Things that separate the men from the boys and/or major concepts in software - <AUTHOR>

Here are a handful of things I've had a really tough time with in programming which seems be something you either get or don't, and there's a big difference between those who master it and those who don't. These are in no particular order.
* Recursion and thinking in higher-order functions
* Continuations
* Monads
* mod_rewrite
* Pointers and the process of building a low-level mental model of machine execution in assembler/C
Also there was a huge weedout in my abstract algebra class in college, separating those who could do rigorous proofs from those who couldn't.
"Turtles all the way down" in Smalltalk was a significant moment for me as well.
What other major things like this have you come across? <comment><USER3> Locality of concerns. I've come to realize that the fundamental issue in programming is that we all look at the universe through finite brain-sized portholes. Higher order languages, structuring systems in abstraction hierarchies, and software architecture research are all attempts to organize arbitrarily large systems so that they can be understood in brain-sized chunks. One might say that well-designed large systems have a sort of fractal nature; it is possible to zoom in and out, and gain useful insight at multiple different levels.

</comment><comment><USER4> I have a, perhaps strange, opinion that these topics are not that difficult, just difficult to explain and usually explained poorly.

Once you've gained knowledge, it takes a certain type of empathy to explain it effectively. I think this skill occurs less commonly in left dominant math/engineering oriented brains. This is why some programming books read like poorly translated stereo instructions and developer positions requiring customer-service skills tend to pay _very_ well.

This doesn't negate the intelligence or persistence needed to pick these programming skills up in any way--they remain difficult for these reasons.

<comment><USER5> Actually I still find continuations hard to grasp. I still have to stop and think before writing code involving continuations, the same way I have to stop and think before driving from A to B in Cambridge.

It doesn't feel like continuations match the way the mind works. Ditto for nested backquotes, though I've never been able to think of a better way to do what they do.

<comment><USER4> I was mainly thinking of difficulty understanding as opposed to difficulty doing.

Our minds aren't impressive short term memory-wise. That might be part of the nested backquotes problem. Memory prodigies usually don't have greater short term memories--they're just better at "chunking" which is really a compression strategy.

Cambridge roads are Escheresque. I've been to Manhattan a few times, but my mental map of Manhattan is better than of Boston, where I live. You gave a talk about compression and beauty, if I remember correctly. Maybe it's all related--beautiful things are more memorable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How come mod_rewrite is on there? Isn't that basically just regular expressions?

As for a more general suggestion: databases. Seriously. It is embarrassing how many aren't, but just about every programmer these days has to be very comfortable with understanding database querying and optimization, because that's one of those few lines of code which can make or break an entire application.

<comment><USER7> I totally agree. Regex gets easier and easier as you do more. It's just hard to do in the beginning (personally I started with trial and error).

But definitely, robust database design is among the hardest things I've had to do. I mean, it's one thing to just set up a couple of tables and write queries to get your desired data. It's a whole different ball game to ensure that it'll be scalable, and designing with consideration that you'll eventually have to split your database into shards as it grows.

In a way, it's a subcategory of what I think is the hardest thing, which is designing for scalability. Just because something works with a handful of users doesn't mean it'll work when you have millions of users and hundreds of simultaneous connections, which most of us are striving for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about multi-threaded programming and atomic operations on shared data? Seems like something many people flub up or aren't even aware of.

</comment><comment><USER9> _"There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things"_ -Phil Karlton

In all seriousness, I agree with your list with the exception of mod_rewrite. I'd also add mastery of algorithms and complexity theory to the list.

</comment><comment><USER10> To me what separates the men from the boys in software development is the ability to get the job done effectively. In my experience, while the boys are playing with programming methods for the sake of it, the men are actually implementing functionality using the techniques that fit the job.

I must admit spending a fair bit of time as a boy though :)

<comment><USER11> Well, you first have to be a boy to then grow into a man then (makes sense). Because to know what techniques fit the job, you have to know the available techniques, and to know them you have to learn them, and to learn them you either have to know or trust that they are or might be useful.

You can't really know how useful they are before you know how they work, but you won't be bothered to learn how they work if you don't know how useful they are. It's a bootstrapping problem the solution of which is to accept that there's a percentage of new things you learn that will turn out not to be useful to you. So, there's a lot of value in using unfamiliar techniques just for the sake of it.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Aquiring the right tools is important. As long as you remember that the tools are there to get the job done not the other way round.

Preferably you can do the majority of your 'technique aquisition' on someone else's time so when you are coding in your own startup (or mine) you can focus on the problem at hand. I know I've implemented things before in ways that I now realize were pointlessly clever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The notion of pointers is interesting - to me, as a relative novice to programming, pointers seem as the intuitive way of doing things - and not at all hard. What this implies is that different people have very different mental models of the world and how it works. I know people that I would certainly consider smarter than myself who have trouble understanding the concept of pointers - so it's not just about intelligence, though a certain baseline is probably needed.

On the other hand I have serious trouble understanding faith and the thought of a god - this is one of the things that just doesn't seem to fit into my mental model of the world. So understanding certain abstract concepts seems to have some kind of correlation to how you view the world, and what you find to be easy and what you find to be hard.

I'm not quite sure I brought the point across in a coherent manner - but one can hope...

<comment><USER13> This insightful News.YC thread that I stumbled upon a while back _seems_ to explain C pointers in a different manner better than I have seen elsewhere:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=87348>

(Other than the stuff about casting between pointers and ints though.. )

"That was the lightening bolt moment. The problem with pointers in C is that the [star][varname] syntax means two different things, and they are actually contradictory from a certain perspective. In one context it means "declare a variable that is a pointer" and in the other it means "deference". Whenever my languages-brain bit looked at this it couldn't deal with it, recognised it as a contradictory positions and basically shut me down, but not in a way that let me work out what was going on. Have a look at it yourself from that perspective - hopefully you'll see what I always did. Now whenever I look at C code I instead just think "everything is an int and pointers are all about casting ints, and a star when you declare something is your way of telling the compiler that the type of this thing is int-pointer instead of just int". Thus I now have no difficulties at all."

<comment><USER12> Very well written, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Macros. Especially macro-defining macros.

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Maturity. The ability to not whine about every little problem one runs into, but Google it down quickly and fix it right away. This is about persistence. I find it difficult to work with people I have to motivate at every step of the way through a project.

2\. Holding a program in one's head. I'm not sure really whether to attribute this to PG or Peter Norvig, or somebody else. The best way to understand this is really to experience it in practice. Everyone finds it difficult to keep a mental image of a project once it starts to grow, but it seems like some programmers have an especially hard time with this.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh, and I'd add cryptography because it's difficult enough that you probably shouldn't write your own unless you've been formally trained and have put some time in as a practitioner.

<comment><USER15> Implementing cryptography isn't that hard, the algorithms are fairly simple. You can write RSA for example in a couple of hours if you already have BigInt implemented. The hard part is the math behind the algorithms that makes them work and be secure, but thats what we have Schneier for...

Although I wouldn't recommend implementing them yourself, unless you have a very good reason for it, as Linus once said "Given sufficient eyeballs all bugs are shallow", in Cryptography that is doubly important.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I would say that the math behind the algorithms is not the hard part (someone else already did the hard work, as you mention); the hard part about crypto is learning all of the subtle ways that you can screw something up. This is the reason you should never implement your own crypto code -- by definition it will suck for a long, long time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why are monads on the list?

FWIW I've never read a clear and simple definition of a monad (that more than one person agreed upon). The word "monad" appears to be very nearly replaceable by the word "opinion" with all ensuing ramifications. Perhaps someone can provide a clear definition of "monad" here!-))

But seriously, I can't help but think that monads occupy a position similiar to Tait's quaternions: useful to some but not popular enough to achieve a critical level of adoption.

</comment><comment><USER18> all that it takes to get a concept is time and effort and nothing more. do enough examples and exercises related to a concept and you get a pretty good model in your head of what the concept is actually about.

</comment><comment><USER19> When you say mod_rewrite, you refer to mod_rewrite or to regular expressions?

</comment><comment><USER20> Benchmarking - optimizing performance (at the right time) is one area when junior people never even think of the things that senior people routinely do

Elegance - my definition is Elegance = Functionality / Lines of Code. Sometimes maximizing elegance takes everything you've got. (And dramatically reduces long term maintenance cost.)

Variable naming - (not a joke, although it seems like one). This shows that you really understand what you're doing and makes life easier for those who have to maintain your work. Real programmers never have to protect their jobs.

Structuring of data - both internally and on disk. Streamlining data structures often reduces the need for complex processing. Eliminating the need to be elegant is often more elegant than being elegant.

</comment><comment><USER21> The ability to quickly learn new things like monads and mod_rewrite.

</comment><comment><USER22> Parsing and translation.

</comment><comment><USER23> really grok source control, merging / it's not a windows share with revisions on top of it.

<comment><USER24> Please explain source control, because I still don't understand it. I don't understand how a source control system could do merging without knowing about the format of the files. It's currently based on a string merge, but this doesn't seem principled and it's not correct in many cases, or is it? On the other hand it often works in practice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Category theory in general, because it encompasses areas of computer science, mathematics, and physics.

<comment><USER24> Why should someone who is interested in programming languages learn category theory and what is the best (preferably online) text?

<comment><USER26> Category theory is important to type theory and semantics (Pierce, see below, also wrote several books on types in programming languages) and offers a different representation of computational flow (monads, arrows).

Benjamin Pierce's "Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists" (not online) is terse and complete [1].

Wikipedia is good for definitions and there's also a Wikibook on category theory: <http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Category_theory>

There are some brief, informative, and fun lectures on YouTube by the Catsters: <http://www.youtube.com/profile_play_list?user=TheCatsters>

The natural transformations playlist is where to start, just be ready to use the aforementioned references.

__

[1] Natural transformations are the original point of category theory. A text that doesn't cover them is incomplete.

<comment><USER24> Thank you and thanks neilc. What is the right order to watch the lectures by the Catsters? Top-to bottom as listed on that page?

Are there any data structures based on category theory, like sets & graphs which are inspired by mathematical theories?

<comment><USER26> Category theory shares a lot with set theory, but they are different - <USER2> make different assumptions and each is better suited at describing certain types of systems. Graph theory is also its own topic in math, though sets can be used to talk about them

As for the Catsters' videos, I'm unsure about the best order. The recommendation to start with the natural transformations playlist came from someone in #haskell (Cale, maybe?). I'd suggest diving in to whatever sounds interesting and backing up to review other videos that contain any new terms.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


BitTorrent study finds most file-sharers are monitored - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19474829 <comment><USER2> I was interested in how they were detecting monitors and whether they were just picking out any anomalous peers (say ones that don't accept connections). I was also wondering if the paper was going to be obviously flawed and funded by some copyright agency with the aim of articles such as the one we just read being created. I still wouldn't rule it out, but I feel that the methodology was sound.

To summarize for others indicators were:

"""

1\. The proportion of a subnet that has been seen in BitTorrent swarms. Monitoring agencies may use a large proportion of their subnet for monitoring.

2\. The length of time a peer spends in a swarm. Monitors may spend more time in the swarm than regular file-sharers.

3\. The number of different (IP, port, infohash) combinations per IP address. Monitoring agencies may operate many clients from a single IP address.

4\. Whether a peer reported by a tracker accepts incoming connections. Monitors may block all incoming connection attempts. (((This was discarded as an unreliable indicator)))

5\. The number of swarms in which IP addresses from a particular subnet appear. Monitoring agencies may monitor many torrents from their subnet.

6\. The number of times the same (IP, port) pair is observed concurrently in different swarms.

... we found 1,139 IP addresses that were in the top first percentile for all four features (((1,2,3 and 5))) IP addresses assigned to a company named Checktor [3], which offers commercial BitTorrent monitoring services, and 16 addresses assigned to a medium-sized computer security consultancy company that does not publicly acknowledge monitoring BitTorrent. Another subnet, which we saw in over 500 swarms, belongs to a company that advertises itself as providing "intellectual property advice" ... We also found two subnets assigned to hosting companies ... We speculate that copyright enforcement companies are using these hosting companies as a front to disguise their identities. We also identified a number of IP addresses allocated to large ISPs, such as Vodafone, Etisalat and SingNet. ... This feature (((6))) found IP addresses assigned to Peer Media Technologies [16] (a well-known copyright enforcement agency) monitoring seven Harry Potter ebook and movie torrents, and the INRIA research institution [10], which had been overlooked by features 1–5 because so few torrents were being monitored, and because a very small proportion of INRIA's subnet was being used for monitoring """

I didn't read too much further into their methodology for detecting "direct monitoring" other than to see a pretty graphic showing peer lying about their download completion.

<comment><USER3> Direct link to the paper: <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/P2PSecComm2012.pdf>

You can find the lead researcher's other papers here: <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/home.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >researchers found that nearly every file-sharer they monitored, was monitored.

<comment><USER5> Haha, I cracked up when I read this. This just seems like a (very typical) BBC scare tactic article.

<comment><USER6> Tactic suggests an objective. So to what ends might BBC use such (according to you, very typical) tactics?

<comment><USER7> BBC gets it's TV series published on the torrent networks. That would be one incentive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Aren't there bittorrent clients which autodetect and autoblock clients which connect, but neither upload nor download? Doh! Link to a somewhat more informative, less beeby, story: [http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/09/honeytr...](http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/09/honeytrap- catches-copyright-co.html) And the lead researcher <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/home.html> Published paper link snaked below! :)

(A previous paper: Analysis of BitTorrent Peers' Behavior and Monitoring Trends [http://www.kaspersky.com/images/camilo_andr%D1%83s_gonzalez_...](http://www.kaspersky.com/images/camilo_andr%D1%83s_gonzalez_toro-10-75858.pdf) which was based on the Snark Project, updated)

<comment><USER9> It would have to be the tracker, not the client, and at best it could somewhat reduce the number of other clients' IP addresses available to suspicious clients, since the classification is based on how they interact with other clients, whose IP addresses they of course have to know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/P2PSecComm2012.pdf>

Link to 18-page scientific article by University of Birmingham. This is the actual meat behind the BBC article.

Not an alarmist paper, just boring work with Bittorrent download progress bitmap monitoring.

Some juicy bits on their usage of Tor, from the paper:

"we created our own indirect monitoring client that gathers newly-published torrent files from the Top 100 in each category on The Pirate Bay, and continually contacts each of the trackers and stores (IP address, port number, infohash, time) tuples from the peer lists that are returned; it then attempts to establish a TCP connection with each host and sends a handshake message to ensure that the host is in fact a BitTorrent peer. [..] We collected data from July 21–28, 2009, routing our traffic through the Tor anonymity network."

</comment><comment><USER11> The original paper without all of the scaremongering:

"The Unbearable Lightness of Monitoring: Direct Monitoring in BitTorrent"

<http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~tpc/Papers/P2PSecComm2012.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER12> Except that it is illegal to collect IP addresses in some European countries (Switzerland for example). Here's the link:

[http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.18/collecting-ip- addres...](http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number8.18/collecting-ip-addresses- illegal-switzerland)

<comment><USER13> It's the law in others

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Some tips on anonymizing VPNs from a previous HN discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3913985>

</comment><comment><USER15> This feels like a scare tactic to get people scared, they could never go after all downloaders.

<comment><USER16> Couldn't they? Letters are cheap to send.

They could simply send out a few million or so letters, maybe costing a million £ or so. Offer everyone a settlement of a few hundred £ to cover all past transgressions with the threat of suing for a much greater sum if there is a repeat offence or if they do not comply.

If you work on the basis that about 50% just pay up straight away that's quite a lot of money. This money can be used to subsidize going thermonuclear on at least a few thousand of those who don't.

Besides, they don't need to sue everyone to make people scared enough to avoid pirate sites.

<comment><USER17> Pretty sure that the justice systems of most sane nations would crack down on an effort like this. It certainly wouldn't fly where I live (Europe).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A lot of it is definitely for consulting purposes. I thought of going into that line - seeing how what movies, TV, and music wouldn't be taken even for free would be interesting to the producers of that content.

Looking at activity on torrents gives you a really good idea of relative interest in something, and in addition, on membership torrent sites, it could be cross referenced with the other interests of the downloader simply by using their history to give you some idea of demographic and to guide marketing strategies.

<comment><USER16> That's an interesting point, I imagine stuff that is popular with a more tech savvy demographic (sci-fi etc) is more frequently pirated.

It might be interesting to know if your show is unpopular because nobody wants to watch it or if everyone who wants to watch it prefers bittorrent.

On the other hand , I don't know what you would do with this information unless you had a strategy for monetising bittorrent.

<comment><USER18> I mean more like "People who pirate your show also pirate _Breaking Bad_ and _Sons of Anarchy,_ but of the people who pirate _Breaking Bad_ and _Sons of Anarchy,_ there's more pirating of _Futurama_ than your show." or "Though you think your show appeals to _Friends_ fans, the people who pirate your show tend to pirate _2 Broke Girls_ more significantly than they pirate _Friends._ "

Even more interesting to me are the surprising highly trafficked music and movies that are long out of print. Might be a good indicator of when to bring them back, and what fora to announce that in.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was worried, then remembered that the only things I tend to pirate are anime. And I expect the fansubbed torrents are not quite so well-monitored.

<comment><USER20> Have a peek at the peers next time. You might be unpleasantly surprised.

<comment><USER19> True. But even so, it's usually torrents with very few peers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's a little know fact, but all telcos here in Croatia monotor and store all torrent traffic info of their customers. They have massive rooms with monotors dediated to showing which customer in which building is currently using torrents.

And all of this data is stored for once the Gov decides to "crack-down" on illegal file downloads, they will have massive amounts of evidence.

<comment><USER16> This strikes me as unlikely. Perhaps they can track some of it, but IIRC many torrent clients will use random ports and end to end encryption which is there to evade traffic shaping.

My router has various features to block P2P traffic, as an experiment I tried enabling these features and then downloading torrents (Linux distro ISOs). Every time I enabled these the data rate on the torrent client would start to drop, but then within minutes it would be right back to full power again. At the end of the day you can just make a bunch of connections to port 443 on a remote host, start an SSL session and you are now indistinguishable from HTTPS traffic.

The only way I could effectively block it was to disable NAT and force everything to go through an HTTP proxy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This shouldn't be a surprise. It is trivial to capture that kind of data from large bittorrent clouds like piratebay, and that data may have some useful applications. For example, getting statistics on what movies, tv shows, and music people are interested in (often before commercial release) with really precise geographic information.

</comment><comment><USER23> This should not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following the developments within the P2P-world. If you still care about privacy while you connect to a large amount of computers, a proper VPN or a similar service to mask your origin is the way to go.

<comment><USER24> Any recommendations?

<comment><USER25> [http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take- anon...](http://torrentfreak.com/which-vpn-providers-really-take-anon..).

My personal choice is privateinternetaccess.com: $40/year, unlimited bandwidth (cloak and many others limit bandwidth), multiple platforms (Windows/MAC/*nix/iOS/Android), multiple protocols (PPTP, OpenVPN and IPSEC/L2TP), multiple gateways (US/UK/Switzerland), and most importantly, NO user activity logs.

Also, per <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4474529> you could use any vpn that routes through Switzerland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Most" does not seem to mean much here, while it probably is correct. According to the paper they only used thepiratebay as originating tracker. Right now the homepage lists 30 million peers. what.cd shows 9 million peers. I do not know how many peers Demonoid had, probably a similar or higher number. Some smaller trackers I checked all had around 100k peers. So just think of 60 smaller trackers like that and poof, the "most" is not true anymore.

This also only covers Bittorrent, not "most file-sharers".

</comment><comment><USER13> All the monitors were checking whether the file sharer used BT software? Why? I mean, there's not much of a reason to connect to a swarm if you're not seeding or leeching. Then again, does that mean that spoofing the name/id/whatever of the software gets you off the monitors radar?

</comment><comment><USER27> What does 3 hours mean? I don't need that long to download anything.

And I doubt that if I download some rare indie music stuff, that anyone would care to monitor this torrent.

<comment><USER6> I think it means 3 hours from the initial torrent availability on trackers.

<comment><USER28> Actually webjunkie appears to be correct. From the paper:

> Average time before monitors connect. 40% of the monitors that communicated > with our clients made their initial connection within 3 hours of the client > joining the swarm; the slowest monitor took 33 hours to make its first > connection. The average time decreases for torrents appearing higher in the > Top 100, implying that enforcement agencies allocate resources according to > the popularity of the content they monitor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> People know that I'm downloading the new Fast and Furious movie from TPB?

<comment><USER30> They don't watch tpb traffic so much as actual torrent traffic. Basically, if you want to be more anonymous, pay to be a part of a vpn.

<comment><USER29> I was being entirely sarcastic. Where I live, people have been getting stung by honeypots for at least the last five years. I figured everyone (here on HN) either used private trackers or a VPN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Please let's never forget: An IP-Adress is not a person[1]

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt- identify-...](http://torrentfreak.com/judge-an-ip-address-doesnt-identify-a- person-120503/)

<comment><USER32> An IP address can be assigned to a person that can be held legally responsible easily enough, though.

<comment><USER33> If someone cracks your WEP, are you responsible for what they do over your connection?

If someone steals your car, are you responsible if they use it as the getaway car for a bank robbery?

<comment><USER16> I read something a while ago from an IP lawyer, he said that in such an occurrence they would instead just sue you for negligence.

There don't seem to be many wireless LANs using WEP anymore anyway because of the obvious security flaws. Perhaps some grandma with an old router could get away with claiming ignorance as a defence but the average HN reader probably couldn't.

As for the car analogy perhaps this would be similar to leaving your car unlocked knowing full well that it was likely to be stolen by criminals.

<comment><USER34> I don't lock my car, my house or my wifi. This isn't negligence, I do it on purpose. If somebody steals my car and runs over people with it, THEY are at fault, not me. And if somebody downloads "infringing" material over my internet connection, they are at fault. I really don't understand how this could be otherwise.

Suppose I invited a friend over to my house, and while I was asleep, they taped TV movies onto my VCR. Am I the one at fault because I didn't lock up my VCR? Is there any other place in the law where I am considered at fault when somebody else breaks a law? I'm not talking about "the getaway car", but more like "the guy who parked across the street from the bank and had his car taken by the robbers".

<comment><USER16> IANAL , but this depends if we are talking about criminal or civil law.

AFAIK in a civil case there would be more onus on you to prove that you didn't know what other people were doing with your stuff.

Also this would be affected by your circumstances, so if you work in tech/IT you might have a job arguing that you didn't know that running an unsecured wireless AP was a bad idea.

<comment><USER35> > Also this would be affected by your circumstances, so if you work in tech/IT > you might have a job arguing that you didn't know that running an unsecured > wireless AP was a bad idea.

Pointing to a renowned security expert saying he does the same might help, though:

[http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wirele...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/01/my_open_wireles.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Resources to prepare for a Software Developer interview in 2019? - <AUTHOR> What are some of the resources you use to polish your skills before the Software Developer interviews? <comment><USER2> Leetcode, InterviewCake and Cracking the coding interview book should be enough to give you good understanding of topics involved and how to solve problems.

</comment><comment><USER3> I just google "how to prepare for a _____ job interview", so JavaScript or React or DevOps, etc. I have several sites bookmarked but they just came from a basic google search.

Not very imaginative but hopefully helpful nonetheless :)

<comment><USER4> I do a combination of this, and googling the company I'm applying for. Looking for examples of interview questions from that company, and also information about that company so I can ask questions about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This [https://dev.to/ice_lenor/do-i-want-to-work-in-this- company-o...](https://dev.to/ice_lenor/do-i-want-to-work-in-this-company-or- what-questions-to-ask-on-an-interview-7po) has a lot of good questions for a candidate to ask, worth the reading time.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am currently working through the book "Elements of Programming Interviews".

<comment><USER7> I generally don't recommend EPI for interview prep. I've found that the questions are overtuned in difficulty, and don't resemble anything I've seen at even my Google, Facebook, etc. interviews.

I echo what the other poster said - Interview Cake, LeetCode, and CTCI.</comment></comment>


Announcing Bitwise - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pervognsen/bitwise <comment><USER2> > My goal with Bitwise is to show that these things can be done much more > simply and quickly than people realize if we strongly favor simplicity over > marginal gains in feature completeness or performance.

This is a refreshing way of looking at the world. One of my principles is to always strive for simplicity when creating, but i've never given much thought about how it applies to the fundamentals of existing creations or ideas when learning.

In retrospect, I've learned many thing that I previously thought too complex to understand. The complexities tend to dissolve when you realise they are mostly just extra distractions emerging from the pressures of engineering the thing... distractions that you probably find yourself inventing all over again once you've assimilated the core idea.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite "toys", by far, are those happy, cheerful, friendly implementations of famous problems, that make for a fun but educative learning experience.

It may not be as huge in scope, but allow me to plug my own initiative:

[https://www.latenightsnack.io](https://www.latenightsnack.io)

I set out to replicate the joy of reading through code listings in old magazines, and present seemingly-complicated problems in a simple and concise way.

Some of the problems I will approach in the future are text and image compression, compilers, chains, http servers, and so on.

I would love if you had a look!

<comment><USER4> Pretty cool idea (though I'd personally tone down the intensity of the yellow background, and use a higher contrast font color... whoever came up with the "black is bad" meme will be really sorry when they get older and their vision deteriorates!).

One story from "back in those days"... I worked at a small computer store in 1980/1981, and one of my fellow co-workers submitted a program to one of those magazines, and they printed it!

Well, they _mis-printed_ it, and then mis-printed the correction he sent in :-)

<comment><USER3> That's how you patch software :) An open, if somewhat artisanal, process.

I have toned down the intensity of the yellow background, and increased text contrast. I hope this improves!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi. I'm the guy behind Bitwise. Long-time HN user. If anyone has questions, I'd be happy to answer them.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for this !

Question - Why did you choose C99 and not C11 as the standard ?

<comment><USER5> MSVC only received C99 support starting in Visual Studio 2015 and even then it's only partial (but enough for us). Actually, we'll probably use anonymous structs and unions, which are technically a C11 feature, but have been supported by all the major compilers for a long time before C11.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like a massive undertaking. The breadth and depth both seem huge. Though I suspect that the prerequisites for the intended audience could probably be a barrier, this will be helpful to thousands (if not millions) of people around the world.

I will check it out. Wish you all the best!!!

<comment><USER8> +1 - Best of Luck

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Will all of the course video and discussions be available for download from YouTube permanently? I am very interested in following along with my 10 year old daughter, but we will need to move at a much slower pace. If we can still access the course video a week or two late that would be ideal.

My daughter knows how to code in python, but not C or C++. I will have to teach her that on the side which will slow us down considerably. She is really motivated to learn though. We are both excited about your course.

<comment><USER5> Yes, they'll be available permanently. I talk about this in the FAQ in the repository, if you want to check it out.

I'm afraid this is going to be far beyond any 10 year old! I assume a pretty high level of intellectual development and ability to learn abstract ideas quickly, even if the formal prerequisites are minimal.

<comment><USER9> Understood. We are going to follow along anyway but at a much slower pace :-). My daughter is highly motivated to learn. As long as she remains interested I will do my best to lower the barrier of entry by teaching her all that I know about C programming. I will work through all of the exercises with her and we will spend as much time on them as we need to. We are not concerned about how long it takes.

What you are doing with your time is a gift. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The daily or bi-daily streaming and starting from scratch sounds like a kindred idea to Casey Muratori's long running Handmade Hero gamedev streaming project. Maybe not entirely by accident - it seems these guys have some common professional history.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, Casey's work was a big inspiration. Much of the structure is my attempt at adapting Casey's format for my own goals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This sounds great. Kudos for undertaking this. Looking forward to following along.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'll definitely follow this! Thanks for the contribution</comment>


Is the Library Card Dying? (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/library-card/477162/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Killed by OPAC.

~ Khayri R.R. Woulfe</comment>


Bruce Schneier: The internet era of fun and games is over - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/bruce-schneier-internet-of-things/?tw=share <comment><USER2> While I think there does need to be more standards an regulation for security of embedded devices°, it will always be problematic.

Software is unlike most products that have come before in human history. I'd almost say that software is a bit like an ideology, which can be modified by third parties to achieve a certain goal.

I'm really afraid attempts at regulation will end up turning into a witch hunt, a bit like find the communist in the American 40s and 50s.

° before people start complaining that standards and regulations are put up to collect fees and restrict access; I know, and I agree. However, I think we as software developers need to accept that even if we are perfect, not everyone else is (and certainly most companies aren't), and the business needs penalties for cutting corners and shipping insecure shit.</comment>


To advance sustainability, fight inequality, researcher says - <AUTHOR> http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/02/to-advance-sustainability-fight-inequality-researcher-says/ <comment><USER2> There was a whole school of economic thought around the idea of widely distributed ownership and the family (as the organic, root institution of sustainability) that died in the conflagration of WW2, called Distributism:

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

This, along with populism (Texas-style, pre-1900) and Georgism are historical economic movements with interesting things to say about the world today that have sadly been largely memory-holed.

</comment><comment><USER3> This research is flawed. There is a connection between social and environmental sustainability, but they do not work independent from one another. What we know is, the most environmentally sustainable cities, are also the most equal. This has to do with a 'culture', or less corruption, more collaboration, and governments that work. If you want to improve sustainability, it starts in the culture. [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-should-come-first- enviro...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-should-come-first- environmental-social-philip-beere)

</comment><comment><USER4> At what scale does equality lead to sustainability? At the family, neighborhood, local, state, national, hemispherical, global levels?

In other words, does equality have to apply across the board, or can it have effect at more local levels?</comment>


Scale model of 'Flying-V' airplane makes successful maiden flight - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/flying-v-maiden-flight-intl-scli-grm/index.html <comment><USER2> I do not want to be in one of these planes in the back row 30ft + from the center of gravity when this thing hits turbulence or is rolling while landing in bad weather. This was discussed in anther post some time ago about the same design type but can't find it right now.

<comment><USER3> I wonder if there's a way to counteract this with automatic flight controls that work both tactically and strategically.

tactical would keep the plane level, and strategic would set up for turns to take them more slowly than current jets.

I think about this because of the Tex Johnston 1-g barrel rolls during the demonstration flight where the people inside the plane experience "normal" g force.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As an armchair engineer, I wonder about engine behavior at high angle of attack. It looks like it could be difficult to feed the engines enough air to maintain thrust.

I hope they work out all the details, because improved efficiency is a big deal. Although I also prefer the older Boeing blended wing body since it seemed to offer great efficiencies and immense interior space.

As I recall, one of the factors in abandoning the idea for passenger planes was the assumed reluctance of people to sit in a flying room (where they can't see out and could be more disoriented or uncomfortable).

<comment><USER5> > As I recall, one of the factors in abandoning the idea for passenger planes

Another was the different forces on passengers depending on where you were seated. A regular airplane everyone is situated on the same plane (ha pun!) more or less. But on a V config anyone far from the center would experience greater forces when the aircraft moved.

<comment><USER6> That's what I was thinking. I've been on a lot of planes that banked -hard- on approach. I can't begin to imagine what that would feel like sitting in this configuration.

<comment><USER4> Presumably the roll rate on that type of plane would be lower than on a traditional tube-with-wings design. So while the bank angle might still be high, it won't happen quickly.

As long as the plane is banked at an appropriate angle (relative to the rudder angle), the passengers shouldn't feel anything other than perhaps a bit more positive G force.

<comment><USER6> What about turbulence? I've been in some doozies where it felt like the pilot was fighting it hard, constant up and down and left and right corrections. I wonder what effect that fast change in altitude has, if any? Just G Force?

<comment><USER7> Pilots do not fight turbulence, hard or lightly. The plane goes where it is pushed, and you go with it.

A very long (thus widespread) updraft might cause the pilot to reduce power, but that is very rare.

<comment><USER6> I'm not refuting you, but now I'm genuinely curious. We all know or think of turbulence like hitting bumps in the road, shaking, etc.. I was on a shorthaul, some embraer or similar sized plane, and experienced this only once. We kept hitting those big 'bumps', then I'd feel the plane dive down or up quickly. The kind that gives you the feeling in your stomach, like going over a hill as a kid in a car.

In my head to this day I assumed the pilot was quickly trying to find an elevation to avoid the turbulence, but your comment implies that's incorrect. So those quick pitches are also a form of turbulence? It was stomach turning, and honestly made me a bit uneasy.

<comment><USER7> What you call turbulence is really just a mass of air moving at a different speed or in a different direction, and the plane moved out of one into the next.

So, e.g., the plane passes into a downdraft near a cloud, and then into an updraft under the cloud, then into another downdraft, and then out. You feel four lurches. The pilot might be looking for a path that stays away from those, but you won't feel anything the pilot does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Flying wing designs have always facinated me and blows my mind how this was invented in the 1930s. Its fairly well known that flying wing in theory is more suitable for long term travel. But the biggest issue was ergonomics (as my professor put it, no one wants to feel like sitting in a movie theater for over 2 hours) and flight controls. Seems like they're trying to fix the ergo issue with the double fuselage-like design. It would be pretty exciting to sit in one of these if the idea picks up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting / weird concept. I'm cynical that it'll take off (ha) as a concept for passengers, given that they'll either be sitting at an angle (in relation to the flying direction), or they'll have to tilt all the seats making the internal seating arrangement weird and ineffective. But counter-intuitively, it looks like a simpler design for planes compared to those with wings.

<comment><USER10> There are business class layouts at angles and no one seems to mind.

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

<comment><USER11> BA's business class has seats facing backwards too. Never bothered me, and I'm obviously not alone in that.

<comment><USER10> The things that help most for dealing with motion sickness on planes are having a good perspective view of land and being the one flying the plane. Those don't work so well for commercial air travel, so G forces are kept pretty modest and directed down and there aren't sudden movements. Sensitive people do better around the center, but otherwise, people mostly do OK on planes, even at a slight angle or backwards. This isn't "Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This concept is not new. Lifting bodies have been around since the 20s.

Boeing and NASA have both experimented with this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body)

<comment><USER9> Nowhere is it claimed to be a new invention. On that page itself there's only two or three that were aimed at passengers, none of which ended up commercially viable.

But it also has (or links to) reasons why it's not been developed further for passengers; to quote:

"Passengers are unwilling to sit in windowless environments." \- not an issue with this particular design

"Passengers furthest from centerline will be subject to potential discomfort during wing roll. Extreme discomfort results in motion sickness." \- Definitely an issue I think.

(on the X-48): "[...] passengers did not like the theater-like configuration of the mock-up; the design was dropped for passenger airliners" \- Also not really an issue due to the dual-fuselage design of this one.

<comment><USER13> NM: I didn't see the double tube design.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks cool and sounds cool but I doubt it will get popular.

You have entire companies, organizations, groups, standards, certifications, training and employees built around the current airframes. Its not going to be easy to change all of those overnight.

Not to mention, current airframes are the way they are because its what works best. Ever wondered why engines are always on the bottom of the wings, never on the top, or almost never on the back? Because its close to the ground and easy to maintain. Ever wonder why the wings are pointed upwards and swept back? Because those are the most fuel efficient and stable configurations. Flat fuselages like in the V plane means less heigh clearance which means passenger planes will have less space and freight planes will have trouble carrying certain shapes of cargo. All in all, that makes it hard to sell for any airplane manufacturers that want to make it

The current airframes are the way they are because of decades of incremental improvements and selections of which designs work and which don't. The entire industry or even a good enough chunk of it wont just drop that overnight

<comment><USER15> I don't know, the entire rocket industry is having to to re-orient itself around SpaceX's reusable rockets.

And given current usage, the gains in better rockets presumably pale in comparison to the potential savings / improvements that could be provided by new airframe designs.

<comment><USER16> One could make the argument that prior to SpaceX's entry into the market, there was stagnation due to limited market participants, cost-plus contracts, etc.

Commercial aviation is the exact opposite of this: Since deregulation, airlines have been operating in a highly competitive market with external pressures that have forced adoption of new technologies (oil prices => fuel efficiency, noise regulation => high bypass engines, labor costs => replacement of the flight engineer)

<comment><USER15> You're confusing airlines with manufacturers though. We're talking about an airplane design here, not the operation of it.

Effectively there are only two international long-haul airplane manufacturers (i.e. producers of planes that would compete with the OP) – Airbus and Boeing. That seems like "limited market participants" to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one disappointed that they didn't make a plane in the shape of a Gibson guitar?

<comment><USER18> That sounds like a youtube opportunity, go nuts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It looks like the Aereon. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEREON_26](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AEREON_26) Which test flew in 1971. There is a book about its development "flying deltoid pumpkin seed"

Some more info: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theatlantic.com/amp/article/72142/)

<comment><USER20> What's interesting is the split tube design. Very different from usual flying wing designs I've seen. possibilities for more windows?

<comment><USER21> Who needs windows? Just give them all some AR/VR-Goggles, and have them look _through_ the plane in any direction, like the helmet in the F-35 allows.

<comment><USER22> I think any perceptible latency and turbulence together would probably turn the plane into a vomitorium. Unless perhaps all the passengers where fighter jet pilots with iron stomachs..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Photos would help. Anyone have a link to any?

<comment><USER24> Yes, and a video:

[https://www.flightglobal.com/aerospace/flying-v-model- embark...](https://www.flightglobal.com/aerospace/flying-v-model-embarks-on- first-test-flight-with-airbus-support/139999.article)

It's a scale model that flew, not an actual aircraft. It's an interesting idea though.

<comment><USER25> Neither article addresses the flaw that always comes up when this design is proposed: By placing the passengers in the wings instead of the the middle, the would be exposed to much stronger turbulence (probably at a level unbearable for the general public).

<comment><USER26> Forget turbulence. Normal flight characteristics would be unbearable. Some of the approaches to Chicago Midway airport have ~45 degree bank angles.

<comment><USER27> Why would this be unbearable further outside on the wing? Wouldn't the angle still be the same for everyone on the plane?

<comment><USER26> The angle isn't the problem, it's the 40' vertical drop for the passenger near the wing tips.

<comment><USER28> What could be a solution would be the ability to angle the winglets up or down and use those for your banking instead of the body.

<comment><USER29> The turning will cause banking, or just lead you to a stall unless you have ridiculously słów turn rate (bad idea)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> These sorts of typos really annoy me

> Dutch airline KLM has agreed to find development of V-shaped aircraft

Do publishers not have any proof readers any more?

<comment><USER31> To be fair, there are multiple entities taking revenue away from them over the years. Something has to give.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> So why this over a delta (flying wing) shape?

<comment><USER32> Frankly, a flying wing would at least have placement of seats in a non-roller coaster configuration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> How is this different from the US military B2 style aircraft?

They look superficially very similar.

<comment><USER34> The photo in the article is deceptive; better pictures are here: [https://www.flightglobal.com/aerospace/flying-v-model- embark...](https://www.flightglobal.com/aerospace/flying-v-model-embarks-on- first-test-flight-with-airbus-support/139999.article)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can the title be adjusted to make it clear it's a scale model?

<comment><USER36> Thank CNN for that. Clearly clickbait. The Flight Global article someone else linked to has the word "model" in its title and a lot more useful information.

<comment><USER37> If there's going to be a change, I suggest just switching to the other link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There seems to be a lot about liquid-hydrogen as a fuel for passenger jets lately.

IMHO, it's totally unsuitable.

Is there another reason it's being pushed, eg it's an output of some other process that is desired?

</comment><comment><USER13> This seems like a useless efficiency, given no passengers would willingly fly in it, and it's not good layout for cargo either.

<comment><USER34> " given no passengers would willingly fly in it,"

Why do you say that?

<comment><USER26> Because the "cheap seats" further away from the centerline would be like a six hour roller coaster ride at Six Flags.

The centerline seats would have no windows (doesn't matter to me, but does for some people).

<comment><USER39> Motion sickness is much more likely when people can't see the horizon. This might be mitigated with forward facing monitors for each passenger.

But I'd pay for a six hour Six Flags experience. Turbulence and G's are fun for some.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Languages of India - happy-go-lucky https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_India <comment><USER2> Not just Hindi but Gujarati has a dialect that is heavily influenced by Perso- Arabic vocabulary called Lisan ud-Da'wat [0] As a native speaker of the later, I can fully attest to the fact that the language isn't mutually intelligible with Gujarati as spoken in India. It is even more true for the written form of these languages. There's a day and night difference with Perso-Arabic influence simply overwhelming its Gujarati roots.

This is also true for Hindi and Urdu, and you can tell esp if you're exposed to both. When you study both the languages theologically and linguistically, the differences become ever more apparent. It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called Hindustani [1] (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that's mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken form.

I, for sure, know that the Punjabi [2] spoke in Multan (Saraiki) _sounds_ different than anything I've heard in India; but my Indian Punjabi friends tell me its mutually intelligible to them.

Imo, the Hindi-Urdu debate isn't similar to a Croatian-Serbian or even the EasternPunjabi-WesternPunjabi one, where the vocabulary remains the same for the most part and only phonetics remain a predominant source of divergence.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud- Dawat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisan_ud-Dawat)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindi%E2%80%93Urdu_controversy)

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

<comment><USER3> > This is true for Hindi and Urdu, esp when you're exposed to both. When you > study both the languages theologically and linguistically, the differences > become ever more apparent. It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called > Hindustani [1] (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that's mutually > intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken > form.

You make it sound like everyday Hindi and everyday Urdu are far apart, but I'm not sure if that's true: if you took a Pakistani Urdu speaker and an Indian Hindi speaker, both from the middle class with only a modest amount of education (and therefore limited access to specialized technical vocabulary), both would have no trouble at all talking to each other. Occasionally one might use a word where the other might have preferred a different one (like زبان for the Urdu speaker and भाषा for the Hindi speaker for 'language'), but it's only possible to imagine them struggling if both were attempting to speak in the registers that are only used in exceedingly formal, technical, or literary contexts.

And when you ignore vocabulary, it becomes even more clear: the grammar of even highly Sanskritized Hindi is more or less identical to that of everyday Hindi, and while I'm less sure about what high Urdu is like, I don't think it differs grammatically from everyday Urdu either, with the possible exception of ezafe[1] (which both Hindi and Urdu speakers are perfectly able to comprehend, even if they do not produce it).

edit: this is Colin Masica's take in his book The Indo-Aryan Languages (p.27):

> The ultimate anomaly in the what-is-a-language dilemma in Indo-Aryan is > presented by the Hindi-Urdu situation. Counted as different languages in > sociocultural Sense B (and officially), Urdu and Modern Standard Hindi are > not even different dialects or subdialects in linguistic Sense A. They are > different literary styles based on the same linguistically defined > subdialect.

> At the colloquial level, and in terms of grammar and core vocabulary, they > are virtually identical; there are minor differences in usage and > terminology (and customary pronunciation of certain foreign sounds), but > these do not necessarily obtrude to the point where anyone can immediately > tell whether it is "Hindi" or "Urdu" that is being spoken. At formal and > literary levels, however, vocabulary differences begin to loom much larger > (Hindi drawing its higher lexicon from Sanskrit, Urdu from Arabic and > Persian), to the point where the two styles/languages become mutually > unintelligible. To the ordinary non-linguist who thinks, not unreasonably, > that languages consist of words, their status as different languages is then > commonsensically obvious, as it is from the fact that they are written in > quite different scripts (Hindi in Devanagari and Urdu in a modified Perso- > Arabic).

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez%C4%81fe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez%C4%81fe)

<comment><USER2> Thanks.

> You make it sound like everyday Hindi and everyday Urdu are far apart, but > I'm not sure if that's true: if you took a Pakistani Urdu speaker and an > Indian Hindi speaker, both from the middle class with only a modest amount > of education (and therefore limited access to specialized vocabulary), both > would have no trouble at all talking to each other.

Hence this from the parent post: _It is only the mash of Hindi-Urdu called Hindustani (popularized in modern day by Bollywood) that 's mutually intelligible to both Hindi and Urdu speakers alike, and only in its spoken form._

> And when you ignore vocabulary...

That's the crux of my point. The punjabi dialects vary mostly in phonetics and not so much in vocabulary. In my case _Gujarati and Lisan ud Dawat_ aren't exactly mutually intelligible in spoken form and most def not in their written form. As for _Hindi-Urdu_ , it is mutually intelligible when in its hugely popular _Hindustani_ [0] form, which is what your saying as well, I think.

> I don't think it differs grammatically from everyday Urdu either, with the > possible exception of ezafe.

That's one difference that has Perso-Arabic tilt to it. The Urdu/Rekhta literature has other elements [1] that diverge from high Hindi that it couldn't possibly pass off as the same language as Urdu, imo. Exhibit A: [https://www.rekhta.org/ghazals](https://www.rekhta.org/ghazals) Most native Hindi speakers would have trouble parsing through most of those Urdu _ghazals_ , I'd reckon.

> At formal and literary levels, however, vocabulary differences begin to loom > much larger (Hindi drawing its higher lexicon from Sanskrit, Urdu from > Arabic and Persian), to the point where the two styles/languages become > mutually unintelligible.

Exactly. For a language like Lisan ud-Da'wat spoken by a much less number of people, there's a common ground with Gujarati which is simply to speak the main language _Gujarati_ itself, even if the core vocabulary and grammar are similar between the two. The only thing working for Hindi-Urdu mutual intelligibility, imo, is that Hindi is spoken by a large number of people who are exposed to Urdu, on a day to day basis, and vice versa.

I guess, like someone mentioned [2], 'a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.'

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

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

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759103](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6759103)

<comment><USER4> Punjabi dialects do vary in vocabulary. Just go to Indian Punjab, and converse with people from Majha, Malwa, Doaba or Poadh. You will instantly find differences. Singers from Majha sometimes use vocab that needs help translating.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> When I visited Himachel Predesh I stayed a few days in a remote Himalayan village named Malana, sometimes referred to as "The Village of Taboos" due to all of the rules they have, largely concerning outsiders. Outsiders are not allowed to touch a Malanan person, touch or enter a building, or even speak the village language even if the outsider know some of it. They also claimed to be the world's oldest continuous democracy, and descendants of Alexander the Great's armies. Definitely a strange and fascinating society.

<comment><USER6> It's a testimony to India's vastness and diversity that more than 99.5% Indians wouldn't have even heard about Malana let alone know about their unique culture and society.

<comment><USER7> On the contrary, most people I know have heard of Malana simply because of "Malana Cream", a variety of highly sought after hashish

<comment><USER8> "Most people you know" does not equate to 99 or even 90% Indians, so this does not negate the previous statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The diversity in general in India is mind boggling which most of Indians take for granted. Be it terrain, climate, language, culture, food, etc., And all the above change noticeably every 200KM or so such that you will find more similarities between Delhi and Lahore (different countries) than Delhi and Bangalore.

It's a miracle that India manages to function as one country.

<comment><USER9> The West expected India to be a failed state within a decade of independance. There were 584 princely states and hundreds of linguistic, religious and cultural minorities to integrate within one country.

Compare India to Yugoslavia which broke up violently along ethnic lines or to Sri Lanka which had a bloody civil war that lasted 25 years. Or the division of Pakistan into Bangladesh along racial and linguistic lines even though they shared the same religion.

What I fear is that young Indians take nation for granted and don't understand that India's secular democracy is fragile and that it can within a generation 'be broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls'.

<comment><USER10> Also mentioned in India After Gandhi.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> India's definition of what is and what is not a language is highly politicized and highly idiosyncratic.

Hindi and Urdu, by any reasonable linguistic definition are not separate languages. The official standards for both Hindi and Urdu, are both based on the form of the huge dialect continuum that spans North India and Pakistan, as spoken in Delhi. The only difference is that Urdu uses Persian and Arabic as inspiration/source for high vocabulary, whereas Hindi uses Sanskrit as a source for high vocabulary. And they use different scripts. But on the street level, the language is identical, not merely mutually intelligible.

Many of the languages traditionally clubbed by the Indian government as Hindi are much farther away from standard Hindi than Urdu.

<comment><USER12> > on the street level, the language is identical

Personal anecdote: when I first went to South Asia, I spent time in southern Pakistan and learned some basic Urdu. Then I spent time in north India, among Hindi speakers. The language I'd learned was immediately usable there, but my local friends could also tell where it came from -- and sometimes would tell me "Aha! yes, we know what you mean, but that's an Urdu word - in Hindi we say ...."

So even on a basic street level, I don't think it's true that they're identical. Both part of the same huge dialect continuum, yes, but they're slightly different points on it.

Whether to call them _separate languages_ is as much a political question as a linguistic one, of course.

<comment><USER13> Same way like Italian and Romanian and Spanish

<comment><USER14> Not quite. As a Romanian speaker I can't understand more than very basic Italian. Perhaps Spanish is slightly more understandable but still not to a 90% level for sure.

I also doubt they understand any Romanian at all.

<comment><USER15> Romanian kept its case system unlike the other Romance languages by virtue of ending up in the Slavic sprachbund. I'd wager that there are Slavic loanwords as well?

<comment> barry-cotter 11-14%

> A statistical analysis sorting Romanian words by etymological source carried > out by Macrea (1961)[88] based on the DLRM[99] (49,649 words) showed the > following makeup:[89]

> 43% recent Romance loans (mainly French: 38.42%, Latin: 2.39%, Italian: > 1.72%) 20% inherited Latin 11.5% Slavic (Old Church Slavonic: 7.98%, > Bulgarian: 1.78%, Bulgarian-Serbian: 1.51%) 8.31% Unknown/unclear origin > 3.62% Turkish 2.40% Modern Greek 2.17% Hungarian 1.77% German (including > Austrian High German)[97] 2.24% Onomatopoeic If the analysis is restricted > to a core vocabulary of 2,500 frequent, semantically rich and productive > words, then the Latin inheritance comes first, followed by Romance and > classical Latin neologisms, whereas the Slavic borrowings come third.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A co-worker of mine once said then he heard a greater variety of spoken Indian languages in the Bay Area than he'd ever heard back in India, where he was born and educated. Never thought of a polite way to ask, but I've always been curious as to how many Indian co-workers of mine share a language other than English - seems like the number could be lower than expected, given the sheer amount of different languages.

<comment><USER17> Your co-worker's observation is actually more obvious than we think it is.

Since states in India are essentially divided based on linguistic grounds, he would have been exposed to two Indian languages at best - the regional language in his town and Hindi (if the dominant language in the town is not Hindi already).

In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.

<comment><USER18> > In the Bay Area you'll find people from various states of India.

Doesn't the same thing happen within India itself, due to internal interstate migration? Not everyone who works in (for example) Bangalore's IT industry grew up there.

<comment><USER19> On a related note, does that make people in (e.g.) Bangalore speak Hindi more than Kannada?

In China, the purpose-built electronics city of Shenzhen is full of migrants from other regions, so the local language is Mandarin even though the surrounding Guangdong province speaks Cantonese.

<comment><USER20> In Hyderabad which is in a neighboring state to Bangalore, most people speak both Telugu and Hindi.

Among white collar workers English is pretty common.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It still boggles my mind that so many of the languages of India are related to European languages. Hindi and English share a common linguistic ancestor. Yet languages that are much physically closer together like English and Finnish or Hindi and Tamil aren't related at all.

<comment><USER22> This is because both Europe and India where both conquered by the Yamnaya people about 4 millennia ago[1]. Europeans and Indians are (distant) cousins. Take a look at most Bollywood stars for example and the resemblance is clear.

[1] [https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated- by-c...](https://www.livescience.com/59703-north-india-populated-by-central- asian-invaders.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Lost among here is Sentinelese [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language)

The only language where not a single word is known to the outside world!

<comment><USER22> On some level you have to respect a people whose response to anthropologists is to see how many arrows they can stick in them.

<comment><USER24> There has been friendly contacts with them according to Wikipedia: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese#Shipwrecks)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> The number of languages is stunning. Does anyone know if the number of languages is just the officially named languages or if it includes creoles? The language I speak is a creole of two languages and doesnt have a name or writing system really, and I'm curious to know how that is counted.

<comment><USER26> I'd consider "Mumbai Hindi" a creole. It's nominally a dialect of Hindi/Urdu but it has a lot of Marathi mixed in, among other languages.

<comment><USER11> Mumbai Hindi is not a creole by any definition of linguistics. It is actually a dialect of Hindustani with Marathi and other languages mixed in.

A Creole specifically occurs when two languages (usually unrelated) suddenly mix together, usually with a _greatly_ simplified (but consistent) grammar from the parent languages. It's not just the result of heavy borrowing.

I don't believe that's happened for Mumbai Hindi.

<comment><USER27> I believe you are confusing a "creole" with a "pidgin".

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

> pidgin language, is a grammatically simplified means of communication that > develops between two or more groups that do not have a language in common: > typically, its vocabulary and grammar are limited and often drawn from > several languages. It is most commonly employed in situations such as trade, > or where both groups speak languages different from the language of the > country in which they reside (but where there is no common language between > the groups). Fundamentally, a pidgin is a simplified means of linguistic > communication, as it is constructed impromptu, or by convention, between > individuals or groups of people. A pidgin is not the native language of any > speech community, but is instead learned as a second language

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure Mumbai Hindi would qualify as a pidgin either then since it's definitely the native language of a significant number of people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This may be a long shot, but could anybody help me find a Bible in Oriya?

Last year I did some research into Unicode PUA characters and discovered some unencoded Taiwanese & Hakka characters. I wrote a proposal to add them to Unicode, and a blog post on Medium (called Hakka news).

Now I've done the same for all languages on Bible.com, and I'm trying to compare with printed copies to know what the text should say.

<comment><USER28> You can find an online version here [https://vachanonline.com/](https://vachanonline.com/) .

If you are looking for the data, here is a repository: [https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB- NT.BCS](https://git.door43.org/BCS-BIBLE/Odiya-ULB-NT.BCS) That is the New Testament only, the Old Testament can be found in the same way.

<comment><USER19> I can already get the online version!

The trouble is that I can see some PUA codes being used in the text.

[https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV- BSI](https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/1KI.4.20.ODIAOV-BSI)

[https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV- BSI](https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/2KI.16.17.ODIAOV-BSI)

[https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV- BSI](https://www.bible.com/bible/1749/ROM.6.16.ODIAOV-BSI)

No idea if these will appear in the comment, but let's try:

 U+F020  U+F02F  U+F0A0

If I can compare to scans of a printed copy, then I'll be able to know what the characters should be (and therefore whether they're already in Unicode).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The surprising thing for me is the fact "India (780) has the world's second highest number of languages, after Papua New Guinea (839)."

</comment><comment><USER30> It's amazing how most Indians believe that Hindi is the national language of India, when there's no such as a national language in India.

There are two official languages for union government communication - <AUTHOR> and English.

I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented English instead of The Indian language.

<comment><USER31> The original plan was, of course, to phase out English as a national language. This never happened, I suppose partially because while 'Hindustani' (as was) made sense as a symbol of unity during the time leading up to Independence, afterwards, especially as 'Hindi', it was seen more as a regional language (even if the region involved is large) and so not necessarily more deserving of official nation-level status than Bengali or Tamil. English ends up being more neutral in many ways (though, of course, not without its own (post- colonial) baggage).

> I've also noticed that a lot of non Indians find it funny that most Indians > here in bay area companies communicate among themselves in heavily accented > English instead of The Indian language.

Ah, yes, of course, 'the Indian language'. :)

<comment><USER32> I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated under a Swiss style cantonment system ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland)). They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too. And whatever paroxysms of violence from internal migration might have been mitigated against if it was all being overseen by a single government and army instead of the three-way clusterfuck of the actual partition.

There would have needed to be some system for maintaining a rough level of parity/equality of representation of various minority groups at the high level. Scheduled castes and tribes would probably not have been as well protected under such a system, for example, but it's probably something than could have been worked out with effort.

<comment><USER33> > I always thought India would have functioned better if it had confederated > under a Swiss style cantonment system > ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantons_of_Switzerland)). > They maybe could have even avoided partition this way too.

In what way? Having even more autonomy than they have as states?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> For the movie industry it's a challenge, but they settled for 5 languages to target. Remember, the Indian movie industries are the biggest in the world, by far outnumbering Hollywood or porn.

So they have English as lingua franca (mostly as repeated short statement to get the point to non-native speakers), but it's not a target language.

1\. Hindi as dominant by the biggest industry from Mumbai (lot of trash movies, comparable to Hollywood).

2\. Tamil from Chennai (much more political, having the more famous directors, but kinda ridicolous fashion styles).

3\. Bengali from Kalkutta (very European, radical, cynical).

4\. Telugu (Chennai, now Hyderabad) and I have no idea about the fifth. Is the a Punjab film industry? There are two more south Indian smaller industries, but the south combined (Tamil, Telugu, Malalayam, Kennada) has a market share of 50%, whilst in west you only hear about Bollywood with its musicals. Take that Hollywood.

</comment><comment><USER35> Too many languages, too many religions to govern a country like this effectively. Unpopular truth, but truth nonetheless.

<comment><USER36> Yet governance has been pretty effective since the last 70 years and will only get better as more of Indians get educated and the population growth slows.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> "The difference between a language and a dialect is an army and a navy." Of course this is all politicized, therefore sometimes militarized...

</comment><comment><USER38> Those who are wondering why Indian languages are a subgrouop of Indo-European languages, this chart might be helpful. It shows some of the many words that Sanskrit and Slavic both share.

[https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_a...](https://www.rbth.com/blogs/2014/11/01/sanskrit_and_russian_ancient_kinship_39451)

<comment><USER39> Not all indian languages are in that subgroup. There are another family of dravidian languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> A bit strange that Sinhala is classified as Indo-European rather than as Dravidian, as one might think from geography.

<comment><USER41> The sinhalese people of Sri Lanka are Indo-European, not dravidian. IIRC they came from Modern day Bengal.

<comment><USER40> But Sinhalese culture,food etc is closer to Dravidian.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here is a well respected source on this [https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN](https://www.ethnologue.com/country/IN)

</comment><comment><USER42> India's right wing government under Modi is trying to impose Hindi on Indians who belong to different ethnicity and speak diverse set of languages. A sure shot recipe for balkanization of a young nation.

<comment><USER43> > trying to impose Hindi on Indians

That turned out to be a big hoax. This is the second time such a frenzy was created for no apparent reason. There is no such "imposition" done by the Centre. A proposal is in draft which makes third-language compulsory for students. That does not mean Hindi would be imposed. The student can choose whichever language s/he wants to learn. The third language thing is implemented in quite a few states already but it is not Nationwide. This should be encouraged as it would allow students from Hindi belt and Dravidian states to learn a different third language.

> speak diverse set of languages

I disagree completely. I am from South and I can tell you that we have too much pride in our languages. So much so that we would rather speak English with our fellow Indians but not learn a different Indian language. Balkanization has already happened. What we need to do is try to unite by shedding this arrogance of language superiority. It doesn't matter which language came "first" or which is the most "ancient". A language is means of communication. That is it! There is no need for all this frenzy around it.

<comment><USER44> > A language is means of communication. That is it!

As any sociolinguist will tell you, languages are partly a means of communication, partly a signal of group identity. The latter trait of human language is why some demographics intentionally take the common language and attempt to make it difficult to understand by outsiders by adding in-group slang and cant. It is why many peoples determine that a person is no longer a member of their community when he/she switches to entirely speaking an outside language.

If you see language merely as a means of communication, a lot of sociographic and inter-ethnic phenomena are going to elude you.

<comment><USER43> What does that have to do with the topic at hand? I am talking about irrational hatred for a language. Not about how a language can be misused. The misuse of language is secondary. What is the point of knowing about slang and cant if you aren't even going to learn the language in the first place?

<comment><USER44> > Not about how a language can be misused. The misuse of language is > secondary.

Again, use of language as a way to signal group identity and block out others is not "misuse" of a language. It is an inherent part of the human language faculty, it _is_ normal usage. I know that in a venue like this who many participants are developers or sympathetic to the software community, there is a tendency to think of human language like a programming language, as solely a means of communication, purely a matter of "utility", but as I said, that is not how human communities actually work.

As for "irrational hatred": considering the danger that large languages supported by a central government can pose to regional languages – a danger illustrated by numerous case studies all over the world – the desire of certain South Indians to avoid Hindi is not irrational at all.

<comment><USER43> > It is an inherent part of the human language faculty, it is normal usage

If it is normal usage then there is nothing to fear right? This logic makes no sense because I don't see this happening with other regional languages vis-a- vis Hindi.

> a danger illustrated by numerous case studies all over the world

Are you telling me that Hindi speaking people are deliberately targeting Tamil and Malayalam while giving a free pass to other linguistic communities? Why don't I see Assamese or Odia people having similar issues with Hindi? Surely they should also feel threatened by Hindi right? But they don't! They are thriving and they continue to speak their own language, maintain their own culture and traditions and also know to speak and write Hindi!

India has a 5000 year recorded history. Never has any language in these 5000 years been deliberately destroyed. I am a Kannadiga. I speak Kannada at home and yet have studied Hindi as my 3rd language and am fluent in it. It hasn't destroyed my culture, tradition or language. I don't see Hindi as a danger. If at all it has enriched my life, my thinking and given me a greater perspective.

But I am open minded enough to know other perspectives. Even if I disagree 100%. Can you share links to some of those studies? I find it hard to believe that any study can come to a conclusion on one Indian language being a danger to another language.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


New process for preserving lumber could offer advantages over pressure treating - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-02-lumber-advantages-pressure.html <comment><USER2> One advantage they don't discuss is perhaps lack of toxicity. I used to do Carpentry during summer break and sometimes we'd burn scraps for heat. I was advised not to throw treated lumber into the pile as it's toxic so this would be a good step in the right direction towards less toxins introduced into homes and groundwater.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, but looking at the three substances they mention in the article - Oxides of Zinc, Aluminium and Titanium, I guess there could be other considerations in terms of groundwater issues?

Also, how practical, cost-wise would this be? It's not mentioned in the article, but surely titanium would be prohibitive in terms of cost? (Even for small amounts)

<comment><USER4> Let's see if I can multiply up the numbers correctly. Please let me know if I'm messing these up.

Article is closed, but supplementary material is free.

Each experiment is 3 blocks of wood, each 5 grams. So 15g of wood.

They say they need 2x10^20 molecules of TiCl4 for one experiment (perhaps the final deposited amount in the extreme 'all cells covered' case). Or 3x10^-4 moles. That's 200x10^-4 or 2x10^-2 for 1kg wood. Making it up to 1 mole gives us 50kg of wood. 1 mole is 190g of TiCl4. Or about 250kg wood per kg TiCl4.

Alibaba costs (I'm not in the field so that's based on it being there first link) puts that at maybe a dollar or two.

Caveats: may require less because completely covering all cells is not realistic. May require more because you don't use things completely efficiently. Alibaba may not be representative (either direction) and the "99.9%" pure stuff there may not be good enough and going higher may get exponentially more expensive.

But it doesn't seem like the raw cost of the materials _necessarily_ would be a problem to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is credited "by Georgia Institute of Technology", so it is a press release. This is just early research, but presumably the problems of toxicity are what inspired the study in the first place. But, they can't make any claims yet, because lawyers. And cost would be a huge factor, unless regulation were involved. There is a potential public good in reducing toxins in the environment. But what about their idea of using it for framing lumber? Nobody uses pressure treated for framing today, do they? It would help insulate, they say, but there's no way that would make any sense unless the cost were much lower than today's treated lumber, which... well it's just an early research project.

<comment><USER6> The thing about toxins in treated lumber, it isn't a bug in the product. It is actually the feature. Treated lumber is just as porous and traps water like any other lumber. It has so much copper compounds trapped in it that almost nothing can ever break it down. If you bury treated lumber in the ground you will find it sterilizes a small layer of soil around it. This is why it is so effective.

Anything trying to reduce the toxicity of treated lumber by swapping on a coating runs into the same problem as traditional methods like painting the lumber: a single tiny hole in the coating allows the entire piece of lumber to be compromised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why are all of the comparisons to untreated lumber? Shouldn't they have tested against pressure-treated lumber too to see how well it performs against that?

<comment><USER8> I'm not familiar with all types, but most pressure treatments don't attempt to stop water uptake, they just impregnate the wood with pesticides/fungicides.

It's not there to stop the water, it's there to stop termites, fungi, mites and other pests that can degrade or threaten the integrity of wood. That's why most exterior decking should be sitting on something like this ([https://www.amazon.com/Simpson-Strong-Tie- ABA44Z-Gauge-20-Pa...](https://www.amazon.com/Simpson-Strong-Tie- ABA44Z-Gauge-20-Pack/dp/B002LOT0TA?ref_=fsclp_pl_dp_5)) to prevent water uptake.

I'd be curious to see how this compares to treated wood for their mold test, though. That seems like a really valid test.</comment></comment>


How to Build a Space Elevator - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/how-to-build-a-space-elevator/261405/

<comment><USER2> The advocates of this idea clearly aren't thinking it through:

1\. A space elevator is necessarily located at the equator.

2\. A carbon nanotube is a conductor, indeed a rather good one.

3\. For practical reasons the tube needs to be as thin as possible consistent with its other requirements.

4\. The structure will last until the first major thunderstorm, and thunderstorms are common at the equator.

The same kind of analysis could have been offered about the Space Shuttle (on which I worked), if anyone was willing to think deeply enough about the system's vulnerabilities. But no one was.

<comment><USER3> Space elevator advocates have considered thunderstorms: <http://www.mill- creek-systems.com/HighLift/chapter10.html>

<comment><USER2> Yes -- they acknowledge that a lightning strike would destroy the cable. "One possible event that would destroy the elevator cable would be a lightning strike. Lightning has sufficient current and voltage potential in its arc to heat and destroy any composite that we have been considering."

But this fact is rarely pointed out in widely read descriptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What would happen when a space elevator cable breaks:

<http://gassend.net/spaceelevator/breaks/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> Nothing new, this idea has been around since the 60s, or was it 70s?

<comment><USER6> The first I know of is "The Fountains of Paradise" by A.C. Clarke. Great book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> space elevator again? oh...man... try launch loop next time.</comment>


Programming in a museum? Creative coding for art mediation (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://ils.sont.la/post/programming-museum-creative-coding-art-mediation <comment><USER2> In a cubicle only you shall program!

                          - The Management -</comment>


The New York Times Redesign - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/redesign

<comment><USER2> Im puzzled why top menu need it dublicate as side panel, activating throudh top menu and looking like amateur greasemonkey plug-in. And oh, fonts, my eyes burning.</comment>


No CLI ads: Ad blocker for command line interface ads - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kethinov/no-cli-ads <comment><USER2> Haven't we had CLI ads for some time? I mean, this is an ad, right?

      % parallel
      Academic tradition requires you to cite works you base your article on.
      If you use programs that use GNU Parallel to process data for an article in a
      scientific publication, please cite:

        O. Tange (2018): GNU Parallel 2018, Mar 2018, ISBN 9781387509881,
        DOI https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1146014

      This helps funding further development; AND IT WON'T COST YOU A CENT.
      If you pay 10000 EUR you should feel free to use GNU Parallel without citing.

      More about funding GNU Parallel and the citation notice:
      https://www.gnu.org/software/parallel/parallel_design.html#Citation-notice

      To silence this citation notice: run 'parallel --citation' once.

And that has been in GNU parallel for years.

<comment><USER3> > _this is an ad, right?_

It's not advertising some other product/service, it's simply asking to be cited when used in publications.

And it can be silenced by running one command...

<comment><USER2> You agree that it's an ad, right? (And it's asking for a voluntary donation of 10000 EUR as an alternative, so certainly money is involved.)

Is the GNU parallel ad okay, but other ads are not?

If so, what makes something a "good" ad? Or a "tasteful" one?

If this isn't an advertisement, what should I call it should I wish to put something similar in my code?

<comment><USER4> Telling people to cite their work, which is way different.

<comment><USER2> Cite their work _or give 10 000 EUR_ to the project. The last makes it an advertisement.

If it isn't an advertisement, what it is? A public service announcement?

<comment><USER4> Pretty much, yeah, because it's a joke. You get jokes, right?

If you do a work that needs strict citations and not cite properly, your project itself could be at stake. No one will pay 10,000EUR to be questioned by the ethics board about their work.

<comment><USER2> Is it an advertisement? Yes, or no?

If not, what is it?

(Lots of advertisements contain/are jokes.)

And -- hah! You know how many papers there are which used software X, Y, and Z, all with cite-able references, and where the authors did NOT cite the software?

I mean, last year I was at a conference, talking to a vendor, who complained about academics, using their software under an academic license which clearly requires that the vendor be cited for any publications, who omit citing their work.

I have never heard of any scientific project which got in trouble for omitting a reference for an non-scientific software component like GNU parallel - and I can't think of any which have gotten into trouble for omitting a reference to a scientific software component they use.

At best it would be described as an oversight, and if the journal really is that strict (can you point to one?), resolved with a correction. It's certainly not a threat to the project.

But, let's suppose it _is_ an issue.

Shouldn't more software components be doing this?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Code is going to disappear - <AUTHOR> http://make.bubble.is/post/90659170481/code-is-going-to-disappear

<comment><USER2> A very interesting source of thoughts is the work done by Bret Victor [http://worrydream.com/](http://worrydream.com/) (take a look at Recent Output section).

Code the way we know it today will change. After all, human languages keep changing.

However, changes will happen in a very natural way, with selection of the best compromise between efforts and results. For instance, programming languages might not change that much while we might end up with more and more powerful frameworks to build software.

Nevertheless, next 50 years of evolution will be very very interesting to follow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah Bret has some very interesting points. I don't think he's shipping stuff anymore, that's kinda sad...

I agree with your point about frameworks, Bubble is a framework in some ways. However, my point was that at some point, creating software will not be done via typing code, but more through a more pleasant input/user experience (independently of the framework, which will of course evolve).

<comment><USER2> Ok, that's a good and hopefully true point. Code and tools will both evolve, eventually you might not deal directly with code but with the abstraction offered by such tools.

Code itself won't likely disappear. It will be just buried behind more and more layers of abstractions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Code wont disappear unless there's some magical evolution of the PC.

Last time I checked, the idea of a universal computer came from Robert Turing several decades ago, and no one has even come close to revolutionizing that.

Even quantum computers fundamentally are hardware devices that emulate other computational machines through means of software/algorithmic theory. It hasn't changed, and it wont.

Just because you can understand a couple languages doesn't mean you understand computation.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I said code will disappear, I mean people won't use it as much as they do today. Code will still be there, assembly language is still there for instance. I agree with that point.

I'm just saying that at some point, more people will be creating software, and for most of them, they won't use code, but something more visual. Similarly, today, most people don't use assembly language any more.

In other words (back to what we do at Bubble), we're trying to make of JS/Python/Ruby what assembly language is today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Books are becoming so popular that we'll no longer need an alphabet or grammar!</comment>


The Fight to Preserve Dead Videogames - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/videos/the-point-the-fight-to-preserve-dead-video-games/2300-6424754/

<comment><USER2> Video games that require an online server to work, need someone to host a server and rewrite the code to support old video games that the video game maker no longer supports. The fact that a video game maker can cease to support a video game by taking down the servers is scary. They can force owners of the video game to buy a new version for 2015 by taking down the servers for the 2014 version.

I used to have Battlefield 1942 and Vietnam for my son, and those servers were taken down. So the games are basically unplayable now.</comment>


Show HN: Anti cyberbullying digital parenting app - <AUTHOR> https://app.kindigo.co/signup <comment><AUTHOR> We are looking for our first early adopters who we can work closely with to improve our product, ideally parents with kids in age group 7-15. For the parents who work with us at this stage we promise to build a product which will work for them and offer a chance to really make a difference by building something which can solve problems for millions of parents in same boat.

Kindigo is a digital service to keeps kids safe from cyberbullying, and other forms of dangerous content online. Kindigo does this by giving parents more visibility and control into their kids' online activities. Although in early days, Kindigo aims to become the default platform to educate and coach parents on best practices for parenting in the digital age.

To do this, Kindigo uses multiple mechanisms to monitor a child's public and private online activity. Using artificial intelligence to flag content in text and web activity, images, contacts, and even app lists, parents are immediately alerted when something dangerous or potentially harmful is detected.</comment>


Go DevRoom videos from FOSDEM - <AUTHOR> http://video.fosdem.org/2014/K4601/Sunday/

<comment><USER2> If you want to read about each talk before watching the videos, check out our liveblog of the event at [https://sourcegraph.com/blog/fosdem-2014-go- devroom](https://sourcegraph.com/blog/fosdem-2014-go-devroom).

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtLJO5JKE5YDKG4WcaNts3...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtLJO5JKE5YDKG4WcaNts3IVZqhDmmuBH)</comment>


Looks like Color was beaten to the punch. - <AUTHOR> http://jarvus.com/

<comment><USER2> Erm, they were already beaten to the punch by every other photo sharing app in existence.

</comment><comment><USER3> Beaten to the punch by yet another photosharing app, that shipped after Color's, and also has no obvious traction?

Bizzaroworld?</comment>