Charles Hugh Smith - Nothing Has Changed - <AUTHOR> http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug10/nothing-has-changed08-10.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I posted this particularly because of point 17:

"Innovation" stays safely corralled in the realm of toys, gadgets and social media. Real innovations in education, governance, the legal system, etc. that threaten the status quo fiefdoms and Power Elites are smothered at birth.

What are your thoughts on this? I know that I've had this vague sense of disappointment that the biggest, most recognizable 'innovation' we've seen this year is the Ipad - which, let's face it, the hardware has been around for years; it's just the slick iOS that brings it all together effectively... And I'm not ready to view programming as innovation, necessarily.

So what are your thoughts on this? What can be done to foster some real innovation?</comment>


I Am Mitchell Hashimoto, Founder and CTO of HashiCorp. Ask Me Anything - <AUTHOR> https://hashnode.com/post/i-am-mitchell-hashimoto-founder-and-cto-of-hashicorp-ask-me-anything-cjr6ptyne003qdjs29mz7m3hv# <comment><USER2> Was not on Reddit, did not understand.</comment>


Tulsa Remote (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://tulsaremote.com/ <comment><USER2> Be prepared for a lot more of these kinds of bids in the coming years. We are all Walking talking tax banks concentrated around certain parts of United States. States that have fewer of these tax banks want more and nothing wrong with that. Clusters cause echo chambers. The more evenly distributed the populous the lesser and/or smaller the echo chamber specially when the populous works "nationally" (by virtue of being remote). Hopefully this will result in the populous being more tolerant and accepting which in turn will demand and drive more centrist policies.

(Personally I think that is one of the reason why US is one of the very few countries that has citizenship by birth. It's a sure fire way to increase the number of tax banks in the country)

<comment><USER3> I think the word you're reaching for is "populace"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This has come up several times before. The original submission (in 2018) had the most comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18463553)

<comment><USER5> Also discussed (under a different URL) 2-3 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22458342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22458342)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is Tulsa's broadband like? Not sure where to find the info after a glance at the FAQs.

If anyone from this program is reading this please include local broadband providers with those large apartment complexes and speed. If the broadband is poor-a local gigabit fiber initiative that the local apartments are mandated to offer would be better than bribing high income individuals to move to a city center.

Got to hand it to Tulsa. Still better than paying some large companies millions in tax breaks to open a warehouse w/o air conditioning.

</comment><comment><USER7> Anyone on here who has actually done this? Is Tulsa a competitive option for remote workers?

<comment><USER2> Competitive or not culture change is a big part of the equation. There would be a huge difference between say Bay Area and Tulsa or Florida and Massachusetts for example. I think we will see more relocation but initially a large percentage will within A smaller geographical area say Bay Area to Sacramento for eg. Some change but it's not entirely a new "country"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The stock photo of a nice blended family in a park had me laughing.</comment>


2 weeks with the Meta Watch - <AUTHOR> http://self.ach.al/post/meta-watch

<comment><USER2> You mentioned that you have to repeat the steps for enabling the notifications every-time the watch disconnects. Whats its range?</comment>


Startup School 2010 Talks (videos) - <AUTHOR> http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/videos

<comment><USER2> If you enjoy these, you should also check out the videos from Startup Bootcamp on 9/11/2010 at MIT.

        Chris Wanstrath (Github)
        Mick Mountz (Kiva Systems)
        Ayr Muir (Clover Food Labs)
        George Bell (Excite)
        Bob Metcalfe (PARC, 3com, ethernet, etc.)
        Bill Clerico (WePay)
        James Lindenbaum (Heroku)
        Alexis Ohanian (Reddit and now YC ambassador)
        Stephen Wolfram (Wolfram Alpha and Mathematica)
        Kevin Hale (Wufoo)
        Ric Fulop (A123 Systems)
        David Cancel (Performable, Compete)

There are also more archived talks from previous years.

<http://www.youtube.com/startupbootcamp>

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I was looking for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do I view these with the Justin.tv iPhone app?

<comment><USER5> You don't right now, sorry - you'll have to view them on the website. An archive player is the next big thing on the iPhone todo list though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone have recommendations on which ones to watch first?

<comment><USER7> I liked Ron Conway, Brian Chesky and Tom Preston-Werner the most. But it's kind of hard to choose overall.

pg's state of the funding was very interesting but can be found in writing on his site.

Adam D'Angelo had some good insights (if you're not sure yet, go work for a startup; at first, it's ok if it doesn't scale) but his presentation was so- so.

Mark Zuckerberg was interesting though I'm not sure you'd get as much good useful bites as others.

Finally the Imeem's CEO (whose name I can't remember right now, sorry) had a great presentation and delivery. If you were not thinking about doing a music startup, the insights are somewhat limited. Very fun guy though.</comment></comment>


FBI Files on Steve Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://vault.fbi.gov/steve-jobs/steve-jobs-part-01-of-01/at_download/file <comment><USER2> Surprise humor on page 129. It is (I believe) an internal fax to the FBI Director. Besides the normal cover letter stuff it contains a drawing of a man in a trench coat saying "The fax man, and nothing but the fax."

<comment><USER2> Page 184 describes an extortion attempt.</comment></comment>


India's infrastructure is failing to provide basics like electricity - <AUTHOR> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/energy/power/coal-crunch-may-trip-power-plants-including-those-of-ntpc/articleshow/10346396.cms

<comment><USER2> I think the problem does not lie with infrastructure.If you have a knife with you you can cut vegetables or you can kill a person.The choice is yours.The person who is using the tool should act with wisdom.Otherwise these problems will remain unsolved.The politicians will have to answer.</comment>


NASA shakes up exploration leadership - <AUTHOR> https://spacenews.com/nasa-shakes-up-exploration-leadership/ <comment><USER2> These leaders, especially Gerst seem to have kept nasa going in this world where we basically waste money in a job creation program and don't design anything that's immediately usable. The current administration isn't going to accomplish anything by firing competent leaders.</comment>


Creator of PHP talks to Digg about performance and security - <AUTHOR> http://about.digg.com/blog/rasmus-lerdorf-php-performance <comment><USER2> I really like his rant that starts at the ~62 minute mark and ends with this:

"PHP is just a damn tool. It's just a hammer; it's boring. It's not that interesting. I'm not that interested in it. But I need a working tool to solve problems. I'm really, really interested in problems. The tool itself; if it works great. If it's broken I fix it. But I don't spend my entire life fixing it. PHP is damn ugly. It'll always be ugly because we're not going to spend the time to sit and make it pretty. We're spending our time building actual solutions and fixing problems. And the tool works. You can build really, really fast things with PHP. And yes, it's not pretty. If you're a CS major or if all sort of for the purity of coding; PHP is not for you. But then you're not probably not interested in building things for end users."

<comment><USER3> I'm not much a fan of that sentiment. It's the same sentiment espoused by people who don't have time to design software properly, or test it, or do exception handling. The tool is an important part of solving problems, but having an elegant tool helps keep the tool itself from becoming a problem. There seems to be subtext in that rant which says "prettier languages are inferior because they're written by academic snobs who don't have any experience actually writing real software", which is just patently false.

<comment><USER4> You are missing the point. The end user does not need to know, and more importantly, doesnt even care what language you use. Just solve their problem.

<comment><USER5> I may not care, but I end up knowing every time I see one of those PHP/MySQL error traces in a website. Apparently one of their problems isn't proper exception handling.

<comment><USER4> So writing my app in <your preferred language> automatically ensures my database will be up and all exceptions are handled correctly?

<comment><USER5> No, it does, however, ensure that my errors don't randomly get dumped on the page, and that instead an exception is raised and a proper 500 page can be returned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After 3 minuts Rasmus says this:

"I never taken any classes in computer science. I should have taken classes in computer science".

So it was never designed to be a state of the art language. Just a tool to get things done. From 1997 to 2001 I really enjoyed solving problems in PHP. But things have changed. I have learned more and now certainly prefer using Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER7> Rasmus is a former colleague at Linuxcare, and as far as I'm concerned, is a really cool guy, and very worth talking with. His story is pretty interesting, too. That said, I've encountered too much ugly PHP code to really want much to do with the language these days.

</comment><comment><USER8> Regarding his anecdote of the company porting a client's application from PHP to Rails: Maybe the fact that completely _rewriting_ an application in Rails is preferable to maintaining their PHP application is telling.

<comment><USER9> Rewriting is always more fun than maintenance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd be willing to bet the Digg engineers were bored by this talk. Most of this isn't new and is already PHP best practice (minus the HipHop stuff, I suppose).

<comment><USER11> I saw him give the talk at the Confoo conference (formerly PHP Quebec that got renamed when Ruby + Python tracks were added) and I was bored as well.

You can pretty much boil his talk down to use a profiler and make sure you run as little lines of code as possible. (AKA: Extra indirection always adds extra cost which is why generic web dev frameworks are always slow)

The HipHop part of his talk isn't really useful because _extremely_ few sites are resource constrained enough at the web server level for it to make sense to complicate your deployments that massively.

<comment><USER2> He made a good point about using HipHop for static analysis though. The weird code he found in WordPress via HipHop was a bit disconcerting considering how many copies of it are running.

The performance stuff was pretty boring. 30 minutes of talking to go from 9 to 34 reqs/s. My VPS provider can increase my resources by an order of magnitude in 1 minute.

<comment><USER12> You don't need to analyze WordPress via HipHop to determine that it is truly dangerous total crap written by morons, and given that, it's been apparent for a long time that it is disturbing how many copies of it are running.

If you take a look at any community of designers who consider themselves 'developers', its scary - most of them build on WordPress as a platform. Clearly this is somewhat like putting up a tent on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform. I can't believe how terrible the innards of wordpress are. That said, the outtards work pretty well, somehow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Felt like I was watching an old school cracktro with the rainbow effect going on there (a DLP projector issue?).

Most of Rasmus's talk is the same as it was for years in regards to optimization. If you've seen one of his older presentations take a look at the slides directly (<http://talks.php.net/show/digg/1>) rather than watching the video.

</comment><comment><USER14> I look forward to one day having real php compilers instead of just opcode caches.

If I am not mistaken there are a couple of projects already working on that.

<comment><USER15> Check out <http://wiki.github.com/facebook/hiphop-php/>

<comment><USER14> For some reason I didn't consider HipHop as a native compiler since it's really converting into another language to get outside of PHP entirely.

Also, it's supposedly REALLY difficult to build.

I was thinking more like PHC but more evolved.

<comment><USER16> I think it's fair to call HipHop a native compiler, since it can generate native executables. phc generates C code, which is admittedly lower-lever, but it's roughly the same idea.

I'm interested in how you'd like phc to be more evolved. I've had lots of ideas (I'm the author) but I'm curious what others would like. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow! I saw some actual code/command that I could use at work. Like PHP itself, his talk was very practical. Thanks for the link!

</comment><comment><USER18> I see php as a lightweight web framework. And it works well for that. I wouldn't use it for general purpose scripting though.

</comment><comment><USER19> _Creator of PHP talks about security_ it is already funny.. ^_^

<comment><USER4> He drops knowledge quite frequently on the subject.

<comment><USER19> People who are really concerned about security starts from a clear design with security in mind.

PHP lacks any kind of design, it was just an rapidly evolved toolchan. ^_^

<comment><USER20> i guess that means that assembly, C, etc are all terrible languages because they don't have a clear design with system security in mind.

<comment><USER5> From a security perspective, kind of... it's not like for a decade or so every other security hole was a buffer overrun (or underrun, as the case may be) or others of that ilk. That's not to say they don't serve a purpose, but it's pretty easy to see that higher level languages have eliminated an entire class of security concerns in our code (at obvious costs).

<comment><USER20> > (at obvious costs)

i suppose thats my point. languages are just tools. some languages are hammers, where you can accidentally hit your thumb. some languages are like an automatic electric hammer where its all safe, but its heavy and you have to keep it plugged into the wall.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is BestBuy Hacked or do they sell information? - <AUTHOR> screenshot: https://imgur.com/Hi5CeX5<p>I use mailinator when a company won't let me buy something without submitting my email address. Found an address that had 0 emails before the purchase(approx 14 hours before the snapshot). Curious if this is an indication of being hacked or selling information? Didn't even receive an order confirmation :( <comment><USER2> What is BB?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> BestBuy</comment>


Ask HN: How to promote a minimum viable product? - <AUTHOR>

I spent the last few weeks in an emotional rollercoaster building a webservice. I finally got a minimal product working, but I'm way too biased to recognize if the product is valuable or on the wrong way. With zero users, my product desperately cries for some early feedback. On the other hand I feel insecure about releasing an unfinished product which may contains bugs and with just one core feature to an public audience. How do you promote a MVP, and how do you decide when it's time for a first release? <comment><USER2> I'd say when it feels usable to you. Eating your own dog food is a classic piece of advice. When you can make use of the product and the experience isn't painful then it's (hopefully) going to be valuable to someone else. Design- wise, it doesn't have to be the most beautiful thing in the world, as long as it has a consistent personality. Maybe someone else can tackle the promotion question (its been covered here a bunch in the past). Promotion is an art in and of itself, that you should probably research as deeply as the coding side if you want to do it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to know when. It depends on what you think a MVP is. Some think its an alpha. Others think its a beta. And some think it's a completely finished and polished product. I wouldn't shy away from doing a Show HN if you want real feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why don't you do a shown HN? You can always do another "launch" if you want. Airbnb "launched" like 4 or 5 times, if I recall.</comment>


Hammock-driven Development: Andrew Wiles, on how he solved Fermat's Last Theorem - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/wiles.html

<comment><AUTHOR> (Scroll to end of interview). Different field, but I was struck by some of the similarities between Wiles' daily and nightly obsession with Fermat, and Rich Hickey's Hammock Driven development. Note that I'm not trying to imply that Rich Hickey is the new Wiles, although he's no doubt a truly brilliant individual.

Simply, I was pondering about how those two guys formalize their own way of thinking.

There is value in thinking about HOW to think and sometimes that means NOT actively thinking, but letting your brain find the connections on its own.

The daily obsession, the 'loading' of the brain, and eventually, after a long time, that, seemly serendipitous, epiphany.

Do some of you have that secret 'quiet time' to think about deep problems that you obsess over?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586>

this is the video I'm referring to.

I wish the Nova program on Wiles was available...</comment>


Starting June apps submitted to the App Store must support IPv6-only networking - <AUTHOR> https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=05042016a <comment><USER2> They announced the same thing in August, with a target of "early 2016":

[https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=08282015a](https://developer.apple.com/news/?id=08282015a)

So this isn't really new; they're just extending the deadline.</comment>


A giant map of metabolic pathways - <AUTHOR> http://biochemical-pathways.com/ <comment><USER2> It would be great to have this detail of map for immunology...but we can't grind up cells to meaningfully isolate and test enzymes as quickly as the old biochemists because so much depends on signaling the 'state' of the intact cell, like whether certain genes/proteins are in an on or off state, which in turn seems to depend on a never-ending abyss of factors like what other cells are nearby or what media you're trying to grow them in. A sharp contrast to many basic metabolic pathways which have to be available ('on') at most times in most cells could be studied without needing as much or any DNA/RNA analysis back in the day. Sigh.

<comment><USER3> I think maps like this beautifully illustrate how complicated biology is. Now add in things like what the parent mentions such as cell state, external signalling systems and it gets worse. Much of this chart was mapped out using E. coli, S. cerevisiae (budding yeast) and other single celled organisms.

It gets much much more complicated when you have multi-celled organisms. It also gets much more complicated when you recognize that many of those arrows are equilibria, so the reaction can actually go backwards under certain circumstances. And virtually every signalling system controlling these activities is an equilibrium. The interaction of all these systems makes biology incredibly difficult to understand in the kind of rigorous, systemic, mathematical way we would like to.

<comment><USER4> Also each of the reactions shown is the intended reaction only, it doesn't show all the side products, side reactions, impurities, and what happens when things break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Honestly kegg is more useful because it's interactive and hyperlinked and contains species specific information (identified genes in genomes)

[http://www.genome.jp/kegg- bin/show_pathway?hsa01100](http://www.genome.jp/kegg- bin/show_pathway?hsa01100)

</comment><comment><USER6> Paper versions of the Roche metabolic pathway map have been on at least one -80 freezer in every biology lab I've ever worked in.

I remember the many, many hours I spent during my undergrad learning just parts of this. I felt quite proud when I had committed the Krebs cycle to memory and then somewhat crushed when I later saw it in context.

</comment><comment><USER7> gotta follow this up with a shout-out to flux balance analysis [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_balance_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flux_balance_analysis) I'm TAing intro Bio right now, and I really wish teaching metabolism with toy FBA models was generally part of the pedagogy: [http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v8/n6/full/nchembio.9...](http://www.nature.com/nchembio/journal/v8/n6/full/nchembio.969.html) (my apologies, that probably isn't open access). I think it would go a long way towards getting students to think about metabolism rather than just memorizing it, and it might be a good way to also teach the strengths and limitations of modeling.

</comment><comment><USER8> For years I had this as a poster on my wall. Very humbling when you occasionally get the idea that some non trivial biological cause and effect must be straight forward.

<comment><USER9> How did you get it? I emailed them at some point asking if I could buy it somewhere, and got a one liner back more or less telling me to get lost.

<comment><USER10> You can just order it online - it's free.

[http://www.roche.com/sustainability/for_communities_and_envi...](http://www.roche.com/sustainability/for_communities_and_environment/philanthropy/science_education/pathways.htm)

Click on image below "Order the Poster".

<comment><USER11> In response, I received:

"Roche Life Science will no longer provide printed copies of the Biochemical Pathways Charts. These charts are now available for viewing online only at Explore the Pathways.

Regards,

Roche Life Science"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> These used to be up in a slightly different, less nice for humans, but easy to scrape UI.. So I did and stitched them together. 16870 x 12000 @ 300DPI came out at 56x40in

<comment><USER13> Any chance of getting a copy of this from you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice! Another great site with gorgeous pathways is the Small Molecule Pathway Database ([http://smpdb.ca](http://smpdb.ca)).

</comment><comment><USER15> Also another good map: [http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical- documents/articles/bio...](http://www.sigmaaldrich.com/technical- documents/articles/biology/interactive-metabolic-pathways-map.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> Wish this was available as a couple of nice PDFs</comment>


Show HN: A macOS app that might be helpful if you're WFH & do video calls a lot - <AUTHOR> https://presentify.compzets.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is my first macOS app that I launched yesterday. Really excited to share it with you all. The app is called Presentify and it lets you better explain yourself during presentations or while working from home via video calls, etc. Given that most of us are now working from home, I thought this might be helpful to some.

Here are the links:

* Website: [https://presentify.compzets.com](https://presentify.compzets.com)

* Demo: [https://youtu.be/CTR1iAbGhjg](https://youtu.be/CTR1iAbGhjg)

* Mac App Store: [https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666](https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666)

Please, feel free to share your feedback. It would mean a lot to me.

</comment><comment><USER2> I think it is a useful application. I will try it out later tonight.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a million :) Let me know what you think.</comment></comment>


Cool kids use Git to manage their whole infrastructure - <AUTHOR> https://platform.sh/2016/04/what-if-git-manage-infrastructure/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty much a solved problem, albeit not yet push button simple. I see using Git for this as the classic "Only having a hammer so everything is a nail" syndrome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Already do exactly that with Ansible.

</comment><comment><USER4> about defining infrastructure and application code side by side.</comment>


Working with encrypted data without decrypting: CryptDB, ZeroDB and homomorphic - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/encryptions-holy-grail-is-getting-closer-one-way-or-another/

<comment><USER2> I see a few problems here, or perhaps I didn't get it at all:

1\. What happens with data shared among a dynamic group of users? A temporary password could be saved and then re-encrypted for each one of them?

2\. If a suer changes its password or certificate, all its records of the databse should be updated? In a cloud service or backup that could be expensive (unless a all the information and password travels back to the user and it is reencrypted)

3\. In case an attacker breaks into the remote system or database: game over. He installs custom code there and waits that the user logs in again. Or exploits the client doing a personalized MITM for the DB.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Yes, this is a fair problem. Currently common solution is this. You encrypt data with, say, AES, and AES content keys with your public key. Whenever you want to share, you (not cloud) re-encrypt all the content keys for all people you want to share with. This can be pretty computationally expensive. The way to solve this, mentioned in the article - proxy re- encryption. There are such algorithms which allow the cloud to re-encrypt data on your behalf, without knowing your keys. Compromised cloud would have only choice of executing or not executing re-encryption.

2\. Same as (1). You either re-encrypt all the content keys on the client side, which could be an expensive process. Or you use proxy re-encryption to let the server re-encrypt data for your new key.

3\. That I don't understand. Ok, attacker breaks into remote database. What can he do? When user logs in, he[user] doesn't ever say decryption key to the server. That was the whole point of this article :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could something explain to me how FHE could allow for arbitrary computation?

For example, how could a server using FHE possibly execute any algorithm whose steps are data-dependent? Like, if the client gives the server an encrypted number and asks it to "return 'good' if the number is even and 'bad' if the number is odd", how could the server possibly do that without actually knowing what it's returning? Heck, even knowing the LENGTH of the return string would be enough to tell the server what the input was!

<comment><USER4> The thing is the server doesn't even know what it's returning (or, more precisely, what "means" its response). In your example, the "encrypted algorithm" could be "If the last byte of the input module 0xab is greater than 0x04, then answer 0xff, else answer 0xaa". The server just follows the steps but had no idea what is happening.

<comment><USER3> So you're saying only some algorithms can be implemented this way? i.e., an algorithm whose output size isn't fixed beforehand can't be implemented this way, correct?

<comment><USER4> Well, imagine that after "encrypting" the algorithm, its output always become fixed length. Of course, this is all a big metaphor, not the exact way FHE works.

<comment><USER3> I don't get how something like that could ever be practical though, even on a theoretical level. Like say you ask a server for a list of all flights from airport A to airport B. The only way this could work without making the server "know" what is happening is if the output size accommodated the list of ALL flights in ALL databases globally. So you'd have to return the client gigabytes(?) of data even though the answer probably fit in a kilobyte.

Basically, fundamentally I just can't see how computation could be efficient with FHE (and this has nothing to do with the efficiency of FHE itself).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What sort of encryption was used in the fully-homomorphic case? Was it something recognizable like AES or something completely new?

<comment><USER6> No, it's nothing like AES. The idea with fully-homomorphic encryption is that you want not just any encryption function C, but a function C such that C(x + y) = f(C(x), C(y)) and C(x × y) = g(C(x), C(y)). No such f and g exist for common encryption schemes, and in fact it's not clear that there should be any secure C where such f and g exist. But a very recent breakthrough in cryptography has constructed such a C; that's FHE.

<comment><USER7> Has that solved the problem of f and g being asymptotically more expensive than addition and multiplication?

<comment><USER6> Ah, sorry, I was just referring to the construction of FHE itself as a breakthrough. Several steps have been made that make FHE more efficient, but there's still a ways to go.

We're talking about fixed-size operations, so there's no notion of asymptotic expensiveness here, but yes, FHE "addition" and "multiplication" are very expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > The security compromise is that performing some operations reveals a "little > bit" about the encrypted data.

How big a problem is this?</comment>


[Opinion|Idea] Using the Social Graph as an Artifical Neural Network (ANN) - <AUTHOR>

So the basic concept behind artificial neural networks is to have a graph with input and output nodes. You send logic through the graph, as a series of pipes. The logic within the graph (each node serves as I/O) processes the input values and provides output values based on the graph structure. You create the graph by training/conditioning the neural network - thus creating the logic.
What would come of applying this theory to social networks (and other occurrences of graph patterns throughout the internet)?
The reason that neural networking works is that the structures in the graph fundamentally represent patterns outside of the graph; effectively their logic mimics external mathematical patterns - they are a simplification of the information that the network digests as it is conditioned.
Extrapolating from this fact, shouldn't the patterns (and hence the logic) within social networks hold meaning? What would be the equivalent of running "pulses" through the social graph?
There would be two ways to do this.
1. Internally - create a simple algorithm that uses the logic held in the social graph to process inputs and outputs. For example, you might send an array of integers through a subgraph of Faceboook and get some other integers out from different end nodes within the subgraph. (With internal graph processing, you'd need access to the database, so only the social network would have the ability to run analytics like this.)
2. Externally - literally send a piece of information (an email that get's forwarded from one person (node) to the next, a tweet retweeted, or a hyperlink referenced) through the social work and follow it's path through the network. It's ending point would effectively be a function of it's starting point, and it's ending quality (for example, if the email was somehow changed by the end), would also be a function of it's starting point.
What could be made of such analytics? Are people already doing this? (I assume they are... I can't be the first one who thought of this.)
Btw, this is only my second post, so looking forward to getting familiar with the hacker community and hello. Let me know if this post was too long to be enjoyable. <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on this, although I have been doing a lot of reading / studying on social network analysis and network science lately. But just to throw some ideas out and provide some food for thought:

 _Extrapolating from this fact, shouldn't the patterns (and hence the logic) within social networks hold meaning?_

Probably, yeah.

 _What would be the equivalent of running "pulses" through the social graph?_

Depends on how you see the analogy. Research on "diffusion of innovations"[1] could relate to this... the idea being that the introduction of a new "thing" (a technology innovation) is your "pulse" and its spread through the network is the analogue of the neural network processing. Also possibly related would be the idea of "information cascades" in networks[2]. Seems like there's something of a parallel between some of the SNA / Network Theory stuff and the Spreading Activation[3] stuff as well.

I don't know about trying to treat the social network as an analogue of a neural network, but the Social Network Analysis[4] folks certainly study the flow of information through a network. You might poke around the journals and forums on that, or the Network Science[5] and/or Complex Adaptive Systems[6] people and see if anybody is doing anything related.

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations>

[2]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade>

[3]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spreading_activation>

[4]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network#Social_network_a...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network#Social_network_analysis)

[5]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory>

[6]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_adaptive_system>

There's an interesting wiki full of links related to network science and complex systems here: <http://netwiki.amath.unc.edu/> that might be fun to explore.

<comment><AUTHOR> The links are much appreciated. Thanks! The social network article is especially detailed , glad you pointed it out.

Funny, I was thinking of the exact same example of modeling diffusion of innovations when you edited your post to include that. Using a social network, you could simulate the diffusion of information about a product from the starting point of an advertisement. So theoretically, you could highly optimize your ad campaign to target just the right people that will spread the word of your product the farthest.

<comment><USER2> _Using a social network, you could simulate the diffusion of information about a product from the starting point of an advertisement. So theoretically, you could highly optimize your ad campaign to target just the right people that will spread the word of your product the farthest._

Yep. Gladwell talks about the marketing aspect of some of these ideas in this book _The Tipping Point._ Actually, despite being a "pop science" book, there's a lot of good stuff in _The Tipping Point_ , in terms of providing good starting points to start exploring. Reading his book was one of the things that got me interested in this field. From there, I started reading the stuff by Duncan Watts and Albert-László Barabási and then some of the more technical stuff. It turns out that network science underlies and unifies all sorts of stuff. It's really proving to be fascinating... well, to me, anyway.

<comment><USER3> Here's a link to some interesting theoretical work by Hernan Makse titled "Identifying Influential Spreaders in Complex Networks."

<http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1001/1001.5285v2.pdf>

They actually used some online networks for their simulations:

"We investigate (i) the friendship network between 3.4 million members of the LiveJournal.com community [15], (ii) the network of email contacts in the Computer Science Department of the University College London (Zhou, S., private communication), (iii) the contact network of inpatients (CNI) collected from hospitals in Sweden [16], and (iv) the network of actors who have co-starred in movies labeled by imdb.com as adult [17]"

They found some rules about how the structure of the network influences the spreading ability of each node. As you may suspect, they find highly connected individuals aren't necessarily the best spreaders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm by no means an expert, but I think you're confused as to how NNs work.

>Extrapolating from this fact, shouldn't the patterns (and hence the logic) within social networks hold meaning?

Most likely not. Neural nets are trained to map relations between inputs and outputs. The way that each neuron relates to the others is set, during training, so that when you present a given input to the network, you get something close to the expected output. In a social network, you basically just have a (somehow weighted) graph of people, but you lack the means to "train" it. If you somehow found a way to use the social graph as a pre- trained neural net, you'd most likely get the old "garbage in - garbage out".

Also, what kind of inputs and outputs would you expect to use?

I think you'd be better off thinking of ways to exploit the social graph just as a graph (if you could have access to it, that is).</comment>


Show HN: Monte-Carlo optimization of a gun-fight in Julia 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/PiotrZakrzewski/julia-monte-carlo <comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to take Julia for a spin and see how implementing some simple numerical computation would go. This script does not really use the most distinguishing features of Julia 1.0, the same logic could be implemented in Python for instance. But those are the first steps, later I will try to implement something more sophisticated. As to my findings about Julia itself:

\- a syntacticly pleasant language! I like the multi-line expression with begin -> end (you can see a few examples in the code)

\- packaging is in a bit of a flux still, but it is expected

\- documentation is pretty good

\- linear-algebra operations as a first class citizen, random number generation as well. Plenty of other features like that that make numerical code in Julia somewhat more compact and idiomatic

<comment><USER2> Can you please elaborate about the gun-fight game itself and how you do the simulations?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi! I actually described all the rules of the gun fight here: [https://github.com/PiotrZakrzewski/julia-monte- carlo#gurps-r...](https://github.com/PiotrZakrzewski/julia-monte-carlo#gurps- rules-needed-for-this-simulation) Those are rules of one RPG system called GURPS (Generic Universal RolePlaying System) I use but a subset of its rules. Have a look at the README.md of my project I tried to explain the script there.</comment></comment></comment>


Things that are not strings - <AUTHOR> https://frantic.im/no-strings <comment><USER2> TL;DR: use a programming language that has data types. That's it.

<comment><USER3> you summed this up rather nicely, I was coming to post something similar.

His premise "things are things, not strings" things as he calls them, become more than strings in their usage, not transport, so things aren't "things" until you attempt to use them, until them, they are just data being transported from one place to the other, and the sender can not always know what system will accept them, so strings are a safe bet, if both sides are aware, and account for it.</comment></comment>


European millennials are not like their American counterparts - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/09/europes-young-not-so-woke/598783/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this. It's interesting to see how different experiences can lead to different political views in populations.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was an interesting read, for sure!</comment></comment>


The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming - <AUTHOR> http://homepages.cwi.nl/~jve/HR/

<comment><USER2> _The Haskell Road_ rocks my world. It's an amazing book, especially for programmers who want to become better at discrete math. (No Haskell experience is required, and no math beyond high school algebra.) I read about six chapters in a weekend (ouch!), and my understanding of logic, relations and functions improved dramatically.

In general, doing abstract math in Haskell makes it a lot more accessible to me. In particular, it's nice knowing the types of all the equations.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. I read (a good bit of, not yet finished) this book along with The Essence of Discrete Mathematics ([http://www.amazon.com/Essence- Discrete-Mathematics-Neville-D...](http://www.amazon.com/Essence-Discrete- Mathematics-Neville- Dean/dp/0133459438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1292782533&sr=8-1)) and came out of both with a pretty understanding of discrete mathematics and deeper understanding of programming (especially around sets). With only a high school mathematics background and very light Haskell experience, the material was still completely approachable. Demonstrating these concepts with programming made it so much more concrete for me. /ramble

<comment><USER4> Yes! When I do math in college I often get a nagging feeling of vagueness. What is the significance of this theorem? Are the consequences of this theorem "empirically" testable in the real world? For example by running a computer program that tests many examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have spent the last year or so having false starts on learning Haskell; I would reach an impasse as soon as I start asking "what will I use this for." Once I decided to learn Haskell as a companion language for learning more math and computer science, I was actually able to stay on track.

If you have any other books along the lines of this one to recommend I am all ears. The time I have spent on these sorts of academic pursuits have paid off incredibly well in the real world of programming for a living day-to-day.

<comment><USER5> Talking about books I would recommend _Introduction to Functional Programming_ 1st edition (Prentice Hall 1988 -- the second, paradoxically, is "spoiled" by Haskell), by Bird and Wadler.

<comment><AUTHOR> Could you expand on what you mean by it being spoiled by Haskell?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have this book on my shelf, waiting for me to finish all the other books I'm reading at the moment. But probably the motivating comments in this post will help me get there faster.</comment>


Alternatives to Lavabit, with no physical ties to the United States? - <AUTHOR>

Lavabit shuts its secure email service, is there any alternative secure email service with no physical ties to the United States? <comment><USER2> Runbox is based in Norway and are very privacy oriented.

[https://runbox.com/why-runbox/](https://runbox.com/why-runbox/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> it looks countermail.com is a good alternative, has an interesting feature: Diskless web server and some other "unique features".

<comment> at-fates-hands The USB Key feature got my attention:

"USB Key option If you purchase this option, your email account will become even more secure, because it will be impossible to login without your USB key inserted into the USB-port."

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> hosted in Germany, you might want to look at

www.posteo.de

<comment><USER4> Just remember that you'll have to use the .de ending, otherwise the BND will do what the NSA does in the US. At least they claim they only read non-.de mails, just like the NSA did…</comment></comment>


The past, present and future of Mojang as seen through Notch's eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/5/4183864/minecraft-scrolls-0x10c-the-past-present-and-future-of-mojang-as-seen <comment><USER2> Interesting to see how Mojang/Valve's "work on what you want" policy might be Considered Harmful. Not wanting to finish a game, tune a webserver that processes your sales or freeze and document an API because it's hard.

Even with the API where Mojang hired the developers of the de facto mod API Bukkit, the development seems to have just continued on Bukkit while the promised API languishes for 8 months.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I had a talk with someone from valve awhile back and he mentioned that only a certain kind of developer works well in the "work on what you want" strategy. If you don't have goal driven people who know what they're doing, nothing will ever ship.

On the other hand I see Mojang, the company who in its infancy hired the popular and attention-obsessive "minecraftchick" to do PR/Advertising rather than someone who actually knows what they're doing.

On top of this, Valve has the kind of financial backing where they can screw around all day and still not go bankrupt for awhile thanks to their previous work in Steam. Mojang on the other hand is only making income on merch and the 5 people who haven't already bought minecraft.

As much as I hate to say it, the more I read about Mojang, Minecraft, and the decisions they're making, the more I feel like the success of the game was an act of serendipity rather than one of skill.

<comment><USER4> > the more I feel like the success of the game was an act of serendipity > rather than one of skill.

I see it the same way, and honestly when I hear Notch speak about all of his success he seems about as confused as everyone else. I'm happy for the guy, because he worked hard on something he was passionate about and it was a huge success. But at the same time he kind of hit the lottery with Minecraft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Notch could be suffering from programmeritus - a condition where a programmer works a difficult, but fun problem that doesn't help reach the end objective (in his case, making a fun game).

We've all been there - spending months doing something that in the end doesn't matter.

Notch has the ability to make fun games quick, I'd gladly pay for a full version of the last game jam he participated in. If he made a series of demos, then chose the best one he wouldn't be in the dilema he's in now.

</comment><comment><USER6> _"I kind of see this a little bit like my hobby: just being able to just work on games and not have too much external pressure that (those games) have to make money or whatever."_

Maybe that's the problem. No pressure can also take toll on finishing something.

<comment><USER7> If it's a hobby, and you do it for fun, why not finishing anything is a problem?

<comment><USER6> It's not a problem by itself. Nothing wrong with fooling around. However, if your objective is to produce something then it becomes a problem. When there is a set deadline or a resource limit you're forced to make decisions, while if there are no limits it's easier to fall into "creative blockages".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Maybe more structure and less treating Mojang like its your personal frat house is the answer.

Minecraft has allowed them to bankroll certain proclivities that the whole "we're cool nerds" culture Persson likes to perpetuate; but if they want to be taken seriously as a gaming company, they might want to knuckle down a bit and use some of the tried and true methods for bringing a project to market.

I work for a Swedish father/son company. Interestingly, the son has the same problem; take something interesting 90% of the way then wander off to a new shiny before the project gets done.

<comment><USER9> > if they want to be taken seriously as a gaming company

I don't think that they necessarily do, though. At least, it doesn't seem to be a high priority.

<comment><USER10> All they have to do is release a very cool game every few years and they'll be fine.

It's not like anyone else is releasing good games on a faster schedule. Most companies just pass the time releasing crap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Programming inside the game sounds really interesting. I really hope they focus on 0x10c, although it won't be as big as Minecraft obviously.

</comment><comment><USER12> > 0x10c (pronounced ten to the c)

Really? It's pronounced like that? What's the reasoning behind it? Why not "268", or "ten cee hex"?

<comment><USER13> Notch and the community seem to have actually settled on the pronunciation "Trillek"

<comment><USER12> Hum, that makes it even more convoluted :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > But you couldn't use the spaceship CPU to subvert the basic tenets of the > game. Put another way, players would be working within the confines of the > existing system when coding in 0x10c, not dipping into the game's raw code.

Modifying the game from within actually sounds like a good idea.

<comment><USER15> Not the same as code, but the Cube FPS[1] allows realtime, multiplayer changes to the 3D map.

[1]: <http://cubeengine.com/></comment></comment>


Yutongo - <AUTHOR> http://www.yutongo.com yutongo is idea crowdsourcing as a service at low monthly fees.
With yutongo, businesses crowdsource ideas with their staff or the yutongo community. Each business gets its own subpage/subdomain and has full control of who is participating and of the privacy settings of their projects. Innovators and creative folks from all over the world join idea projects and use a unique creative process based on cross-inspiration and multiple view angle thinking and earn money each time they participate. <comment><USER2> Hi Sandro --

I was about to flag this as spam, then noticed that this is your own site and you've been a long time lurking member. If this is a new release you want to show off, you might get better results as a "Show HN" type post. You're probably aware of the community norms, but self-advertising is best done delicately here to avoid setting off the spam alarms. But voted up and good luck!</comment>


Instagram begins rolling out two-factor authentication - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/16/11025792/instagram-two-factor-authentication <comment><USER2> Always good to see more support for 2FA. If anyone wants a list of services that support it then take a look at: [https://twofactorauth.org/](https://twofactorauth.org/)

For Android users I'd also recommend the Authy app: [https://www.authy.com/](https://www.authy.com/)</comment>


Tesla whistleblower breaks his silence - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/russ1mitchell/status/1291763545940533248 <comment><USER2> Is there any verification to his core claims? His videos meander so much, his claims are vague, and the statement about firing his attorneys is concerning.

<comment><USER3> The specificity of the claims, high rate of battery fires on the road, general pattern of behavior at Tesla with respect to build quality and disregard for safety. Not enough to convict anyone but enough to convince me that it is more probable than not. It should also be enough to convince anyone that there is a serious possibility that it's true.

What verification would have satisfied you for the fraud at Wirecard (or Enron, etc.)?

<comment><USER4> I think you know that the issue here is there are too many folks who will believe Musk nearly no matter what he says. It's going to take some really strong evidence to slow or stop his freight train. Maybe that comes; maybe it doesn't. But the power of true believers is strong and real. It helped save Apple in the late 90s, and it will give Musk many, many second chances.

Edit: My comment was very, very neutral. And very, very factual. Shame on you whoever downvoted me.

<comment><USER5> I believe what's on the _official_ court documents that were made public. Anything else is speculation, which is what is exactly what you're doing.

<comment><USER4> I didn't speculate about anything. I just said that the public will require overwhelming evidence of something bad to change its mind because of the cult of personality around Musk. That's simply a fact.

<comment><USER6> change its mind about what? about him being like bill cosby? grow up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everything you need to know about Martin Tripp: [https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1291854536924168195](https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1291854536924168195)

</comment><comment><USER7> It appears the person in the video is Martin Tripp.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when- elon...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-03-13/when-elon-musk- tried-to-destroy-tesla-whistleblower-martin-tripp)

Martin Tripp, a slight man of 40 who'd spent his career in a series of low- level manufacturing jobs before finding his way to the assembly line at the Gigafactory. Tripp later claimed to be an idealist trying to get Tesla to tighten its operations; Musk saw him as a dangerous foe who engaged in "extensive and damaging sabotage," as he wrote in a staff memo.

</comment><comment><USER8> That video was very... weird. Not much to take away from a man rambling for 11 minutes.

I'm not saying I do/don't believe his claims, I just don't know what they are to begin with.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can someone fill me in on how this story started?

<comment><USER3> Tesla had (has?) many defects in their batteries and they were putting dangerous units into production cars when they should have been thrown away. They were also hiding the defects in the financial accounting by marking them as test units instead of scrap.

Tripp tried to bring the issue to management's attention. Musk and management ignored him. Tripp then went to the press. Musk then fired him, put him under 24/7 surveillance, tapped his cell phone using a stinger, and seemingly[1] ordered someone to "SWAT" him by calling in a fake threat that Tripp was armed and coming to Tesla to "shoot up the place". Tripp is now suing.

[1] Hard to believe that it wasn't done a Musk's direction given that similar things have happened to other whisteblowers (child services was called on another [I believe she is now suing], Musk personally called the boss of at least one other, Musk tried to get another external whistleblower arrested by falsely claiming vehicular assault [and also tried to get him expelled], that person is now suing).

<comment><USER5> [https://www.scribd.com/document/471770054/TES- TRIPP-0028348-...](https://www.scribd.com/document/471770054/TES- TRIPP-0028348-pdf)

<comment><USER3> What am I supposed to take away? Some other former employee (who is broke, was fired and is trying to get his job back at Tesla) claims the problems were not that bad (Does he have expertise in batteries?). He makes a bunch of other unfounded allegations about Tripp claiming about getting paid (Musk in his deposition testified that there was no actual evidence for that allegation). The entire testimony reads like incoherent rambling.

<comment><USER5> > unfounded allegations about Tripp claiming about getting paid

This has already been substantiated on the court documents.

[https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220154057895088133?...](https://twitter.com/enn_nafnlaus/status/1220154057895088133?s=20)

>(Musk in his deposition testified that there was no actual evidence for that allegation).

Do you have a link for this claim? I'm curious to read it.

<comment><USER3> Page 83 and 84 of the Musk deposition for Lopez.

Musk says that his private security told him that Tripp's colleague (who was living in his car begging for his job back) told him about a payment but the private security testified their investigation found no evidence. Musk himself doesn't explicitly testify that there was no evidence in that passage. I confused that section with his testimony about the lack of evidence linking Tripp to shortsellers on page 96.

So the entire claim about payment rests on the testimony of a QA technician who got fired for cause from Tesla, was living in his car and begging Tesla for his job back, a claim that Musk's own private investigator testified they could find no evidence for.

<comment><USER5> A link to your claims would be great. Otherwise, it's hard to take it seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The stats of Tesla deaths per million miles is better than moat cars, so until there's a proof that those statistics are biased, I side with Tesla.

This is very different from the diesel emissions lie that is killing millions of people silently every year.</comment>


Show HN: Spaceship.codes – a game for programmers - <AUTHOR> https://spaceship.codes <comment><AUTHOR> My solution to the Obstacle level is here if anyone wants to copy & paste to see it in action: [https://gist.github.com/rfotino/39b104fd61bc6c4d8cc24282c1f1...](https://gist.github.com/rfotino/39b104fd61bc6c4d8cc24282c1f10444)

It uses a servo(angle) function to turn to a specified angle and a state machine to string together turns and thrusts.</comment>


What Are Traffic Waves and Why Do They Happen So Much? - <AUTHOR> http://ww2.kqed.org/lowdown/2013/11/12/traffic-waves/ <comment><USER2> This reminds me of a piece on traffic I read quite a few years ago and might have been on reddit or even perhaps slashdot. I still follow its advice to this day when having to brave the 101.

It discussed traffic waves and our reactions to them. The repeatable waves this article mentions come from (most of) the individual drivers driving faster than the capacity of the road to carry them all. So they bunch up at some point, catching those in front, everyone slows down for a bit and then the bunch "evaporates" from the front... repeat. Those who get out of the slowdown speed to the next one. It also discussed the effects of merging, which have a high cost as lanes get fuller, also why you'll see lights at on- ramps to mitigate.

The recommendation was to slow down, leave plenty of space ahead for others to merge, and try to get going at as close to a single speed as possible to conserve momentum, gas, wear & tear, nerves, etc. If packed enough you can let the car idle push you along around 5mph/8kph, which is what I aim for in that situation. Feels better than speed-up/break/slow-down over and over.

It also responded to questions such as, "what if everyone around me wants me to go faster?" It happens, but those people tend to drive off in a huff. Once one or two of them do, you'll find a more relaxed driver behind you for the rest of the trip. The impatient driver won't get ahead much anyway so you can wink at them when you catch up at the next slowdown.

<comment><USER3> How can you be sure the cars behind you aren't even more compressed than they otherwise would be if you're leaving so much space in front of you like that? One thing I hated about that article was that the author assumed he was doing such a great service for everyone by "smoothing out" the traffic waves by leaving a buffer, but he never really proved it; he just waved his hands and said that it looked like the cars behind him were doing fine. (How can you see more than one or two cars behind you? Are you driving in a literal ivory tower?)

In reality it could be just the opposite, someone behind you could be blindly accelerating because he sees the cars next to him doing so, then realizes you in front of him aren't accelerating along with them and has to tap his brakes, causing more traffic waves. And by definition the traffic behind you is more compressed than it otherwise would be, because you're hogging tons of lead space all for yourself. So you're dampening the waves in front of you by making the waves that develop behind you even worse!

Given that the minimum amount of lead time drivers are comfortable with is constant, if you pour tons of cars into a highway at rush hour, traffic necessarily must slow down because there's too many cars per mile of road to accommodate a safe lead time for each car at high speed.

So if everyone tried to smooth out traffic waves by leaving extra space in front of them, they'd effectively be making the number of cars that will fit in a mile of road even lower by artificially requiring more space for themselves. This will always make traffic become slower overall. Say what you want about the benefits of not having to stop-and-go traffic but you shouldn't be under any illusion that it makes the commute faster overall.

<comment><USER4> Whenever I see an article about traffic patterns, I inevitably see this exchange:

Person 1: You can fix traffic waves by smoothing!

Person 2: Smoothing traffic waves makes no sense!

It's frustrating. I don't know what to believe. Is there any peer-reviewed, simulation- and data-backed research that puts this issue to bed for good?

<comment><USER3> I think the sad truth is that it doesn't matter how you drive, traffic is going to suck.

Given that everyone requires a safe lead time of (for example) 1-2 seconds, the more cars there are per mile of highway, the slower everyone must drive. (You can't drive 80 miles per hour bumper-to-bumper.) So if density is say, 50% (one carlength of open space per one car), you have to drive a speed such that a carlength is 1-2s, in other words 10-20mph.

But traffic distribution is not uniform, there's exits and entrances, and cars do occasionally need to change lanes. If traffic is going 10-20mph with 1 carlength of space between cars (steady state), and I change lanes, the guy I merged in front of now has to slow down more to leave more room, and this _will_ cause a traffic wave behind him. What happens at an exit when half the cars change lanes? Standstill. No change in driving technique on anyone's part will help this.

I think the only times where the way you drive matters is when the density is kinda sorta high but still low enough for a safe following distance at reasonable speeds, at which point "smoothing out waves" becomes a common sense matter of "don't follow so close", which is effectively the same thing, and something everyone should be doing anyway when the density is low.

<comment><USER5> You are thinking about traffic in terms of cars per foot. The right way to think about it is in terms of cars passing a spot per second.

A lot of traffic problems stem from the fact that you get _more_ cars per second from quickly moving smooth traffic than from slowly moving dense traffic. Therefore if something bad happens to rapid smooth traffic, you quickly get a phase transition into horrible traffic.

Now what does the transition from horrible traffic back to good traffic look like? The first step is that you have to get back to smooth traffic, and then that has to speed up.

If nobody smooths out traffic deliberately, then you don't get this until the volume of people wanting to pass gets so light that all of the stop spots "evaporate" on their own because there is no pressure on them. Then the road speeds up. By contrast if traffic has been smoothed, the bottom speed steadily increases, and you get back to full speed much earlier.

Plus smoothing traffic will save on your own car's wear and tear.

Oh, and on merging? Go read [http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/workshops/accessible/McCoy.htm](http://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/workshops/accessible/McCoy.htm). You will find that in the real world when drivers are instructed to merge late and politiely, merging happens significantly faster, with far fewer conflicts between drivers. So how you merge actually does matter. A lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone else remember the scene in Mission Impossible 3, where tom cruise is hosting a dinner party full of guests who only know his fake cover identity as a statistician working on traffic waves for the department of transportation?

The movie portrays it as conversational kryptonite, where he briefly discusses traffic issues in order to weaponize boredom and get some people to leave him alone.

That part broke my suspension of disbelief, because I was like "Hey, why is everyone wandering away?!? I want to hear what Tom has to say about how to address the problem!"

<comment><USER7> I remember this, and actually thought the same thing. It led me to do some research and I came across a pretty interesting page on the topic of smoothing out waves of traffic. It's an old site and I was just able to re-find it just now, but perhaps you will find it interesting:

[http://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html](http://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're in the left lane and going slower than the guy behind you, pull to the right. I wish people in America would be taught this, I'm amazed at how often light traffic I encounter is from a few people meandering in the left most lanes and then everyone behind just matching their speed. Obviously does nothing about major traffic but still annoying. Besides that, people need to stop thinking of driving as a competition and let others change lanes and merge. I'd like to think those 2 things would help the situation a bit.

<comment><USER9> In my driving experience in the US:

If a highway has two lanes, the average speed in the left lane is higher than the average speed in the right, but the only major passing opportunities are on the right when there's an empty stretch (because no one merges right).

If a highway has >2 lanes, the left is never consistently the fastest moving lane, and almost every passing opportunity comes from moving right. It is not uncommon to find the right lane near empty, and it is then possible to blow by everyone in that lane.

The exception to the above is in areas with heavy merging, wherein the average American driver seems to not understand how to merge (either blocking one another, or coming to a stop as the merge lane begins). In this case, speed seems to increase moving left.

<comment><USER10> California is the worst about this and if that's where you live may be giving you a false impression of the US as a whole. It's probably because in California, 18-wheelers are required to stick to the right lane and have a lower speed limit (55 instead of 65). That's not true in most other states.

I, too, have noticed that people here tend to just pick a lane (usually the left one to avoid trucks) and stick to it no matter the speed they're going. However, my experience in the other two states I've lived in (Florida, Indiana) and the other 35+ states I've visited, is that most people in the US know that the left lane is for passing and are somewhat more considerate about this.

Drivers have trouble merging in all 50 states, though. Half the people merge as soon as possible, thinking it's more polite to merge sooner rather than later (or just not wanting to fight for an opening or get angry looks from people who believe merging early is better), and half the people merge as late as possible, attempting to do the zipper merge which is actually the most efficient means of merging and what everyone should do.

<comment><USER11> > It's probably because in California, 18-wheelers are required to stick to > the right lane and have a lower speed limit (55 instead of 65).

Autos with trailers and trucks (vehicles subject to the 55mph limit where other vehicles have a 65 or 70mph limit) are _not_ generally restricted to the right lane in California.

They only are restricted to the rightmost lane on roads where: (1) where there is no other designated (by sign) set of lanes for such vehicles, _and_ (2) The road is not a divided highway with four or more lanes in the direction of travel (where the default, without a designation, is that they are restricted to the two rightmost lanes for normal traffic, plus the next lane out for passing.)

<comment><USER10> Okay, but the vast majority of roads do not have 4+ lanes in one direction, and the vast majority of roads do not have a sign indicating a different lane designation.

<comment><USER11> > Okay, but the vast majority of roads do not have 4+ lanes in one direction

On a road with 1 lane per direction, trucks being restricted to the right lane except for passing has no negative impact on your preferred practice regarding use of the left lane in multilane roads.

On a road with 2 lanes per direction, trucks being restricted to the right lane except for passing exactly matches your preferred practice, though the lower truck speed limit (independent of any lane restrictions) might arguably encourage other drivers to stick in the far left lane (though, except in areas with high density of trucks, doesn't really provide any strong incentive not to follow the use the right lane for traffic, except for passing, it just increases the likelihood that non-truck traffic will want to pass trucks, which is pretty high in any case.)

The lane discipline which doesn't apply on roads with 4+ lanes in one direction thus is really even potentially even a factor in what you are concerned with on roads with exactly 3 lanes per direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Nice visualization! I made something similar a while back (refresh the page if it doesn't start properly): [http://sinelaw.github.io/jammed/src/](http://sinelaw.github.io/jammed/src/)

It includes drivers with different personalities (buses accelerate slower, some drivers are daydreaming, etc.) and lane changing (people change lanes when it's beneficial)

<comment><USER13> Very nice, but since there is no transition the lane changing looks a bit too jerky so that at first I thought it was broken.

<comment><USER12> Right - that needs to be fixed. Besides the graphical issue, the lane changing is instantaneous, which is not realistic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I find this happens a lot more in some countries than others, and it's not down to levels of traffic on the road, it's down to driving habits. I think the UK has done well with driver education and variable speed limits to mitigate this, and zipper merging is the norm.

<comment><USER15> I think has a lot to do with manual transmission which allows for natural and controlled engine breaking, thus not creating the brake light to come on (and therefore the wave of copy-cat type braking).

<comment><USER14> The worst I've seen has been in Johannesburg in South Africa, where automatic transmission is rare. I used to refer to it as concertina traffic before I knew it was called a traffic wave, and the concertina is a popular instrument in South Africa amongst the ancestors of the people who are usually responsible for these waves.

<comment><USER16> > and the concertina is a popular instrument in South Africa amongst the > ancestors of the people who are usually responsible for these waves

I'm not sure what you're trying to imply there, but it seems a bit racist? Or am I just being ignorant?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Whenever the topic of self driving cars comes up in conversation I let people know I think self driving cars are going to solve a lot of our traffic woes.

I'm not sure if a model exists yet for cars 'putting out' traffic waves, but I'm sure once we have self driving cars and they start talking to each other this is going to be of great interest.

I'm hoping we can effectively 'micro' away some degree of congestion.

<comment><USER18> I think people overstate the degree to which self-driving cars will actively 'talk' to each other. And I actually think it's somewhat detrimental to advocating for self-driving cars, because the immediate thought is that communication acting as a channel for malware. And that's a fairly justified fear.

In the end, I think most of the communication will just be in terms of the fact that self-driving cars interacting with other self-driving cars will be much smoother and more normal than existing traffic.

Look at flocking birds. They're not talking to each other, really. They're reacting in a complex but uniform way to their peers. I suspect self-driving cars will look like that even without active communication.

<comment><USER19> And that's assuming error free communications, near latency free communications and non-congestion as well as perfect hardware.

Is 'no signal' the same as 'no other cars' or 'broken radio(s)'?

Self driving cars have all the elements of a distributed computing system only now it's moving at a pretty good clip and lives are at stake. 'Move fast and break something' is very bad advice and 99.999% uptime is _not_ going to cut it.

Hard enough to get autonomous (pun not intended) systems right, much harder to make systems that communicate between vehicles right. The best way would be to _not_ rely on inter-vehicle communication but to only work with the signals that the car can pick up from the environment.

At least that data will be somewhat trustworthy because you have some idea about the integrity of the system.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure what either you or the person above you adds to the topic of traffic congestion.

You certainly wouldn't depend on communication for collision avoidance, but it's still likely that cars will have beacons which alert other cars to their existence, and it has nothing to do with -- at the range of kilometers -- taking turns broadcasting how many cars you see around you (immediately, ie, traffic packing), your velocity, and your location.

The other self-driving cars can listen for beacons about congestion, and adjust strategic parameters (such as speed) in a safe manner. While I wouldn't trust a random driver telling me to break suddenly, why not take a random tip that there's a slowdown and adjust my driving to help mitigate the jam, especially if 50 other people agree that there's a jam there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Somehow I always knew this, and I was always driving in a specific manner to combat this effect: I always leave a buffer of space between my car and front car, and whenever I observe oscillations in the car in front, I use my buffer to let my speed oscillate as less as possible.

</comment><comment><USER22> Nice. I had a quick look at this effect in an old blog post, it's surprisingly simple to derive the existence of waves in traffic flow (given some simplifying assumptions) [http://jasmcole.com/2014/09/14/only-a- fool/](http://jasmcole.com/2014/09/14/only-a-fool/)

<comment><USER23> TIL only a fool breaks the two second rule

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5d2DP4Pp0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mf5d2DP4Pp0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Widespread use of adaptive cruise control basically solves this problem. That's the technology where you can set the car to follow a certain distance behind the car in front, and then it accelerates or brakes as necessary. The systems use radar or stereoscopic cameras to measure distance. Once 20%+ of cars on a road segment are using ACC then everything smooths out. Now that the price of ACC has come way down I think the government should offer rebates for purchasing the ACC option on new cars. It would be more cost effective than building new roads or adding lanes.

[http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066...](http://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.066110)

<comment><USER25> ACC just imposes safe driving behavior: proper spacing for the reaction time.

So if just 20% of humans were safe drivers (spaced out properly,) then everything smooths out.

That, or perhaps 0.5% of drivers could intentionally go at the average speed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> An interesting point to mention is that the traffic "jam" moves backwards. This is because at the front of the jam, cars are able to accelerate out of it, while at the back o the jam cars are piling up into it. Seen from above the jam is a shock wave moving backwards.

This often upsets people when they get out of a jam only to see there was nothing causing it! In reality what caused it may have been much further up the road.

<comment><USER27> It's usually high density traffic and someone pulling a move like a forced merge which causes the person now behind them to slam on their brakes. I've seen this hyperactive "weaving" happen too many times to have it be explained only by "slow human reactions times".

<comment><USER28> I heard a few years back (no source) that when they model traffic they can design systems that work perfectly, its human error (not hitting the gas fast enough after a green light, changing lanes to often, 18 wheelers getting in the far left lane to turn right) that make the models break down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> One point that seems often forgotten (or undervalued) is the great different in deceleration vs acceleration. Cars (especially driven by humans) decelerate much more quickly than they accelerate. I didn't get the impression from the simulation that this difference was realistically represented. I think reality is even worse than this simulation illustrates.

</comment><comment><USER30> I wish, for those of us that ride motorcycles in this type of traffic in the US, that all states would adopt a sensible lane-spitting allowance for motorcycles. In country after country, lane-splitting has proven to help reduce congestion, and yet, if I try it here, I'll get a ticket. Ridiculous.

<comment><USER31> Lane splitting is legal in California.

But honestly, how does this reduce congestion? My experience is that these motorcycles often dart between cars causing drivers to swerve slightly and tap their brakes.

I would argue this makes congestion worse as it causes more cautious drivers to brake (sometimes abruptly) and almost always slow down.

Finally, it is important to consider that as a vehicle, most of us are not looking for you and make small changes from left to right while in our lanes. It is not a goal of mine to accommodate motorcycle riders while driving. Splitter beware.

I'm all for sharing the road-- be we all need to subject to the same rules.

<comment><USER30> I'm aware of CA splitting -- it's not been adopted yet elsewhere in the US. It's too bad that you had to experience someone who was "swerving in and out" and not the majority of riders who would split sensibly and safely.

Lane splitting is only supposed to occur _below_ a certain speed; splitting above that number would be a violation, of course.

Take a look at Europe to see how easily splitting can be integrated, for both driver and rider. It absolutely does reduce congestion: bikes move smoothly to the front and away, freeing space.

American drivers just aren't educated to realize this because negative stereotypes about motorcycles are so prevalent in the US, and the many positive benefits of riding aren't presented as options here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> That's why fuel efficient driving techniques are so great. Save you cash and stop the stupidity [http://eartheasy.com/move_fuel_efficient_driving.html](http://eartheasy.com/move_fuel_efficient_driving.html)

</comment><comment><USER33> This is something I love to think about when driving on the highway. I've read so much on it. I've also had some thoughts on recommendations to solve it

1\. Divided lanes for 3+ lane highways. Basically a modified HOV lane but no occupancy restriction. The far left lane would have lane dividers with openings every 5 miles (or 3 exits). The middle lane opening every 2-3 miles (or every other exit). The idea is that it would force a certain average speed of traffic and hopefully distance between cars in the respective lanes.

2\. Smart roads to adequately distance cars from each other. Either a driver assistance signal or actually controlling the internal cruise control system.

<comment><USER34> I believe there are highways designed like #1, I seem to remember visiting the NY/NJ area, and I think it was the NJ turnpike that was this way. Several lanes of "through traffic" with a wall, and every few miles, it merged with a few lanes on the right of "getting off/on soon" lanes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A model of this is included in the NetLogo models library, which comes with the NetLogo modeling language: [http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/TrafficBasic](http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/models/TrafficBasic)

It's fun to see children (and adults!) play with the controls on this model, experimenting with different factors that they think might eventually reduce the congestion.

This model is also a great way to introduce kids to complex systems, in which the large-scale results aren't necessarily as obvious as the individual actions that lead to those results.

</comment><comment><USER36> Atlanta has rolled out variable speed limits on some highways (I285) which attempt to slow down the flow BEFORE people reach the congested area.

I'm not sure how well most users understand how it's supposed to help them go faster by slowing down; a bit more education could be helpful so everyone plays the game.

It is a bit weird seeing the speed limit jump from 45 to 65 then to 35 within the space of a mile…

<comment><USER37> These are very common in the UK around large cities, and in my experience they work really well. As long as there's sufficient threat of enforcement (speed cameras), people stick to the speed and the whole mass of cars move along at a reasonable speed. Compared to the horrible 80 mph, 5 mph, 80 mph, 5 mph thing you get when everyone absolutely guns it to the next slowdown they're brilliant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I would love to see a visualisation of lane change waves. How people changes the lane on peak time. I always felt Elliott Wave Theory[1] is applicable to this.

[1] [http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/111401.asp](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/technical/111401.asp)

</comment><comment><USER39> I would never get closer than a car's length away from the driver in front of me if I was driving 60 mph; why should I act any differently when I'm driving 30 mph? Speed is trivial - the gap must be maintained so drivers have the opportunity to react to cars around them without having to make any drastic changes in speed.

<comment><USER40> Because following distance is irrelevant. Following time matters, and that is a function of speed.

<comment><USER39> Okay, but on-the-fly time calculations aren't exactly optimal. It's much easier to establish a lower limit on distance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> can you see the animations?

my browser refuses to load them because of mixed content .. but html was downloaded over http !?

        Blocked loading mixed active content "http://d3js.org/d3.v3.min.js"
        ReferenceError: d3 is not defined

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm pretty convinced that self driving cars can fix this. Reaction times will be much faster and they can network together to spread out the braking and acceleration. Possibly even merging at high speed.

<comment><USER42> A more powerful potential mechanism is that they can be programmed to respect do not enter directives from a traffic control system (keeping human drivers off a freeway would take a lot of infrastructure). So the amount of traffic on the road can be regulated to keep it below the capacity implied by the safe response time of the vehicles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The demo breaks after I click around a bit: [http://i.imgur.com/OGvAO2Q.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/OGvAO2Q.gifv)

<comment><USER44> this happens because the brake level when you click the brake button is smaller than the brake level needed to not collide with the car in front of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> this is one of the first things i ever programmed! cool to see it is seeing the light of day again.</comment>