps.org/research/overview/knockdowns)

See the upper-right chimp (Binky) for confirmation: "In eight years, this young male known as "Ch-665" was knocked down 136 times-mostly for cage changes and tooth cleanings."

<comment><USER3> Well, today I learned. I feel like the use of specialized jargon doesn't help communicate the experience or idea the artist would probably like to convey, by including those kinds of details in the captions. The definition for the term needs to be provided as a footnote, each time it gets used under that context, since non-experts are among the audience.

You have to figure that chimpanzees are psychologically advanced enough that it's really the totality of an experience in a lab cage that ruins them. Getting shot with tranquilizer darts is more or less the icing on the cake, adding insult to injury.

I'd suspect that after, on or around knockdown #20, the maximum amount of trust has been eroded, and a chimpanzee is pretty much done with being around people, but especially the ones that dart them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very good, very depressing. I felt a strong compulsion to read each chimps bio.

</comment><comment><USER6> Each one so distinct!

</comment><comment><USER7> And we call chimps violent.</comment>


Thoughts about transitioning from SysAdmin to DevOps - <AUTHOR> This is my article about the transition from SysAdmin to DevOps where I navigate through some considerations:<p>- Version control - From pets to cattle - Logs and observability - Idempotency and automation - Security<p>Hopefully will help to others. <comment><AUTHOR> The link to the article:

[https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/sysadmin- devops](https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/sysadmin-devops)</comment>


The End of Work? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zagaja.com/2014/12/end-of-work/

<comment><USER2> When cars got invented buggy whip makers went out of business. The horse and cart was obsolete. People had to learn new skills and get a new education to learn how to service cars and make parts for cars.

When the microcomputer, word processor, printer got invented a whole room of 100 people on typewriters lost their jobs because one administrative assistant can press a few buttons to print 100 copies of a memo or letter to distribute. Then that got replaced with attached files in email or on a file server.

There used to be five and dime stores, run by mom and pop operations. Until Sam Walton found a way to bundle services at his five and dime store and then use a computer to manage his inventory better and buy it in bulk at cheaper prices to undercut the other mom and pop stores and then take on the big guys. Suddenly Walmart put Woolworths out of business and caused damage to Sears and K-Mart. But that was before Amazon.com got formed and did the same things but with robots in warehouses to pick items for orders, and a 24/7 website with bundled services with Amazon Prime to give free two day shipping, free videos, and other benefits.

Now we got the Dotcom era with startups, each startup has a way to have a website that automates things that does things cheaper or for free that puts people out of work.

You even got programs that write programs now, you got Ruby on Rails that anyone can use to create a web app even without knowledge on how a computer works, without a degree, and with just six weeks of training in how to use it.

I myself had worked so hard automating things for companies that I developed mental and physical illnesses from the stress and ended up on disability. I took paper forms and made electronic forms stored in databases that put people out of work and made the system more efficient. I super debugged other people's programs to add in quality and security checks, but face facts quality and security checks aren't always done anymore and there is no market for me anymore.

Work is done by apps and websites, AI can write books and websites and apps, almost everything is automated these days, and if not it soon will be.

Yet there exists a problem, the people who pay for this automation that makes services and products no longer have jobs, they cannot do work because their job was automated and getting a new education in an advanced area is expensive and how can they afford it without a job? Even if they do earn a degree the student loan debt will cripple them if they cannot find a good paying job that can pay off enough of it that they can afford a house and car.

At some point you will see Unemployment, Disability, Social Security going away and replaced with Basic Income. Basic income will be paid for by taxing the corporations that use robots and automation and giving it to people who can no longer work for any reason at all. There will be resistance to this, but it will have to be done or face a major homeless and poverty problem.

There are still ways to earn an income without a job, make a series of Youtube videos and advertise on them, write books, try to become an artist or musician and do a Kickstarter or Indiegogo campaign to form your own company, etc.</comment>


Here is what the first McDonald's menu looked like - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/here-is-what-the-first-mcdonalds-menu-looked-like-2015-5

<comment><USER2> Aristocratic hamburgers? I wonder if they could recreate this menu today, the way it was prepared then.</comment>


Up and Running with Node.js Book Preview - <AUTHOR> http://ofps.oreilly.com/titles/9781449398583/

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently the commenting system isn't working. I talked to the folks at O'Reilly and we will get it up tomorrow.</comment>


Europe's New Culture Capital Is Lisbon - <AUTHOR> http://elevatedtoday.com/2015/03/06/europes-new-culture-capital-is-here-and-its-not-berlin-barcelona-or-paris/

<comment><USER2> I am a software engineer and I no longer have friends in the city where I grew up (Coimbra), I would say that 90% of my friends are off the country working somewhere else (mainly UK and DE). Unless you want to work at a sweatshop consulting company, or a service provider, Lisbon is not the place to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> The country is in this situation partly because a lot of portuguese people are like this fellow user. Only complain about the negative stuff instead of focusing in the positive parts of Portugal.

<comment><USER3> The country is in this situation partly because a lot of portuguese people are like this fellow user. Prefer to merrily bury their head in the sand instead of acting on the dramatic reality developing around them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not saying that the country if perfect, far from it. But is a great country to leave while working remotely for a company outside of Portugal for example.

Portugal produces great talent in a lot of areas, but all the top talent leaves and it's impossible to revert the situation.

<comment><USER3> Talented people will come back voluntarily to a society that invests in that talent, I agree with you that it does seem like an impossible problem to solve in the near future.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's true. I think that one of the ways to invert the situation is to convince the top talent to stay and build their own companies. There are some good examples doing that, but the ecosystem isn't strong enough yet and the legislation doesn't help either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The best of both worlds is living in Lisbon while working remote for at least a European company and even better an American one. Since I arrived here in 2004 I've worked for British, French and now Swiss-based companies. I have only worked for one Portuguese company (the somewhat well-known one from Coimbra) and I'd never do it again.

fmsf's comment about the sweatshop environment is accurate, but only because the skills of Portuguese management are spectacularly bad. All management decisions are based on a single variable: cost and cheaper always means better. Having said that there are some spectacularly awesome, world-class, engineers here.

If there was more money floating around, Lisbon would be an awesome center for startups (there are quite a few already) - great beaches, decent night-life, plenty of culture and awesome weather (though a little too warm for my tastes).

<comment><USER5> well, i moved recently to london (from porto) and, tbh, i'd love to know that i could have the opportunity to work remotely from portugal... (how do you people find these jobs??)

i've seen bad and good management. i've been under bad management from german managers as well, whilst in portugal, and i've been under bad management here. let's cut the crap, it's not only in portugal that you find bad managers. you find them EVERYWHERE. they do thrive especially well in portugal due to the weak economy. people put up with crap that they wouldn't otherwise.

i would just add that anyone could say just about the same things about porto. probably with the advantage of the city being a bit more cheap/less expensive than lisboa.

<comment><USER6> [https://weworkremotely.com](https://weworkremotely.com) is a good start to find remote jobs. [http://careers.stackoverflow.com](http://careers.stackoverflow.com) as well.

I worked in London for one year and I prefer working there. Waaaay more stuff to do in London, and you have a lot of great developers over there.

<comment><USER5> i've come across those before (and a few others) but they don't seem to have, normally, roles i'd be looking for (android dev.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hey, I've been working for the Samwers in Berlin, for US based companies and recently in Lisbon. And yes, the vibrations and creativity of the ciy is still unique and not yet overun by hipster crowds. I believe it will stay like that for quite a while because there is no giant rush of international masses to the city to live and work like in berlin. thats good for staying a creative landmark, thats bad for driving business and startups forward. most stuff here is dominated by local people or international enterprises and as long no international strong interest si driving knowledge and skill into the city it won't change.

</comment><comment><USER3> 36 year old long time HN lurker, born and raised in Lisbon.

Lisbon in some sense is like a tourism start-up. The number of visitors has exploded in the past few years and like other mass tourism capitals in Europe (ie: Barcelona) the flood of tourism is bringing with it a loss of identity.

Eventually, like most successful start-ups its culture will be ruined by its own success.

Regarding the low-cost aspect, it's purely related to the low salaries that derive from the way we were fucked over on the Euro deal. Simple as that.

<comment><USER6> Stop blaming the Euro… It was not its fault. We are just awful at managing money we lack a strong moral sense. Simple as that.

<comment><USER3> Have you ever tried researching the factual rational counter-arguments to that idea?

I think you owe yourself that, because repeating what you hear on the news is not going to make you a better [+edit] informed [/edit] citizen any time soon.

You can start here for example: [http://esquerdaalternativa.bloco.org/documentos/18-a-chantag...](http://esquerdaalternativa.bloco.org/documentos/18-a-chantagem- da-divida-contra-a-democracia.html)

<comment><USER6> Do you know who repeats what they hear on the news? People that blame the Euro.

But I'll read that article, if you say it's worth it. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice to see my home country and one of the cities I have spent a great deal of my life on HN.

<comment><USER9> Unfortunately Lisbon will not have a future. No bright american, english or french will go to a city where wages are 20.000 euros per annum. No way.

<comment><USER10> You dont have to work for a local company to enjoy life in a certain place. Especially when you are a programmer or similar which allows for telecommuting.

<comment><USER8> The problem there is that there is a fierce competition from off-shore paradises, which have even lower salaries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lisboa? Really? Even the chap who tried to pick my pocket last time I visited there asked me how things were in my home country.

We employ a lot of folks from Portugal here, and none seem to miss the employers back there.

</comment><comment><USER12> Instead of reading and jumping to conclusions, come here and take a look. I'm gonna borrow some french and say there's a certain je ne sais quois in Lisbon. If any HN'ers want to come here and visit, I'll be happy to show you around. Lisbon really shines, specially in the summer

Oh, and if you want to hire tech people, we have some good people over here who are wasting talent on sweatshops and the like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is not even spring and Lisbon is already shining. More than 23C of temperature today ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a nice article, and it certainly makes me want to visit; but it seems like a stretch to call Lisbon Europe's new culture capital, especially when it's "virtually unknown" like the author says.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is Portugal: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4cyNK3BW7Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G4cyNK3BW7Q)

</comment><comment><USER15> Mons, European Capital of Culture for 2015, would like a word with you ...(just kidding)

</comment><comment><USER16> tl;dr: American goes to Portugal without knowing anything about it, realizes there's actually interesting stuff and culture in Lisbon, thinks that means it's a super special city or something.

<comment><USER17> Well it _is_ super special to be both affordable to live in and have the kind of culture and community that would appeal to young cosmopolitan people. It's not very easy to find this combo these days.

<comment><USER3> Lisbon is not affordable to live in for the locals . I make 800 EUR a month in a Business Intelligence role at a growing multinational company in Lisbon. My rent for a 1 bedroom flat in a very modest part of the inner suburbs comes out at 380 EUR.

Combine that with an unemployed wife and you have a pretty standard picture of what the average young couple with 1 child is faced with here. (not to speak about the thousands educated and younger than me who are being forced out of the country because they can't afford to start a family or even leave their parent's houses)

Just for comparison I lived for 5 years in London UK, made 3000 EUR a month and could save enough to travel frequently . While renting a 2 bedroom house with a small garden.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why did you come back to Portugal?

<comment><USER3> My wife was unhappy in London. Family happiness above money. I don't regret the decision. I do regret the sad situation in the country though.

<comment><USER6> I have trouble understanding people that are not happy in London. Maybe it's just my spirit city or something.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What things would you put a gps on for $5? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I don't know if you can hit that price point, but looking at trade pubs I see there is little on the market for the equestrian market.

I think there are several uncanny valleys that make the market hard to serve:

* many horse paddocks are only a modest multiple of the gps uncertainty for typical hardware * you can't count on cell service in rural areas * no unlicensed wireless technology has a range that is (consistently) a large multiple of the gps uncertainty, so if your horse is ranging in a large area you can't get the signal back * anything you interact with while riding is a no-no because misattention will have you on your ass in no time

<comment><USER3> Actually a large part of the equestrian market could still use a form of this. I am in Florida where places like Ocala and Central/South Florida as a whole have a large number of equestrian activities. I could see a product that was GPS enabled and sent a signal every few minutes via a cell network when in range -- for large open pasture a cell repeater could help increase coverage. And when out of cell range it sends a lower frequency signal broadcasting the coordinates, e.g. 400Mhz or lower. This would let you have a tracking device to find lost animals much faster. And if they get to a place where GPS is no longer connecting, that's fine, the last known position plus signal strength could still get you to the animal much faster.

The hard part is making it affordable, in a small enough form factor of low weight but with reasonable battery life to matter. And then how to attach it to the animal, using the halter is one idea, but most people don't like leaving a halter on a horse in a pasture for safety reasons. So then how to mount it without interfering with the animals movement or having it get ripped off when the roll or scratch on a tree etc. When you are riding there are ways to do it via the saddle, reins etc, but when they are out grazing it is a tougher problem.

I guess another point though, some riders where safety vests, many wear helmets, so a device for a rider could also be created along the same lines. This would be nice for those trail rides when the horse gets spooked, drops its rider and the rider isn't well enough to walk out. Happens more then people realize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you mean a GPS tracker that can tell me where something is? Or do you just mean a GPS receiver that can tell me where I am? There's a huge difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> tracker, you put it on something, and that something sends you its location (any where in the world) via the internet.

<comment><USER4> So it connects to the internet via... cellular networks? Is that possible for $5 (and only $5) without a service fee and/or the costs of integrating with multiple carriers?

<comment><AUTHOR> an annual cost of $5/tracker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Cars, bikes, pets, anything that gets stolen or runs away. The existing cheap tags are just beacons with short range. The apps overpromise using a network (other people with apps) to continuously look for reported tags. In not densely populated areas that's useless.

<comment><USER6> And without a single tag specification being widespread, it's barely useful since the market is fragmented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wallet, keys, car, bike, skateboard, roller-blades etc.

This depends on how long does the battery last, and how easily the GPS information is retrievable (APIs, etc)

Also is this based on something like LoRa or SigFox ?

</comment><comment><USER8> I just came off a project in St. Eustatius, where I met a team of marine biologists tracking sea turtles with some form of GPS device. They seemed to be spending a lot on the devices, which were modified for underwater conditions and algae growth and other problems. Still, $5/device is sounds like a price point that would attract many people in the scientific community.

</comment><comment><USER4> Size matters a lot here. For $5, I'd put a tiny tracker on all my expensive belongings. If the tracker is bigger than, say, a US quarter, then the number of things I could put it on would be much smaller.

</comment><comment><USER9> Depends how accurate you can get it. I work in a large manufacturing plant and am always losing clipboard/notepad and usually resort to walking around the whole plant to find it.

</comment><comment><USER10> kids or some kind of belt or backpack watch

</comment><comment><USER11> Sure, I have a list:

\- Laptop

\- Car

\- Kids (at least until they are teenagers.)

\- Wallet

\- Keys

\- Phone

</comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat pricey bicycles.

</comment><comment><USER13> Drug dealers

</comment><comment><USER14> My cats</comment>


Show HN: Firebasic – Input a JSON file, get static Firebase-compatible output - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zackbrown/firebasic

<comment><USER2> I see that this didn't get much attention on HN, but I think it's a great idea. A step towards a purely client-side static blog - which would be cool.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! we used this for a production project to make our last non-static dependency (Firebase) static. The rest of it was a SPA (Angular, actually Famo.us/Angular) which we could already host off of S3.

I wanted to take the extra 30 mins it took to open-source this in the hope that someone else could find a production use for this simple tool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could you please add a simple client demo in JS consuming this static "firebasic" JSON?</comment>


Zuckerberg responds to UK Parliament publishing Facebook documents - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10105559172610321 <comment><AUTHOR> > Ultimately, we decided on a model where we continued to provide the > developer platform for free and developers could choose to buy ads if they > wanted. This model has worked well. Other ideas we considered but decided > against included charging developers for usage of our platform, similar to > how developers pay to use Amazon AWS or Google Cloud.

This is a pretty disingenuous comparison, in my opinion. AWS and Google Cloud are similar to Facebook's platform only in that they are all, arguably, "platforms" of some sort. AWS provides infrastructure that lets you run more- or-less whatever you want on it. The Facebook platform is much closer to being simply a proprietary API to enable your app to access Facebook user data.</comment>


Show HN: Patent Time Machine – Who Owned What When - <AUTHOR> http://uspto.io/gui/patents <comment><USER2> I don't think this is actually run by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO uspto.gov), so the website owner could be risking whatever equivalent law of Passing off the United States has.

I'd also be interested as the where the data for this came from. ASAIK, the real USPTO doesn't provide any APIs or anything to their data.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can find out more here if you have questions: [https://gitter.im/3tl/usptoio](https://gitter.im/3tl/usptoio)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> More info: [http://uspto.io](http://uspto.io)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very cool. Nice work!</comment>


The VAX platform is no more - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20160309192510 <comment><USER2> Pour one out for /vmunix.</comment>


Bitcoin's energy usage is huge – we can't afford to ignore it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/17/bitcoin-electricity-usage-huge-climate-cryptocurrency <comment><USER2> This is another of the bitcoin related topic which has been discussed many times already in last couple of months:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15663053](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15663053)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15873395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15873395)

I have also written a blog on this:

[https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy- use-5...](https://hackernoon.com/dummies-guide-to-bitcoin-energy- use-5f38e91c3253)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't the root of the problem that fossil fuels are too cheap? If you tax carbon to include the costs of climate change then this problem will go away.

</comment><comment><USER4> The idea is the switch to proof of stake will likely fix this particular problem if it works.

<comment><USER5> A lot of people seem to be ideologically opposed to proof of stake; they define "works" in a very narrow way that proof of stake can never satisfy.

<comment><USER6> Work as a concept is fine, but that massive amount of work having a direct correlation to massive amounts of energy consumption isn't ideal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a reason the proof of work can't do something more useful, like protein folding?

<comment><USER2> Because of verification. It is easy to check whether the generated hash is correct or not. How will the verification for protein folding work?

<comment><USER8> It's easy to evaluate if the energy of one structural conformation is lower than another. (You don't need to determine at each step if the submitted conformation approximates the real protein at equilibrium, only that it's a lower-energy conformation than has been seen before.) But I'm not sure that is the only problem.

You _want_ the proof of work to remain difficult for a PoW scheme. We have pretty good assurances that mindless cryptographic hashing is difficult; ASICs accelerate it considerably, but don't lower the Big O complexity of the problem. On the other hand, people keep searching for _algorithmically_ faster ways to simulate protein folding, not just ways to hardware-accelerate existing algorithms. If one group of folders were to discover superior algorithms for searching the potential energy surface, that would be beneficial to science but potentially disastrous for a currency based on protein folding problems. For that matter, the overall incentives might make science worse off if ProteinCoin encouraged superior algorithms to be kept secret, for PoW advantage, instead of publishing advances in the open scientific literature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As I know, there is only 2 million Bitcoins unmined left. Once we mine all, aren't we done with mining and miners ?

<comment><USER10> Miners are transaction processors, and instead of block rewards, they get paid in transaction fees. So, no, you're never done with them until you're done with Bitcoin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sincere question: what's the energy usage for e.g. USD or EUR?

<comment><USER12> It's zero. Exchanging banknotes or coins for goods or services does not consume electricity. Can't believe this was "sincere question".

<comment><USER13> Many bitcoin proponents believe that bitcoin can fully replace the current financial system so whenever the energy consumption problem comes up you should expect to hear someone talking about how much banks spend on air conditioning every year.

<comment><USER14> Of course banks wouldn't go away with Bitcoin. There are still physical branches despite the ubiquity of online banking and credit/debit cards. People like having humans to interact with. And Bitcoin is trying to add in the Lightning network, which requires large trusted entities where people can store their coins for off-chain transactions, IE banks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article is based on some incredibly bad estimates, and reaches an outrageously large conclusion.

Let us assume that 100% of all mining rewards go to electricity (and none to buying mining equipment, paying employees, servers, or networking), and let us further assume the electricity costs $0.01 / KWhr, which is cheaper than one can buy basically anywhere.

From flippening.watch, BTC paid miners $20,797,200 yesterday, for 2,079,720,000 KWHrs. This translates to approximately 87 GW of electricity, 24/7\. 87 GW is approximately the output of the 21 Palo Verde nuclear plants in Arizona, which according to the US Energy Information Administration, can output up to 3937 MW. [https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=104&t=3)

In other words, Bitcoin is a drop in the bucket. Let's put this myth of massive energy usage to rest, and at the cost of being too snarky, and let us ask our journalists to learn basic math.

edit - I made a math mistake, which I have corrected. The overall point, while I was off by several orders of magnitude, however, holds.

edit 2 - I retract the entire comment. It appears the article is true, and that, ironically, I made the same mistake I accused the journalist of. I'm going to leave the comment up for posterity, but I retract it.

<comment><USER16> How did you go from 2,079,720,000 KWHrs to 24.07 MW of electricity, 24/7?

My calculator and Google (search for "2079720000 kWh per 24 hours to MW") says it's more than 86,000 MW (so ~86 GW).

edit: corrected units from TW to GW, as pointed out by philipkglass

<comment><USER8> 86 GW, not 86 TW. 86 TW would be several times world primary energy consumption.

<comment><USER16> You're right, thanks! It was an unfortunate typo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's a problem because it's a digital currency? Because many other things that could be considered "surpeflous" also consumer massive amount of electricity. Or for example (not superfluous but potentially equivalent) how much electricity all the global banking system uses? I bet that it's more than "a nation".

</comment><comment><USER18> fast forward to a Dyson sphere for crypto mining

</comment><comment><USER19> How does a nation expand credit with a cryptocurrency? Like as in the case with fractional reserve banking?

<comment><USER20> Here are some thoughts on how it could work. Not completely thought out, but something:

Before we had electronic bank records, banks could print "bank notes" which were as good as money if you trusted the bank. Now that we have electronic records they basically "create" USD by adding a deposit to your account while only having ~10% of that actually stored away in dollars.

If your account was truly in BTC they obviously couldn't just increase your balance, since it's a cryptocurrency and they can't just make something up.

One option would be for banks to have their own tokens, similar to bank notes of old. All banks would accept the tokens of other banks 1:1 and convert them to BTC on demand, but it would allow expansion of the "money supply" like we have now with dollars.

<comment><USER21> > One option would be for banks to have their own tokens, similar to bank > notes of old. All banks would accept the tokens of other banks 1:1 and > convert them to BTC on demand, but it would allow expansion of the "money > supply" like we have now with dollars.

Why not create one big bank that can issue its own tokens that any bank will accept? We can call it a "central bank" or something. And then maybe after many years we can decouple the value of these central tokens from the value of bitcoin, instead allowing the central bank to control the total supply of tokens based on some kind of "monetary policy" to keep prices stable.

Sounds good. The future of crytocurrency is bright indeed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> High electricity consumption is the trade bitcoin made in its design for a stable money supply, it's not an inherent problem with cryptocurrency.

<comment><USER23> It's the tradeoff made for a _distributed_ money supply. Satoshi just as easily could have made a fixed supply of money which is also stable and doesn't rely on proof of work.

That said, at the time, I don't think this was really the tradeoff being made. When bitcoin originally came out, proof of work was the only decentralized consensus mechanism available.

<comment><USER22> Having a distributed money supply makes it unstable, since you've tied an incentive to creating bitcoin.

Money supply would then be equal to how many miners there are without adding a difficulty, and the amount of bitcoins would go through the roof. Difficulty was clearly added as a solution after this to keep the money supply stable.

Note I didn't say it's necessary to waste electricity to have a stable money supply, only that the reason Bitcoin does is because it keeps it's money supply stable.

<comment><USER23> Difficulty adjustment is used to keep block times stable. Without this adjustment block times would continue to go down until you would eventually end up with a chain that has much more frequent forks of greater lengths. You eventually end up with a state where the current head becomes indeterminate and all sorts of security issues become possible, including double spends.

Bitcoin could have easily based block rewards on timestamps to keep the supply of money consistent, similar to how the current difficulty is calculated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I posted on FB while working on my degree and got a 5 year memory about it recently. I visualized the miners turning the polar bears black, and I was a good liberal who turned off my lights. Ethics would win. "It was a cool prototype" that I forgot about. Every CS student can figure this out, so it's surprising that we've let it go. Incentives, right.

<comment><USER25> Polar bears have black skin with white fur

<comment><USER26> My car has steel panels with white paint. It's still a white car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What a ridiculous article. Household air-conditioning wastes energy. Running your television wastes energy. Serving up webpages for The Guardian is apparently a waste of energy. If the problem is that the price of energy does not encompass the negative externalities it creates, then we need a Pigouvian tax on it. The price rises, and miners reassess whether or not they are profitable in a carbon-neutral world. The author seems to think that market participants using energy in a profitable manner are at fault here, rather than the policymakers who are not interested in tackling the Greatest Moral Challenge of Our Time (TM). But sure, jump on the bandwagon and write op-eds while Bitcoin is in the news.

<comment><USER21> > What a ridiculous article. Household air-conditioning wastes energy. Running > your television wastes energy. Serving up webpages for The Guardian is > apparently a waste of energy.

All of these provide some form of value to the user. I have yet to see what value bitcoin provides over USD. Okay, so we now have another medium of exchange, so what? Why is that worth the 1000x energy consumption per transaction over payment processors like Visa?

All your examples, by the way, have gotten more and more energy efficient over the last 50 years. Bitcoin is going in the opposite direction for payment processing.

<comment><USER27> Thank you for actually engaging! Let me preface this by saying I'm usually the first to deride Bitcoin as a payments platform. However, using energy to mine Bitcoin does provide value to the user - profits over and above what the power bill and ASICs/GPUs cost. And you're right - for a payments platform, it is a regression in terms of energy consumption.

That, however, does not change the fundamental issue - the severe underpricing of emissions-heavy power generation. The externalities that the author is so worried about (in the form of climate change) are not priced into the going rate for electricity. Blaming bitcoin miners is silly - if I pay for my power, I should be able to use it however I see fit. The alternative leads to absurdity, such as a law that states your aircon may be set no lower than 22C in summer, as anything more would be "a waste". I pay for it, I use it, bugger off.

The external social cost of electricity generation needs to be internalised into the private end-cost - a carbon tax or an ETS. Pick one, follow through, and stop blaming rational agents for acting rationally.

EDIT: Spelling</comment></comment></comment>


Prince William and Kate Middleton engagement picked up by hackers - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/security/3249152/prince-william-and-kate-middleton-engagement-picked-up-by-hackers/

<comment><USER2> Obvious they would...</comment>


The best of rivals: how four friendships changed the course of art history - <AUTHOR> http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/best-rivals-how-four-friendships-changed-course-art-history <comment><USER2> >In a bewildering act of vandalism, Manet slashed the picture right through the profiled face of his wife. Smee suggests that Manet felt Degas had portrayed him as overcome by ennui, boredom, indifference, even contempt. The cut was the psychological equivalent of Manet stabbing Degas.

Judging from the article, rivalries sound like they lead to fairly unhealthy behavior, also people have different strengths and weaknesses, so why measure yourself based on someone else.</comment>


Ask HN: Biology and Tech? - <AUTHOR> Hello,
I would need some advice to change my career plan from Molecular and Cellular Biology engineering into Tech stuff. Unfortunately i do not know how to code but I'm good at electronics and physics. There is a place where Biology is used in Tech, like to build new kind of transistor that fit better for AI, that could be more similar to what neurons and brain used to be for deep learning? Also I'm a good IT guy, good reviewer of electronic hardware in general. Thanks you a lot for your input! <comment><AUTHOR> FYI i hold a master degree in Molecular and cellular Biology, and also tried one year PhD that not suited me well. That's why i would like to change career plan into electronics sciences if possible.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> There is maybe some serious electronic engineering courses that one could attend, if already hold good physics knowledge?</comment>


Recovery.gov as its own Stimulus - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/wired-o-nomics.html <comment><USER2> I think it is worth noting that although this is a good step in the right direction, Recovery.org is not going to make it easy to find unpopular information. It would be unreasonable to expect President Obama to highlight things that he believes in, but knows will not be received well by the public. There are other sources besides Recovery.org that may serve as a better data mining resource.</comment>


General-purpose OS, special-purpose OS, and now: vendor-purpose OS - <AUTHOR> https://drewdevault.com/2020/06/26/Vendor-purpose-OS.html <comment><USER2> Historically, wasn't this the case?

Companies like IBM, DEC, etc. built highly-proprietary systems that weren't compatible with each other, and were able to set high prices because of it.

Only later, in the late 20th century, did computers become more compatible, as open standards for hardware interconnects, communication protocols, and file storage formats were adopted. And the rise of FOSS in the 1990s also did a great deal for this.

<comment><USER3> Yup...this reads like a low-fidelity rant than a substantive observation. Historically, proprietary/walled-garden operating systems were the norm. Trying to get, say, an IBM VM/CMS environment to talk to a DEC VAX/VMS system involved the deepest of dark incantations, and usually some expensive third- party software and hardware (show of hands...anyone else try and implement an APPN to DECNet gateway? Not recommended.).

There has never been a time where vendors didn't try and 'innovate' in ways that tried to lock out competitors, or at least made them less convenient. Right or wrong, it's not an insight that it's still a business model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > They've also long been making similar moves in their hardware design, adding > anti-features which are explicitly designed to increase their profit — > adding false costs which are ultimately passed onto the consumer.

Honest question, what is this statement referring to?

<comment><USER5> Removing ports. Zero upgrades possible - not even hard disk, memory.

In Apple's case - repairing is near impossible for an average user. Even the fucking screws are non standard. They charge an arm and a leg for repairs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well, OS's take a lot of effort and resources to update, maintain, and release.

The entities that put forward the resources have strong reasons/goals, and they are going to target their OS or distribution toward those reasons/goals.

It never was or every will be different.

An OS is a platform, so a vendor will want to appeal to users/customers. But that's one of several concerns they balance. They generally target a market -- a group or multiple groups of users with a similar perspective. If you aren't in one of the groups they are targeting, you will probably be unhappy with a relatively large number of tradeoffs they make. In other words, maybe that OS isn't for you.

That's OK.

In the end, you will be disappointed if you were expecting anyone to do a lot of work or expend a lot of resources to cater to your needs to the detriment of their own.

Put another way: No one's your mother and father but your mother and father (not even them in some cases, but you all don't need to hear details of my childhood).

Also: it never made any sense for Apple to adopt Vulkan into their OSs. A general OS _needs_ a low-level abstraction on top of the GPU. Adopting an external API for this purpose means OS releases would tied to a dependency they _don 't control_.

(Not to mention: Metal predates Vulkan. Imagine the awkward transition that would have been to drop Metal a year or two in and adopt Vulkan instead.)

So, e.g, the next version of iOS might not be able to drop because a Vulcan committee debate on the semantics of a new API are running long... thus delaying the release of the next iPhone which depends on the new OS version. (That would be bad for the vendor and for the customers who want that new iPhone.)

That was just never gonna happen.

Apple _could have_ developed and supported Vulkan API as a translation on top of their native graphics abstraction API (Metal), but that's something really much better done by a third-party via an independent library. A game, e.g., is much better off targeting a specific Vulcan API version and including the library that implements it (with its own platform compatibility support) in their own release.

If Apple did it as part of the OS, a game dev would have to work with whatever version that shipped with the OS the end-user is running. You need an API to be stable to release software written to run on top of it.

Think of it this way: if Vulkan was the native graphics hardware abstraction API of macOS or iOS, game devs would need _another_ abstraction on top of it, to write their games against. (Many do this already, of course, with Unity or other game engines.)</comment>


Linus's first version README for git - <AUTHOR> http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=blob;f=README;h=27577f76849c09d3405397244eb3d8ae1d11b0f3;hb=e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290

<comment><USER2> Probably inspired by my comment earlier [1] about how Linus comitted the first version of git _in git_ [2].

I find it fascinating that systems can be bootstrapped upon their own foundations.

[1] - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3277079>

[2] - [http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commit;h=e83c5163316f...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commit;h=e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23ca2e25604af290)

<comment><USER3> I guess the canonical example is using a compiler to compile its next version. Ken Thompson famously used this bootstrapping property to insert a trojan horse into the C compiler [1]. It propagated itself into future binary versions of the compiler, without actually appearing in their source code.

[1] <http://cm.bell-labs.com/who/ken/trust.html>

<comment><USER4> Ken explained it was _possible_ to write such a trojan but he never did it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a question, why did git grow so popular? What was better about it?

Edit: To down voters I think this question is important because it helps us understand why certain softwares are successful despite other successful competitors. I am not trying to start a flame war on which version control system is better.

<comment><USER6> GitHub may be one reason.

Maybe less but still important IMHO is that it's far more pronounceable than e.g. SVN. That could help build the hype.

<comment><USER7> I remember when I was first introduced to version control - I was told "we're using 'subversion' for XYZ". I thought that meant we were doing something sneaky that I shouldn't talk about.

"Git" is definitely a nice name.

<comment><USER8> I have no idea where urbandictionary.com is from, but its page on `git' describes the meanings it's always had for me, and indeed probably most UK (and Australian?) readers:

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=git>

This is partly why I have, so far, not joined the "Git Hub".

All in all, I think a better name could have been chosen. But, most of the time, I only type it - and it IS certainly nicer to type than `svn', I'll give it that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's pretty close to a minimal viable format Particularly key to the success is the clear invitation to build obvious tools and extensions without relying on magic limitations. There's no version number embedded in the format, but it's easy to flag tags your tool doesn't understand.

</comment><comment><USER10> And this is why I have a deep respect and admiration for Mr. Torvalds</comment>


How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Blockchain Developer in 2018? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-hire-a-blockchain-developer-in-2018-salary-overview-and-hiring-trends-908488615142?ref=youteam <comment><USER2> Argh. These folks emailed me by trying to guess my email address with a link here. Here's the text of the email:

\---

Hi John,

Greetings from Anton, CEO and co-founder at YouTeam, a marketplace for hiring offshore development talent.

Lately, we've been researching the topic everyone wants to know more about but fears to ask: salaries in blockchain. Did you know that according to public sources the average blockchain developer salary in the US equals $95,545? Would you agree with this or do you think it is actually way higher? We researched the salaries in the most popular cities in the US and right now discussing them on Hacker News.

Help us gather fresh opinions, find more reliable sources and better data!

Join the conversation here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403348](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17403348)

Best, Anton Mishchenko CEO and Co-founder of YouTeam

+44 20 3868 7878 I firstname.lastname@example.com 800 West El Camino Real, Suite 180, Mountain View, California, 94040, USA

\---

<comment><USER3> I got the same email. I flagged this article.

<comment><USER4> My sincere apologies - this was a result of a miscommunication inside our team. Happy to elaborate if you care to hear more. We are very much aware of the HN community standards. Won't happen again - promise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi guys, I'm Anton, co-founder of YouTeam and Cryptohire. Happy to answer any questions about the findings I've presented in our article.

I would love to have a discussion with startup founders about salaries in blockchain. We were actually quite surprised with the data we gathered from public sources. I expected the salary range to be way higher. But then again - nobody, sort of, talks about this publicly.

I'd really appreciate if you can point us in the direction where we can gather more data because it's just the beginning of our more extensive research. Something else I would love to discuss is whether you look for in-house blockchain developers or do you usually hire remotely?

Feel free to join the conversation :)

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the data in this article, most companies prefer hiring permanent in-house blockchain specialists and one of the reason is the issue of sensitive data.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I'm quite sure that with the time remote teams will become a common type of employment within software industry and blockchain in particular. Today many companies such as Zapier, Trello, InVision and many others manage distributed teams and they prove that although remote work has some disadvantages, it offers way more opportunities, e.g. an access to a wide talent pool. I believe the same goes for blockchain companies.

<comment><USER5> What is going on in this discussion thread? You both work for the same company.

<comment><USER6> The apologies are also funny, there are multiple versions by the same person but they all differ in the exact reasons about what happened. I wouldn't touch this company with a 10' pole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As other comments note, this submission was spammed.

The better question is how did they get a list of emails of HN users (w/ first names)?

<comment><USER7> Everyone who has complained in this thread has contact info in their HN bio.</comment></comment>


Samsung spins off startup making fake windows that generate artificial sunlight - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/18/21262050/samsung-startup-artificial-window-sunlight-sunnyfive-c-labs <comment><AUTHOR> A question for someone in Iceland and other Nordic countries would you guys be interested in something like this.</comment>


Performance of Rust and Dart in Sudoku Solving - <AUTHOR> http://attractivechaos.wordpress.com/2013/04/06/performance-of-rust-and-dart-in-sudoku-solving/

<comment><USER2> A small personal peeve: it doesn't make sense to say that Sudoku is NP-hard, as the linked post does (or NP-complete). First of all, this benchmark (as far as I can tell) uses only traditional 9x9 puzzles, of which there is a finite number. Problems with a finite input space are trivial from the point of view of complexity theory; in order to talk about any kind of completeness or hardness results, you need to generalize Sudoku by defining NxN problems in some way.

Moreover, once you define NxN Sudoku (the generalization is easy), you need to pick the problem for which you want to prove a hardness result. The decision problem is typically defined as "given an instance of a problem, determine if there is a solution". For Sudoku, you would need to decide if a partial grid can be completed to a full grid, i.e. if the given puzzle is solvable. This has been proven to be NP-complete. However, this is not how the puzzle is usually done, including in this benchmark: you are given a puzzle which is _known_ to have a solution, and the solution is _known_ to be unique. You then need to find the solution. It's been shown that such a Sudoku problem is equivalent to the unambiguous satisfiability problem (given a logical formula which has a unique variable assignment that satisfies it, find that assignment). Now the unambiguous satisfiability problem is not known to be NP- complete when phrased as a decision problem.

Anyway, don't just throw around terms like "NP-hard". :)

EDIT: edited "unique satisfiability" to "unambiguous satisfiability". I believe this is the correct terminology for the "promise" version of the problem which I described, and to which Sudoku is equivalent. (The unique satisfiability problem is "decide if a logical formula has exactly one solution", where you are not told if it has more than one, none, or just one).

<comment><USER3> Finding and understanding computational algorithms is part of my daily work. I know what time complexity means. By saying NP-hard, I mean an NxN sudoku cannot be solved in time polynomial to N.

Most sophisticated sudoku solving algorithms, including mine, do not assume the grid has a solution or one solution. They test and give all possible solutions. I am really trying to solve an NPC problem.

That said, your comment still tells me something I do not know - you seems to say that given a sudoku that is known to have one solution, there may be polynomial algorithms. This reminds me of someone who left a comment in my blog, saying that if the solution is unique, at each step there are at most two choices with the exact cover matrix. He couldn't prove that, but his program run happily on tens of thousands of Sudokus without problems. This does not necessarily solve sudoku in polynomial time, but may make solvers faster for unique sudokus.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I have no problem with that if it's viewed as an NxN problem. I do have a slight tic about this since I've heard "NP-hard" misused so often, including by one guy at a former workplace whose program needed to test all 6 permutations of something-or-other to discover the optimum one, and that was "NP-complete", you see.

About the complexity of Sudoku which is known to have a unique solution: I didn't say there is a polynomial algorithm for it. It's equivalent to the Unambiguous SAT problem, and Valiant and Vazirani proved that it's in some sense almost as hard as the SAT problem itself. You can't call it NP-complete (because that's not known), but if there is a polynomial algorithm for it, then there is a _probabilistic_ polynomial algorithm for every problem in NP; and since you can run a probabilistic algorithm as many times as you want and get independent results, you'd be able to solve every decision problem in NP with immense certainty (although less than 1).

About efficient algorithms for Sudoku, I think that the crux here is average case complexity (defined in some way over the sort of samples you are using). It's not clear to me that average case complexity for Sudoku is high, at least for the kind of puzzles we know how to generate. Certainly solvers based on backtracking seem to handle them very well. It's very hard to prove results about that, though. In any case, if someone has a polynomial time algorithm for Unambiguous SAT, or something equivalent to it, that would pretty amazing (but I doubt it - the average time might be very good, though).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for these info. I appreciate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I added some optimizations to the Rust compiler on my branch, added inlining attributes to match the C version, removed I/O (we have performance problems there that are under active development) and reduced the integer sizes to 32 bit to match the C version more closely (see [1]) and got the time down to within 50%:

C version: 0m1.305s

Rust version: 0m1.871s

I think the remaining time may be attributed to the fact that you used smaller integer widths for the various internal arrays in the C version and larger integer widths in the Rust version. Remember that Rust `int` types are the size of a register (like Go 1.1), so they're 64 bit on x86-64. You can use `i8`, `i16`, etc. for smaller integer widths.

Bounds checks may also have some effect; we should add methods to allow them to be avoided.

Finally, thanks for trying out Rust. Do you mind if we add this benchmark to our test suite?

Edit: Updated the gist to use smaller integer widths, like the C version. Now Rust is within 33% of the C version:

C version: 0m1.205s

Rust version: 0m1.613s

[1]: <https://gist.github.com/pcwalton/5327090>

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm really excited by Rust because it seems to be one of the most sensible language designs I've seen in a while. Go is nice but has some pretty odd syntax in places. I'm just waiting on Rust to hit 1.0 before I start playing with it more seriously.

<comment><USER6> You're complaining about Go syntax, which is one of the most readable languages out there but you like rust which looks like line noise?[1]

Sometimes I have a hard time convincing myself people don't post troll comments on HN.

[1][https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libsyntax/pa...](https://github.com/mozilla/rust/blob/master/src/libsyntax/parse/lexer.rs)

<comment><USER7> > _You're complaining about Go syntax, which is one of the most readable > languages out there but you like rust which looks like line noise? Sometimes > I have a hard time convincing myself people don't post troll comments on > HN._

And then, as an example of "bad Rust syntax" you link to the "lexer.rs"?

As if a lexer in any language is a good example of it's everyday syntax?

How about the very first example they give:

<http://www.rust-lang.org/>

> _My first thought was that it looked like CSS o.O_

Because the top part of the source he linked to has just struct definitions, which is what CSS was designed like anyway. Would struct definitions in most common languages, like modern C or Go look any different? (including an {} object definition in JS)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My results with newer versions of gcc and go:

gcc 4.7.2 o3 0.765s

java openjdk 7 1.066s

java openjdk 6 1.118s

go 1.1b 1.653s

rust 0.6 opt 3 1.659s

go 1.0.2 2.127s

dart 0.4.4.4 2.384s

pypy PyPy 1.9.0 5.094s

pypy PyPy 2.0b 5.319s

(Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3520M CPU @ 2.90GHz)

Edit: Added java

<comment><USER9> It looks like Go 1.1 might be faster than Java. That might help convince enterprise developers to adopt it.

<comment><USER10> No way would a microbenchmark ever change any responsible person's mind about tooling. There are a lot of reasons (some of them nearly respectable) to use Java; "it's faster than <X>" isn't one of them.

<comment><USER11> Don't be silly. Java is extensively used for speed. It is an extremely fast language with a few caveats (such as startup/warmup time).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Better stats than time using Linux perf utility. Looks like if you can exclude Java's startup time they are all pretty much very competitive. Clang SVN wins and Go 1.1 native build beats gccgo-4.8. Hmm.

* java version "1.7.0_17" - 485,284,671 cycles, 0.133074106 (0.0577s excl. startup) seconds time elapsed, 3.64% of all branches missed

* clang svn -O2 - 49,227,286 cycles, 0.029045632 seconds time elapsed, 6.70% of all branches missed

* gcc-4.8 -O2 -flto - 56,989,391 cycles, 0.029750578 seconds time elapsed, 6.48% of all branches missed

* gccgo-4.8 -O2 -flto - 114,583,934 cycles, 0.061428897 seconds time elapsed, 2.96% of all branches missed

* Go 1.1 Beta - 109,278,081 cycles, 0.048572937 seconds time elapsed, 2.62% of all branches missed

<comment><USER13> Why are you using -O2 instead of -O3?

<comment><USER12> -O2 seems to be the most commonly used optimization level. That's what most of the distro software and the kernel etc uses. In the past except for maybe a handful things, O3 was an overkill. (O3/Ofast remind me of my Gentoo days! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm really excited about Rust's performance here, considering how young the compiler and its runtime are. It has to get much faster but that seems likely to be possible.

</comment><comment><USER15> Since asm.js is also flavour of the month and not a million miles away from Rust and Dart in terms of target application, would be great to see this added.

<comment><USER16> Results on my machine, normalized to C

Native (C): 1.00 Firefox/SpiderMonkey: 1.38 Chrome/v8: 1.97

Firefox and Chrome are running on asm.js code from compiling the C source.

edit: link: <https://gist.github.com/kripken/5327216#file-sudoku-asm-js>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've tried it with go tip and go 1.0.

T(go tip) / T(go 1.0.3) = 0.8

Thus one might expect go to take third place after clang and gcc. But keep in mind that e.g. java isn't the newest version either...

<comment><USER18> Just tried it myself with the C version and with 1.0.3,

      C:  ./a.out < sudoku.txt      0.07s user 0.00s system 94% cpu 0.077 total
      Go: ./sudoku_v1 < sudoku.txt  0.06s user 0.01s system 88% cpu 0.079 total

Which seems a bit interesting...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Man, PyPy got destroyed, let alone CPython! As a Python lover, that's pretty disheartening. I'm not an expert in many of these languages, but it would seem as though it should be possible to build a Python interpreter as fast as V8, even without using Numpy to accelerate the math. Anybody have any thoughts as to why PyPy is such a poor performer here?

<comment><USER20> I think LuaJIT is the outlier, not python. All other implementations got lots of resources to make them fast, except for LuaJIT.

<comment><AUTHOR> PyPy simply isn't at the same level as V8 and LuaJIT yet.

V8 is a professional, full-time project employing some of the best programmers money can buy. And LuaJIT.. well LuaJIT is written by a fucking genius 10x programmer. Let me quote him:

" The reason why X is slow, is because X's implementation is slow, unoptimized or untuned. Language design just influences how hard it is to make up for it. There are no excuses. " Source: <http://www.reddit.com/user/mikemike> (that's his reddit account)

Python (and Ruby for that matter) could reach a comparable performance level if people with the necessary skills invested the necessary amount of effort.

<comment><USER20> Indeed, that's what I meant, even though my phrasing was unclear. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Java 1.6 is more than 6 years old now too. I half expected to see a Turbo Pascal 4 benchmark mixed in there before I realized I was joking.

</comment><comment><USER22> Update the Go example to use 1.1 :D

<comment><USER23> It's been just 2 days since go1.1beta1 was released, the other language implementations seem more out-of-date than that.

<comment><USER24> There are more low-hanging performance fruits in the immature languages.

That said, of course all should be up to date.

<comment><USER23> See danieldk's comment -- <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5502984>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Obligatory programming language shootout link: <http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/>

<comment><USER23> The project name changed 6 years ago.

"The Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 once again pushed gun violence into the media headlines. There was no wish to be associated with or to trivialise the slaughter behind the phrase shootout so the project was renamed back on 20th April 2007 - The Computer Language Benchmarks Game."

[http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/dont-jump-to- conclus...](http://benchmarksgame.alioth.debian.org/dont-jump-to- conclusions.php#history)

<comment><USER25> That is ridiculous.

<comment><USER23> What is ridiculous? Understanding what a shootout is?

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

<comment><USER25> Changing the name of a __programming competition __to not cause some kind of __offence __is ridiculous in my book.

I understand what a shootout is. Do you understand what a programming competition is? I'll give you a clue, it does not involve murder nor does it advocate gun crime. Anyone that can construe a bad message from a programming competition called a 'shootout' is as bad as feminists claiming sciences lack of progress in the field of fluid mechanics is sexism.

This kind of behaviour only encourages the ridiculous "politically correct" world we live in today.

<comment><USER23> > Do you understand what a programming competition is?

Is the benchmarks game listed somewhere as a programming competition?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_programming#Notable...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_programming#Notable_Competitions)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It would be nice to see a Nimrod benchmark.</comment>