Greenland is Melting Away - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/10/27/world/greenland-is-melting-away.html <comment><USER2> I can't believe that there are people in the USG that want to cut funding for this kind of research. Really? And spend it on what? Missiles to kill people?

This kind of research is the one that keeps America and the forefront of science and technology. I'm glad that the federal government and NASA have continued to do science regardless of all that political pressure. These US institutions need to be strengthened with more funding.

<comment><USER3> > I can't believe that there are people in the USG that want to cut funding > for this kind of research. Really? And spend it on what? Missiles to kill > people?

They aren't trying to cut earth sciences in order to fund other things. They are trying to cut earth sciences because earth sciences keep finding out facts that they don't like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Every American needs to read this piece [0] about how Lamar Smith and Republicans in Congress are trying to shut down science they don't like by undermining peer review and ridiculing grant proposals with funny titles.

We are facing a new Lysenkoism [1].

[0] [http://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9616370/science-committee- wors...](http://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9616370/science-committee-worse- benghazi-committee) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow... that's the first time that I've ever gotten immediate vertigo from visiting a site. Whose bright idea was it to put a full-frame moving aerial image at the top of the article?

I seriously just had to lie down for five minutes thanks to that.</comment>


Tell HN: I Just Bought $2,814 of Print Advertising for $15 - <AUTHOR>

I just bought a 1/2-page full-color advertising slot (retail rate: $2,814) for $15, with only 1 hour of work.
If there's enough demand, I'll write a blog post detailing the process in full.
Let me know in the comments! <comment><USER2> What the hell? How can this make so high in hacker news without any actual content? Of course we want to know how to get cheap advertising to promote our startups - unless your method is not repeatable. Just show it

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, I'm enjoying the anticipation.

Working on the blog post now. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the blog post: [http://chrishaueter.com/blog/2814-of-print-advertising- for-1...](http://chrishaueter.com/blog/2814-of-print-advertising-for-15/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Either do it or don't.

</comment><comment><USER4> Post it please :)

</comment><comment><USER5> +1</comment>


Accswift- Truly Nepali Accounting Software - <AUTHOR> http://www.accswift.com <comment><USER2> If you are searching an accounting software for Germany, check this out: [https://www.buchhaltungsbutler.de](https://www.buchhaltungsbutler.de)</comment>


Myst Is Coming to Oculus - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/16/21436681/myst-trailer-cyan-worlds-remake-vr-oculus-quest-announcement <comment><USER2> Man, I haven't thought about Myst in a long time. I remember playing the remastered edition on my dad's computer and being transfixed by how beautiful it was, despite being a bit too young to grok all of the puzzles. It seems fitting that it will be remastered again for VR.</comment>


Show HN: Shelfie-Get free and discounted Ebooks of your print books - <AUTHOR> http://Shelfie.com <comment><AUTHOR> Our app allows readers to get the ebook versions of the books they own either for free or at a deep discount, discover new reads and keep an instant digital inventory of their shelves; we also recently launched a Goodreads integration.

Readers simply take a picture of their bookshelves (Shelfie) and we do the rest. We have signed over 450 publishers (including 2 of the big 5) to bring over 100,000 titles to users.

Would love feedback from the community.</comment>


New haskell-lang.org - <AUTHOR> https://haskell-lang.org/announcements <comment><USER2> FWIW, I've tried to use stack twice and came back to cabal-install. There's also that I enable split-objects in ~/.cabal/config (not available in Stack) and often use GHC on platforms where there's no Stack-provided GHC available. That said, avoiding the compatibility problem of dependencies via curated package sets (Stackage) is a nice idea. However, Duncan's nix-local-build work makes the problems void from what I can tell, and Ed's Backpack work will improve the situation even more. Though, curated sets are still a nice idea regardless.

I'm not a Haskell greybeard, just a light user, but despite the improvements via FPComplete's output, at least some of it feels NIH and unnecessarily polarizes the community. For instance, reusing Shake in Cabal(-install) and getting nix-local-build and Backpack production ready look like improvements that will be beneficial for a longer time, rather than splitting the community with a different build/package structure (stack).

I mean, dividing the already small Haskell community doesn't make sense to me. If Gershom doesn't play fair with the management of www.haskell.org, this should be raised officially and fixed, because haskell.org is not a one man project and there's a team around it.

<comment><USER3> Credit where credit is due: nix-local-build is mostly Duncan Coutts work (I just wrote the announcement, and contributed some patches!)

<comment><USER4> Links to nix-local-build please? Is this the same as cabal new-build?

<comment><USER2> It's the same: [http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build- ni...](http://blog.ezyang.com/2016/05/announcing-cabal-new-build-nix-style- local-builds/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this is awful. It seems like there are a lot of immature people on both sides of this nonsense. If any of them are reading this: you're making your ecosystem look bad. Settle your differences privately and present a unified front.

<comment><USER6> Could you explain more about what's awful and immature? Do you mean the linked website, or the discussion here, or somewhere else?

<comment><USER5> The difference between haskell.org and haskell-lang.org, the new subreddit and IRC channel, the cat fights between the designer and haskell.org, and so on.

<comment><USER7> The new subreddit is for discussing the new site, not for general Haskell discussion. The top moderator of /r/haskell_lang confirms this: [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_thi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_this_the_official_haskell_subreddit_or_is/d54cpja)

<comment><USER8> It's a bit broader than discussing the site, if you accept what they have announced. The subreddit (and twitter feed, etc.) will be "open to all to discuss the contents of the website, and more broadly how to make Haskell as welcoming a language, community, and ecosystem as can be managed." That second part implies a wider mandate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why on earth would they launch a new subreddit when there is [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/) with 20k+ subscribers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars. We need a clean break. A new subreddit provides a fresh start allowing to mold a new community based on better principles. Everyone who wants to be part of the new community is invited to join the new Haskell movement. Troublemaker will hopefully stay behind

<comment><USER10> "Because /r/haskell has become a place of constant flamewars."

Are we talking about different /r/haskells here? I'm not seeing it.

"Disagreement" is not "a flamewar". Wouldn't even call it "constant disagreement", either.

Do you have an example "flamewar" you can show us?

<comment><USER11> > "Disagreement" is not "a flamewar"

It's worse these days. "We need a safe zones!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I understand you desire a clean break, but personally I find it rather user- hostile to fragment all of your resources so easily.

</comment><comment><USER13> I still don't understand why new subreddit or IRC channel are necessary. They could be used strictly to talk about the new site, but it seems they will be targeted to all things Haskell, exactly like the existing places.

Otherwise I'm all for some form of competition and moving things forwards, so props for the initiative.

<comment><USER14> Seriously. And frankly, haskell-lang.org looks a lot like haskell.org

<comment><USER13> This is the same design. And the person who donated it to haskell.org asked them to stop using it[0]

[0] [https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell- community/2016-Ap...](https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell- community/2016-April/000100.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess I don't understand the need for a new IRC channel. #haskell is one of the best out there, both as a resource and a community. Why split it up?

<comment><USER16> I got the impression on #haskell-lang that the current occupants think the channel is about the new website. But with a channel name like that it definitely sounds like a channel devoted to Haskell discussion...and thus may become one.

We already have #haskell, #haskell-overflow (sometimes even #haskell-overflow- overflow :P) and #haskell-beginners. I don't think there's a need for further IRC channels for language discussion. The current Haskell IRC community is beautiful and the least toxic and splintered of any I've ever been to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good to see that the Haskell community is looking for ways to be more accessible to newcomers. I'm not very familiar with Haskell, but I have long heard that the Haskell community wasn't interested in popularity. Has there been a shift in their thinking?

<comment><USER18> No. This is not the community's doing. It is FP Complete, a corporation attempting to subvert the haskell community for their financial benefit. The purpose of this site is to make newcomers think the FP complete tools are the tools to use, rather than the official ones.

<comment><USER19> You do understand that comments like this are actually building their case for problems in the community right? I've read several of your comments on this page, and you're the only one making accusations without any evidence, and turning this into a flame war. If you don't like stack, don't use it.

I'm not a big fan of this whole community splitting action, but to think that it's been undertaken as a coup d'état to take control of the community by a commercial entity is verging on tinfoil hat territory.

And you know what? Stack is a fantastic tool for newcomers, we use it exclusively for our commercial Haskell projects and it's changed our development practices for the better by a long way. Something that built today I can be sure will build in a year without changes - cabal has never been able to guarantee that. I'm really glad someone has put in the huge amount of effort to make a better Haskell build tool, it's been far too long coming.

<comment><USER18> No, this whole "any negative response to our hostile actions justifies our hostile actions" nonsense doesn't fly. It is begging the question. And you are spreading FUD again. Cabal absolutely is able to guarantee that, and always has. All you do is exactly what stack is doing, pin yourself to a specific version of your dependencies.

<comment><USER19> I'm not going to argue with you, I don't think you're contributing anything to the conversation, and your tone definitely isn't, that's all

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Quote: Why a new site?

Since it is a common question in such statements, let us ask it directly here: why create a new website instead of working to incrementally update haskell.org? In the opinion of the team behind haskell-lang.org, the tooling story and general ecosystem infrastructure for the Haskell community has accumulated enough baggage that a clean break is the best use of everybody's time. We intend to streamline the on-boarding process for new developers, move away from infrastructure that is showing its age, and embrace newer approaches to facilitate open collaboration. Similar decisions have already been made in creating the Stack build tool and Stackage.

<comment><USER14> On-board them to Haskell or FP Complete?

<comment><USER18> Exactly. At this point I really wish the FP complete people would just fork GHC and get it over with. They've been such a huge problem in the haskell community, just divide it up already.

<comment><USER21> A huge problem? Could you give an example of the sort of problem they are causing?

Maybe I am out of the loop but from my perspective as a hobby coder FP complete (particularly snoyberg) has done nothing but put out extremely useful code. Most notable of which stack which is (going to be) the defacto standard for deploying Haskell applications.

<comment><USER14> Stack is exactly that, and it's controlled by a private entity whose business model works better the more dependence their users have on their tools.

FP complete isn't misbehaving, but they're putting themselves in a position to do a lot of damage if they did.

<comment><USER22> > Stack is exactly that, and it's controlled by a private entity

It's open source and the bug reports and feature requests merged in seem to indicate the aims have been making building Haskell projects easier.

I don't see indications of vetos in favor of FP complete that hurt the Haskell community.

<comment><USER14> Stack isn't just a tool, it's also infrastructure to support that tool.

I use it constantly, and like it, but let's not pretend there isn't a shift in power and influence as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Well, at least one motivation for launching a new site is so that [https://haskell-lang.org/get-started](https://haskell-lang.org/get-started) is a much more streamlined way to onboard users than the existing [https://www.haskell.org/downloads](https://www.haskell.org/downloads) Unfortunately, the presentation of how to start new users is somewhat political because there is disagreement if new users should just get stated on Stack, or see all of the options.

<comment><USER10> A new website I understand. If one wants a radically different model of community participation than what the standard haskell site presents, by far the best and easiest thing for everybody is to just do it, and see what happens. The original can conservatively hang around, the new one can be trialed, if the new one is successful perhaps the original adapts or is even replaced. (IIRC, the maintainers of haskell.org have stated they don't have a lot of time to advance the backend and make significant changes.) That all makes sense to me.

It's the rest of the fragmentation that doesn't.

<comment><USER10> Reply because I can't edit now: It seems the new subreddit was set up for discussing the new site only, so it's not a fragmentation: [https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_thi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell_lang/comments/4rv4uu/is_this_the_official_haskell_subreddit_or_is/d54cpja)

No one on /r/haskell seems to know who Rabble_of_One is who has been posting here. I believe the assertions that none of the involved parties would hesitate to speak out under their established names, because they have not hesitated in the past to take strong positions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why are there two Haskell websites (haskell-lang.org and haskell.org)?

<comment><USER4> You think that's confusing? The old home page led straight to a wiki, which is still up:

[https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell](https://wiki.haskell.org/Haskell)

<comment><USER23> Which one is the official website and endorsed by the writers of the language/compiler?

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say the "writers" are endorsing the old website, or not endorsing the new one, but whois is pretty telling:

        $ whois haskell-lang.org | grep ' Name:'
        Domain Name: HASKELL-LANG.ORG
        Registrant Name: FP Complete Corporation
        Admin Name: FP Complete Corporation
        Tech Name: FP Complete Corporation

        $ whois haskell.org | grep ' Name:'
        Domain Name: HASKELL.ORG
        Registrant Name: YaleUniversityComputer Science Department Haskell Group
        Admin Name: Galois Hostmaster
        Tech Name: Galois Hostmaster

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This seems like a community leadership coup to get people to use a different package management system, Stack.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why? How does this improve over the old one? I'm certainly not going to change IRC channels or subreddits.

</comment><comment><USER13> The link to the CHG (which I confused with IHG) is using HTTPS but it seems the redirect to GitHub works only in HTTP.

I'm not sure what stating CHG sponsors the new site means.

<comment><USER26> I have no idea either. The new site was never discussed once on the list ( [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/commercialhaskell) ) nor does there seem to be anything in the CHG charter that would let it as a group do anything at all, such as making a collective decision to sponsor a site.</comment></comment>


What do you do when you can't talk to anyone about your startup problem(s)? - <AUTHOR>

If you are a startup founder (probably especially the CEO), have you ever felt really alone with your problem(s), like you can't talk to anyone about it? Not the team, advisors, investors and not a friend/family member who knows nothing about startups.<p>What do you end up doing when this happens? Do you just make a decision on your own, or eventually go with a lesser evil and talk to someone to get some objective input? <comment><USER2> Why is it any kind of "evil" to get objective input?

<comment><AUTHOR> complex situation, but if you are a startup founder, have you ever felt like you can't talk to anyone about a particular problem, otherwise there could be negative consequences? That's what I meant by 'evil.'</comment></comment>


How I made $10.000,00 under a month selling assets in the (Unity) asset store - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1z2o7n/how_i_made_1000000_under_a_month_selling_assets/ <comment><USER2> I've been doing this as well. It's interesting how it is almost like a "micro" version of the App Store — with the added perk of selling to customers that desperately want to spend money on whatever looks cool to add to their games. Gotta love "shovel/gold rush" markets.</comment>


The Bomb Didn't Beat Japan, Stalin Did (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/ <comment><USER3> Apparently a literal coup involving a thousand people to prolong the war, even after the bombs had dropped, is the same as "being ready to surrender".

And apparently the Soviets, who had essentially no capability to launch a amphibious invasion, were a serious threat to the Japanese home islands. You know, compared to the country which had just launched the most ambitious amphibious operation in history.

The Japanese government at the time was prone to ultra-nationalist factions and extreme instability, and the problem with the idea that they would surrender just because the Soviets had closed off one of their options was that, although any individual leader might well know that their situation was untenable, anyone who acknowledged this would be prone to a coup by nationalist junior officers. The incentive structures of Japanese military leaders was such that it would be extremely difficult to justify ending the war. Otherwise, they would have de-escalated with China in the first place, or at the very least following the US embargo.

I'm being far less fair than I should be, but so is the article itself - <USER2> story it presents is plausible revisionism and is taken seriously by historians, but it is revisionism nonetheless; there is a reason historical consensus is historical consensus, and saying that "there is a real resistance to looking at the facts" ignores this. The story that the Soviets caused the surrender is perfectly plausible, but so is the story that the bombs did. My own feeling is that the article is written in bad faith.

As an aside, the idea that nuclear weapons were widely considered horrifying at the time is very much an anachronism. Nobody really understood the consequences at the time; to give you an idea, Operation Downfall planned to use nuclear weapons as an opener and then _march US troops into the blast zone after 48 hours_.

<comment><USER4> I'm aware this is a tangent, but I couldn't find any mention of nuclear weapons in the wikipedia page for Operation Downfall

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

Now, Operation Downfall was supposed to be many, many times larger than the Normandy landing, so the wiki page cannot possibly be complete. If you have some details about the planned use of nukes, could you provide a link please? I'm especially interested in whether the planners envisioned using NBC equipment, in which case an invasion after 48 hours does not sound quite absurd.

<comment><USER5> >...I'm aware this is a tangent, but I couldn't find any mention of nuclear weapons in the wikipedia page for Operation Downfall [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall)

There is a section of that wikipedia page that talks about the planned use of atomic bombs during the invasion:

>Nuclear weapons

>On Marshall's orders, Major General John E. Hull looked into the tactical use of nuclear weapons for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, even after the dropping of two strategic atomic bombs on Japan (Marshall did not think that the Japanese would capitulate immediately). Colonel Lyle E. Seeman reported that at least seven Fat Man-type plutonium implosion bombs would be available by X-Day, which could be dropped on defending forces. Seeman advised that American troops not enter an area hit by a bomb for "at least 48 hours"; the risk of nuclear fallout was not well understood, and such a short amount of time after detonation would have resulted in substantial radiation exposure for the American troops.[81]

>Ken Nichols, the District Engineer of the Manhattan Engineer District, wrote that at the beginning of August 1945, "[p]lanning for the invasion of the main Japanese home islands had reached its final stages, and if the landings actually took place, we might supply about fifteen atomic bombs to support the troops."[82] An air burst 1,800–2,000 ft (550–610 m) above the ground had been chosen for the (Hiroshima) bomb to achieve maximum blast effects, and to minimize residual radiation on the ground as it was hoped that American troops would soon occupy the city.[83]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The story is incorrect on many levels, but the most important is this:

The bombs did __not __force Japan to surrender. The threat of a third bomb did. (You can see the actual memo enquiring about the third bomb here - [2] )

Take that all in for a moment.

[1] - [https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/third- shot/](https://outrider.org/nuclear-weapons/articles/third-shot/)

[2] - [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf](https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/72.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Wow. I knew about Truman's "rain of ruin" threat [1], but I always thought it was a bluff. Today I learned it was not a bluff at all.

[1][https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=100](https://www.trumanlibrary.org/publicpapers/index.php?pid=100)

<comment><USER6> Yeah - it's amazing how poorly the history of the end of the war in the Pacific has been told. The lesson is fairly different once you learn the reality.

Also, a fantastic link that you shared!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> To get around the paywall: [https://outline.com/KLsq7C](https://outline.com/KLsq7C)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you were were to believe Russia's patriotic propaganda, they won pretty much everything and anything. This seems to have come straight from the same cookbook.

</comment><comment><USER8> Convincingly told. Sounds perfectly plausible to me.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it normal to get 100-200 req/day to an un-launched side project? - <AUTHOR> For fun I've been working on a tiny side project [1]. I haven't told anyone about it yet, but I'm seeing about 100-200 random requests / day in my nginx logs (does not include traffic from me, or search engine bots).
Most of the traffic seems to be from dumb bots that keep trying the same few PHP exploits on my server over and over. Other traffic seems more custom and looks like it is from someone trying to "hack" into my server using known exploits on common platforms like Wordpress. A few requests look like genuine users stumbling across the website. One person even made an account!
Is this kind of traffic normal for an un-launched side project?
I was expecting my nginx logs to be completely empty except for the few requests I'm making for testing. I was very surprised to see this amount of traffic considering I've never posted the URL publicly. This is one of my first website side projects so I really have no baseline for what is normal.
[1] Here's the URL in case anyone is interested: https://wordz.io. I wonder if the extra traffic is because the domain name is relatively short and is a common mis-spelling of a common word. The project is just for fun, and not done yet. <comment><USER2> I'd say this is normal, but probably depends where you are hosted. E.g. IP address ranges belonging to AWS are heavily monitored (I had an idle nginx + docker + gitea EC2 hacked due to not updating for a while). Other software, like Wordpress, may notify other servers about blog posts you create, drawing organic traffic that way.

<comment><AUTHOR> The project is currently hosted on digital ocean so I suppose some bots might be monitoring those IP ranges too. Makes sense that these bots are monitoring specific IP ranges instead of the whole internet.

<comment><USER2> Yea, this will apply to DO the same as AWS. It is a bit scary all those attacks, especially when not a sysadmin. After the hack I became more careful and now consider e.g. running a VPS where the provider handles more of these tasks for me.</comment></comment></comment>


Simply Amazing app with Audio Filters #Apple still beats #Android - <AUTHOR> http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pikspeak/id556869571?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> I'm confused as to why an iOS app written by you denotes "#Apple still beats #Android"? Couldn't anyone code this for Android as well or am I missing something?

Besides that little tidbit with the OP/author, this still looks really cool and is an awesome idea.

Also, #Hashtags don't do anything on HN..this isn't twitter.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh.. thanks @tubbzor (I don't think that even @ works here ). As for Apple, some of the effects that we added are very difficult to add on Android, for which Apple provides direct API!</comment>


Web pages can now detect when Chrome's window is covered by another window - <AUTHOR> https://webplatform.news/issues/2019-03-27#web-pages-can-now-detect-when-chrome-s-window-is-covered-by-another-window <comment><USER2> Seems like a good time for the various OSes to have a blacklist of programs who shouldn't be able to access this info - chrome being the first program to add to list.

</comment><comment><USER3> Once upon a time, I genuinely thought of a browser as a "user-agent", as hinted in the HTTP header; a tool I could use to reach out into the world.

I have increasingly had to abandon that idea and treat browsers as potentially hostile incursions into my computer, since browser makers seem determined to prioritize the needs of web developers by granting them access into my machine without really bothering to get my consent. Why do I have to use third-party add-ons that break browser default behaviors in order to get back to a comfortable security state? This suggests that my interests and those of the browser makers, especially Google, are not well aligned, and that really reduces the usefulness of the web for me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yuck. Is this a move to help advertisers pause ads when we switch to a different tab? Imagine adds not going away until you watch them...

What's the official use case for this?

<comment><USER5> It is already possible to detect whether the current tab is being viewed or not (window.onfocus) in javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can an extension like tampermonkey block/highjack events from a page?

<comment><USER7> Yes. jQuery's `.unbind()` can do it easily, but doing it in vanilla JS is a bit different[1]. You essentially clone the node and swap the clone into the original node's spot. This also clears all event handlers for any child nodes (so, swap out <body> with a clone and you're set).

[1]: [https://stackoverflow.com/a/19470348/13876](https://stackoverflow.com/a/19470348/13876)</comment></comment>


Tiny, Vast Windows into Human DNA - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/science/human-fly-worm-dna.html?ref=science

<comment><USER2> It's really cool how, in a way, DNA is the source code of life. Except it's completely awful spaghetti code even compared to the worst computer code you've ever seen, and we have only the vaguest idea of how the processor that's running it works. Imagine what we could do if we had the level of understanding and power over it that we had over computer code. I hope these guys are getting us just a little bit closer to that point.

Anybody wanna take a crack at refactoring the human DNA? Okay, we aren't anywhere near ready for that, but imagine if we were.

<comment><USER3> If DNA is like source code, then it is really interesting the way one gene is unzipped in order to unlock other genes.

Maybe it's a sort of encryption/decryption process, at the same time having the properties of a "program" running to perform actions on itself. That would make it the ultimate "self-modifying" system, which I imagine would be really hard to reason about and debug.

Do you suppose DNA embodies the old idea that data is code and code data? Wouldn't it be something if the DNA scheme turned out to be sort of like Scheme. Apparently DNA is recursive in a sense, maybe it's also homoiconic.

I'm going to stop here now, I'm starting to get myself very confused.</comment></comment>


Ideologues miss Orwell's greatest lesson - i-j https://unherd.com/2019/02/idealogues-miss-orwells-greatest-lesson/ <comment><AUTHOR> Orwell as a flexible thinker who doesn't fit neatly into any category is a very common take, but I honestly think this is too positive. When I read 1984 for the first time I had a similar reaction to Asimov, whose review of the book I only encountered later ([http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)) but resonated with me

" _[...]The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain, for he was convinced that if he did not, he would be killed From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action.During World War II, in which he was rejected for military service, he was associated with the left wing of the British Labour party, but didn 't much sympathise with their views, for even their reckless version of socialism seemed too well organised for him.He wasn't much affected, apparently, by the Nazi brand of totalitarianism, for there was no room within him except for his private war with Stalinist communism. Consequently, when Great Britain was fighting for its life against Nazism, and the Soviet Union fought as an ally in the struggle and contributed rather more than its share in lives lost and in resolute courage, Orwell wrote Animal Farm which was a satire of the Russian Revolution and what followed, picturing it in terms of a revolt of barnyard animals against human masters.[...]"_

I honestly found a lot of his fiction to be representative of his personal feud with Stalinism, while most of his views of society seemed remarkably old- fashioned and conventional. I've always had the same feeling about one his admirers, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens also was often treated like a maverick, but to me it seemed like he just rebelled in his reputation as a contrarian, with his views being more shaped by personal fights than anything else.

</comment><comment><USER2> Offtopic and inflamatory, I know. But I do have to question: why is this not flagged like opposing view posts? It's the same: a political oppinion piece belonging to one end of the spectrum. No valuable information or intelectual discussion.</comment>


Finally Waving The White Flag to Objective-C 2.0 - <AUTHOR> http://lethain.com/entry/2008/dec/04/finally-waving-the-white-flag-to-objective-c-2-0/

<comment><USER2> I think it's somewhat petty to dismiss Objective-C 2.0 because it was created by Apple. gcc's Objective-C support originated at NeXT. Apple is the closest thing to a benevolent dictator Objective-C has.

Otherwise I agree with him. Synthesizing accessors (like attr_accessor in Ruby) is nice, as is fast iteration. Dot notation for property access isn't a huge win but some people seem to like it.

</comment><comment><USER3> not having to write getter and setter methods seems like a really big deal. I hate doing that passionately.

I'm surprised he didn't mention having a GC. Does the iPhone not have a GC? I hate doing memory management.

<comment><USER4> > _not having to write getter and setter methods seems like a really big deal_

I agree. I've not used Objective C but if a language forces you to write the same boilerplate code again and again, it's badly designed.

<comment><USER5> > if a language forces you to write the same boilerplate code again and again, > it's badly designed.

It's not that ObjC was badly designed, it's that it was designed before modern OOP principles were popularized. ObjC 1.0 dates back to the mid-80's, if not sooner, if you count some of the work done with SmallTalk as a predecessor. Most of what people think is part of ObjC is really "convention" from the NeXTStep/Cocoa APIs, not something actually designed in to the language in the first place.</comment></comment></comment>


Accidents at Virgin Galactic, Orbital Sciences Show Hurdles for Private Space - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/04/business/in-traveling-to-the-stars-risk-and-cost.html <comment><USER2> > You have personalities like Richard Branson and Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, > who are not engineers.

Elon Musk has a BS in Physics, Jeff Bezos has an engineering degree (electrical/computer science.) Maybe they never got their PE licenses but they have strong enough technical backgrounds to grasp the science of what they're doing.</comment>


Ask HN: Accepting equity - What terms? How to ensure that the equity has value? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, this is my first post here, so go easy on me. I am currently a consultant, and have a long working relationship with one of my clients (I've been working with them for two years), and we get along quite well. We occasionally have our disagreements, but we've always been able to work things out.
I would like to raise my rates, but my client can't really afford my new rates. So to compensate for the lower rates, we've been discussing me being paid in shares of the company along with cash. I would like to somehow guarantee that the equity I earn does not go to waste. I definitely see the company growing quite a bit in the next few years, and I believe they have a great product.
Currently the company's valuation is $X, which was calculated some time ago. The current proposal is to offer me $Y in cash and $Z worth of shares for every hour I work. The value of the stock would be based off of the current valuation. I'm not sure how this is typically done, but I was thinking that shares would be issued quarterly for hours worked that quarter. I'm also not sure what terms I can place in the agreement to protect myself and try to ensure that the shares don't end up worthless.
Any advice? <comment><USER2> > Any advice?

Hire an attorney! Get legal advice. Being compensated with equity can become a legal morass if the offerors don't understand the rules.

> I'm also not sure what terms I can place in the agreement to protect myself > and try to ensure that the shares don't end up worthless.

What? By definition, it must be possible for the equities to become worthless. Equities are not cash, they are tied to the value of the company, and any company can become worthless. If this were not so, it wouldn't be equities.

> The current proposal is to offer me $Y in cash and $Z worth of shares for > every hour I work.

Again, be very careful with this arrangement. Corporate board members can't just give you shares in the company without meeting some rather complex requirements. And all other issues aside, if this arrangement went on for a while, you might automatically become a voting board member (for a small company) which means you become responsible for what the company does.

I suspect those making this offer simply don't understand corporate law. Be careful, and get competent legal advice.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'd do well in exploring alternatives that don't involve equity.

Have the other clients accepted your new rate? Do you expect to easily get additional clients at the new rate? If so, then you could work on a compromise with client X (the one who "can't afford" your new rate), e.g.

(i) lowering total number of hours per month you work with them, such that the total bill works out about the same as before. Proactively suggest scope cuts. If you know more or less how much revenue (or how much savings) they get due to the projects you do, you should also have a good idea of what features lead to more gains for them.

(ii) give them a discount, or even better, give them a number of "bonus" hours for free, as long as they order over _x_ hours in an n-month period. Think of it as giving them the option of locking in a lower price in exchange for ordering in bulk. They get a lower price and you decrease the risk you won't have enough income in that period.

<comment><AUTHOR> Instead of equity I've also been thinking of a commission on each product sold, once the product gets to market. Hopefully it will be ready for sale in 6-9 months, but there does appear to be significant demand for the product, so that might be a good alternative to equity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't have much for you regarding equity. I'd propose thinking about other ways for you both to find a winning relationship:

Is your customer actually making money? One thing you might propose is some kind of profit share based on your contribution. I.e., propose that you take a % of future profits. This would be a great incentive for you to do a great job for them; and the premise is that everyone is making money. By this means, you might avoid some of the agony of trading your own time for something unpredictable.

<comment><USER2> > One thing you might propose is some kind of profit share based on your > contribution. I.e., propose that you take a % of future profits.

For a corporation that issues stock, this is illegal. Do avoid offering this kind of advice.

From the OP, we know the company is organized as a corporation and has a board and issues equities. Therefore, as a matter of law, it cannot "share profits" with a specific individual without breaking corporate law.

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe it is currently an LLC, with a bunch of private investors (wealthy individuals, not VCs). I also spoke with a lawyer, and they didn't foresee any issue with profit sharing. Can you be more specific on why you think it might be illegal?

<comment><USER5> LLCs cannot issue stock.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Extraordinary Growing Impact of the History of Science - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-extraordinary-growing-impact-of-the-history-of-science-642022a39d67 <comment><USER2> This came out last year, and was discussed on HN.

One of the things I said then, which I'll repeat now, concerns these lines:

> But many of the subject areas that experienced a decline in older citations > were part of two broader areas: chemical and materials sciences, and > engineering.

> Consequently, these broad disciplines show almost no increase in old > citations. Just why citation trends should differ in these disciplines isn't > clear.

If you look at the early history of information retrieval you'll see that chemical documentation was tightly connected with it. Several of the IR pioneers (Luhn, Mooers, Taube) worked with the American Chemical Society or presented at ACS conferences. I like to point out that "information retrieval" as a term was first presented at an ACS meeting.

By the 1960s, CAS (the Chemical Abstracts Service of the ACS), the Institute for Scientific Information, and other organizations provided pretty complete indexing of the chemical literature.

While it's improved since then, I believe the old literature for chemistry has been searchable longer than for other fields, and in large part because the chemical structure give a uniquely indexable key (usually) for indexing the literature.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an essay on the ease of accessing historical archives of science, not the discipline involved studying science from a historical lens. Those are two very different things that scientists routinely conflate.

<comment><USER4> Similarly I heard about an historian with a strong scientific view on history, he even coined a name for his field, unfortunately I can't remember it for my life.

<comment><USER5> Cliometrics? At any rate, this is my favorite take on the concept of scientific history, courtesy of Isaiah Berlin:

[http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/cc/scihist.pdf](http://berlin.wolf.ox.ac.uk/published_works/cc/scihist.pdf)

The parent comment makes a good point here. Although I did appreciate the nod at the end to the larger archive of historical sources that digitization has "presentized" or whatever we want to call the process discussed here. I just wish there were more dialogue between practicing scientists and historians of science - in my experience there is virtually no professional interaction.

<comment><USER2> I really enjoyed [http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of- don...](http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald- knuth/fulltext) ("The Tears of Donald Knuth"), which describes Knuth's reasons to study the history of a field, and also describes some of the disciplinary and institutional difficulties involved.

<comment><USER4> I'm fascinated by the drift of teaching and its limited span. How in 20 years people will have forgotten about fringe or non mainstream ideas and will probably have them again thinking they're something new to dive into.

<comment><USER2> Here's one I've been researching for the last year or so (of on-and-mostly-off research) - superimposed coding.

Remember about 5-10 years when Bloom filters popped up often on HN and other tech sites? They are one type of superimposed coding. The basic idea is that a given word or descriptor gets $k$ bits, out of $N$ in a bitset. In a Bloom filter, $k$ is constant, but in the general case it can vary.

In the 1940s, Calvin Mooers worked out one system of choosing $k$ based on the information content of the descriptors. He called it Zatocoding. He applied this to selecting punched cards, including punched cards with chemical data; that being the field I work in. Knuth has a bit about the approach in The Art of Computer Programming, v 3, with "false drop cookies."

This technique was never mainstream, in part I think because one has to trust in random numbers, but also in practice it was applied to manual punched card searches, and it's difficult to memorize random punch codes.

As computers became machines instead of people, this approach disappeared. There's a chemistry paper in about 1975 which considers it, with the phrases "old technique" and "this may appear to be a throwback", then a paper in 1976 which gives a much needed improvement for how to apply Zatocoding to hierarchical data.

I think that 1976 paper is amazing. It helped me understand the problem. But it was never part of mainstream understanding. That is to say, very few modern practitioners know of the concept, it's not in any of the text books (they have a very shallow coverage of the topic), and the few papers that have referenced the 1976 article don't seem to have understood the paper, but are citing it for completeness sake.

That said, it doesn't solve the problem. An alternate approach was developed in the late 1980s that's more directly related to the Bloom filter sense of using $k$ hash functions. As a result, it's detuned for the specific information in the data set, but it's able to reject new descriptors that weren't part of the training set.

Based on the documentation for the method (it was never published in the scientific literature; everyone references the manual page), it comes across like a Bloom filter. However, in talking with people in the know, a specific detail was not clarified, which is that $k$ is a function of the size of the chemical feature used as the descriptor. This makes it a proper superimposed coding system.

No one has looked at this information-theoretical approach in 25 years. Almost no one knows that this can even be a useful approach.

<comment><USER6> Very interesting. So Zatocoding [1] allows for a card to have multiple index entries, and then any of those could be used to retrieve it.

For completeness, the 1951 paper is here [1]. Apparently has been covered in undergraduate algorithms at U. of I. [2] (with Bloom filters) so be getting more exposure.

Is the "needed improvement" of the 1976 paper due to better methods available (e.g. proof rigor, or understanding of sorting algorithms) or a better explanation of the methods (perhaps because of more widespread knowledge of information theory, and a better defined terminology).

I thought edge-notched cards [3] had been used for a long time (and have: since 1896)--I remember reading about them used for fingerprint card retrieval (indexed by feature, on each finger. This didn't use superimposed coding, but instead was a type of content-addressable memory--the time to retrieve all cards with e.g. a whorl on the thumb is O(1).

Apparently the cards are still used some places, see Kevin Kelly's [3] site for some images and interesting comments.

Finally found a fingerprint filing reference: "For example, as early as 1934 the FBI tried a punchcard and sorting system for searching fingerprints, but the technology at that time could not handle the large number of records in the Ident files." [5]

        1. https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs473/fa2013/misc/zatocoding.pdf
           (or buy from Wiley for $38)
        2. https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/cs473/fa2013/lectures.html
        3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge-notched_card
        4. http://kk.org/thetechnium/one-dead-media/
        5. Chapter 3: Evolution to Computerized Criminal History Records
           https://www.princeton.edu/~ota/disk3/1982/8203/820306.PDF

<comment><USER2> Mooers' original work was presented at the ACS in the September 1947. Knuth cites that, as well as the Am. Doc. (1951) citation you gave, in TAOCP v3 p571. His 1948 Master's thesis from MIT, which goes through the derivation, is at [http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12664](http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/12664) . This is why I say it's from the 1940s, not 1950s. I also think the chapter "Mathematical Analysis of Coding Systems" by Carl Wise, from "Punched cards; their applications to science and industry" (2nd ed. 1958), at [http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3958636;view=1up;...](http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3958636;view=1up;seq=456) gives an excellent treatment of the topic.

Nice find with the U. of I. course. Interestingly, if you listen to the presentation the speaker says: the topic won't be on the test, perhaps the rigor behind the method isn't as good as desired for the class, but it's something the students ought to know exists. Plus the speaker "just found out about" the topic (at 08:19), like you, cites a 1950s date, and describes it as using a fixed number of bits per category .. which is why he says that Zatocoding "reappears" years later a a Bloom filter. They are both superimposed codes, but not the same thing.

I find the mention of the two problems with superimposed codes to be interesting. 1) researchers don't like false drops and instead expect perfect matches (in Mooers' chapter in 'Punched Cards' his spins it as serendipitous matches; Knuth does something similar in TAOCP with 'false drop cookies'.), and 2) librarians love to make hierarchical categorizations, which isn't needed with Zatocoding.

(BTW, from what I read, American Documentation was _the_ journal for information theory in the 1950s and covered many topics. I interpret Mooers' paper more as advertisement to a wider audience, because it doesn't go into the technical details of his method. He was trying to drum up work for his consulting business.)

The "needed improvement" comes with chemical descriptors. Suppose one of your descriptors is "contains a carbon", another is "contains 3 carbons in a row" and a third is "contain 6 carbons in a row". I'll write this as 1C, 3C, and 6C. Zatocoding treats all descriptors as independent, though there's a paper where he describes a correction for when there are correlations. But in this case whenever 6C exists then both 3C and 1C also exist. These are hierarchical descriptors.

I was wrong about the date. The improvement paper is Feldman and Hodes, JCICS 1975 15 (3) pp 147-152, not 1976. In the original Zatocoding, the number of bits $k$ is given as -log2(descriptor frequency). In Feldman and Hodes, $k$ for the root descriptors are given the same way, but $k$ for a child descriptor is given as log2(parent frequency/child frequency). It's possible for a fragment to have multiple parents (consider that "CC" and "CO" are both parents of "CCO"). In that case, use the least frequent parent.

In addition, ensure that the bits selected for the child do not overlap with the bits set for the parent.

This ends up giving a first-order correction to Zatocoding for hierarchical data.

The "needed improvement" therefore is the ability to handle hierarchical descriptors, which are frequently found in chemical substructure screens.

While you say "still used some places", Kelly's site concerns dead media. I spent some time trying to find modern edge notched cards, including, though a friend, asking on a mailing list of people interested in old computing tech. No success. There were a couple of used ones on eBay, but I wanted 500 unused ones so I could make a data set myself. Instead, this is the 21st century, and I think I can use a paper die cut machines to make them for me, with pre-cut holes even.

You mention "sorting" several time. My use is for selection, not sorting.

For punched cards the selection time will be O(N). The only way to get O(1) is with an inverted index of just the descriptor you're looking for. Mooers in 1951 proposed 'Doken' (see [http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4243](http://www.historyofinformation.com/expanded.php?id=4243)) as a way to search '100 million items in about 2 minutes'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are tools and data available at the Science of Science (Sci^2) site [1], part of the Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, funded by NSF.

I haven't looked closely in a couple years, but my impression is NSF hopes such tools can help show the effects (and "ROI") of research grant money, connection with PI's and institutions, and their impact both on publication citation and economic impact (development of technology etc.).

Ideally this could also be used to measure growth in technical fields to determine whether more (or less) funding is required to answer bigger questions in basic science (which may not have economic incentives yet), methodologies, public policy, and education (will there be enough Ph.D's in the pipeline to meet demands for fields that will exist in ten years?).

Scientometrics [2] (the journal) has been around for nearly 40 years, and I assume people were thinking about such issues then. Sci^2 looks to me like a more "big data" approach to not only understanding this, but seeing if it is possible to "push" the frontiers (but I admit I don't know anything that goes on at NSF or how their decision-making process works).

Another tool, Publish Or Perish [3], is aimed at individual academics to understand their (or another's) impact in terms of citation metrics that are used in the games for academic (and other) hiring purposes.

I stumbled on Sci^2 when trying to learn some new fields (computer vision, hpc / parallel computing, network science, sensemaking) and wanted to quickly find seminal papers (ie highly cited, or literature reviews) to quickly get a broad overview. Not having the patience or time to read lots, playing with interesting tools and trying to extract data from Google Scholar and the like was more attractive.

Being impatient, I wanted a way to process knowledge like data. To measure something like growth of a field, it seems something like scientometrics with some natural language processing and ontology engineering is needed.

The Google paper seems to be more about an analysis of Google Scholar data and what can be gleaned there. Maybe an update of Google Scholar Metrics is coming? I am surprised no reference to scientometrics in the arXiv paper (maybe they aren't familiar with the literature?).

1\. [https://sci2.cns.iu.edu/user/index.php](https://sci2.cns.iu.edu/user/index.php) 2\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics_%28journal%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientometrics_%28journal%29) 3\. [http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm](http://www.harzing.com/pop.htm)</comment>


SublimeGit is going open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SublimeGit/SublimeGit#sublimegit <comment><AUTHOR> This is great news. Been using this for a couple of years now and has always been my favorite git client for Sublime.</comment>


Tell HN: Planned Maintenance Jan 23 1-5 AM PST - <AUTHOR>

During the maintenance window the site will be intermittently available, with varying degrees of responsiveness.<p>Tweaking our storage configuration a bit. <comment><USER2> Whoah, new noticeboard feature. I like it! It harmonizes with my topcolor.

I object to labeling "Tweaking our storage configuration a bit" as "details", though. ;)

<comment><USER3> I don't know if that's a noticeboard feature or someone just stuck the notice in the html template for now :P

<comment><USER4> How would you propose implementing a noticeboard feature?

<comment><USER5> Sites that do user notices on a regular basis often create a system where small bits of text go into a DB along with start & end times for display, the admin who posted it (for auditing purposes), countries where it's visible, etc. There's an ACL for who's authorized to post new notices. Then the main site template has a section that's shown only when there's an active notice and automatically disappears when the notice is stale.

All this is probably overkill for a site like HN. However, think about things like tsunami warnings on the Google homepage. These get shown only in a certain geographical location, they need to be approved by multiple people, and they need to get pushed out to tens of thousands of servers, all within minutes of the alert coming in. There's a lot of complexity that can go into even a simple feature.

<comment><USER6> GitLab has this feature, but it's called Broadcast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I promise to do a post-mortem (with details), but from my perspective the issues that began on Jan 6th are ongoing. It's all I've been working on since then.

Once I get a break I'll write a blog post about it, and try the Matasano/Square and Stripe CTFs :)

</comment><comment><USER7> While you're tweaking things, mind increasing the font size? I typically zoom in, but then the up arrows get pixelated. Such problems!

<comment><USER8> As do I. In fact, one of my favourite Firefox add-ons is called NoSquint, which remembers your zoom setting on a per-site basis. For me, Hacker News is constantly at 150%, and wikipedia is 180%.

As for the arrows being pixelated, rather than having higher resolution images, shouldn't the images be replaced with unicode?

▲ ▲

▼ ▼

<comment><USER9> Doesn't Firefox remember your zoom settings on a per-site basis out of the box?

<comment><USER10> Yep: [https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/font-size-and-zoom- incr...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/font-size-and-zoom-increase- size-of-web-pages)

NoSquint only seems to be useful if you want to adjust the global zoom level.

<comment><USER9> After playing with the extension for a moment, there's one key feature that'll probably make me keep it installed: per-site configuration of text-zoom vs. full browser-zoom. Firefox's "Zoom Text Only" is a global setting, but the extension permits it on a per-site basis.

<comment><USER8> It also puts the current zoom level in the status bar, which I find useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what's PST? Why can't we all use UTC/GMT+/-x so we all understand?

<comment><USER12> Furthermore, those "timezone" labels are inherently ambiguous. Either use the UTC offset (UTC-8) or the zoneinfo name (America/Los_Angeles).

<comment><USER11> > or the zoneinfo name (America/Los_Angeles).

Although it'd usually give me some idea, I wouldn't know what the offset of LA is.

<comment><USER13> It does seem to be a standard format though: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones)

<comment><USER11> I'm sure you can find PST in a standard somewhere too, but the point is that by using UTC+x everyone can instantly determine their local time.

Okay quick quiz: What time is it currently in Europe/Zaporozhye? ... Time up! Alright next question. What time is it currently in UTC-3? ... Time up! Final question: What time is it currently in the GST timezone? ... Time up!

All of them used standard formats. Which one was the easiest?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For easy conversion to your own local time: [http://localtime.io/#?d=Jan%2023%201-5%20AM%20PST](http://localtime.io/#?d=Jan%2023%201-5%20AM%20PST)

</comment><comment><USER15> Thank you for spending so much time on this. We appreciate it.

</comment><comment><USER16> How much karma do we need to change the color of the announcements bar?

</comment><comment><USER17> What kind of storage requirements does HN have? I would expect everything to fit snuggly in 32GB of ram.

</comment><comment><USER18> What, no zero downtime DB deployments?

<comment><USER19> HN doesn't have a DB.

<comment><USER20> It clearly has a DB, even if it is a simple filesystem store. DB != RDBMS.

<comment><USER21> pg actually just types the text of the page in when you request it. This system increases the average page generation time, but also increases civility.

This "planned maintenance" is just a cover for a quick nap.

<comment><USER22> Joke's on him. Hundreds of people have him enclosed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are these redesigned backup or improving recovery speed related changes by any chance?

</comment><comment><USER24> I can't believe they're finally fixing the pagination bugs! Super excited.

</comment><comment><USER25> Good luck!

<comment><USER26> And may the Source be with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> good luck, it's a commendable thing that you're doing.

</comment><comment><USER28> good luck</comment>


An Argument for Why Windows Will Go Open Source - <AUTHOR> http://www.justinkterry.com/2017/08/an-argument-for-why-windows-will-go.html <comment><USER2> > ..the fight for Windows server against Linux is one Windows absolutely can't > win..

Windows server already has been winning on-premise every year for a long time There are way more SMBs out there than big businesses and they all run Windows servers on-premise. Just take a look at the usage numbers of one popular piece of cross-platform software that IT departments might run - [https://community.spiceworks.com/networking/articles/2462-se...](https://community.spiceworks.com/networking/articles/2462-server- virtualization-and-os-trends)

Oh, you were just talking about web-servers, right? Well Windows server also has greater than 30% of the public web server market share, more than any one Linux variant - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems#Public_servers_on_the_Internet)

As the Apple crowd likes to point out - Microsoft is also a profit leader compared to companies that hock Linux.

> Creative work is going to mobile in a big way...

No it's not.

> ...gaming is already mostly mobile...

Not really, unless you contort your stats to include every single person playing Candy Crush on their phone. Have you ever watched Twitch? Nobody is playing mobile games there. Everybody there is running Windows.

> ...there's been a huge move to natively support Linux with games (roughly > half of new steam releases and 25% of all steam games are already on > Linux)...

Oh really? Linux having 25% the support for games means Windows is going down, but somehow Windows having 30% of the web server market means that Windows is also going to lose there? Pffffft. OK!

This article is garbage.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Also note that Microsoft will still be able to charge money for the open > source code because there's no reason that you can't other than piracy > concerns, and due to the increased legal scrutiny corporations tend not to > pirate products, unlike the general public.

Yes, Microsoft will still be able to charge money for the open source code, but if the code is open source, other people will be able to distribute it free of charge or for a fee, that is not at all illegal or piracy! Open source has always meant this. Let me quote from the Open Source Definition, by the Open Source Initiative, the only authority on what constitutes open source:

> 1\. Free Redistribution

> The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the > software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing > programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a > royalty or other fee for such sale.

All of the open source licenses listed on osi.org allow users to redistribute the software free of charge.

<comment><USER4> Open source does not mean you are free to distribute the code, necessarily. It literally just means that the code is available for inspection. Paid-for open source software isn't a new thing.

You're thinking of _free_ open source software. While I'm not a huge FOSS- head, there is a distinct difference between "_free_ and open source" and just "open source". It's all in the licensing.

I could, in theory, write a license that says, basically, you can't distribute my source code, but you can look at it, compile it, and even alter it to fit your needs. In fact, a lot of licenses on older software projects allowed for exactly that.

I could also release a license that says that you can only redistribute my code if you haven't purchased it, but if you have purchased it, you're not allowed to redistribute it. Pointless? Yeah, probably. But that's still a valid license.

Anything goes, as long as you can come up with the proper legalese to put in the license.

EDIT: I get it, some people support OSI's definitions, some FSF's, and apparently sharing the opinion of one has angered the supporters of the other. A lot of this is subjective, and I know that. I'd appreciate it if you discussed and voted accordingly.

<comment><USER5> If you can look at, but not redistribute, freely, it is called 'shared source'. Open Source really is about free redistribution. And the difference to Free Software is mostly about the stance on community and lock-in.

<comment><USER6> "Open source" is very generic, it literally just means "Not closed/private source." Nothing else about redistribution and restrictions is implied. For that there are specific licenses, which the article didn't mention.

<comment><USER7> It's not open source unless it's an open source license, and it's not an open source license unless it meets [https://opensource.org/osd- annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated). You are referring to "source available". Please stop conflating the two.

<comment><USER4> Can you blame us? This is largely a subjective matter, and the different organizations who talk about this kind of thing have often-conflicting ideologies about how all this works.

When I hear "open source", I don't know which camp the speaker is sitting in. It's perfectly reasonable to get mixed up sometimes.

<comment><USER8> > This is largely a subjective matter,

It just isn't subjective. "Open Source" is a technical term with a clear well understood meaning.

<comment><USER4> It is a technical term defined by a bunch of people who got together and agreed that their opinions (however educated they may be) are more correct than other people's. That's extremely subjective, and not universally accepted.

Technical terms have definitions that transcend the opinions of people who use them. When I say "byte", everyone knows exactly what I mean, as it's a unit of measurement. When I say "agile", it could mean any number of different things, depending on context. When people say "open source", the thought that comes to a lot of people's minds is simply "I can see the _source_ code, because it's out in the _open_."

It's subjective, and, frankly, annoying. It shouldn't matter how something is licensed, because the most important aspect of software is whether or not it provides value and helps me do my job. Bickering about semantics doesn't get work done.

<comment><USER9> That's how definitions work. The fact that you ignore one doesn't make you more thoughtful or insightful it just makes you look like a special snowflake.

Your example is also incorrect because I'll assume you think that a Byte is 8 bits but technically it's not, it's an arrangement of bits a byte can be 0-255bits, it was common to have non 8bit bytes in the past.

The 8 bit byte was set by a specific ISO standard and later by IEEE but it's defined as 8 bits only within those standards.

Agile also has a definition if nothing else because you have bodies and various foundations promoting a specific implementation of it.

<comment><USER4> I'm not ignoring or disagreeing with anything. There's no need to be a dick. I'm just saying that there are conflicting "definitions" out there.

<comment><USER9> I'm not trying to be a dick, there aren't "conflicting" definitions, at least not on the subject of source code redistribution.

"Open Source" has a specific definition that is the one from the OSI.

[https://opensource.org/osd-annotated](https://opensource.org/osd-annotated)

Any conflicts that exist are not conflicts in the definition of Open Source, but are different definitions for different terms which is why the terms open- source software and free and open-source software exist.

This isn't a subjective matter, this is a very well defined term, if nothing else because OSS and FOSS software is used in the industry including in commercial products this requires the definitions and the licenses to be very very specific to meet legal and regulatory requirements.

So while you can say there are different software licenses to meet the requirements of being Open Source it needs to meet the definitions set by the OSI which are in general mean that the source code must be available, that the distribution is not restricted in any way which usually means that it's distributed under a free and non-discriminatory license agreement.

You may chose not the follow this definition but this doesn't mean that this is a correct action, this is no more subjective than the definition of a kilogram. Definitions exist for a reason and that is to remove ambiguity, if ambiguity exists its either because there is no definition or consensus which is clearly not the case with Open Source Software.

<comment><USER4> > "Open Source" has a specific definition that is the one from the _OSI_

Emphasis mine.

<comment><USER9> And? Kilogram has a definition if you take the one from NIST it will follow the one defined by the CGS system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So the author has some commentary on operating system code licensing with no understanding on open source licenses (that bit about charging money for the source code and "piracy", see other comments here) or proprietary development habits (randomly licensing bits and pieces from third parties when they're no differentiator and too onerous to develop in-house)

Unless those third party licenses allow for redistribution of the source code under open source licensing terms (haha. no.), the result will _at best_ be a CDDL-alike licensed code distribution of everything else. See how well that worked for OpenSolaris' reception in the wider open source ecosystem.

<comment><USER11> Third party code would be mostly a problem for XP and older with things like HyperTerminal and Pinball. Even for MS they were a problem: [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080225-00/?p=...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20080225-00/?p=23343)

<comment><USER10> With OpenSolaris, there was some l10n code in libc that they weren't able to get clearance for some reason.

Windows has ~30 years of legacy. There are probably some bits of Adobe code in font rendering - although at least in this case, Adobe still exists so at least it's possible to call somebody to try to negotiate.

If there's some significant piece of code in some ancient video codec (to pick some silly example) that came from a third party in the late 90s who then went under, it'll be a mess to track down if there's even anybody who needs to be called.

Now, such a codec is well isolated: "Free Windows doesn't support the AncientCrapware4Windows codec. Does anybody care?", but what if some fundamental parts of the shell was licensed back then and dragged forward all those years?

It's the long tail that hurts and just checking _if_ there's anything to do is lots of legal work that scales by lines of code (and OpenSolaris was tiny compared to Windows). For a product that (as the article claims) approaches a retail value of $0, that's a steep investment.

<comment><USER11> Yea, both are true. The Adobe code is called ATMFD (which last time I checked don't even have PDB symbols on the MS symbol server), and there is also the Indeo codec that was already partially disabled years ago due to even MS not having been able to patch it (indeed, MS created a special telemetry stub DLL that calls the real one to log how often it is used). I don't believe either is required for Windows to run though and they are also well-isolated components.

<comment><USER10> It seems I wasn't clear enough on that, but either were just examples. Another, OpenSolaris' libc components, is more intricate.

Unless Microsoft's lawyers can make sure that something like this (deeply integrated component with unclear terms with regard to relicensing) does _not_ exist, publishing the Windows source code is a rather expensive task.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This post reminds me of the very ambitious and still going ReactOS project - not to be confused with the javascript framework. [https://www.reactos.org/project- news/reactos-045-released](https://www.reactos.org/project- news/reactos-045-released)

</comment><comment><USER13> >Creative work is going to mobile in a big way

What does the author mean by 'creative work' here? Writing? Image edition? Video edition? Software development? None of those things are going mobile in any way shape or form as far as I know

> Losing PC gamers also isn't a major concern for Microsoft, because again > gaming is already mostly mobile

 _Casual_ gaming is already mostly mobile. Hardcore gaming is still very much a non-mobile thing, and will stay as such for the foreseeable future. Companies are developing their games (think Call of Duty, Overwatch, Battlefield, Dota) with consoles and desktops in mind. And regarding gaming on Linux, it's better than it was -- it was nil -- but it's still a joke. Go to the steam store page right now and see how many games on the front page run on Linux

</comment><comment><USER14> Seems like there are some good arguments here for making Windows _free_ (as in beer) but _open source?_ I don't get it.

<comment><USER15> I stopped reading at "has caused Microsoft to develop operating systems that people wanted".

\- Telemetry.

\- Candy Crush.

\- Updates crammed down my throat.

\- ReFS removed from W10 Pro.

\- Still an OS that doesn't know if it's for touch or keyboard/mouse. The information density on Settings app for example is laughable on a 27 inch monitor.

\- Every major update used to reset search/privacy settings.

But yeah, it's what people wanted.

<comment><USER16> It works. I can play games on it. I can play much more games on it and easier than on linux and macos. Lightroom runs on it. Everyone knows it.

But still your comment doesn't even answer the comment you commented on.

I use windows and arch linux and ubuntu. Like them all.

And yes my arch linux i need to update anyway otherwise my chrome and kernel is out of date and insecure.

<comment><USER17> Your Windows installation is insecure full stop. No matter when you patched. Even if all vulnerabilities would be patched then there are still backdoors siting and waiting to be exploited.

<comment><USER18> So is your Android, iOS, macOS and every linux flavour out there. What's so special about Windows being insecure?

<comment><USER19> Closed-source just ups the uncertainty about security. I'm not saying open source is a panacea, but I think in general it increases certainty about security to some extent.

<comment><USER16> You remember the OpenSSL debacle?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It could perhaps go open source in the same way .NET has. A core part of it might be made open source, such as the IOT core windows bits. They need a good reason for it. Hobbyists adapting it for various SoCs could be one such reason.

The vast codebase that is the "full" x64 Windows desktop OS though? I'll eat my hat if that happens. Source made visible, sure. That's already true for a lot of it. But proper open source, don't hold your breath.

</comment><comment><USER21> > Microsoft has publicly stated that Windows 10 will be the last product in > the Windows line.

This may be because:

      1. Cloud is where the money is.
      2. Maintaining an OS is a lot of burden (Hardware drivers,
      patents, tie ups with several hardware/software vendors,
      developer cost, and so on)

So the simple thing they can consider is to ditch the OS, and develop platform independent solutions. Gradually this will (hopefully) happen.

Releasing the OS source will be too much costly (cleaning back doors, lots of code smell, and so on). This will cause too many people vulnerable to attacks. And that can't happen.

So no, Windows won't go open source.

</comment><comment><USER22> I doubt they'll make Windows open source ( maybe pieces of it ). They will make the OS free and collect data on you and sell you ads. Think Nadella said as much in his interviews.

Also, the author should have defined what he meant by "open source" because it means different things to different people.

</comment><comment><USER23> > have to lose for making Windows open source and requiring people to pay to > use win32 apps?

Surely, if Windows is open source, we can port Wine to it and run all the win32 executables we want? Wine already runs old Windows programs better than Windows does.

<comment><USER4> No, it really doesn't. Windows has had backwards compatibility as a huge priority for a long time, often to their detriment. You can literally update a machine from Windows 3.1 to windows 10, and programs written for Windows 3.1 will still work.[1]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPnehDhGa14)

EDIT: TO be clear, this is a video of upgrading to Windows 7, and there is a direct upgrade path to 10 from 7. Also, as per another user's reply, this doesn't hold true for 64-bit. However, that doesn't change the fact that Wine doesn't and really can't run win32 better than win32 does.

<comment><USER24> > and programs written for Windows 3.1 will still work

Not on x86_64.

[https://superuser.com/questions/140953/why-cant-a-64-bit- os-...](https://superuser.com/questions/140953/why-cant-a-64-bit-os- run-a-16-bit-application/140956#140956)

<comment><USER20> They made a decision to cut the compatibility but also made the 32bit XP mode VM ship with windows for a transition period (unsure if it's still available). I think it feels like a fair compromise (assuming the VM only causes an overhead for those who need it, but having a whole kernel subsystem for legacy apps might mean security or performance issues for _all_ users)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The fun thing is that I can also imagine how it will technically likely work too, such as test signing .msu and .cab to install code modifications for testing. Outlook recently added .msu to blocked attachments.

</comment><comment><USER25> Lol. That is not going to happen. When I was working on a project that required access to the Windows source code, the security hoops I had to jump through were ridiculous. Can't see them abandoning all that nice security machinery.

<comment><USER26> Actually, I worked in such a project a long time ago and I had the opposite feeling. They just gave us a few cds with the code on it. There were some restrictions as who could use it and so on, but it seems they didn't really care.

<comment><USER25> Lucky you. We got RSA tokens and devices and software so that we could connect to the Redmond server where the stuff was hosted. Copying it from that environment to your own was NOT ALLOWED.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I hope windows goes open source and windows kernel is replaced with modified linux kernel.</comment>


Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.nilkanth.com/2007/09/07/millionaires-who-don%e2%80%99t-feel-rich/ <comment><USER2> _"One might ask then, are these people fools to work so hard even after all that stack of cash?"_

I think the problem is that they might be millionaires on paper, but they don't have cash. Having a $1.5 million house and a $80K car doesn't mean you're rich...it means you have a mountain of debt to pay off.

Now, go ask someone whose house is paid off and who has a million dollars in the bank if he feels rich.</comment>


Solomon Islands Hit by Magnitude 8 Earthquake, Tsunami Alert Issued - <AUTHOR> http://www.hawaii247.com/2016/12/08/severe-quake-in-solomon-islands-hawaii-under-tsunami-watch/ <comment><USER2> Now a 7.7 [0] according to the USGS.

[0][http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20007z80#...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us20007z80#executive)</comment>


Ask HN: Is it right to give 1 month notice for switching to remote position? - <AUTHOR> I work as a system admin for a private company in Canada.
I recently had notified my employer that I am leaving the country for 4 months and want to work remotely during this time. I have made up my mind that if they are not ok then I will just quit, because I really need the time away.
The top management were not happy, not happy at all, even though my manager is ok with it. They said that I should have informed them months in advanced, instead of leaving them a hole to cover up. And now they have to offer me the position because they have no choice and cannot hire another person at this time.
Now my question is: Am I at fault here to give a month of notice in advance. I quit my last job with 2 weeks notice and my boss was ok with it. But this is different, because I am asking to continue working.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I think 1 month notice is really fair. Your job is not slavery so not that you have to work for them for 6 month out of "guilt" or because they haven't thought about bus factor.

After all, it's management's fault that they don't have someone to take care of your responsibilities in case of your illness for instance.

I know that finding good SREs is extremely hard but this works both ways IMO: if they can fire you with 1 month notice, you can politely assume that all your actions are fair with 1 month notice as well.

Personally I think it means a lot how they ask you to stay. It worth nothing to them to ask you politely, as a favor to stay a bit longer, e.g. 6 or 8 weeks. I would consider that scenario, because shit happens. But if that was more like an ultimatum I don't think company is worth it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

Thanks for your reply, you actually makes me feel better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Totally generous. Don't feel bad for a second. They literally just told you they are not happy because they don't have enough time to not extend you an offer.

</comment><comment><USER4> They're not your friend, they don't ultimately care about you or your career. 1 month is, frankly, generous on your part.

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, good to know we think alike

</comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell Weird. In the UK, your notice period is generally part of your contract. If you're made redundant, they have to give you the same notice period as if you resign. I've had 3 month notice periods in the past but my current is 1 month.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure employment law in Canada, but if you were in the US I would say that this would be a completely fair thing to do. After a quick google search it does look like it is a little bit more difficult for employers to terminate employees and so this may have put them in a tight spot.

It seems to me like you have some leverage that you have with this company and top management does not like this. I would be prepared for them to try to take away this leverage by hiring to fill this skills gap, cross training, etc.

At the end of the day I think you did the right thing. You could have left them in the lurch by giving them two weeks notice and walking, and even then no one will hold that against you. At the end of the day I think any reasonable party will realize you are being fair with them, as long as you continue to deliver high quality work and remain transparent with them.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing to be aware of is that in some industries you are removed from your position as soon as you announce your plans to quit. In the us 2 weeks is typical.

I recently had an employee quit after 6+ years. Because we had a good relationship, he gave me the heads up that he was looking to move on about 6 weeks before he formally gave us his notice.

Note he still gave 100% during that time. He's leaving on a good footing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fault is not really the point that you should focus on. I'm sure you are within your rights to leave in the time frame you've specified.

It's generally better for your career to leave on good terms. Otherwise, they may not be willing to be a reference for you.

Also, it is a small world; you may run into these people in the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think if two weeks notice is fine for quitting, a month is more than fine for nearly any real change.</comment>


Google alters algorithm as Hollywood lobbyists win latest copyright battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/10/google-algorithm-hollywood-lobbyists-copyright

<comment><USER2> Maybe this will open up an opportunity for a competing search engine. It's a tiny crack in the wall admittedly, but one that a lot of users are interested in.

<comment><USER3> Something like The Pirate Bay or any of the dozens of torrent metasearch sites?</comment></comment>


Wikipedia Dominates Among Smartphone Users Looking for News and Information - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/05/people-love-wikipedia/482268/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I definitely use Wikipedia, but never when "looking for news". The article points to stats that people read Wikipedia before linking to news sites, but that is likely just because the Wikipedia article linked them to news sites. These readers are probably just looking for information, and news sites are reasonably reliable for that purpose. I imagine most of the time that a reader links from Wikipedia to a news article, it isn't a new news article—if for no other reason that it has to have been added to a Wikipedia entry already.</comment>


Ask HN: Trying to get back into the tech industry and need advice - <AUTHOR> I recently graduated from business school and took a job in finance.  However, I've quickly realized the finance industry is not for me I miss working in the tech sector. I spent 5 years in the technology industry prior to grad school.  However tech companies won't even interview me anymore and all I get is rejection notices without even an interview despite 5 years of experience in tech.<p>Any advice would greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> What specifically are you looking to get into? Tech is pretty broad.

</comment><comment> alex- I would have assumed that the union of tech and financial knowledge would have been a very valuable combination. Have you been looking for tech roles within the finance industry?</comment>


Ask HN: Do you live outside of a large city? - <AUTHOR>

After 8 years of living in a large city, I'm ready to move back to a small town (nearest big city is 3 hours away). I'm not interested in working for the most glamorous or trying to make it rich playing the startup game.
Really I'm just trying to enjoy a better quality of life and a slower pace. The problem is that I'm a software developer, and I'm worried about my potential for finding remote work outside of a tech hub. I've asked around on the internet about this, but so far have gotten pretty negative feedback about it. Negative as in "why the hell do you even want to do this?" not as in "you're going to have a hard time".
I'm curious to see if anyone on HN lives outside of a large city (suburbs don't count) and has made it work. If so, how? <comment><USER2> The closest big city to me is Chicago, which is roughly 3.5 hours away, and I make do. It's the best thing about working on the internet for a living. You can live anywhere you want. Want to live in a big city? Do it. Want to live in small town Iowa? Do it (I do.)

Most of those people who say "why the hell do you even want to do this" are the people who were born and grew up in a big city and never lived outside of one. They don't see the pleasure in it, quiet nights. Seeing the stars. All that good stuff.

But in the end there are also negatives, like nothing open past 9PM and to do anything you've gotta sit in a car and take a boring drive through endless corn fields.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm in San Luis Obispo: 3 hours from LA, 3 hours from San Jose and 4 from San Francisco (6 if traffic is bad).

It's sunny, it's warm, we have nice beaches, good people, the pace is great. It is (literally) the happiest place in America (look it up). My only complaints are my allergies (really bad here compared to elsewhere) and it lacks in the culture/diversity departments.

I'm a bootstrapped founder so I can work from anywhere.

I think your fear is the opposite of reality. Medium sized cities need developers. I basically have to hire remote freelancers. We have tech companies here in SLO (Mind Body, Level, iFixit, etc) and many have standing open positions because we can't find local people (all the Cal Poly grads leave). Same goes for Santa Barbara.

You may not command an SV salary here but the cost of living is lower (not a lot) and freelancing on the side is always an option.

All that to say, you can definitely make it work.

</comment><comment><USER4> You might like Durham, NC. Small town feel with a slower pace compared to the big cities, but a decent startup scene with a few local incubators and universities nearby. If you want to work for a big company, Lenovo and a couple other big companies have campuses nearby.</comment>


Young, Urban, and Not so Tech Savvy - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama/2009/06/technology-and-revolution.html

<comment><USER2> Something the article fails to note: The WaPo op-ed they are quoting left out some fairly significant information:

"The poll that appears in today's op-ed shows a 2 to 1 lead in the thinnest sense: 34 percent of those polled said they'd vote for Ahmadinejad, 14 percent for Mousavi. That leaves 52 percent unaccounted for. In all, 27 percent expressed no opinion in the election, and another 15 percent refused to answer the question at all. Six percent said they'd vote for none of the listed candidates; the rest for minor candidates."

See [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the- numbers/2009/06/...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/behind-the- numbers/2009/06/about_those_iran_polls.html?wprss=behind-the-numbers) for more details.

</comment><comment><USER3> Without knowing how well researched the article is, if you had only seen internet commentary in our last election you might be surprised that Ron Paul isn't our current president. The 'net seems to have a voice unto its own.

<comment><USER4> Perhaps if the extent of the Internet was reddit's mainpage and digg.

I saw a _lot_ of Obama support on other sites I frequent.

<comment><USER5> Yep, lots of Obama support. On the other hand, I didn't see much McCain support. On election day, McCain had roughly 85% as much support as Obama. Most of those voters were invisible to me. Probably partly because they're underrepresented on the internet, and probably partly because I would only visit the sites where they congregate if there was something unintentionally hilarious there to point and laugh at. The internet is kind of like a big city; once you get your bearings, most of it becomes invisible to you.</comment></comment></comment>


Ingenious candle remakes itself each time it's burned - <AUTHOR> http://www.designfaves.com/2014/03/ingenious-candle-remakes-time-burned

<comment><USER2> It may remake itself, but it will be smaller every time since the candle actually burns its own wax as it melts.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Never buy candles again!" Hmm that doesnt seem right...</comment>


Contrary: a university-focused VC backed by cofounders from Tesla, Twitch, more - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@contrarycapital/day-zero-1942481fdd43 <comment><AUTHOR> Contrary Capital (contrarycap.com) consists of 100+ student investors across dozens of universities. This is something I've been helping work on for several months now and I'm stoked to finally launch it!

80% of our LPs have started $1bn+ companies and we invest 50k-200k.</comment>


Slice – A elegant collection of form components - <AUTHOR> http://dope.github.io/slice/

<comment><USER2> No offense but "why"? And it's not elegant either (missed word I thought)

</comment><comment><USER3> and writing "a elegant" instead of "an elegant" is quite unelegant</comment>