Ask YC: Favorite blogs? - <AUTHOR> I checked searchyc - doesn't look like there's ever been a discussion about this! What blogs do you love? Not even what blogs do you think are best, what ones do you love reading?
My favorites: The Big Contrarian (http://www.bigcontrarian.com/), which has incredible essays (one of the best is on something like the third-to-last page), All of Andy Baio's blog posts and links (http://waxy.org/), Daring Fireball (http://daringfireball.net) - which I started reading before I was a Mac user, and which got me into both Apple stuff and typography, so perhaps there's a bias - and Shawn Blanc writes excellent reviews of software he loves (http://shawnblanc.net/).
What about you? Which blogs really get you going? <comment><USER2> Here are a few previous discussions:

Who would you pay to read? <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=166607>

The Best Blogs You're Not Reading <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=128762>

</comment><comment><USER3> La Tartine Gourmande <http://www.latartinegourmande.com> One of the best food blogs ever with awesome photography. It helps to have non-tech stuff sometimes :)

<comment><AUTHOR> What an absolutely lovely blog! Thanks so much for pointing this one out.

<comment><USER3> The photography is just amazing, its like food porn. Apparently she's making a cookbook, which should be pretty sweet. I can't wait to make some of the more involved stuff when I get out of my tiny NYC apartment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Seth Godin's Blog - <http://sethgodin.typepad.com/>

Mark Cuban - <http://BlogMaverick.com>

Paul Graham - <http://PaulGraham.com>

Gary Vee - <http://garyvaynerchuk.com/>

538 - <http://FiveThirtyEight.com> fascinating

Freakonomics - <http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/> as above

ZenHabits - <http://zenhabits.net> I met him in person and Leo is as genuine as they come

My Life In A Cube - <http://www.mylifeinacube.com/> Great comic

And like, hundreds more ;)

Also the best place to find stuff I like is my StumbleUpon RSS feed at <http://tr.im/sidsu>

I think it is all pretty spiffy stuff myself. And of course, my blog is at <http://sidsavara.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> I like the following:

Hack a day - hackaday.com

Overcomig Bias - overcomingbias.com

3quarksdaily - 3quarksdaily.com

make magazine - makezine.com

developing intelligence - <http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/>

schneier on security - schneier.com/blog/

... and a few other ones that are slipping my mind. Will update if I remember.

<comment><USER6> hey, thanks for the plug of DI...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only blog I really read: <http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/> (interesting discussion of game theory that is accessible to non-game-theorests)

I also check <http://startupnorth.ca/> from time to time to keep up on what's happening in Canada.

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/195689/what-developer- blo...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/195689/what-developer-blogs-would- you-recommend-reading)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78955/what-are-the- best-p...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78955/what-are-the-best- programming-and-development-related-blogs)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/188991/which- programming-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/188991/which-programming- blog-entry-opened-your-eyes-and-made-you-do-something-differe)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/151974/c-blogs-that- you-r...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/151974/c-blogs-that-you- regularly-follow)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/249044/best-non- microsoft...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/249044/best-non-microsoftnet- development-blogs)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=380236>

</comment><comment><USER9> <http://www.makezine.com>

<http://www.deutsche-startups.de> \- German Techcrunch

<http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/> \- for creative inspiration

<http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/> \- watch a new startup in the making

<http://www.codinghorror.com>

<http://www.hackaday.com>

<http://www.lifehacker.com>

<http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/>

<http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com> and <http://www.getrichslowly.com> \- for personal finance

Other than that I pretty much rely on HN to filter interesting stuff ;)

</comment><comment><USER10> Linus Torvald's Blog: <http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/>

Paul Graham Essays: <http://www.paulgraham.com/>

Coding Horror: <http://www.codinghorror.com>

JoelOnSoftware: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com>

Bryan Cantrill's Blog: <http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/>

Rich Burridge's Blog: <http://blogs.sun.com/richb/>

</comment><comment><USER11> Merlin Mann - <http://43folders.com> \- creativity, productivity A List Apart - <http://www.alistapart.com/> \- html, css, webdesign Kottke - <http://kottke.org> \- cool links Subtraction - <http://www.substraction.com> \- print design, web design

Some things that aren't blog but I Think provide great things and have rss feeds

<http://delicious.com/network/tikva> <http://delicious.com/cshirky> <http://ffffound.com/>

I read over 100 blogs, not all are in the super duper cool level, but I share what I think is the best stuff using my google reader @

<http://www.google.com/reader/shared/06434253323852871046>

</comment><comment><USER12> www.terrytao.wordpress.com is a blog I like to follow, really nice research level expositional writing on a wide variety of fascinating and nontrivial math. Whats especial impressive (aside from the field's medal) is that the first two years of his blog are being converted into expositional texts to be published by the American Mathematical Society.

</comment><comment><USER13> Harder the me just listing them, but you can take a look through my Google Reader shared items:

<http://www.google.com/reader/shared/10530692481246922106>

The most frequent ones are:

* Schneier on Security ( <http://www.schneier.com/blog/> )

* Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science ( <http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/blog/> )

I also follow a bunch of significant python people and the artima weblogs.

</comment><comment><USER14> Most of my favorites are startup related or at least in the tech industry.

<http://mashable.com> <http://centernetworks.com> <http://scalableintimacy.com/> <http://chrisbrogan.com> <http://xconomy.com> <http://dondodge.typepad.com/>

</comment><comment><USER15> I was sat on the bus this morning thinking of asking this exact question. I have a big list of blogs I read but they're mostly personal, and I need to expand my geeky reading list.

Anyway, as I am looking for geek/code/software blogs I have none of those to share, but think there's quite a few of you here would enjoy Chairman Bill's blog ( <http://ttocb.blogspot.com/> ) - strong British humour throughout.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm in college so I really like Cal Newport's blog. He writes about time management, and to succeed at college without stressing yourself out. For instance, he mentions that you should ignore your g.p.a. . He talks about finding a bunch of citations from his professors his senior year, because he never looked at the letter with his g.p.a. Link: <http://calnewport.com/blog>

</comment><comment><USER17> Here are a few that I don't think have been mentioned yet:

The Cooper Journal <http://www.cooper.com/journal/>

Google Testing Blog <http://googletesting.blogspot.com/>

Knowing and Doing <http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/>

</comment><comment><USER18> I put together a list of hundreds of blogs written by successful entrepreneurs, executives, investors, venture capitalists and other top people:

<http://www.bigwinner.org/successful-people/>

I don't read them all regularly, but I love getting advice and information from successful people.

</comment><comment><USER19> I enjoy random blogs (yay for link agregation sites), but MJD and Steve Yegge continually write content worth reading:

MJD: <http://blog.plover.com/>

Yegge: <http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER20> I have these guys's blogs posted under "Software Development A-list" in my RSS reader:

Steve Yegge, Joel Spolsky,Jeff Atwood (Coding Horror), Martin Fowler, Ted Neward, Andy Hunt, Steve McConnell (10x Software Development), Michael Feathers,Paul Graham

</comment><comment><USER21> The Last Psychiatrist - <http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/> Yegge - <http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER22> Unqualified Reservations.

There are plenty of political crackpots on the internet, but how many condemn the American Revolution and support the Jacobite cause? How many go back to actually read Tory papers from the 18th century and Confederate papers from the 19th? Have you ever read the Tories' side? Chances are you haven't. Chances are you've been taught that America is wholesome and awesome and good and apple pie.

That's why UR is awesome. I love writing that changes my perspective on the world.

Edit: Here's a nice fisking of the Declaration of Independence from 1776:

[http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://oll.libertyfund.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1130&Itemid=264)

Some quotes with Moldbug's commentary:

" The last time I had the honour of being in your Lordship's company, you observed that you were utterly at a loss as to what facts many parts of the Declaration of Independence published by the Philadelphia Congress referred..."

Moldbug: In other words: these Congress people are so whack-a-doodle-doo, half the time your Lordship can't even tell what they're talking about. Presumably "your Lordship" is Lord Germain. Dear reader, how does your own knowledge of the Declaration compare to Lord Germain's? Weren't you amused, for instance, to learn that

" I know of no new offices erected in America in the present reign, except those of the Commissioners of the Customs and their dependents. Five Commissioners were appointed, and four Surveyors General dismissed; perhaps fifteen to twenty clerks and under officers were necessary for this board more than the Surveyors had occasion for before: Land and tide waiters, weighers, &c. were known officers before; the Surveyors used to encrease or lessen the number as the King's service required, and the Commissioners have done no more. Thirty or forty additional officers in the whole Continent, are the Swarms which eat out the substance of the boasted number of three millions of people."

Moldbug: or, most intriguingly, that

" The first in order, He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good; is of so general a nature, that it is not possible to conjecture to what laws or to what Colonies it refers. I remember no laws which any Colony has been restrained from passing, so as to cause any complaint of grievance, except those for issuing a fraudulent paper currency, and making it a legal tender; but this is a restraint which for many years past has been laid on Assemblies by an act of Parliament, since which such laws cannot have been offered to the King for his allowance. I therefore believe this to be a general charge, without any particulars to support it; fit enough to be placed at the head of a list of imaginary grievances."

</comment><comment><USER23> My first stop of the day is non-tech: Glen Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer turned political pundit.

<http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/>

</comment><comment><USER24> The French Laundry at home <http://carolcookskeller.blogspot.com/>

She finished up in October, but it is still one of my favorite blogs.

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://www.barstoolsports.com>, besides the usual techcrunch, gigaom, readwriteweb, go2web20, etc.

</comment><comment><USER26> makezine.com

codinghorror.com

iwillteachyoutoberich.com

joestump.net

freelanceswitch.com

zenhabits.net

<comment><USER27> I'll second iwillteachyoutoberich, I've been reading that blog for a few years now and Ramit has a style that is very accessible to a lot of people. Great blog.

<comment><USER28> i recommend it too, but only cause ramit's my brother :)

<comment><USER29> Wow -- this is so cool. Thanks, guys. (I'm the author of <http://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com.>)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Carl Zimmer, biology: <http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/>

</comment><comment><USER31> I use a slinkset as my RSS reader. It's at <http://andrew.slinkset.com/>

</comment><comment><USER32> <http://friendfeed.com/brlewis/likes?service=blog>

</comment><comment><USER33> joelonsoftware <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/>

</comment><comment><USER34> gapingvoid.com, especially "How to be creative" bill clementson's lispy blog

</comment><comment><USER35> good coding music: <http://www.dancefloormayhem.com/>; <http://noiseporn.com>

</comment><comment><USER36> No FlowingData love?</comment>


The Architecture of Mailinator (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2007/01/architecture-of-mailinator.html <comment><USER2> Surprised to see this here now after 11 years.

Needless to say, this is incredibly out of date. Mailinator now runs across several servers with a real-time websocket system tied to Redis channels for incoming emails. The multiple server system is more for fault-tolerance than scaling issues.

The Websocket-to-redis connection allows incoming emails to be available the instant they arrive (fully) at Mailinator. Instantly - no polling front-end or otherwise. Public email storage is still in-memory with a system that chunks emails into common parts and reuses them. A reference counting garbage collector cleans them up once no email in the system is still using that part. I tried compression a million different ways but nothing beat reusing parts of emails.

[http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-mailinator- compre...](http://mailinator.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-mailinator-compresses- email-by-90.html)

The 2007 article is a valid picture of things then, but the system has come a long, long way since that time.

<comment><USER3> Hi! I run a "copycat" site that perhaps you may be referring to in that post, GuerrillaMail.com (well, actually, I didn't copy it myself, but acquired it from another guy many years back) and also been using Redis to store all incoming mail in memory. RAM is cheap these days and you can find decently priced servers with >= 128GB easy. Haven't moved over to websockets or "chunking" / deduplication yet, but architecture and UI needs an update in that direction to make it more instant. Thanks for some ideas ;-)

Actually, like you, I've also hand-rolled most of it myself, replacing the previous guy's architecture. It's been a lot of fun. No frameworks, no bootstrap, just a few dependencies here and there. Started with PHP, but now prefer to use Go for anything new. Also hand-rolled the SMTP server which turned in to a project on its own, [https://github.com/flashmob/go- guerrilla](https://github.com/flashmob/go-guerrilla)

<comment><USER4> Is guerrillamail.com supposed to be displaying just a "Welcome to nginx" page?

Screenshot on the left: [https://nat64check.ipv6-lab.net/v6score/measurement-30830/](https://nat64check.ipv6-lab.net/v6score/measurement-30830/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Some related previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3617074](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3617074) 2012

And a blog post by me in reply to those comments, which is how I remembered it :) [https://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18065079081/cogs...](https://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/18065079081/cogs- bad)

<comment><USER6> Even though Paul says that the service now runs on multiple nodes, I think the general idea of your post is even more important than 10 years ago.

(I miss blogs..)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very useful service that I have used for many years. However, in the updated version of Mailinator I can't find the "Alternate Inbox Name" anymore. Do anyone know why this function was removed?

<comment><USER8> It still shows alternate domains for me on the front page, or am I misunderstanding what you are looking for?

<comment><USER7> Previously, if you created the inbox e.g. firstname.lastname@example.com an "Alternate Inbox" name would be generated e.g. email@example.com. You could hand out this address and the mail would still end up at email@example.com. This would make the inbox a little more private.

<comment><USER9> A relatively unique name coupled with an alternate domain seems like it would solve roughly the same problem, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Before I used mailinator I was using the + addressing feature at google. I just did username+site@ . The thing I found (at least back a fairly long time ago) - a lot of folks you don't even think DO in fact sell your emails or get bought and sell your email, or maybe it's their order processing or shopping cart software. I couldn't fully figure it out.

It seems to matter a lot less now. I assume my email is out there, but google does a remarkable job filtering my inbox (paying customer if that makes a difference). And I've added DMARC / SPF / DKIM as well to my outbounds (went from thousands of forged outbound to basically none so presumably spammers are also watching some of these signals for whatever reason).

I always loved how fast mailinator was, and once I had that for all those random quick orders I used it. Now I've just started using amazon for just about everything - so less of a need for the mailinator emails.

<comment><USER11> If you use DMARC, your domain is less interesting for spammers, because lots of providers will now bounce the emails they send using your domain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The AgingHashmap is basically a rate limiting device. Nowadays, Guava provides something like this "out of the box".

Oh, and thanks for Mailinator.

</comment><comment><USER13> I must say I'm surprised a Java application could handle 2.5M emails/day (29/second) in less than 1 GB of RAM.

<comment><USER14> Why?

Would it surprise you to learn that many of the worlds financial markets run on a handful of Java servers? Message rates of thousands of messages per server is not uncommon.

Java is very fast. Very weird people in 2018 think it is not.

<comment><USER15> I think one of the reasons people are startled by the RAM usage figures here is that a Spring Boot app with a bunch of extra jars/"starters" added to it idles at ~500-600MB without any load at all. And can take 30-60 seconds from "java -jar..." to being able to successfully handle its first inbound HTTP request.

<comment><USER14> Well, idle memory usage is not a super useful metric to measure for an app that uses a GC. And in fact the comment was about speed... speed and memory usage can often have inverse relations (think caches)

Startup time is not super useful when using a framework with 200,000 lines of code. Try creating a webserver using Java + a servlet, you will be serving requests in < .5 seconds on a modern machine...

<comment><USER15> Oh, don't get me wrong, I totally agree. You can definitely create lean & mean stuff in Java, it just doesn't seem to generally be the Culture of Java.

And while idle memory usage isn't an amazing metric, it's still pretty indicative of bloat. For us, in the current state of things, memory usage is what determines our cloud costs. Setting heap maximums and things seems to somewhat work, although the Spring apps with a max heap set to 512MB still seem to be able to overrun their cgroup max memory of 1GB. There's the new experimental options to have the JVM look at its cgroup limits and manage memory based on that, but due to reasons we don't have a new enough JVM yet.

For me and my tastes, Go's pretty tough to beat in the overall productivity/efficiency/reliability set of tradeoffs. I fully admit that that's a taste thing. It's not even that it's amazing at any particular thing, it's actually not really that amazing at all. It just doesn't have anything that particularly annoys me. And the community is awesome: they really don't do the 200kloc framework stuff; the attitude is generally "why do you need all that?" and I agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is there a container/vm out there that's ready to serve up a private Mailinator-type instance that you can just point a domain to?

<comment><USER17> I'm working on something similar but it's still a work in progress. And it's not quite point a domain to it and your done type setup just yet. It takes advantage of mailgun and uses webhooks rather than hosting an email server yourself. [https://github.com/haydenwoodhead/burner.kiwi](https://github.com/haydenwoodhead/burner.kiwi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> (2007)

<comment><USER19> Thanks, updated!</comment></comment>


A Brief History of Graphics in Video Games [video] - <AUTHOR> http://floobynooby.blogspot.com/2014/12/a-brief-history-of-graphics-in-video.html <comment><USER2> blogspam, here is the link to the compiled video from the author's youtube page: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyjyWUrHsFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyjyWUrHsFc)

45 minutes, very interesting and high production value.</comment>


General purpose quantum computing closer to reality with Microsoft breakthroughs - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/features/new-microsoft-breakthroughs-general-purpose-quantum-computing-moves-closer-reality/ <comment><USER2> > Craig Mundie, who as Microsoft's chief research and strategy officer first > backed Freedman's push into quantum computing a dozen years ago, noted that > if a quantum computer could hypothetically process a training algorithm for > the Cortana digital assistant in a day rather than a month, that would mark > a profound improvement in AI advances.

I didn't think that quantum computing would help with DNN or parallel processing...what gives?

<comment><USER3> One of the people mentioned in the article, Svore, works at the QuArC group for MS and has worked on quantum machine learning. (QuArC generally works on how to actually design and use quantum computers.)

For example: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.3489.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.3489.pdf)

From my (shallow) understanding, you can get improvements by considering the space of possible states of your quantum system to be the space of weights for your model, and then annealing the quantum system (which is equivalent to optimizing the objective function). The quantum annealing is a (significant) improvement over other optimization methods... or something.

<comment><USER4> +1

<comment><USER4> looks like a quantum computer can train models better. Like, find gradients better or just find better gradients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What about the quantum programming language? Q#? The extension is .qb so i think not... What do you think?

<comment><USER4> The sample they showed did not look like any of the standard .NET languages, so I wonder if they are going with a standalone language. AFAIK most quantum programming languages are actually embedded into another language (C, Haskell, ML) so if they actually implemented a standalone language, that would be interesting. Not sure what the file extension means.

<comment><USER6> It looks like it was related to Liquid. Info here: [http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/](http://stationq.github.io/Liquid/)

That specific code sample looks like it was based on the Teleport sample: [https://github.com/StationQ/Liquid/blob/master/Samples/Telep...](https://github.com/StationQ/Liquid/blob/master/Samples/Teleport.fsx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here, saved you time on reading 3 pages of bloat.

> A new programming language that is designed for developers to create apps to > debug on quantum simulators today and run on an actual topological quantum > computer in the future.</comment>


HAVEN: World's most tricked out smart lock that attaches to the floor - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/havenlock/haven-the-stronger-smarter-home-lock?ref=nav_search

<comment><USER2> sick</comment>


Do developers often need to create prototypes for UX/UI designs? - <AUTHOR> As we know, prototypes are usually created by UX designers or product designers. But, in my company, the developers often do the job. Is it the case for you, my fellows? <comment><USER2> As a CTO in a small startup, sometimes I have to do all the work. I created UI/UX for my product and my engineers were also involved in it. I think you can't become good programmer without the knowledge of UI/UX.</comment>


An ethical website visitor session tracker is coming - <AUTHOR> https://reactflow.com/land.php?ref=09DD80E2 <comment><AUTHOR> As start, It does not use cookie for tracking, nor it track IP addresses. Furthermore, It mask all the texts of the page on client side while recording, so no sensitive information will be transmitted and there is no way to identify user who recording was performed on. See the sample: [https://imgur.com/a/tlnibjX](https://imgur.com/a/tlnibjX)

</comment><comment><USER2> How it can be ethical?

<comment><AUTHOR> See my comment above :)</comment></comment>


Single player horde mode locked to I7? - <AUTHOR> https://steamcommunity.com/app/342180/discussions/0/152391285458876458/?ctp=2 <comment><USER2> Apart from the obvious stupidity of tying game features to particular processor SKUs, I'm additionally baffled by the fact that no one was ever told about it. Like, if this was a scheme by Intel to sell more i7's, how was it supposed to work if no one knew the feature was there? Inexplicable.

"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!"

<comment><USER3> Well, unless your plan is actually to destroy the world, or in this case, make i7 owners slightly more entertained!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some extra info to save people digging through that whole thread:

* The game developers have since released the content for all CPUs

* The developers at reVive, which are normally focused on making the Vive work with Occulus exclusive titles, released a patch in under an hour to remove the restriction.

<comment><USER4> > The developers at reVive, which are normally focused on making the Vive work > with Occulus exclusive titles, released a patch in under an hour to remove > the restriction.

Good. I was about to say this seems like about the easiest thing in the world to crack given that the CPUs are otherwise almost entirely compatible, all that would be required is hooking the get processor function.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _I have two machines one an i5 4690 another an i7 6700 and have two vives, one(I7) has single player horde mode the other(I5) does not!_

I had to stop and think about the word "vives", heh. Of course I was not _expecting_ someone to describe his partners' gaming setup, but still tripped me up.

This seems like a weird thing to do, and perhaps even more so that it wasn't more clearly communicated. I don't follow this game at all, but there are clearly commenters who do who are surprised about being locked out.

</comment><comment><USER6> This situation, from the initial complaint through to the apparent resolution, is absurd and strange. There were no winners here (besides customers getting extra stuff on Intel's dime, I guess?).

That said, I think this is a time that the title can stand to be summarized. Something like "'Arizona Sunshine' game locks game modes to i7 CPUs only"? Probably could be better than that.

<comment><USER7> This seems like a pretty clear breakdown of HN's "original title" policy. The title here only makes sense in the context of a game-specific Steam forum, and provides no real information out of context.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Titanfall 2 won't launch on a Pentium CPU, but runs fine if you use a ExtremeInjector and a special dll that is floating around.

<comment><USER4> Amazing the things a quick hook can do, isn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One possibility is that there is some unoptimized code that depends on certain CPU features in the newer models, and that they're working to optimize it. One of their later comments says:

> We have recommended and still recommend using the Core i7 in order to > maintain a constant 90FPS with advanced physics.

There's also this:

> These surprise game modes were meant to be a reward for those players with > high-end VR systems who were looking for the most immersive experience > possible.

Does Intel own a stake in any VR companies? Did they bundle their game with any PC building companies? It could be that they made all their money on the bundles, not on the CPUs directly.

</comment><comment><USER10> Only slightly related, but reminded me of [http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html](http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html)

<comment><USER11> This was a great read! Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the end user POV it's a shitty thing to do, but most likely this stems from the developer making a deal with Intel. It takes a lot of resources and effort to deliver VR games with the quality and length that PC gamers have to come to expect, and the VR market is still tiny; at the end of the day you can't really blame VR developers for taking deals left and right, because it's the only way to subsidize development.

If every time something like this happens there's an internet outrage, what's gonna happen is that no one will subsidize shit (because why would you pay a developer if exclusivity or exclusive features are not on the table?), VR content development will stall as there won't be incentive for developers to spend months/years of work only to barely break even (if they get lucky), VR adoption will not go on, etc.

Something's gotta give, VR gamers need to cut developers some slack if VR is to flourish in the future, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

<comment><USER13> Yes, this is due to Intel participation. From their post on Steam forum:

</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>====

Vertigo Games [developer] 17 hours ago Single Player Horde Mode & Apocalyptic Mode

These are two game modes that we have not focused on previously.

Working with Intel allowed us to create even more content than we originally planned, including these modes and the physics systems in the game, making Arizona Sunshine one of the richest VR experiences possible. We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes, but they'll be available March 6, 2017 to everyone who owns the game.

Single Player Horde Mode is as you would expect, a single player experience in Horde Mode.

Apocalyptic Mode is the highest level of difficulty in the campaign. Its features include: • Only one weapon (handgun) • Very limited ammo • No checkpoints - you die and go back to the start of the game • One hit death

Completing this is tied to an achievement that will result in an award of a golden desert eagle pistol for use in multiplayer and future apocalyptic sessions. The gun will be added in a future update.

<comment><USER14> If you splurge and get a nice Xeon chip for your system guess you're likewise screwed.

"Sorry, you spent too much money on your Intel® powered VR system."

<comment><USER15> A xeon would be a poor choice for a gaming rig. More money for lower clock speed.

Edit: you guys can't seriously believe that a xeon is a good gaming CPU...

<comment><USER14> For those that do a lot of heavy 3D where you need cores, cores and more cores Xeon is a lot more cost effective than paying a crazy premium on 6 or 8 core i7 chips.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


EC2 Price Reductions – Reserved Instances and M4 Instances – AWS Blog - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/ec2-price-reductions-reserved-instances-m4-instances/ <comment><USER2> What impressed me the most is not the pricing reduce, but the __No Upfront Payment Option for 3 Year Standard RIs __. It 's really a cool offer! (Thanks to Google)

<comment><USER3> These are only for m class and above or does the lowly t class get some love?

<comment><USER2> Seems all classes(including t2) pricing are reduced. [https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved- instances/pricin...](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/reserved- instances/pricing/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> if they wan't more customers they should probably push lightsail to more availability zone's. currently that would attract more small-/mid-sized customers that don't need the flexibility.</comment>


The Economics of The Formula One Grand Prix of Monaco - <AUTHOR> http://smartasset.com/blog/news/the-economics-of-the-formula-one-grand-prix-of-monaco/

<comment><USER2> This article is a weird non-graphic infographic that turns a data table into prose. I suppose it's mildly interesting if you haven't seen these numbers before. From the title, I was hoping for an analysis behind the business economics.

If you're new to F1, the Monaco GP is this weekend and is considered by many to be the one to watch of the entire season (though I tend to like other circuits). Aside from the raw speed, fame, and fortune, the technology itself is a big draw for a lot of F1 fans. This site does a great job of analyzing the nonstop flow of new F1 tech: <http://scarbsf1.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Normally I'm very patient with new people posting on HackerNews, but this is almost ridiculous.

1) Your "PLEASE SIGN UP" full page flashover is so annoying. I don't know what to say other than I hate this :(.

2) The Infographic at the bottom is like a list of numbers with no real rhyme or reason (relative to the kinds of content we've come to expect from companies like priceonomics).

3) This is just a kind of lavish puff piece about how great Monaco is; there's not a lot of meat.

In short, I was actually hoping to learn a lot more about Monaco, but your harassing signup page and the content didn't work for me. Better luck next time, but please do try again because it seems like you want to produce good content. This kind of long-form stuff is exactly what you should be doing, just try to produce new insight instead of regurgitation and turn off the spam signup thingy when you post to HN.

<comment><USER4> Flashover, what's that? :)

By default I browse the Interwebs using Firefox and NoScript. HN is quite readable w/o Javascript. And I didn't see any flashover when I read the article, because I invariably view unknown random websites with Javascript disabled by default. NoScript is my sine qua non for browsing.

I'm _not_ saying you should use Firefox. I'm _not_ saying you should browse with Javascript off. To each his own. HOWEVER, if you have an easy way to rid yourself of some of the worst excesses of the web, then I think you've ceded at least some of the moral "high ground" by complaining rather than by simply using tools easily available to you.

<comment><USER3> I suppose that's true. That's really only one of my complaints though. I care much more about the content (or lack thereof) than I do about the annoying popup.

Point taken though :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, someone found a way to make the modal begging cup even more annoying! Congrats! Enjoy your bounce rate!

</comment><comment><USER6> I found this interesting but annoying to read, so I pasted it into jottit here: <http://www.jottit.com/fsar7>

<comment><USER7> Thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As one of the FB commenters on the article mentions, the ironic thing is Monaco is one of the worst races to watch, from a pure driving point of view. Lots of narrow turns, very little passing, next to no straightaways (unlike Hockenheim where you can really let loose).

<comment> k-mcgrady It depends on why you watch F1. If you want to see the drivers constantly on the edge, kissing barriers, and interesting strategies Monaco is unbeatable. If the rain hits it's usually spectacular. If you want to see cars go fast and overtake quite easily then thanks to DRS and KERS every other race is better. I like both aspects of racing but I find Monaco even more special now that overtaking is so common in other races (due to DRS).

<comment><USER9> > If the rain hits it's usually spectacular.

Every spring I wish it rains in Monaco. There are few things more spectacular than an formula car racing the streets of Monte Carlo in full wet conditions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is the first time I see someone using Fahrenheit degrees outside of 0-150 range. Do Americans usually use F for stuff like material limits etc?

<comment><USER11> I haven't come across temperatures that hot very often, but my assumption is that the average non-scientific US resident would use Fahrenheit for all temperatures, no matter what range, just because it is what they were most likely raised on.

Just out of curiosity, what would you suggest they use instead? Celsius? Kelvin?

<comment><USER12> Not the OP, but I'd say that for high temperatures it doesn't really matter if one uses Celsius or Kevin, and that's because 1 degree Celsius = 1 degree Kelvin. So, let's say that you have a reading of 800 Celsius, you just need to add ~ 270 to it if you want Kelvin. If I then get a second reading of 1200 Celsius I know for sure that it's 400 degrees higher compared to the first reading, no matter if I'm thinking Celsius or Kelvin.

For Fahrenheit things are not that straightforward

<comment><USER13> 1200-800=400 in Fahrenheit too, you know :p

<comment><USER12> Really? Ok, I learned something new today :) Of course, if it wasn't obvious enough enough I'm from Europe where Fahrenheit has always confused us.

<comment><USER13> Yeah :) They're both linear. What confuses people is that degrees F are both smaller than degrees C _and_ the 0-point is lower. They meet at -40 (so -40C == -40F) and from there, the F number changes faster than C, that's all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are some interesting prices here, but to get to the economics of the situation, I'd want to hear an economic rationale for car companies to participate, not just prices. It seems really expensive for them. I assume they're in it for the marketing? But would that money be better invested in Research & Development for their products on the road or for car commercials?

<comment><USER2> At a high level, the teams are largely their own companies that get money through sponsorships, and spend their money on developing cars. For companies like Mercedes-Benz and Red Bull Racing, it's a big advertising opportunity (and obviously a selling point for Mercedes-Benz sports cars). For teams like Williams and Force India, they're independent ventures.

Every car needs an engine, which may be developed internally or purchased from a supplier. Ferrari supplies engines for its own team (the "factory team"), but also sells engines to other teams like Toro Rosso and Sauber ("customer teams"). Engine development is extremely expensive, so amortizing the cost across several buyers makes sense. Smaller teams cannot afford to develop their own teams.

The best teams can afford to pay their own drivers lots of money, upwards of €20m/year. Some teams can only afford to pay €150k/year, and the drivers hope to prove themselves and move to a faster team after their contract is up (many top drivers came up this way). Some teams can't even afford that, and are willing to take "pay drivers," who pay the team to drive. They're not bad drivers, but they're not necessarily the best ones, either. Cutting loose a good paid driver for a worse pay driver is bad for the sport.

Participating in F1 has a unique marketing value to the right customer, and can't be replaced with just R&D or more commercials. I think it's fair to say that Ferrari wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they quit F1, as it's so much of their brand identity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The amusing thing is that the trophy given to the winning driver is the cheapest in the Formula 1 calendar. I remember hearing that it costs something like 700 euros, but I cannot find a citation now.

<comment><USER16> Seriously?

<comment><USER15> Yes, I'm not joking, I remember the commentator telling this on TV during the GP some years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sir Lewis? Eh?

<comment><USER8> He was awarded an MBE by the Queen after winning the F1 title a few years back

<comment><USER18> He'll have to wait a while longer for the knighthood.</comment></comment></comment>


I'm looking to become a Jr. ROR developer.  Any advice out there? - <AUTHOR>

What are the chances I can become Jr. ROR developer?  I am mid-career.  I have a CS degree but no programming experience.  My first 10 years experience is in IT (sys admin, unix, infosec, consulting) then followed by 10 years as a agency recruiter.  I am now learning ruby followed by rails.  I am currently learning the primer via Ruby Monk, 'Learn Ruby the Hard Way' and the Ruby course on Code Academy.  Then I'll dive into Michael Hartl's ROR tutorial.  Then I'll get into some advance ROR coding. <comment><USER2> The chances you will become a Jr. ROR developer are really high. The question is, what do you want to do with it?

ROR is a great entry into coding, and building applications, however Rails is really abstracted away from Ruby. You will eventually (likely) need to dig into Ruby, but that's completely fine. You can build a lot with Rails, and it's a lot of fun. I sometimes recommend ROR before digging into JS or a different language but that might just be me.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. having a CS degree and having worked with unix and vi, it's been pretty easy setting up the vm box and vagrant and following the primer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Where are you located?

Are you located anywhere near a Ruby on Rails or just Ruby Meetup group?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia.</comment></comment>


Drones over US to get weaponized – so far, non-lethally - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/news/us-domestic-drones-armed-090/ <comment><USER2> There's no such thing as a non-lethal weapon: there are only less lethal weapons.

Even a fist can be lethal, either by design or bad luck.

When you start using weapons, you start risking deaths.

That's not to say that all use of weapons is always morally, wrong, but it IS designed to deflate the idea that force can be used without risk.

A few years back Boston cops use a "non lethal" pepper ball, shot a student straight in the eye, penetrated her brain, and dropped her in a fraction of a second, stone dead.

[http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/1...](http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2004/10/22/postgame_police_projectile_kills_an_emerson_student/?page=full)

Police also kill people all the time using "non lethal" tasers. The firm manufacturing them and the police have a vested and shared interest in denying that any of these deaths were actually caused by the weapons; it is - apparently - sheerest coincidence that people die of heart attacks at the same time that they're hit with 50,000 volts.

<comment><USER3> That's a very broad definition. With enough effort and (bad) luck, almost _anything_ can be lethal. It then become convenient to differentiate things which are designed to kill (lethal weapons), things which are designed to incapacitate without killing (non-lethal weapons) and things not designed to do either (not weapons).

Your definition would place almost everything into one category: lethal weapons. And that isn't very useful.

<comment><USER4> Do there need to be shades of grey when we're talking about weaponizing drones? This just shouldn't happen. What's not useful is creating rhetorical space in which the acceptability of this technology is debatable.

The fact is, we need to scale down the militarization of police across the board, not debate how quickly or in what form advanced military technology should be given to the police.

<comment><USER5> Humans in the heat of the moment do stupid violent things. I would bet weaponized drones would cause less fatalities than in person officers. Make the decisions completely autonomously by computer and you will probably see even less mistakes. Plus, there is a huge class of crime, the inner city, where police do practically nothing currently. Drones might well stop gang violence.

The possibilities really become clear though internationally. If foreign governments, such as mexico, recruit drones, they might well solve their violence problems pretty quick.

<comment><USER6> This is a joke, right? Weaponized drones controlled by a fully automatic computer? Jesus, just try to make a computer that decides when it's safe to cross the street.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In twenty years or so, this could easily be widely available, just like machine guns today. Even if there was an explicit ban on the endproduct itself, the basic technology could be understood well enough to allow underground manufacturing. If true, this would allow anonymous murders and a complete breakdown of law and order. The more advanced miniature variants with face recognition software, might elude detection and jamming technologies. Popular officials might find it too dangerous just to go outside. This would provoke even more intrusive surveillance systems.

There seems to be a broader trend where our offensive technologies are moving much faster than our protective systems. At a state level, this has been handled by deterrence. Fortunately, for nuclear weapons, the necessary materials were rare enough for regulation to be possible. But deterrence wont work when these technologies become popularly available. Hopefully, there is some non-brutal solution that we can find for this problem.

<comment><USER8> I think you vastly over estimate the 'criminal underworld'. The DOD might be able to make miniature lethal drones using facial recognition software in 20 years. But, probably not. The idea that criminals will start mass producing such things cheaply is silly in your lifetime is just shy if ridiculous. Talking about building stuff is easy, but actually building stuff is _hard_.

PS: Problem #1 people don't look up that often. Problem #2 there are a lot of people walking around out there. And it just get's worse from there.

<comment><USER7> Well, I'd love to be wrong about this and hope that you are right. What worries me is that key parts of the technology, like the processor, sensors and software might be available cheaply due to their civilian uses. Manufacturing ability could well be scarce, but these weapons could pass through illicit distribution networks which today distribute machine guns and rocket launchers. I didn't fully understand your postscript, but regarding visibilty, I admit I dont know much here - for instance, how small of drone would be realistically possible for a non-state producer. But I dont see a clear knockdown argument, given that drones are used effectively today. Again, I hope you are right and that there are more technical obstacles out there.

<comment><USER9> The US will just ban PCs like it banned chemistry sets.

<comment><USER10> Cory Doctorow's talk "The coming war on general computation" is a very interesting take on that: <http://craphound.com/?p=3817>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just make sure you have your properly registered tracking chip charged and programmed with your destination (and route thereto, approved 24 hours in advance) and you will be fine. For your convenience, we will embed it for you.

Don't worry, we would never make you travel with papers. That's for a fascist state.

</comment><comment><USER6> The biggest gripe I have with weaponized drones is the disconnection between people and responsibility. When a policeman shoots somebody, the ultimate responsibility for the shot is clearly attached to him and there's little space for denial. When a drone harms somebody, the responsibility for the act is no longer obvious. The government can talk about security logs and similar precautions all night long, but there's always a way around that. Whenever something can harm humans on purpose, there should be another human directly attached to it.

<comment><USER12> These machines are remote controlled by humans, in this sense they are not different from conventional weapons.

<comment><USER6> "According to our security logs the machine was not under our operator's control at the incident time. An investigation is currently running to find the attacker who took control of the drone. We will make sure such thing won't happen again."

<comment><USER12> You are right. These hooligan hackers nowadays...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Predictable. And a few months ago when they said they were going to fly drones those who brought up weaponization were called insane conspiracy loons.

</comment><comment><USER10> Our reactions to the thought of armed drones firing on American citizens on American soil should not be very different from our reactions to using these against our enemies.

American politicians often said, after 911, that the attacks were "cowardly." I suppose that's because they were against unarmed citizens. But still, the attackers did it knowing they would die. Evil, yes. Cowardly? I don't see that.

On the other hand, I bet Al Qaeda gets lots of propaganda value out of our drone attacks. "Those cowardly Americans kill us without even risking their lives." And if a drone strike kills innocent people, that's quadruple propaganda points. If it even IS propaganda anymore...

</comment><comment><USER14> What happens when* private citizens can have access to this? In _Marrooned in Real Time_ , written 25 years ago, Vernor Vinge posits it would lead to the collapse of government and the rise of sovereignty of the individual. Is this likely? Vinge is a foremost visionary but does seem to have a libertarian bias.

Regardless, like biotech, I hope we do not stifle open development of tech that puts a lot of power for creating the dangerous in the hands of the individual even if though they have a great potential for good. It turns the use of such things into black magic. And if there is anything I have learned from Harry Potter and other fantasy, the kind of people who use Black magic have no scruples. Better would be to turn the same tech to architecting better defenses.

* When because with the ever increasing ease of hardware hacking, reprogrammable hardware and 3D printers; DIY versions of these are only a matter of time.

</comment><comment><USER15> >She explained that an officer operating an armed drone from afar would simply not have the same understanding of a situation that an officer on location would have.

Remoteness is double edged. You might have less immediate insight (if it could not pick up audio signals, for example and only relied on video) or did not have coordination with confederates on the ground, on the other hand, if the situation were to break out, there is less immediate threat and the "officer" would also feel less immediate threat to cause defensive or offensive reaction or action.

In other words, remoteness might allow the "officer" to maintain a cooler head in the "midst" of a melee and respond less impulsively (or reactively).

<comment><USER16> If the legal system works like it should, the officer behind the drone will be _required_ to maintain a cooler head since they are under no direct personal threat to their safety.

If the legal system works like it should.

<comment><USER9> "I only had grainy black and white footage, how could I have known that it was a candy bar not a grenade?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> May I be the first to say, what could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER18> If you ask people whether they want weaponized drones patrolling their country they'll say "of course not." If you ask the same people whether they want themselves and their families most effectively protected from violent criminals or terrorists, they'll say "of course!" I'm not saying either reaction is unreasonable.

I think this could be made tolerable but I have little confidence that it will be done in such a way.

It's currently very difficult to have full transparency when police engage a subject, but because a drone is very computerized, that changes. Imagine if every time a drone engaged a suspect any details surrounding the situation were automatically put on a public website, available to be scrutinized. It could actually increase both transparency and public safety.

Is that something police/govt would actually buy into? Probably not.

</comment><comment><USER19> Amazing...

All these people still think the technology doesn't exist...

This technology tree went:

DIY Garage Hackers>government>military>private sector>DIY Garage Hackers...

Its still a vicious circle.

They already have palm-sized(even smaller) quad-rotor drones that have offensive(lethal) capabilities.

All the people thinking this technology will be used for Right, and Wrong....Are completely correct.

It will be a game changer for sure.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's time for DIY anti-drone flak gun project on Kickstarter.

</comment><comment><USER21> Eh, DICE supposedly nerfed this in the last patch.

</comment><comment><USER22> 1984 here we come!

</comment><comment><USER23> > _Drones over US to get weaponized – so far, non-lethally_

Yep, that would be great for the next time the general population thinks the government/big corps pair gets too self-complacent and dictatorship like.

The next "Chicago '68" style event (or any of the blood soaked demonstrations/strikes/etc in the past) could be met with these things.

Essentially nulling this "right to bear arms" thing, which was supposed to mean the right for the people to be able to overthrow a government they thought illegitimate (and not the right to shoot some burglar).

</comment><comment><USER24> This entire article appears to be based off of the ramblings of one sheriff's deputy in Texas.

I've read that RT is not a trustworthy news source. This would appear to back that conclusion.</comment>


Treefinder license change in October 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://treefinder.de <comment><USER2> Never heard of this guy or his program, but Christ, what an asshole.

"In particular, I disagree with immigration policy. Immigration to my country harms me, it harms my family, it harms my people. Whoever invites or welcomes immigrants to Europe and Germany is my enemy. Immigration is the huge corporations' interest, not peoples' interest. I am not against helping refugees, but they would have to be kept strictly separated from us Europeans, for some limited time only until they return home, and not being integrated here as cheap workers and additional consumers. Immigration unnecessarily defers the collapse of capitalism, its final crisis. The earlier the system crashes, the more damage can be avoided. Possibly a civil war in Europe. Not to mention the loss of our European genetic and cultural heritage."</comment>


Lookout raises $19.5M for mobile security - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/22/four-million-users-strong-lookout-raises-19-5m-for-smartphone-security-software/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something we really need as the line between phone and "pocket portable computer" continues to blur. Permissions management for applications right now is a nightmare.

If Android, BlackBerry, and WinMo allow these type of security programs but iOS blocks / doesn't allow them this could be a bad situation for Apple in the corporate market. They are riding a huge tidal wave right now but it doesn't mean they can overplay the hand.</comment>


The Search for the Great Canadian Novel - <AUTHOR> https://thewalrus.ca/the-search-for-the-great-canadian-novel/ <comment><USER2> > Why is it that in over a century of writing—much of it explicitly obsessed > with questions of nationhood and identity—we have only a handful of novels > that come close to representing the full sweep of Canadian life?

Being from Northern Ontario, I'd say the question kinda answers itself if you simply follow it by asking: which Canada?

Although Canada tends to be viewed as a homogeneously multicultural society (we all have our ideas of what any given country is like), Canada is (pardon my language) fucking huge. To ask for a novel to capture "the full sweep of Canadian life" is like asking for an American novel to somehow captures the essence of American life spanning California, Florida, New York, Texas, Utah, etc etc etc. America is best understood as union of otherwise unique states (you could call it... a united states). Canada is similar.

While you might reasonably expect a novel to capture the essence of living in France in a certain period of time, or in Spain, or in Italy, you could not reasonably expect a novel to capture all of the European experience. It's folly. And yet in Canada, we could fit most of Europe inside any one of our provinces or territories.

Canada may be a unified political entity, but it's not a unified cultural entity. There is a world of difference between the experience of growing up in Québec versus growing up in Alberta -- a difference as great as what I imagine it would be like to grow up in Utah versus New York, or Germany versus Britain.

It's a foolish idea to try and capture "the Canadian experience" because that experience doesn't exist. It's not a thing. Except maybe that it gets pretty cold in the winter and hockey is fairly universally liked for some reason.

<comment><USER3> Fair criticism, but I think the author of the article does address your point:

"A Francophone biker in Lennoxville, a Cree lawyer in Manitoba, a Punjabi- speaking business owner on the Lower Mainland, and an anglophone trader on Bay Street may not share any basic ground of identity or culture, but all are, to varying degrees, united by practical bonds of jurisprudence, government, and economics. The novelist's job is to shed light on the brute fact of those binding forces, and that usually means paying close attention to the institutions and individuals responsible for the country's current state of affairs."

Personally, I would vote for something by Farley Mowat. ;)

<comment><USER4> That's actually not true, just look at how the Quebec media vs Ontario media report about the federal government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes (published in 1945) and The Watch That Ends > the Night (published in 1959) are valiant if flawed attempts to depict > Canada's struggle with its own identity in the middle years of the twentieth > century.

I'd say the characterization applied to other works also applies to MacLennan:

> These novels omnivorously took in cross-sections of society...

Even with the apparent confusion around Canadian identity depicted in literature, there are plenty of examples in the article where the cross- sections are well described.

I enjoyed the article nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER6> Margaret Atwood has written several non-sci-fi novels that would qualify, in my opinion, as Great Canadian Novels - e.g. Alias Grace or The Blind Assassin.

</comment><comment><USER7> Pierre Berton - The Mysterious North

I really enjoyed this historical novel. The guy had a way of telling the story that really pulled me in. I picked up the book at a book store in Edmonton years ago and liked it so much I loaned it out, never to see it again.

It was such a great book that I recently found it on AbeBooks and bought a replacement copy.

<comment><USER8> His Canadian histories are all excellent too and well worth reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Robertson Davies forever!

</comment><comment><USER4> Lucy Maud Montgomery</comment>


New Lisp Memory Management Technique (One Reference Only) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newlisp.org/MemoryManagement.html <comment><USER2> This is similar to AutoLisp which has only immutable cons cells and strings. There are no global referencing functions, like rplacd. args are locally bound, but without refcount bumping. It sucks a bit to copy everything, you cannot efficiently share big lists, but the benefits were much larger.</comment>


Deploy Virtual Demos with LabSlice - <AUTHOR> http://LabSlice.com LabSlice allows you to create demos stored in the cloud that you can easily share. Deploy either thick or thin client applications that your customers can load, tweak and play with in just a matter of minutes.
We extend the Amazon EC2 cloud to create a: * Self-service environment, so that your IT and Sales Engineers can easily create their own demos in the cloud. * Policy controlled lab, where each virtual machine is issued based on the size, type and lease duration restrictions that you specify. * Sharable cloud, where you can give your peers, customers and business partners access to cloud demos simply by sending an email.
We would love to hear feedback from ycombinator and any ideas for improving on the product and making it more useful to other startups. <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to hear feedback about this startup from the HN startup gurus...</comment>


Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3192186/ <comment><USER2> One consequence of defeating aging I haven't heard discussed is the tendency of society to become _very_ conservative.

Even if someone's mind regains the flexibility of a 20 year old, it's hard to see how the lessons of a lifetime wouldn't lead to some fairly fixed beliefs. If you can a population with only a trickle of actually young people, it seems like the rate of change could become very slow.

<comment><USER3> This is a very common trope, but it fails to address what might be the cause, rather than the mere correlation, of age-driven conservatism: imminent mortality. If you're 50 years in to an 80 year lifespan, it's more difficult to imagine starting over, with reduced vigor, to revamp your thinking and lifestyle. If there is essentially no increased risk of next-year mortality with age, and if we all have the stamina and energy of 20-year-olds, then there truly are no old dogs.

Also, I'd really like to hear this "tendency of society to become _very_ conservative" fleshed out. I _think_ you meant "as average age goes up," but I'm not sure why "society" gets brought into it. Aren't we pointing to a tendency of _individuals_ to become more conservative as they age?

<comment><USER4> That's a very interesting perspective! Any particular reads inspired it?

Though I think "imminent mortality" is not the only thing at the foundation of age-driven conservatism. I think there is also tendency to follow paths of least resistance (energy conservatism): learning/discovering new ways of doing things comes with more friction (if one does not enjoy the learning/wandering process).

EDIT: I just realized that the two points are really intertwined. Time conservatism is closely related to energy conservatism and cannot be regarded in isolation. (forgive the awkward terms)

<comment><USER3> If anything, I formulated it–I'm sure it's not original–as a reaction against Kuhn's _Structure of Scientific Revolutions_ and its nearly universal adoption by the worst kind of smug, vocal startuppity Silicon Valley types, who apply it to every objection to their newest pet projects. It just seems obvious to me how the fear and resentment of an imminent decline and demise transfers into one of the few places in an older person's life where they still have power, the dinner table and the voting booth. Aging is degrading and humiliating, and you're supposed to wear it with grace and dignity. And then the "news" guy on the conservative channel tells you about all the mistakes that kids and immigrants are making... Presto! Instant "conservative" harking back to an invented Golden Age.

> ...if one does not enjoy the learning/wandering process...

Or, if one does not perceive that the investment has time to pay off.

<comment><USER5> The Book _Algorithms to Live By_ describes some research which found that it is not chronological age, but rather one's position on the explore/exploit curve that drives the apparent conservatism of old age. So a 70 year old who expects to live 50 more years might be considerably more novelty-seeking than a 70 year old who expects to live 20 more years, because the first has a longer interval within which to exploit the benefits of any useful finds.

<comment><USER3> Hey! Thank you for your post! I was pretty sure I hadn't formulated something new, and it's great to have a new book recommendation!

The result you mention seems intuitively correct, and meshes with my own experience. The career changes that I'll consider in my 40s are definitely not the same ones I'd have considered in my 20s. There's no time!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at all > after age 60)

That does not sound like the most radical life extension one can imagine.

IMHO the most radical one is : no more aging after the age of say 30. In that case, one crucial question is : would women remain fertile? If so, what would be their reproductive behavior?

<comment><USER7> Further delay in advanced countries. The biological clock puts an upper limit on how long women can delay childbirth now.

Groups that breed without control will continue to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The biggest consequence of defeating aging is how people will work and will other people have jobs . We already see this happening now.

If you have a set of very experienced people that can perform their tasks why do you need to replace or fire them? Consider the job market with professors in math. Due to tenure you have a bunch of math professors that do extraordinary work. People who would have replaced them instead get non tenure track positions or go into other fields .

This is not to blame math professors that have jobs right now. Or the situation that grad students have in becoming professors.

It also has a weird effect where the social dogma stays for longer than would be if medical science wasn't so good. I don't know what the long term changes that will do.

To be honest if there wasn't so much emphasis on people learning calculus math would have become like getting a Philosophy degree.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Moreover, if some members of society reject to use new anti-aging technologies for some religious or any other reasons (inconvenience, non- compliance, fear of side effects, costs, etc.), then the total population size may even decrease over time." I don't understand how this would decrease the population. Also why would they even bring this point up in the abstract. I thought this study was supposed to analyze the worst case scenario. Additionally an increase of 22% is not a trivial number when the population of the world is 7 billion.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to see this article today with the release of the show Altered Carbon this weekend. I haven't gone far in the show but the implications there is that society will bifurcate into the affluent class called the Meths that can afford to resleeve into new bodies whenever and wherever they want vs the grounded class that can't afford to.

People are too hung up on the Utopia vision that comes with curing aging but the probable outcome is that the Rich won't die and will get to accumulate more and more wealth until they don't have to answer to anyone. And then society as a whole becomes stagnant because it has reached an optimal point because the Rich wants to keep it that way.

That's unlike today where the Rich do sway politics and hold considerable power, but they will eventually die off and then change may come of it.

I recommend folks who like these kinds of sci-fi shows to check Altered Carbon out.

</comment><comment><USER11> It doesn't make sense to worry about what happens if humanity become immortal and nothing else changes. Technology is going to change everything about the world, and immortality may be the least of it.

There's every reason to think humanity will develop super intelligent life, or augment itself into super intelligent life, within 100 years.

Which means that there will never be billions of ape-like humans living to be hundreds or thousands of years old. When super intelligent life emerges, it will probably be immortal, but none of the concerns we have about immortal humans will apply.

There's only one part of our future we can be sure of, and that's giving birth to Superhumanity. It almost doesn't matter what we do before this, and we will have no control over what happens afterwards.

<comment><USER6> Agreed. People already live quite long, so immortality would take a very long time to make a difference with how things already are. If the first person to live 150 years is twenty years old today, he will reach that age in 130 years, that is in 2148.

I believe that in 2148, the world will be vastly different than it currently is, and to a degree we can't even imagine. So to me the desire to be still alive then sounds naive, even futile.

I understand that from a subjective point of view, and especially to people who fear death, immortality is of prime importance, but in the grand scheme of things, it's just a detail : paradoxically it does not matter in the long term because its effects take too long a time to manifest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems like the smartest way to prep for these demographic shifts is to buy renewable natural resources- timber, real estate, etc.

Just get lots of money that keeps getting bigger and outrace demographics. This has worked for family wealth for thousands of years.

</comment><comment><USER13> Defeating aging or extending human life to some extent say 150 years, gives us time to extend life to 300 and so on. It solves for true deep space travel and colonization of habitable planets.

<comment><USER6> Do you really think a reasonable solution for deep space travel is to spend centuries in a spaceship? Don't you think some kind of suspended animation would be preferable?

<comment><USER13> Yes, suspended animation would be great if we did not age during the process.

<comment><AUTHOR> If we had viable suspended animation technology today, that'd be far _more_ valuable than interstellar travel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> That's not defeating of aging until you found a way to prolong youth and not just the old age as this research seem to assume.

<comment><USER14> ...Aaaaand if you prolong youth, people will eventually have more kids. One at 30, one at 45 and one at 60. And then maybe one at 75.

<comment><USER3> Apparently, every opportunity that women are given to delay pregnancy and childbirth is taken. Education advances, health advances, birth control, and wealth have each caused a delay and decrease in reproduction. It's a bit of a cliche fear that is popular because of its simplicity, not its correctness, IMO.

<comment><USER15> I'm not convinced. It does that for a high percentage of the population. However, after a period, the smaller percentage of the population that don't reduce their birth rate will become increasingly dominant.

Current examples are the rapid growth of Orthodox Jews as a percentage of Israel's population, and evangelical birth rates in the US.

My bet is that given technology to allow massive extension of fertility into older age, the fertility differences between religious groups that believe in a religious duty to procreate, and everyone else, will increase even more.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's weird to me that people in general don't see this.

I like to joke that the Amish are obviously the one true religion because eventually they'll cover the earth: They live long and peaceful lives, have scores of children, and are among the best farmers on Earth.

As long as the rest of us don't do something horrible the end state is inevitable.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Share you videos quickly. No login required. - <AUTHOR> http://www.quickviddio.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I created this webapp to allow users to easily upload videos without having to create an account. It's still in the development stages and currently only supports mp4, webm, and ogg videos, but I would really appreciate some feedback.</comment>


Horse_ebooks Is Human After All - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/09/horse-ebooks-and-pronunciation-book-revealed.html <comment><USER2> Am I alone in being slightly disappointed to discover that Horse_ebooks is not a robot?

I've had to conduct a mini-self analysis on this news, as I find myself disappointed. Why?

All I can come up with is that I found joy in the befuddlement caused by my brain trying to make sense of the non-sensicle almost-marketing speak. The fact that it was (supposedly) accidental somehow added to the joy. But I can't think of a good reason why. Was it that I thought some spammer was wasting clock-cycles making me laugh rather than selling me viagra?

It reminded me of Steven Frank's "Spamusement!" (which I also found very funny back in the days of email.)

[http://spamusement.com](http://spamusement.com)

And Panic's love of Horse_ebooks is where I first learned of it.

EDIT: I've just been back to spamusement.com and, yes, it is still really funny. DO NOT start looking unless you have half an hour to waste!

<comment><USER3> I'm relieved. It never occurred to me that horse_ebooks was a spam bot until I started reading other people stating with certainty that it is a spambot. It always struck me as a human posing as a spambot because it was too clever and poetic.

It also surprises me that so many people think we're more likely to encounter a legitimately clever spam bot than a clever human impersonating a spambot.

<comment><USER4> > It always struck me as a human posing as a spambot because it was too clever > and poetic

I dunno, I've seen some pretty clever and poetic quotes from my own markov- chain powered IRC bot:

[http://quotes.shishnet.org/quotes?search=MrCuddlemews](http://quotes.shishnet.org/quotes?search=MrCuddlemews)

(#cuddles on darkmyst to poke him yourself; hilight by name or by starting a line with "@")

And the inspiration: [http://www.jibble.org/montyquotes.php](http://www.jibble.org/montyquotes.php)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is interested in running an _ebooks account of their own, Jacob Harris of the New York Times wrote a Ruby library called iron_ebooks[1] which does just that. Using iron_ebooks, Harris has two accounts: @harrisj_ebooks, which uses his main twitter handle (@harrisj) as an input, and @harrisj_ebooks2 which uses @harrisj_ebooks as its input. The generated tweets have actually been pretty funny and well done.

Also, iron_ebooks uses Iron.io, so you get all the fun of an _ebooks account with all the "serverless" greatness of IronWorker.

[1] [https://github.com/harrisj/iron_ebooks](https://github.com/harrisj/iron_ebooks)

</comment><comment><USER6> @Horse_ebooks is (was?) an excellent piece of performance art. I think the modern audience still has a sense of wonderment when it comes to the computer- generated (as though it is the computer itself doing the generating and not really the programmer who wrote the algorithm). People were willing to believe that "computers" were at the point where they could create consistently hilarious phrases, and are disappointed (and even outraged) today when they find that we're not there yet. The artists have imparted the audience with a sense of disillusionment. Perhaps we'll see more art in this style in the future, although part of (or all of) the magic seems to be in the audience's belief that there was no human intelligence behind the content, so perhaps this isn't duplicatable. If only I could set this experience to a Kraftwerk soundtrack, and maybe play Bladerunner on a screen in the corner.

I can't wait to see what this group comes up with next!

<comment><USER7> The NY Times has been running an automated haiku experiment for some time now. I think it has a lot to do with your comment. Check this: haiku.nytimes.com

<comment><USER6> Ha! That's great, thanks! I had a feeling Jacob Harris was behind that, as he was also behind @nytimes_ebooks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter) was another case like that (apparently; I haven't followed horse_ebooks but I was gulled by Racter at the time: I found it hard to believe but I wasn't cynical enough to disbelieve it).

</comment><comment><USER9> Horse_ebooks was the inspiration for other novelty Twitter accounts such as horse_js ( [https://twitter.com/horse_js](https://twitter.com/horse_js) ) which is somebody taking quotes related to JS out of context, and horse_esdiscuss.

<comment><USER10> As an iOS developer, I always enjoy @Horse_iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gawker has a writeup of the event at [http://gawker.com/horse_ebooks-has-been- a-buzzfeed-employee-...](http://gawker.com/horse_ebooks-has-been-a-buzzfeed- employee-since-2011-1377183209)

The exhibit is three people sitting at a table answering phones (specifically not interacting with the gallery) along with formalistic artistic ambiance.

Sidenote: You've got to give them credit. This has been their endgame for _years._

</comment><comment><USER12> Horse_ebooks, meet Pet Rock. Pet Rock, Horse_ebooks.

</comment><comment><USER13> For those interested, here's some background on the pronunciation book side of the story:

[http://77days.wikia.com/wiki/Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_W...](http://77days.wikia.com/wiki/Pronunciation_Book_Conspiracy_Wiki)

<comment><USER14> Thank you, this was an interesting read.

These guys are good and definitely know their audience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What I'm still wondering... was Horse_ebooks was linking to completely unaffiliated spammy content, or did they build an entire constellation of shitty websites?

And, most importantly, who actually wrote this visitor-triggered cron job script[1][2]?

[1] [http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php](http://quotestatusjoke.com/twitter/tw.php)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6171355)

EDIT: A ha! It appears they purchased Horse_ebooks from an actual Russian web developer in 2011 (who ostensibly actually built quotestatusjoke.com), and linked to legitimate crappy third party self-help ebook websites.

</comment><comment><USER16> A gallery installation where you can watch the artists read tweets to callers on the phone seems like an odd and unimaginative way to end it, but maybe I just don't get it.

</comment><comment><USER17> My favorite mystery blog: [http://moneyistheway.blogspot.com/](http://moneyistheway.blogspot.com/)

He's the world's foremost financial shaman. The blog ranges from the bizarre to the illucid.

Another awesome one along a slightly different genre line: [http://www.johntitor.com/](http://www.johntitor.com/)

<comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4697400](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4697400)

You're in for a treat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To be totally honest, it wasn't until I saw the pronunciation guide that I realized it might be called "horsey books" instead.

<comment><USER11> I used to work with people who called it horsey books. I thought they were morons for doing that. Turns out they were morons for completely different reasons now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Be sure to drink your Ovaltine!

</comment><comment><USER21> So this was an account that posted random Tweets, and it somehow has 200,000 followers? Why? What am I missing?

<comment><USER22> Because it was funny, and it was interesting to see what an entirely random algorithm would turn up.

Of course, it wasn't an algorithm but it's not like the people following knew that.

<comment><USER16> According to Gawker, the current owners purchased the account from a Russian spammer in 2011. Before that it presumably was indeed an algorithm for promoting crappy ebooks and not an art project.

<comment><USER22> Yes, I think it's been known for some time that it "changed" in 2011 (it stopped being posted "from web", IIRC). Still, an interesting story.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why some investors think more big falls are coming - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/cb31917c-fc08-487a-af0d-f9e54c8717dd <comment><AUTHOR> De-paywalled: [https://archive.is/waGv3](https://archive.is/waGv3)</comment>