Aliasing and you - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/12/fast-approximate-anti-aliasing-fxaa.html <comment><USER2> Interesting... in audio, we've basically had affordable super-sampling for a few years. That's exactly what "record at 96KHz or 192KHz" is; all your plugins run against a waveform that's higher-bandwidth than you can hear, and then you downsample and dither at the end to 44.1 or 48KHz in mastering. Some of the best equalizer plugins had internal upsampling, so that even if your source material was 48KHz, the processing was all done at 96KHz. The quality gain from the higher resolution offset the quality loss from resampling.

(In audio, there are other benefits to higher resolution, like latency; a 256-sample buffer adds 6ms at 44.1KHz, but only 1ms at 192KHz.)

<comment><USER3> > (In audio, there are other benefits to higher resolution, like latency; a > 256-sample buffer adds 6ms at 44.1KHz, but only 1ms at 192KHz.)

But the buffer is there to allow you to gather data up before sending it across the pipe (physical or virtual) so you're not incurring latency you don't need to. Increasing the resolution of your data doesn't decrease latency, as you're just incurring that hit more frequently. If that worked, you could just do away with the buffer and send a continuous stream of data at whatever sampling rate you wanted.

<comment><USER2> I'm thinking of setups which often have some absolute minimum buffer size, maybe due more to the protocol (e.g. ASIO) than the converter design; my RME Digiface setup can't work below 56 samples, no matter what the sample rate.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget that the air between you and the speakers is another buffer, holding about 150 samples at 44.1 kHz, assuming near field monitors.

<comment><USER2> Yep, which is why it's so amazing that bands play to a beat that doesn't really exist - it's an agreed-upon moment in time that we pretend is the same for all of us, but when you're standing 20 or 30 feet apart, it isn't.

But latency is critical for tracking through headphones, especially singers; a little bit of latency can screw up your pitch perception as well as your timing.

<comment><USER4> Well, that's why we have hardware monitoring. You only really need the low latency stuff for recording software synthesizers / samplers or if you have a virtual amp, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> FXAA is neat, but the idea of using pixel-based edge detection on games is, IMO, a bit silly. Why not use detect edges on the _depth_ buffer? You'll much more easily see the contrast and you will be far, far less likely to blur your textures. I might have to whip up a quick WebGL demo of this.

<comment><USER5> FXAA and other similar techniques are only relevant when dealing with deferred rendering only. Detecting edges on the depth buffer may sound as the solution until you realize that two planes at right angles has an edge between that can alias. The change there is in the normal and not the Z.

Also modern graphics cards do not give programmatic access to the z-buffer as the z-buffer format is often proprietary. Deferred shading based renderers often duplicate the z-value also into a texture.

Deferred rendering can render large number of dynamic, unshadowed lights very efficiently. It can be used as approximate global illumination technique.

<comment><USER3> > FXAA and other similar techniques are only relevant when dealing with > deferred rendering only.

Why is that? While techniques like FXAA are needed for deferred rendering due to the order of operations, I don't see why FXAA isn't acceptable on non- deferred renderers.

> Detecting edges on the depth buffer may sound as the solution until you > realize that two planes at right angles has an edge between that can alias. > The change there is in the normal and not the Z.

If you have two planes at a right angle to each other, you'd see that in the depth buffer. Imagine you're looking at a line of pixels and you're doing this on each pixel -- you'd look to see if the pixels on either side of the one you're on are trending in opposite directions from the current one, and know it's an edge.

> Also modern graphics cards do not give programmatic access to the z-buffer > as the z-buffer format is often proprietary.

As far as I'm aware, all modern graphics cards allow you to render the depth buffer to texture just like the color buffer.

> Deferred rendering can render large number of dynamic, unshadowed lights > very efficiently. It can be used as approximate global illumination > technique.

Sure, but there's no reason you can't do post-AA using the RTT depth buffer and your composited color buffer.

<comment><USER5> > Why is that? While techniques like FXAA are needed for deferred rendering > due to the order of operations, I don't see why FXAA isn't acceptable on > non-deferred renderers.

FXAA is acceptable for the other techniques as well. However, MSAA is, in my opinion, a better technique as it uses supersampling at the edges and is already hardware assisted. FXAA's strength is that it is less expensive than MSAA memory and bandwidth wise. Both are a premium in deferred shading as you are using a 4x RBGA16 texture render target or something close to it :)

> If you have two planes at a right angle to each other, you'd see that in the > depth buffer. Imagine you're looking at a line of pixels and you're doing > this on each pixel -- you'd look to see if the pixels on either side of the > one you're on are trending in opposite directions from the current one, and > know it's an edge.

The question is can you get reliable edge detection with less number of texture look-ups on the z-buffer versus the RBG based edge detection?

> As far as I'm aware, all modern graphics cards allow you to render the depth > buffer to texture just like the color buffer.

Not quite. You can render the z value to a texture, but that is done in the pixelshader and do not touch the hardware z-buffer used for z-fail/z-pass tests. It is this hardware z-buffer that is inaccessible, as it shares it memory with the stencil buffer which is used for stencil tests. Hence the proprietary format.

> Sure, but there's no reason you can't do post-AA using the RTT depth buffer > and your composited color buffer.

See [http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb14...](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/library/windows/desktop/bb147221%28v=vs.85%29.aspx)

> All render target surfaces used together must have the same bit depth but > can be of different formats, unless the D3DPMISCCAPS_MRTINDEPENDENTBITDEPTHS > cap is set.

As you can see, the bit depth restriction means that you would end up with 2x bandwidth usage with the z based edge detector, especially on the older hardware where you do not have the bandwidth to spare. It would be a different case if you can sample the hardware z-buffer.

<comment><USER3> > The question is can you get reliable edge detection with less number of > texture look-ups on the z-buffer versus the RBG based edge detection?

The way it's working in my mind has about the same number of lookups as FXAA, but I'm honestly not sure how that'd pan out in practice. We'll see.

> As far as I'm aware, all modern graphics cards allow you to render the depth > buffer to texture just like the color buffer. Not quite. You can render the > z value to a texture, but that is done in the pixelshader and do not touch > the hardware z-buffer used for z-fail/z-pass tests. It is this hardware > z-buffer that is inaccessible, as it shares it memory with the stencil > buffer which is used for stencil tests. Hence the proprietary format.

No need for the internal format, though -- raw depth buffers are A-OK.

> As you can see, the bit depth restriction means that you would end up with > 2x bandwidth usage with the z based edge detector, especially on the older > hardware where you do not have the bandwidth to spare. It would be a > different case if you can sample the hardware z-buffer.

One thing to keep in mind is that yes, you're rendering it to texture and you incur _some_ overhead there, but you don't have to pull that data back to the CPU so you're dependent on bandwidth between the GPU and its memory, not main memory. Sure, it's double the memory used there, but that's negligible from a bandwidth perspective. Also a good thing to note that you generally already have your depth buffer if you're doing deferred rendering, and you can do all the AA based on that, in theory.

<comment><USER5> > he way it's working in my mind has about the same number of lookups as FXAA,

However, the FXAA will have a clear win as it works over a partly transparent polygon. So you will have to combine both an RBG and z based to get the same result as an FXAA.

> you're dependent on bandwidth between the GPU and its memory, not main > memory.

The bandwidth I was talking about was the older cards which do not have bandwidth or fill rate to keep 60fps with deferred shading, no AA. FXAA would be a candidate there if it is a pure RGB technique on the composited frame, especially as it is cheaper than MSAA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> SMAA is even better and faster than FXAA. <http://www.iryoku.com/smaa/>

Also there is software that automatically injects SMAA into your d3d9, d3d10 or d3d11 games: <http://mrhaandi.blogspot.com/p/injectsmaa.html>

_Pulled directly from codinghorror comments, posted by: Mārtiņš Možeiko_

<comment><USER7> I was hoping someone else would say that. Have you really tried SMAA? What is your opinion of it on a few games?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought it was a little odd that he says the proper way to solve the problem is to have a higher-res screen, just before he says that we can't do super- sampling because it's too expensive.

<comment><USER9> High-res screen: expensive[money]

Super-sampling: expensive[cpu]

<comment><USER3> A high-res screen isn't just expensive money-wise -- at the resolutions you need to avoid AA techniques, you're rendering at the same resolution you'd be rendering at _for_ AA techniques. So it's more expensive in terms of money and in CPU/GPU time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess I'm probably the only person in the world that prefers the look of no- AA...

<comment><USER11> Most of the time, you loose the "crispness" of the final image with AA and everything tends to look a little bit blurry. Couple that with fact, that it drops the FPS by quite a bit and over time I got slowly conditioned against AA. However in some games it looks very good. WoW for example has a much better image quality with AA. Of course it also runs with 60 FPS pretty much everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> That was a good primer for a non-gamer like me.

Can it be used to make flash graphics and webgl lower load too?

<comment><USER13> I don't know about Flash, but I'd say this is a bit unlikely. You need special shader programs for custom antialiasing tricks like FXAA.

For WebGL, you should be able to write the shaders and a multi-pass renderer framework that does the antialiasing. However, with WebGL, you're constrained to using somewhat simpler texture formats than you have available with a modern desktop. If you have to use 8 bit RGBA textures, you will probably suffer from color banding and other nasty artifacts compared to 16 bit floating point textures that are normally used on the desktop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing. I always thought that something better than super-sampling had to exist.

I hope this becomes standard on PS3 titles, it's painful seeing all those ragged edges on screen, knowing you have a few gigaflops of processing power sitting there, doing nothing :(

<comment><USER15> A number of PS3 titles use a technique called morphological anti-aliasing (MLAA) which is more computationally expensive than FXAA but can look better (to art directors and rendering engineers anyways :)) and, because it runs well on the SPUs, it is able to offload the GPU for it to begin on its batch of work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Huh, I've always thought that that was how anti-aliasing in games worked; take the entire scene and smooth it, Photoshop filter style.

TIL.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you are going to analyze all pixels on the screen, it would be better to use some kind of median filter[1].

It looks smoother and more focused: <http://i.imgur.com/hsq84.jpg>

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

<comment><USER18> Median filter has to sort pixels (3x3, or 5x5) and get the median (this is by memory, haven't looked at wikipedia). As such it might be or might not be better solution.

Also it can't be done in-place (or can it?)

<comment><USER19> You could do it in-place with a memory cost of one pixel row (for 3x3, or two for 5x5) plus one (or 2) pixels. That might make be worthwhile depending on where you're actually doing it. It _might_ be more efficient - it's worth implementing both to see.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Am I like the only person in the world who hasn't been able to see jaggies in like.. 6 years?</comment>


Would You Pay Money to See Your Favorite Site Ad-Free? - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=133039 <comment><USER2> His conclusion is ridiculous given the fact that some people visit dozens or hundreds of sites a day and don't go back to the same times time and time again.

His pricing examples are way too high too considering that almost no sites charge as much as his $30-40 proposed prices simply to be "ad free".

But I think there's an opportunity for someone here to develop a 'branding' that certifies sites as ad free.

It's really irritating to find that when I visit a new site after a google search I can't hardly find the article on the page because 80% of the page is covered by ads and other crap that has absolutely no use to me whatsoever.

What ever happened to keeping pages simple and to-the-point, is this lost forever? I think the person who find a way to get the simplicity of the web back again is going to be a billionaire one of these days.

</comment><comment><USER3> no, I would just do what I do now, and install ad-block plus</comment>


There Is No Such Thing as Nuclear Waste - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123690627522614525.html <comment><USER2> Guy doesn't know what he is talking about. First, the French only recycle the waste once. After it goes through the second time, they don't recycle it again. They are building their own version of Yucca mountain to deal with it after that.

Second, in 2003 a very detailed analysis of nuclear power options by a group of MIT Scientists found that recycling is more expensive than the once-through process. See <http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/>

I am not opposed to nuclear power, but as usual, we see crap on the WSJ editorial page.

<comment><USER3> The only reason it's more expensive is because the disposal of nuclear waste is artificially cheap.

If corporations had to pay for the cost of building phenomenally expensive disposal sites such as Yucca Mountain, recycling would suddenly become vastly more economical.

Another issue is the very low price of uranium; reprocessing solutions weren't considered in the past because uranium was so incredibly cheap that it made no sense to attempt to reprocess spent fuel. One of the primary reasons recycling has become an issue again is that the price of uranium has risen enormously in recent years.

<comment><USER4> According to The Curve of Binding Energy, nuclear power was going to be subsidized by the sale of plutonium to the AEC. At about a megabuck per kilogram of plu, the sale of plu would pay for the cost of constructing and operating a nuclear power plant, and that lead to the AEC's Chairman claiming that nuclear power would be "too cheap to meter" because it would be a by- product of the nuclear fuel cycle. At the end of 2005, there were 1700 tons of privately owned plutonium in the US (the US military has about 100 tons of plu: about 2/3 are in actual weapons).

[http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming- Theodore...](http://www.amazon.com/Curve-Binding-Energy-Alarming- Theodore/dp/0374515980)

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7006056.stm>

If his claim is true, then it wasn't tree-huggers who killed off the nuclear power industry, nor Jane Fonda in The China Syndrome, it was cold economics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nuclear power is a solved engineering problem. France has been doing it for years. Here in the US the problem is so called 'green' activists who don't (or won't) understand the basic laws of physics.

<comment><USER6> Although I agree that modern nuclear reactors are extremely safe, I'd hardly say that the problem is 'solved'. They still don't use the fuel efficiently comparatively to what could be done with eg. breeder reactors, and the solution to the waste problem is still 'bury them'. Separating the nuclear waste by isotopes is a very complex and costly process, and even once it's done it doesn't necessarily follow that what is obtained can be used as fuel or for medicine. It depends on the reactor you use, or the kind of medical imaging you need to do.

Research is still ongoing in nuclear (fission) technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's important to look at nuclear waste in the context of alternative energy generation processes. The solution to waste from coal plants is "pump that shit in the air and water", which is far worse than nuclear.

<comment><USER7> "[a] coal power plant's radiation output [into the environment] is over 3 times greater" than that of a "nuclear power plant with the same electrical output".

Source: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_station#Radioactive_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_station#Radioactive_trace_elements)

<comment><USER8> Unless there's some kind of accident.

<comment><USER9> That's where a professional and well-trained workforce is important, with indepenent and very strong regulations. I'm a former US Navy submarine officer, and the US Navy has been operating nuclear reactors in some of the harshest environments imaginable for 40+ years without any accidents whatsoever.

It works because Navy sailors are incredibly well-trained and well-drilled. But also because there is a virtually independent bureaucracy in the US Navy that can literally "take away your keys" to run the plant. (And I do mean literally.) Regular inspections that scare the s __t out of everyone because of their intensity and thoroughness.

But it works, and with no accidents.

<comment><USER10> Except that 40 years is nothing. Things can change - look at the former Sowjet Union. Maybe a US president comes to power that withdraws funding from the Navy, and things will start to deteriorate (just making that up, but with really long time frames, all bets are off).

Edit: yahooing for "us navy reactor accidents" comes up with quite a few hits, and allegations that mostly the Navy is very secretive about it.

Edit2: Even with the best trained staff, the staff is essentially just running an algorithm. Training the staff makes sure they run the algorithm correctly, but it does not protect against bugs in the algorithm. If you are a software developer, you don't believe in bug free algorithms (above a certain complexity).

<comment><USER11>
      If you are a software developer, you don't believe in bug free algorithms (above a certain complexity).

Please allow me to introduce you to Mr. Donald Knuth (pronounced Kah-nuth). He would like to have a word with you.

<comment><USER10> I don't think that example proves anything - although I like Knuth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article:

> Uranium-238 is 1% of the earth's crust.

This is off by 4 orders of magnitude:

> > [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth'...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth's_crust)

<comment><USER13> I thought that sounded fishy, but I didn't go to check it out. Thanks for the reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anti-nuclear activists _want_ nuclear power to be dangerous, in the same way that religious conservatives _like_ STDs such as HIV - because they provide a grounding in reality for some of their pathological whining and blind hatreds.

<comment><USER15> > Anti-nuclear activists want nuclear power to be dangerous (...)

That really doesn't make any sense. They are opposed to nuclear power because they don't perceive it to be safe (which they learned from disasters like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island), if it was perceived to be safe then they wouldn't be opposed to it. It's not like they hate the power it would give or the jobs i wold create, there is no other agenda for them to oppose it on (unless you're talking about astroturfing campaigns by alternatives, in which case I misunderstood you).

Extreme religious conservatives are another story (and I add 'extreme' because someone can be religious, conservative, and perfectly sane).

<comment><USER14> > It's not like they hate the power it would give

Please read the writings of the prominent environmentalists. Many of them _want humans to hurry up and go extinct._ Not necessarily in so many words, but anyone who advocates a return to the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is in fact calling for the murder of the billions of people who are alive only due to agriculture, of a kind which depends on modern energy sources.

<comment><USER15> You are applying extreme positions held by a minority to broad groups of people who don't hold those positions. To imply that being an environmentalist means advocating a return to hunter-gatherer lifestyle is absurd.

Honestly it's starting to sound a bit hypocritical given your original statement.

<comment><USER14> I'm not simply talking about openly declared human-extinction advocates. The death by starvation of billions is a logical consequence of perfectly mainstream environmentalist platforms - pushing for the elimination of nuclear power, factory farming, pesticides, genetically-engineered crops, and other technologies which make our historically-unprecedented abundance of food and other necessities possible.

I simply _don't care_ about anyone's _stated_ goals. What I care about is the logically inevitable results of the changes they are pursuing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've always wonder why we needed to get rid of nuclear waste. If it's radioactive enough to harm you, then obviously there's some kind of energy there. We just need to find out how to extract and use it (which is what the article is about).

<comment><USER17> We know how to extract and use it.

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

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

The only problem is political.

<comment><USER18> > The only problem is political.

And economic? Perhaps low-grade waste is the bigger issue?

<comment><USER19> Low-grade waste is problematic, but it's really no worse than lots of chemical and industrial waste that we produce and deal with every day. It's completely within the scope of current technology to dispose of it, since most low-level waste doesn't have particularly long decay times.

<comment><USER20> And it's definitely not worse than coal, which is our primary source of electricity in the United States. Merely mining it kills three to four dozen people in the US directly every year, on average, since the 90s (and it was dramatically higher in the past). I don't think I need to mention to HN that the production of nuclear power has killed zero people in that period. The waste produced by the burning of coal dwarfs the waste that is generated per kWh...it's literally several orders of magnitude larger. And the shortened lives of people breathing coal pollution certainly adds up to dramatically larger impact than that of nuclear waste.

Yes, coal pollution is "safer" the nuclear waste in equal amounts, but neither is clean, and nuclear waste (low-grade or otherwise) can be contained safely, while coal simply produces too much to store or convert to non-dangerous forms.

I talked to a Greenpeace activist a few weeks ago to try to understand how Greenpeace can _still_ be anti-nuclear energy with all that we know about the costs of the alternatives. Obviously, an on-the-street activist isn't necessarily representative of all of Greenpeace, but she did have a pamphlet about nuclear energy that she was very familiar with. In short, there is no recognition in their materials that nuclear power and nuclear weapons are dramatically different (and so, "no nukes!" applied equally to weapons and energy in her mind, and she simply couldn't imagine that one could exist without the other). There was also a deep-seated denial about coal and the realistic options for moving off of coal. Her response was, "We shouldn't compromise on clean energy, it's too important. We need clean sources of energy, like solar and wind, to replace coal and nuclear power." Obviously, there's no reasoning with this sort of mentality.

<comment><USER21> _...the production of nuclear power has killed zero people in that period._

This particular assertion seems unlikely to me. People die while mining coal, but they don't die while mining uranium?

<comment><USER22> While I was in my senior year in college (1999) at Brown, there was a fatal accident at a fuel reprocessing facility in Japan. It was a criticality accident; some solution of Ur was put in a bucket or something when it needed to be in a nice, skinny cylinder to stay sub-critical. Three workers died, and they all saw the "blue flash" from Cerenkov radiation in their optic fluid. I only happen to know this because I was taking a class on radiation and health at the time, and the professor found it topical; I got the impression that things like this happen with some regularity.

Fuel reprocessing plants are much less heavily scrutinized than the power plants themselves, since they are less likely to cause massive damage to the surrounding populace. I don't have the numbers to hand, but my impression is that if you're looking for serious worker safety issues in nuclear energy, you should look to the reprocessing plants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> One of my civil engineering professors worked as a consultant on Yucca Mountain and the Swedish nuclear waste repository. I had the chance to talk to him about Yucca Mountain, and he was very critical of their approach. Yucca's design is intended to prevent contact between groundwater and the waste, and ensure the waste is always accessible. While it sounds like a good idea, it's hard to guarantee in practice and made the design very difficult to engineer.

The Swedish design is simpler - they simply bury the waste and backfill the chambers. Waste is always in contact with groundwater, but the site was chosen so that diffusion through the rock is slow enough that it will decay to stable elements long before leaving the site.

<comment><USER24> That sounds implausible on the face of it. Its safer to let the waste contact the groundwater than to try not to...?

<comment><USER23> No, but it is extremely difficult to guarantee that you can hermetically seal nuclear waste from groundwater indefinitely, which is the standard Yucca Mountain has been held to. They've poured billions of dollars into engineering Yucca, but they'll never be able to eliminate the possibility of failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author seems to forget that separating U235 from U238, plutonium, and a slew of various highly radioactive and hazardous materials isn't exactly something you do in your shed with a couple of beakers. Especially if you want medical-grade concentrations of exotic isotopes... Saying that plutonium can be reused as fuel is also an assumption on the reactor technology used.

Imagine even just transporting the spent fuel to another plant. You can't permanently cast it in concrete and glass if you want to recycle it.

Many isotopes for nuclear medicine are also produced in accelerators, not by recycling.

</comment><comment><USER25> <http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=160>

</comment><comment><USER26> Coal plants put out more radioactive waste directly into the atmosphere than nuclear plants generate.

[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more- radioac...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive- than-nuclear-waste)

tell everyone you know, tell them again and again until it sinks in. everyone needs to know this. environmental groups need to be supporting nuclear plants. coal plants put out radioactive waste directly into the environment. the problem of storing it is trivial by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'll stick my neck out and start the "this is _not_ hacker news!" thread. Just look at the discussion - "green activists", "religious conservatives", etc... looks more like reddit than hacker news, which is what happens when we stray from our "core competencies", to turn a phrase.

<comment><USER28> It is silly to have a discussion about whether each submission falls within the guidelines. This submission has received more votes than any other today (80 at present) and has not been rejected by the moderators. What else do you want?

In the end, this story is congruent with the community guidelines but your comment is not.

 _Please don't submit comments complaining that a submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think something is spam or egregiously offtopic, you can flag it by going to its page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag something, please don't also comment that you did._

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if they could start reprocessing some of the waste that has already been stored at Yucca mountain.

<comment><USER30> If this op/ed - it's not an article - is correct, then theoretically, sure. Practically, good luck getting people comfortable with the idea of taking it out.

The interesting issue is that if we make it easier to reprocess spent fuel, then DPK and Iran and others might be able to get rid of their "civilian power" smokescreen and focus on just that part. Then, we're back where we started.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure developing and deploying the technology domestically makes it easier for other countries to use it.

Also, we're rapidly approaching an age when WMD will be accessible to very small groups. Our strategy should be to treat this like a reality today, and act accordingly.

Terrorism is certainly no reason to fuck up our entire domestic energy policy.

<comment><USER31> >Terrorism is certainly no reason to fuck up our entire domestic energy policy.

Nor is terrorism a reason to fuck up the Constitution, but the prior Administration had no qualms doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting, but in the same sense you could say "there is no such thing as waste", because in theory everything could be recycled somehow (and if we have no use for it now, we might find some in the future - just as the article states about some of the radioactive waste). Yet getting rid of waste dumps and just keeping the garbage around at home seems infeasible for now.

It is also not clear from the article how expensive recycling the radioactive waste would be.

</comment><comment><USER32> hello my name is kayleigh, i like to eat pie. that is my opion on nuclear mining

</comment><comment><USER33> Japan recycles their nuclear waste, should be done in the USA too. Hopefully Obama will be able to get new plants built, we're going to need them when all the cheap Chinese cars start coming in in a few years (it's already happening around my area, and they are cheap).</comment>


Android device with 3 flexible touchscreens? - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2011/01/19/android-device-with-3-flexible-touchscreens-oh-yeah/

<comment><USER2> Wow, awesome. Incidentally, I just read about something even better today. It's a cell phone that is invisible and broadcasts images into your mind. They can be slightly transparent, so you can see the actual world, or it can take up your whole field of vision so that you can really concentrate on what you're reading. Except, you don't have to read, because it synchronizes with your mind. Download a book from Amazon, and you instantly absorb the content. Find an interesting YouTube clip, and instead of watching it, you just experience the pleasure that would have resulted from watching it. It can also send text messages without your intervention, and receive phone calls without a 3G signal. Finally, just thinking about the device allows you to travel, instantly, through time and space.

Anyway, I am much better than designers at coming up with impossible devices. Can I win an award or something for this? Thx in advance...

(Sarcasm aside, it seems that designers only think about the device. I would rather think about what I want to do, and then do that without a device. Hence being able to travel through time without a screen strapped to a battery in my pocket. That's my goal...)

<comment><USER3> Haha I thought you were being serious up until traveling instantly through time and space... because at first it seemed like yet another completely unrealistic "design" by yet another "designer" who doesn't quite grasp current technological limitations. But you're right! You are much better at it!

I will say however that without the (seemingly, given the limitations of their time) unrealistic visionaries, we would not have the technologies that we have today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not really news... just a designer concept.

</comment><comment><USER5> The impression that I got from watching that video was that they were trying to 1) flatter the average person by telling him/her that he/she is a very creative individual, 2) convince us that having a funny little device with 3 flexible screens is the pinnacle of creativity.

Incidentally, they didn't really show any really novel use for the device, except maybe the scene where they use the device to hold a flower temporarily (because you'll need to water the flower if you're planning on leaving it there).</comment>


Ask HN: What are the pathways for a H1B guy to start a company in US? - <AUTHOR> Hi all, Wanted to get insights from y'all on starting a company within the U.S. as an Indian immigrant on H1b who's never going to land a green card through employment.
I work for one of the SV companies and have recently been serious about one of the ideas I have on my mind. I am currently working on an MVP and plan to take it to investors in a month or two. I have a positive feeling about it, and I am much motivated to continue in that route and make it my full-time affair.
The only, and only obstacle I see is immigration. I am married and my wife is on her own H1b as well. I've gone through countless articles, spoken to people, researched the internet, but still do not have a 100% coherence on all the twists and gotchas involved here. Similar discussions went on here quite a while ago (> 5 years), but I am willing to see what it's like today.
I can think of the following options:
- Get a H4EAD and be dependant and legally found the company, and run it, while taking the risk of being hit by the shaky executive actions for purported to be unleashed at any point.
- Find a cofounder on GC or with an American Citizenship and have them hire me. The risk I see here is that I only get to remain as a "worker" for the very company I founded who can be fired at any point for any reason or no reason. I have heard horror stories that happened to people in the past and I just cannot trust this path 100%.
- Move to Canada, the country that welcomes immigrants with arms wide open. I will be able to run my company with a GC there no problem. I am just slightly concerned about finding talent and VC access there. Shouldn't be too much of a problem I guess though.
Has anyone of you been through a situation like this? what was your path? What risks did you have to take? What were the factors that resulted in whatever decision you made?
Your answers and insight will be incredibly valuable to me, all help is truly appreciated.
Thank you so much in advance! <comment><USER2> Contact Peter Roberts, an immigration attorney for SV startups that does regular AMAs here on HN. [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=proberts)

Your question has come up any times in his AMAs. Those who were in your situation and are now successfully into their own startups now have replied in the comments. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769789](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22769789)

Canada is also very do-able. In general, ignore the nay-sayers on this thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, this is and incredibly useful comment. This guy seems to be a godsend. I am bookmarking all of the stuff right away. Thank you again and stay safe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I was on H1B and moved to Toronto as a PR. If you want to start your own startup, move to Canada. It's a great option. Even if there are ways to start a startup in US, visa renewals/visa stamping are unnecessary stress.

I don't know about VC access but you shouldn't have any issue with finding talent in Toronto or Vancouver. And, there is an option to recruit remote employees too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the reassurance. Are you working for a startup? Or a big company? How is the general vibe around startups there?

<comment><USER3> I'm in Toronto, remotely working for a startup in US. I don't know much about the startup scene in Toronto. If you need info on startup related stuff, do get in touch with Mars - [https://www.marsdd.com/](https://www.marsdd.com/).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you talked to a good immigration attorney? There are tens of thousands of people in this situation - perfectly capable of starting companies (at least, able to be one man business owners instead of wage slaves) except some murky rules and laws don't allow them to do so.

It would help tremendously if the rules are amended to allow H1B people to start businesses - say after 5 years on the visa or something. Not that I see any progressive action happening in this area in the current political climate ...

<comment><USER5> I agree, immigrating permanently in the US is a very hard endeavor, if you are not marrying a US citizen. I think before even starting your venture you should clarify your immigration status, last thing you want is adding extra uncertainty to entrepreneurship. Lawyer up. Also Canada is not that easy either.

<comment><AUTHOR> When you say Canada is not easy, what did you mean there?

<comment><USER5> I was making a reference to "Move to Canada, the country that welcomes immigrants with arms wide open", that's not the truth. I don't know the details, might be easier than the US, but they're not gonna hand you a passport when you cross the border. Especially if you consider the country as a back-up/second zone country, not the best mindset to immigrate somewhere.

<comment><USER3> If you don't know the details, how do you say it's not the truth? I was on H1B in US and moved to Canada as a Permanent Resident. The process to become a Permanent Resident is incredibly easy. You don't need a passport to start anything. Being a Permanent Resident will do. You just can't vote and not get high security government jobs, that's it.

It's a great option for anyone looking to start their own startup.

<comment><USER5> You are right. His claim seemed kind of over-optimistic, and I wanted to warn him not think it's all so simple.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any updates on the HN Proposition from January? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know what became of the Proposition HN project pitched here 2 months ago? Seemed like an intriguing idea. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694 <comment><USER2> The user that proposed created a blog about it: <http://hnproposition.blogspot.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> Clickable link - <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5037694></comment>


Map of Unsolved Homicides of Females - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Z0UqPLoKFIkoZgI327b_bXMF_T2Tf_Dd <comment><USER2> Anybody knows why this huge disparity between east and west ?

<comment><USER3> It's clearly not any sort of random sample for US as a whole. Could even be synthetic data--the write-up isn't really clear.</comment></comment>


Sleep from San Francisco to Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> http://www.sleepbus.co <comment><USER2> This is awesome. I really think that transportation will revolve around our sleep schedules in the future. Certain self-driving cars will be designed specifically for long rides that will take place overnight. That and an office on wheels sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sleep times are inconsistent. One place Says 8:30, another says 10:30. Data at the beginning of the webpage is repetitive (locations listed 3 paragraphs in a row)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sleep time is 8:30 by default. You can stay and sleep TILL 10:30 in the morning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome! Id love to see some more pictures and info about the team though. I'm an early adopter but this is a little too vapor wary right now

</comment><comment><USER5> Great idea. But only one photo leads me to believe this is an MVP and you don't actually own the bus yet. Curious to see how it goes.

</comment><comment><USER6> MegaBus in the UK have been running an overnight sleeper bus service with bunks between Scotland and London for good while now:

[http://www.megabusgold.com/Customer-Service/Reserve-your- Bun...](http://www.megabusgold.com/Customer-Service/Reserve-your-Bunk/)

<comment><USER7> But they don't have Premium Casper Sheets</comment></comment>


Five Ways Technology Has Changed the Olympics - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5026558/five-ways-technology-has-changed-the-olympics <comment><AUTHOR> When the Summer Olympics kick off in Beijing next month, they will be very different from the Olympics held eight or even four years ago. From weather control to laser timing devices, technology is having an impact on the Olympics in a profound way.</comment>


Betting on the wrong horse - <AUTHOR> https://wincent.com/blog/betting-on-the-wrong-horse <comment><USER2> Disturbingly, I could have written this exact article. But I never made the "ruby" mistake, to some of us, that was obvious, though Rails was a cool concept, just better implemented in other more performant languages.

<comment><USER3> > Rails was a cool concept, just better implemented in other more performant > languages.

Can you list your preferences?

<comment><USER4> PHP - Rails inspired some great frameworks on PHP and once they became available I promptly switched.

I realize I might take some flak for this : )

<comment><USER3> Specifically which framework? (And anybody giving you flak for using PHP is telling more about themselves than about you.)

<comment><USER5> Probably talking about Laravel.... I'm curious what you think not liking PHP says about someone?

<comment><USER6> He didn't say that someone not liking PHP says something about them. What he said was that someone giving flak to another for using PHP says something about them.

<comment><USER5> Ah ok sorry. I misread that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can remember being at my first contract position in 1995/6 and suggesting to people that this new language Java was kinda cool and being told by many other people I was working with that it wasn't worth pursuing. So I didn't...

JavaScript is really cool and I did pursue that one. :)

</comment><comment><USER8> The article displays nothing but a blank page with JavaScript turned off…

<comment><USER9> Well, the blog's author is a Javascript developer :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Guilty as charged. The blog is new (days old), but server rendering will be coming.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Engineers Are Better Off Joining Startups - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/13/engineers-startups/ <comment><USER3> TFA discusses why engineers are better off joining a _startup_ rather then some _bigco_.

Why not take it further, and explain why _joining_ a startup is better _starting_ one?

<comment><USER4> > why joining a startup is better starting one?

To answer your question, I think this personal story from YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is valuable.

> But the executive team made up for nonmastery of details with unwavering > vision, which inspired the troops. At his San Bruno, Calif., office, YouTube > CEO Hurley remembers his PayPal days as an education in business. When he > arrived in California with a degree in art from Indiana University of > Pennsylvania, building a successful company seemed like something other > people did.

"You never think it could happen to you," says Hurley. "But seeing Peter and Max and the guys come up with ideas and seeing how to make things work gave me a lot of insight. You may not have a business degree, but you see how to put the process into effect. The experience helped me realize the payoff of being involved in a startup."

[http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/magazines/fortune/paypal_maf...](http://money.cnn.com/2007/11/13/magazines/fortune/paypal_mafia.fortune/index3.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A lot of these discussions gloss over the fact that engineers can have wildly different personalities and life circumstances. At least in SV where all engineers seem aware of their opportunities to start a business, work at startupco, or work at bigco, they efficiently sort themselves into the buckets they should be in.

<comment><USER6> ... and interests. If you're in software there's a lot more flexibility but if you're going to build something with complex electronics or even mechanical elements you may be better off at a larger or even huge company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would say the only startup worth working on is your own.

Working at someone else's startup is a recipe for getting exploited - overworked and underpaid. And the worst thing about it is that it's all couched in an atmosphere of guilt trips and taking-it-for-the-team.

Perhaps there are exceptions. I just haven't seen any.

I'd rather work for The Man in my day job in a cold corporate environment where everything is explicit from the get-go, get well paid for it and crank out code for my own startup in my free time.

<comment><USER8> It is also possible and very common to be self-exploited, overworked and underpaid at your own startup. And depending on the exit of your startup vs the exit of someone else's startup, and the % you get from the total of outstanding shares in both cases, you might be better off joining a startup than working on your own.

And as the article points out it's getting less risky working for a startup, while working on your own you might need to spend your savings on it.

<comment><USER7> There's something about the feeling of self-determination - directing your own fate - that makes the hard work of your own startup more tolerable, even if, from a mathematical standpoint, you would profit more from working for someone else.

And, sure, it might be getting less risky to work for (someone else's) startup. But I don't think the culture of the startup work environment has changed much recently with respect to the unfettered expectations of your work output and willingness to self-sacrifice for the "larger cause" - <USER2> of how counter-productive that self-sacrifice may actually be.

<comment><USER8> I agree, but working for the startup of someone else you might learn from an awesome team that will prepare you for one day having your own startup. This was the advice of D'Angelo, from Quora, at the last Startup School.

I think it all depends on how prepared you are. If you think you have already learned enough, then go for it.

So, good luck with your startup! :)

<comment><USER7> I guess it depends where you are in life and how valuable a potential learning experience with a good team might be for you.

My feeling is there is no greater motivator for learning than when the problems you face may have a direct bearing on your own financial well-being and the life or death of your own startup.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Rolling Shutters - <AUTHOR> http://jasmcole.com/2014/10/12/rolling-shutters/ <comment><USER2> Nice! Whenever I see rolling shutter photos on flickr/etc I always think about this old page where a fellow built a long-distance camera from a flatbed scanner to get the effect intentionally: [http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/scanner.html](http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/tech/scanner.html)

(There's a great image of a garage door opening & closing about 2/3 of the way down the page if you don't feel like reading the whole thing.)

<comment><USER3> This is so fascinating. This makes me long for the days when browsing somebody's homepage on the web felt like they were actually inviting you into their home like a friend.

<comment><USER4> His woodworking videos are fantastic. Also, FWIW, he's now got a whole page about the cameras he's used to film them:

[http://woodgears.ca/misc/best_camera.html](http://woodgears.ca/misc/best_camera.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a neat analysis from a mathematical perspective, but (especially for a rotating component like this) wouldn't the lighting be all wrong for the remapped pixels? The slow-speed scanning examples use a fixed image (note the highlight doesn't change) so it's likely not usable for real-world digital photography without updates to account for lighting.

<comment><USER6> Why would it be wrong? The pixels have the correct lighting (assuming the overall ambient light didn't change during the rotation), just the wrong position.

<comment><USER7> They have the correct lighting _at their current position_ (the propeller was actually at that point in the image when the photo was taken). Which means when you transform them you'll get wrong lighting in the severely bent parts because they rotated elsewhere when the picture was taken. Light shines on it from another side and you cannot fix that just by changing the image transformation. It's not the ambient light, but the directional part.

<comment><USER6> A yes, the directional light (highlights, specs etc) would change...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ha, my friend used the same photo as the example for his mathematical analysis of the rolling shutter effect: [http://danielwalsh.tumblr.com/post/54400376441/playing- detec...](http://danielwalsh.tumblr.com/post/54400376441/playing-detective- with-rolling-shutter-photos)

The questions he investigated: "Can we figure out the rate at which a propellor is spinning by analyzing this kind of photo? And can we figure out the real number of propellor blades in the photo?"

<comment><USER9> You can play a more complex version of that game using video of the vibrating strings on a musical instrument. Here's an especially good example: [http://vimeo.com/4041788](http://vimeo.com/4041788)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sony is making steady advancements in the global shutter with CMOS sensors. A bit harder on DSLRS with larger sensors and more pixels to read but the smaller sensors with smaller megapixels already have them [1]. So it's matter of a time that most CMOS bases videos will be free of rolling shutter, starting with higher-end video cameras that have sensors with just enough pixels to cover 2k-4k videos [2]

[1] [http://www.sony.net/Products/SC- HP/new_pro/december_2013/imx...](http://www.sony.net/Products/SC- HP/new_pro/december_2013/imx174_e.html)

[2] [http://www.newsshooter.com/2014/09/11/io- industries-4k-super...](http://www.newsshooter.com/2014/09/11/io- industries-4k-super-35mm-the-ultimate-action-camera/)

<comment><USER11> Couldn't help posting this (uses a Sony global shutter sensor):

[http://scolton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/grasshopper3-mobile- se...](http://scolton.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/grasshopper3-mobile-setup.html)

If it were possible to get this in a consumer grade video product I would be very happy. Unfortunately these sensors are $1295.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Somewhat relatedly, check out this awesome new camera technology which essentially captures a rolling diff of the image rather than the image itself, with impressive results: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LauQ6LWTkxM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LauQ6LWTkxM)

</comment><comment><USER13> I see this effect happening in skydiving videos quite often.

The rolling shutter is also why stills from gopro videos never quite live up to how clear the videos look in motion.

The cover photo from this month's parachutist magazine is a great example:

[http://parachutistonline.com/sites/all/files/images/cover201...](http://parachutistonline.com/sites/all/files/images/cover201410.png)

Notice the right leg of the jumpsuit, its flapping in the wind as the shutter rolls over the scene.

When people use the slow-mo feature for gopro videos everything kind of morphs rather than moving naturally. I've always found it to be a cool effect:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUSF6xmmqJg&t=46s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUSF6xmmqJg&t=46s)

<comment><USER14> > The rolling shutter is also why stills from gopro videos never quite live up > to how clear the videos look in motion.

I've thought about this as well. I always assumed the lack of clarity of single frames extracted from video material is because the eye/brain incorporates several images shown really quick in succession into one whole image. So when only a single frame is shown, there's not as much information in that as, say, 10 frames shown quickly in succession.

<comment><USER15> That's also because of the 'shutter speed' or 'shutter angle'. Basically each frame stays 'open' for a certain amount of time to let the light in. Anything slower than say 1/500s is going to introduce motion blur into the frame.

Shutter Speed/Angle are also creative choices. Anything that is faster than 1/50th (180 degree shutter angle) will introduce a 'staccato' effect to the video. Anything slower will be mushy/blurry.

Somewhat off topic, but interesting nontheless!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A very cool article, indeed; but I believe he uses the term exposure wrong.

Exposure is the total time our whole light sensitive area is exposed to the light coming from our scene. You can think of it as an integral of the sensor (or film) area exposed as a function of the time, divided by the total sensor area.

In the examples he uses the term exposure to describe the total scantime of the sensor, whilst it seems that his actual exposure (which is equal to the time each row of pixels samples the scene) is much smaller.

It may sound as a small difference but if one wants to reproduce the effect, we will essentially need to match two parameters: exposure and scantime. While exposure is easy to set, scantime is pretty much hardcoded and depends on the physical characteristics of the camera. Even an analog shutter has a scantime on small exposure times.

</comment><comment><USER17> If I understand this correctly, it is effectively doing what a photo-finish camera does at race sports events, except that the slit moves across the scene, rather than the scene moving past the slit.

Photo-finish shots also end up looking pretty weird: [http://coachdeanhebert.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/100-photo...](http://coachdeanhebert.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/100-photo- finish.jpg)

<comment><USER18> And the performance of those photo-finish systems is impressive. I would be grateful if someone could explain how the software is able to almost instantaneously identify the runners who are frequently not in lanes and also often have missing numbers. For one example, see FinishLynx ([http://www.finishlynx.com/](http://www.finishlynx.com/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can see it now. Soon Adobe will include some tool or setting in Photoshop that will automagically "fix" rolling shutter.

<comment><USER20> I seem to recall that Adobe Premiere Pro and/or Adobe After Effects contain a tool for mitigating rolling shutter artifacts, though I am not certain if it uses the method described in the article.

<comment><USER21> YouTube's stabilisation option attempts to remove (with reasonable success, in my experience) rolling shutter wobble caused by camera movement, although I don't believe it will mitigate the effect of a moving subject.

There was a talk at last year's Google I/O with some examples:

[http://youtu.be/QdXugkXBTbc?t=15m56s](http://youtu.be/QdXugkXBTbc?t=15m56s)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Awesome animated GIFs, definitely helps explain the concept.

This effect was manipulated to extract more information for this: [http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech- fro...](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from- vibrations-0804)

</comment><comment><USER23> Definitely check out other articles on the author's blog; he's a great technical writer.

</comment><comment><USER24> My favorite rolling-shutter video, of an upright bass: [http://vimeo.com/4041788](http://vimeo.com/4041788)

</comment><comment><USER25> The radial graph half way down the page reminds me of this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral#mediaviewer/File:Sa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulam_spiral#mediaviewer/File:Sacks_spiral.svg)

<comment><USER26> Well that's certainly interesting. I was about to say, it reminds me _strongly_ of a zeta function, in a way. But it turns out Dedekind's _eta_ function was what I was thinking of [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedekind_eta_function#mediavie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dedekind_eta_function#mediaviewer/File:Discriminant_real_part.jpeg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Rolling shutters were also used by traditional cameras. This effect is really old school stuff. Rolling shutter providers better exposure than circular shutter. I remember that most of professional photographs taken in 80s also used rolling shutter.

<comment><USER28> You mean curtain shutters, which become just a slit traveling across the sensor at short exposures? I am pretty sure modern DSLRs still use them.</comment></comment>


Betaworks to Pay $500,000 for Fallen Social Media Star Digg - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304373804577523181002565776.html?mod=wsj_share_tweet

<comment><USER2> This is a case of a company having delusions of grandeur. Instead of humming along with 10 or so employees raking in cash hand-over fist, they tried to grow as fast and as large as possible to try to revolutionize news. Instead, Reddit did the former and is stable and profitable; it never pretends to be something it's not.

Not all companies are going to change the world, nor should they. I see Facebook and Twitter making the same mistakes. Perhaps Facebook is a great place to keep in touch with friends but nothing more. Perhaps Twitter is simply a great replacement for blogging, nothing more. Instead of filling their niches and quietly making a small number of employees very wealthy, they try to become these massive institutions that are reliant on very fickle user bases. It's a house of cards.

<comment><USER3> <http://vimeo.com/928615> \- I think this video from Digg sums it up well.

<comment><USER4> Why do you say that. This video shows the office environment which is fun. It's funny with a lot of nerds trying to dance and look cool without looking awkward.

In the hindsight, Digg might have made some wrong decisions but this doesn't say anything about the company one way of another.

<comment><USER3> In the context of the parent comment, it clearly shows the difference in approaches between them and Reddit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, WSJ, you never cease to make me giggle.

> _outmaneuvered by rivals like Facebook Inc. FB -0.52% and Twitter Inc_

Or, you know, Reddit, its direct competitor who mopped up much of Digg's userbase.

<comment><USER6> Reddit is mentioned later in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a lot more to this deal, it wasn't a simple $500k outright purchase. It sounds like the shareholding was restructured with old investors and shareholders carrying over and betaworks taking up a large part of the company. employee options were probably wiped out, a lot of the old investment terms were probably restructured as well, with more recent money gaining favor

i'd think that the $500k is a token cash amount to settle who is leftover of old stock and debt holders/accounts after you move all the other shareholders over. Digg is definitely worth more than $500k (didn't 37signals want $400k just for their job board thing?), Betworks didn't buy the entire co for $500k and we don't know what the 'value' of the new company is, so the headlines are misleading

</comment><comment><USER8> I mean no lack of respect for Kevin Rose but I've got to sit and reflect on the differences between Digg and Reddit now that we know who won. I remember one of the Reddit founders saying once not to focus on your competitors but to just put your shoulder down and go.

So I have to contrast this Business Week cover:

[http://valleywag.com/assets/resources/2006/08/kevin-cover- bu...](http://valleywag.com/assets/resources/2006/08/kevin-cover- businessweek.gif)

To this early 2005 interview with the founders of Reddit. They were so humble (it wasn't even our idea) and how they lived and breathed the site, even waking up every two hours to check it:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rZ8f3Bx6Po>

Kudos to the Reddit founders but the real lesson is that their sacrifice built a better, stronger community.

<comment><USER9> * [http://valleywag.com/assets/resources/2006/08/kevin-cover-bu...](http://valleywag.com/assets/resources/2006/08/kevin-cover-businessweek.gif) *

Let it also be a lesson in the difference between valuation and money. Valuation is meaningless until it turns into liquid cash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> That strikes me as shockingly low.

For context, KillerStartups bought the domain "startups.com" 4 years ago for $500,000. No IP, no brand recognition. The _domain_.

<comment><USER11> Its a great deal for sure, but I would imagine betaworks is going to have some other expenses associated with Digg and factored that into the negotiations.

<comment><USER12> True. At the very least $500,000 will cover some of the costs associating with tying up loose ends when legally doing something like this instead of winding it down. May be employment contracts, leases, colo costs etc.

Either way it is a good deal by smell test standard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I loved Digg when it was v1 and just a technology news site. They always had great content that kept me up to date on the newest tech articles. Then they started adding other news categories and the front page became a bunch of random news articles that mostly didn't interest me.

Even if you went to the "Technology" page, it would only show those articles that had made it to the front page, meaning there'd be less than 10 new articles on that page per day.

Then it just started become spam with spammers using huge groups of users to upvote bad content like infographs.

I've visited it a few times in the past few months just to see what was going on and it's a really, really bad user experience right now. Really just awful.

<comment><USER14> If I was to speculate, I'd say that the early Digg audience may have been what ultimately led them down the path to failure. The ranking algorithm on Digg was blatantly rigged to produce a front page with mass-market appeal. Overly nerdy or political submissions rarely made the cut. I suspect that, early on, Digg's leadership decided that allowing users too much control over content would keep Digg in a nerd/leftist niche that couldn't be monetized. A lack of respect for democratic control over the front page ultimately led them to ignore voting rings, gaming, and spammers; and eventually justified handing over control to the marketeers and content farms in Digg v4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'd make a vague guess that the reason the price is so low is that betaworks assumed some debts.

</comment><comment><USER16> TechCrunch is now disputing the $500,000 price in their coverage[1]

 _One source close to the negotiations tells us that the price was indeed not $500k, but we haven't been able to pinpoint an exact price yet._

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/12/betaworks-acquires-digg/>

</comment><comment><USER17> Color (.com) paid $350,000 for the domain name alone. Silicon Valley is funny like that.

</comment><comment><USER18> Remember when Digg raised $45 million and at one point Google was going to buy them for $200 million?

I guess sometimes you should just take the money and run.

<comment><USER19> Don't worry, Kevin took plenty of money. It's just the regular employees that don't get shit.

edit: nobody knows the number for sure, but he had enough to do angel investments in foursquare and twitter. See also crunchbase [1]. There was a $28mm series C and the speculation seems to be a bunch went into his pockets.

edit2: after thinking for a couple minutes, there's something just really unseemly about founders getting millions and employees plus investors getting zilch, particularly in the context of a failed business. I think the idea of founders cashing out a bit to free the company to swing for the fences is probably good, but still. There's something about this result that just doesn't sit well.

[1] <http://www.crunchbase.com/person/kevin-rose>

<comment><USER20> The reason the investor wants to give the founder an early earn-out is that they don't want the founder to be defensive. If you've invested $45M and you're looking to make ten times that, the site needs to make it really big. And you don't want to have a founder looking for the quick win. You pay him/her an amount in the ballpark of what is often colloquially phrased "fuck you-money", and it increases the chances that he's willing to risk everything to give you that 10x. For the investors, it's a calculated risk.

<comment><USER19> I understand what it is. I understand why investors do it.

I reiterate my point: it's unseemly when founders earn millions and everyone else, particularly the employees, goes home with nothing.

<comment><USER21> That's why it is important for employees to demand market salary, startup or no.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This valuation is way, way, way off. I mean, add a zero to the end and I still don't think you're close to a fair value.

Nice domain, tons of traffic, and a load of real users who you could keep around if you wanted to. Even if you wanted to strip-mine the domain out and dump the company, I can't imagine your costs are going to be anything significant.

Whoever's managing this deal at Digg's end is screwing it right up.

<comment><USER23> OK say you bought it. It is yours. What do you do tomorrow and this week to turn Digg around and have it do something interesting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Digg, for all of its issues, still has 4M monthly uniques and an Alexa Rank of 191.

Compare this to 37signal's Sortfolio, which sold for $480,000 a few weeks back.

<comment><USER25> > _"still has 4M monthly uniques and an Alexa Rank of 191"_

4M monthly uniques that have been downright hostile to any attempt to monetize their traffic. Alexa Rank of 191 with no avenue for actual money.

It's not all about the users.

<comment><USER24> There's a difference between monetizing traffic and bastardizing content (though I'll be the first to admit I'm not readily familiar with Digg's community.)

I think there's still a pretty big niche to be filled with genuine high- quality news aggregation. Even if they were to nuke Digg and start anew, having that existing userbase is a big advantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> _The buyer is New York technology development firm Betaworks, which is attempting to revive a news-sharing site that was outmaneuvered by Facebook Inc. FB -0.52% and Twitter Inc._

"outmaneuvered by Facebook and Twitter"? No. Digg's wounds were all self- inflicted. Between the "power users" and efforts to monetize the site it took on the look and feel of one of those fake news sites created to snare Googlers.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article mentions that digg was "outmaneuvered" by Facebook and Twiiter. But I don't think they are even really related, I was a Digg user in the early days and it's Reddit that killed Digg in my opinion.

</comment><comment><USER12> "The price was only about $500,000, three people familiar with the matter said"

Shouldn't the headline have added the word, "rumored"? Or maybe a Betteridges law version "Digg to sell for only $500,000?"

</comment><comment><USER28> There's only one appropriate comment that sums up both this news item and the state of Digg in general:

Who cares.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure anyone laughed harder than me upon hearing the news.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I specialise? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a "generalist" with shallow knowledge in a wide number of areas, and I think that might be a bad strategy. It seems most people are looking for hackers that are really, really good at just a few things. What's your opinion? Is it better to specialise?
The other half of the problem is what to specialise in. I have no idea, and I love so many different things it's hard to deliberately give up on most of them to focus. Right now I feel very directionless and could really use some advice from people a bit further on in their development than me (I left university a year ago). To give you an idea of my knowledge and capabilities, the things I've done (or helped with) include:
Basic game physics engine (C++) †
Inverse kinematics solver (C++) †
Cross-platform dynamic music engine (C++, OpenAL) †
High performance bittorrent tracker (Java - and way faster than XBTT, the main competition)
Raytracer (Java) †
Typing tutor (Java) †
Bittorrent web front-end with forums etc (PHP, memcached, Sphinx - one installation of this code has 120000 users with a single MySQL server)
I've also made a lot of websites (this is my day job), and I consider my skills to be most developed in this area - but again, I'm a generalist, I do a little front-end, a little back-end, a little server administration.
† denotes a student project, so these aren't "production-ready" (with the exception of the typing tutor, which has been downloaded 10,000 times and so potentially has some life in it)
I'm confident that I have a lot of raw talent, and could make some great things - I just have no idea how to get there from here. Thank you for reading my ramblings, I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the advice and guidance this community gives and I look forward to reading any advice you may have for me (and others in similar situations to mine). <comment><USER2> Let me throw out this quote from Scott Adams [1] proposing that being a generalist has a lot of value too.

"I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The "Dilbert" comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That's how value is created."

1\. [http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870410160457624...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656.html?mod=WeekendHeader_Right)

<comment><USER3> Scott Adams is a generalist in a set of very distant disciplines. The difference between art talent, writing skills and a sense of humour is far greater than the difference between Java, C and Ruby.

I'd say learn one programming language and then learn two more skills which programmers rarely hold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can, and should, do both. It really isn't a one-or-the-other situation.

Specialize in something, but keep up your general knowledge. Being too specialized is just as big a weakness as being too generalized. Unless, that is, you become the absolute best in the world at it. Which is not something you can plan for.

Also, don't pick a specialization just because you feel like you need one, or you'll always be behind the curve. If there's nothing you are passionate about to dive deeper and deeper into, keep looking.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am a proponent of specialization. I've found it is easier to convince clients to use your services if you have a track record of developing similar projects and appear to have expert knowledge in that area.

Of course, it's also great that have breadth of knowledge so you can always say Yes to client when they ask if you can do X.

I would think about which areas that you mentioned above you are most passionate about and what skill-types your current network has and base your decision off of that.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is definitely better to be a specialist than a generalist. In the field of high dollar per hour consulting, for example, you can't make the pitch "I'm a generalist!".

</comment><comment><USER7> Thinking about specializing or not, you need to first some general idea about what you really like and what you want.

Without some sort of short-term (1-4 years) goal, whatever you do won't makes sense.

Once you know more what you like and what you want to pursue, then the pieces like specializing/generalizing will start to make sense.

Generally speaking, having a particular strong area is a good idea since teams need these type of people to fill in specific roles (even startups).

Don't rabbit hole into and stay curious to other things is also crucial ofcourse.</comment>


Show HN: I'm doing a video series about building a C++ IDE from scratch - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMOpZvQB55bfeIHSA71J81OZi3F19lh3d <comment><AUTHOR> Hello friends! I wasn't sure if this is fit for "Show HN" so please shut it down if it's not.

I've started building a C++ IDE for my own operating system, SerenityOS ([https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity](https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity)). I realized that I'm never gonna switch over to using Serenity full time until it becomes a pleasant environment to do C++ development.

My only experience with IDE's and C++ is as a user, so I'm learning this as I go. If this sounds interesting to you, then feel free to tag along, on YouTube, GitHub or both! :)

Videos so far:

1\. Let's build an IDE for Serenity: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUNudFw7rds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUNudFw7rds)

2\. Embedding a terminal in the IDE: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVv2e9ND7bI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVv2e9ND7bI)

3\. Let's make it Build & Run: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUk9sxlaP-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUk9sxlaP-k)

4\. Project-wide text search: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAZYHjHIjfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAZYHjHIjfg)

5\. C++ syntax highlighting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snZrayZhGzo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snZrayZhGzo)

</comment><comment><USER2> so sick</comment>


Ask: Healthcare.gov - What happened to fail and how it got fixed? - <AUTHOR>

Ask: Now healthcare.gov is working - What actually happened and how they fixed it now. Does anybody know? <comment><USER2> Right? I would appreciate an in-depth root cause analysis report on why it failed, mitigation steps and final solution. I'm sure such a document exists somewhere...</comment>


Wood to Oil (1977) - <AUTHOR> http://www.journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/wood_to_oil.html <comment><USER2> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis_oil](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrolysis_oil)

(another angle)

But is the oil good enough to be used for fuel? We can already burn wood but the hope is the oil could be made into diesel.

Then there is this old stand by:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer–Tropsch_process)

It is actually possible to run otto cycle with wood directly

[https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/01/22/from-gasoline-to- ga...](https://www.hemmings.com/blog/2017/01/22/from-gasoline-to-gasification- or-why-we-dont-power-cars-with-wood-today/)

Syn gas or coal gas was a big deal before electric lighting. Turns out syn gas is still used today in chemical manufacturing.</comment>