AI Algorithms, Data Structures, and Idioms in Prolog, Lisp, and Java [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://wps.aw.com/wps/media/objects/5771/5909832/PDF/Luger_0136070477_1.pdf <comment><USER3> If you don't know Prolog, I can give a very warm recommendation to spend some time and get familiar with Prolog. It's an extremely simple programming language that is a good example of taking a formal abstraction (predicate logic) and turning it into a practical programming language.

Prolog is also a very good example of the power of the unification algorithm. Unification is also used in e.g. type inference algorithms in programming languages like ML or Haskell.

Prolog is also homoiconic ("code is data", like Lisp) so it's very well suited for doing experiments in languages. A commonly used example is to create a Prolog dialect with fuzzy logic semantics.

Finally, while you might never get a chance to use Prolog in your day job, it's a programming language that will expand your horizons and learning it will, in my opinion, make you a better programmer.

<comment><USER4> I've been told Prolog is used quite a lot by financial institutions. In fact, one of them bought a whole Prolog company (I forgot the name, sorry).

I agree prolog is quite simple and nice but that is true mostly for the pure prolog subset. The actual programming language with cuts and all the complexity is not so simple anymore - it's not purely declarative (e.g. semantics of the program depends on the order of the clauses).

EDIT: it is Experian (a credit analysis company) that bought Prologia, the Prolog company that was founded by Alain Colmerauer, who designed and implemented the first version of Prolog.

[http://www.experianplc.com/news/company- news/2005/25-10-2005...](http://www.experianplc.com/news/company- news/2005/25-10-2005.aspx)

<comment><USER5> I haven't used Prolog for about 10 years (and then only used it at uni) - <USER2> is my memory of it too. You could specify the rules for your problem very succinctly and naturally but the devil was in the detail. You'd spend all your time making sure the ordering and cuts were right - which at the time felt non-intuitive (though maybe now with more software experience it would be easier).

Isn't there some alternative varient where the ordering of the rules don't matter? (if that's even possible)

Edit: not to put people off - all alternative software paradigms are worth experimenting with

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure you can avoid the dependency on the rules order, and having to understand how the Prolog engine works. But I found there is a rather intuitive way to deal with it: think of the Prolog engine as searching a space of possibilities for a goal (expressed by the rules). Then you must order the rules to narrow the search space as quickly as possible. In other words, try to make the first rules as selective as possible to quickly reduce the search space.

That's how you can get fast Prolog programs. But you have to be careful. It's been a long time since I played with Prolog, but I remember a case where reordering two lines would make the solution reached below 1 second from over 15 minutes. That kind of thing is part of the charm and frustration of Prolog. It can be a nice brain teaser.

<comment><USER7> I like to think of Prolog as an "intellectual diversion."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow! Am I the only one reading this book? No comments so far about the book. I don't remember how I ended up reading this book for past an hour or so. I know Lisp so jumped on Part III after reading the Chapter 1. This really looks like a gem I have never heard of. Anyone already read this? Any comments? Not much in Amazon Reviews.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is on the publisher's website, so I assume there are no copyright issues.

</comment><comment><USER9> For anyone looking to learn prolog, I highly recommend the ciao [1] system. It has many features that help both with exploring the language and with solving actual problems. It also supports some additional constraint programming stuff that I think is really cool.

[1] - <http://ciao-lang.org/>

</comment><comment><USER10> prolog is also on my list of "to learns", and just this week i threw "progol" on there, too. i explored datalog a few weeks ago and enjoyed it, and like martinced notes i'm also eying datomic.

i have been bitten by the AI bug.

<comment><USER11> I "learned" the gist of Prolog in one day. Same as Lisp & Smalltalk. Of course, it takes years to master, as in Lisp & Smalltalk, but you can get a taste of the magic fairly quickly.

A highly recommended book is The Art of Prolog, the "PAIP" of Prolog. But unlike PAIP I have managed only a chapter or two, though it's on my list of "to reads" ;-)</comment></comment>


ClearSky Data Exits Stealth with Novel Approach to Cloud Storage - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/24/clearsky-data-exits-stealth-to-deliver-data-lifecycle-as-a-service/ <comment><USER2> How does this differ from the AWS Storage Gateway appliance? [https://aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/](https://aws.amazon.com/storagegateway/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question. I am but a lowly engineer here but my understanding of AWS Storage Gateway is that it relies on your on-premises gateway to ensure the durability of at least a portion of each write's lifetime. If your gateway goes down, it can lose data with it.

Our (ClearSky Data's) product takes full responsibility for the durability of data. If the on-premises edge cache (which we manage) fails, no data is lost.

Edit: Moreover, we fully manage the edge cache -- with AWS Storage Gateway, it is the customer's responsibility to provision and manage the gateway and its connection to the cloud.

<comment><USER2> Thanks. So with ClearSky Data, you write through to the cloud and only acknowledge once it's completed there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, with latencies competitive with existing enterprise storage solutions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Fundamentally a good idea, but ...

They're asking companies to trust a 30 employee startup with vital company data. The engineering might be sound, but they'd better have some outstanding sales people as well, since using ClearSky requires a big leap of faith.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most of the senior staff have prior experience building successful enterprise- storage solutions from the ground up. You're trusting your data to some of the best engineers in the industry.

And I have full faith in our sales team to communicate that fact to potential customers ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As somebody who has dealt with ClearSky in another industry, I wouldn't touch anything they do with a 10 foot pole.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious what you mean by this; ClearSky Data has only existed for two years and has always been in the enterprise storage industry.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.csky.com/](http://www.csky.com/)

<comment><USER5> We are [http://www.clearskydata.com](http://www.clearskydata.com)

Nothing to do with the company you listed above :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't the Nasuni Filer do something very similar to this?

And why hasn't TechCrunch asked these questions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nasuni has done their best job to hide any pricing or performance info on their web site, but from what I can gather from Google, our prices are _far_ more competitive than theirs.

From what I can tell, a Nasuni device connects directly to cloud providers over the public Internet, and does not ship with a high-availability solution. At ClearSky, our metro Points of Presence ensure low latency by decreasing the distance across the public Internet which customer data has to travel, and our Edge Caches are designed to be highly available.

Finally Nasuni seems to leave management and purchase of the on-premises server up to the customer. ClearSky's Edge Caches are fully managed by us at no additional cost.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What could grassroots politics learn from startups? - kuro-kuris Hi HN,
How would you start a startup which isn't about making money but building a better society through politics?
I have been more and more involved in politics and I was wondering what could grassroots political organisations learn from startups. I am trying to help build a pro European Hungarian political movement, Momentum (momentum.hu).
I believe technology has an important role to play in politics through opportunities for transparent, democratic decisions, and better workflows. I am curious how would you help a political organisation which is in its early stages?
One of our projects I am proud of is tackling local causes which matter to local people. cselekveskorei.hu is our website where we run this platform.
I would love to hear about your experiences in helping setting up political orgs with tech and what you would do to help improve processes. If you would be interested in giving me some more advice regarding this please email me through my profile. <comment><AUTHOR> While I have little political experience, I do have experience developing grassroots volunteer organizations and I can say that it's all about people and communication. Technology is more of a means to an end but what's helped is dialogue with people to share our vision. We've tried introducing new technology before but people just hated it. Why? Because it becomes impersonal and the message gets lost. After all, the medium is the message as Marshall McLuhan would say.

I'd be happy to learn more about what you're working on and see if there's more specific advice I can give.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is not explicitly tech-oriented, but I am reading a very interesting book at the moment that seems highly relevant to what you describe:

"How Organizations Develop Activists: Civic Associations and Leadership in the 21st Century", Hahrie Han

The book is a write-up of a sociological study in which the author accompanied various local groups of two large activist organizations in the USA. Her aim was to find out what differentiated high-achieving groups from low achievers, measured by the number of people they were able to mobilize and keep engaged.

Though she is not concerned with technology per se, she does talk quite a bit about its potential in activism, as well as the pitfalls of an overreliance on it.

I haven't finished reading the whole book yet, but it is certainly thought- provoking and if you are trying to get people involved in a civic group of any kind, I strongly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think discovery is a big problem with small Parties but I'm not an expert.

For example, I only learned there was such a thing as the pirate party last year! I wish I had known so much sooner.

On the other hand, I lack the personal insecurity to just browse around looking for ways to label myself, I'd rather find groups by causes.

"party for people who pirate music" would suit me just fine.

"party for people who start indices at 1 where they belong"

"party for people who think significant white space is gross"

"party for people against semicolons"

"party for people who actually use their turn signal"

Maybe a service that psychoanalyzes you and shows you which groups' members are most similar to you?

</comment><comment><USER4> Worse is better - too much nuisance and nobody's gonna care.

Rapid iteration - throw ideas out there, see what sticks. Also, you can perpetually broadcast different, even slightly conflicting takes on the same general idea. Very powerful when combined with targeted advertising.

</comment><comment><USER5> On the campaign side, I think people running should have primed the SEO pipeline with a blog well before deciding to run. Get their ideas out there, maybe even do a podcast.</comment>


Watsi featured in NYT, gets all patients funded - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/csToASa

<comment><AUTHOR> And here is the NYT article: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/watsi-a- crowdfund...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/watsi-a-crowdfunding- site-offers-help-with-medical-care.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&);</comment>


Patreon CEO discusses content policy and Lauren Southern - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmcK6GvgVPs <comment><AUTHOR> I respect him for coming out and addressing this. There have been a lot of right-wingers accusing Patreon of bias but the policy as described seems pretty fair. Patreon could end up getting sued if someone commits a serious crime using money raised on their platform. It makes sense for them to have standards in this regard. The devil really is in the details of enforcement.</comment>


A $100B Train: The Future of California or a Boondoggle? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/us/california-high-speed-rail.html <comment><USER2> This infrastructure looks more expensive than a Hyperloop.

[http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series- air...](http://www.opshots.net/2015/04/aircraft-operating-series-aircraft- operating-expenses/)

An average flight on a Delta Air Lines 737-800 costs $2,744 per hour. The plane burns 850 gallons per hour. Fuel costs $1,275 based on Jet-A fuel costing Delta $1.50 a gallon. Two pilots and five flight attendants costs around $500 an hour. Direct maintenance on the airframe is around $220, engines are around $130, and maintenance burden is around $150, for a total of $500. In addition to this cost is depreciation of $373 and aircraft rental of $96. An average flight on an American Airlines 737-800 costs $2,180 per hour. The plane burns 850 gallons per hour. Fuel costs $1,028 based on Jet-A fuel costing American $1.21 a gallon. A cockpit crew of two along with five flight attendants costs around $465 an hour. Direct maintenance on the airframe is around $200, engines are around $110, and maintenance burden is around $135, for a total of $315. Also added to this cost is depreciation of $259 and aircraft rental of $113.</comment>


6 Lessons from a guy who changed Media as we know it. - <AUTHOR> http://kage.posterous.com/6-lessons-from-a-guy-who-changed-media-as-we

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll send a book in a draw I hold if you guess it within the first half of the writeup!</comment>


EFF Asks Court to Block U.S. From Prosecuting Security Researcher - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-asks-court-block-us-prosecuting-security-researcher-detecting-and-publishing <comment><USER2> So is the government actually suing this guy or is the EFF just asking a court to say they can't in the future?

<comment><USER3> No, nor was it ever going to.

This EFF action is legit, and so is Matthew Green, but the controversy here is entirely synthetic.

What's important to understand about the US court system is that it is by design hugely powerful and subject to almost no outside oversight, but --- because of that power, and the desire not to have Presidents appointing panels of philosopher-kings --- the courts are only allowed to hear cases about live controversies.

So if you're using the courts as an instrument of policy change, the name of the game is finding a favorable live controversy.

<comment><USER4> I learned about this listening to Radiolab's 'More Perfect' [0]

[0] [http://www.radiolab.org/story/more-perfect- plaintiffs/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/more-perfect-plaintiffs/)

<comment><USER3> So great. Highly recommended.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't see that he has standing because he has not been charged with violating the DMCA (yet). I don't believe you can try those cases in federal court.

This requirement makes sense but can be infuriating. I think most states have this requirement too.

Seems strange to consider it test days but Congress could clarify this in a brief amendment, which might even be possible in these days where "Cyber" is considered "so important"

<comment><USER6> You don't necessarily have to be charged yet if you have concrete plans to do something that is prohibited and you want to challenge the prohibition (I don't enough about this case to know if it qualifies). Otherwise the only way to challenge these laws would be to risk a serious criminal prosecution: [http://federalpracticemanual.org/chapter3/section2](http://federalpracticemanual.org/chapter3/section2) (see 3.2.B).</comment></comment>


The end of Nvidia proprietary Drivers on Linux - <AUTHOR> https://forum.manjaro.org/t/the-end-of-nvidia-proprietary-drivers-on-linux/15325 <comment><USER2> Hum this has implications beyond Nvidia I suppose. Some WiFi driver will be affected I guess. Not necessarily a bad move though. Might give a boost of interest to the Nouveau driver. Let's see what happen.</comment>


RemeIO - <AUTHOR> http://reme.io

<comment><USER2> cool, would be nice if it detects the user's timezone

<comment><AUTHOR> It does detect it.

See the FAQ on the bottom of the page on www.reme.io</comment></comment>


Modeling optimal marathon performance on the basis of physiological factors - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/modeling-optimal-marathon-performance-on-the-basis-of-physiological-factors#email-newsletter <comment><USER2> Interesting study -- dated 1991, this sounds like part of the inspiration behind the Nike Breaking2 attempt [1]. The current world record is now 2:02:57, no longer 2:06:50 as mentioned in the document.

[1] [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZLG- Fij_4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V2ZLG-Fij_4)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Faster-Obsession-Science-Fastest- Cy...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Faster-Obsession-Science-Fastest- Cyclists/dp/1408843757) is an interesting read related to this.

(Cycling obviously, but the genetics behind VO2max apply across different types of physical activity.)</comment>


Matt Ridley's new book - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/jun/18/matt-ridley-rational-optimist-errors

<comment><USER2> Seeing the list of people who are endorsing this book and its concepts, and how influential those people are, is the most depressing thing I've come across all year.

Geraldine Quinn says it best: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_1HtfVfgOQ></comment>


A fun way to assure quality of your website - <AUTHOR> http://9elements.com/io/projects/qa/

<comment><USER2> Why would you switch contexts? (i.e. why is it an iphone app? You're evaluating a website.)</comment>


PyCharm vs. Sublime Text - <AUTHOR> https://opensourcehacker.com/2015/05/02/pycharm-vs-sublime-text/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one who doesn't consider sublimes Eco system that healthy? Stuff like sublime repl is old and works poorly with no updates in sight and no good alternatives.</comment>


Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/12/amplituhedron-jewel-quantum-physics/all/ <comment><USER2> > Unitarity says the quantum mechanical probabilities of all possible outcomes > of a particle interaction must sum to one. To prove it, one would have to > observe the same interaction over and over and count the frequencies of the > different outcomes. Doing this to perfect accuracy would require an infinite > number of observations using an infinitely large measuring apparatus, but > the latter would again cause gravitational collapse into a black hole. In > finite regions of the universe, unitarity can therefore only be > approximately known.

I'm sure the physicists have something coherent in mind, but the discussion of unitarity in the _article_ makes no sense at all. The idea that the sum of all probabilities of all possible outcomes of some situation is 1 isn't even part of physics; it's the definition of probability. It's not necessary to make an infinite number of observations, or even a single observation, to know that the sum over all the possibilities is 1 (also phrasable as "something will happen"). If we _did_ make an infinite number of observations, the only possible sum over all possibilities would be 1, because it's 1 _by definition_. No matter what we observed, it would still be 1, and we would assign probabilities based on our observations _so that_ the sum of them all would be 1.

The previous HN discussion linked by Hopka seems to state that in fact unitarity is not in doubt, that it's just that under the system described in the article no one has yet proved that a non-unitary solution cannot be generated. But how could unitarity possibly be "suspect"? It's a definition.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, this is an issue of "probability" in the physical sense not being the same thing as probability as defined by the Komolgorov axioms -- essentially, a sample space that does not have unit measure. This can end up being "resolved" by redefining the sample space, and the notion of what an "elementary events" is for physical interactions, for something we can define (and normalize) a total measure over, or by accepting the fact that probability isn't an accurate/complete description of what's going on (in the same way that quantum mechanics resulted in accepting that measurement wasn't a complete description of what's going on).

<comment><USER4> > Kol-mo-go-rov

(I get it wrong too every other time)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The same article was discussed here ~3 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6403285)

<comment><USER6> Yes, this one has a date of yesterday, still, it's very familiar

Not sure if this one has any new information

<comment><USER7> Where did you even see the date ... It's not apparent on my phone but I remember reading about this here on HN as well.

<comment><USER8> From Wired:

      > Scientists Discover a Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
      >
      > By Natalie Wolchover, Quanta Magazine 12.11.13 12:46 PM

From Simons Foundation:

      > A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics
      >
      > By: Natalie Wolchover
      >
      > September 17, 2013

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I spoke with Nima about this a few months ago.

He isn't saying that sometimes all probabilities don't add up to one, he is constructing a physical theory without assuming that as a precondition.

It is a consequence of the theory and develops, but he said that if he can explain unitarity in terms of other phoenomena, then there is probably something more fundamental happening, possibly new physics.

</comment><comment><USER10> For the Scott Aaronson parody post, see [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1537](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1537)

</comment><comment><USER11> The same author published a similar article back in September on the same subject. Very intriguing!

[https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel- at-...](https://www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20130917-a-jewel-at-the-heart- of-quantum-physics/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another one?!</comment>


Website design presenter – preview designs as responsive website? - <AUTHOR> Are there any alternative to -- http://www.webdesignpresenter.com/<p>Would like to preview design before taking the time and effort to convert to a responsive page. <comment> thinking-twins This might be an alternative: [http://presentator.io/en](http://presentator.io/en)</comment>


Pixar Animator Dreams Up a New Superhero — For Each Day of the Year - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2012/12/365-superheroes/ <comment><USER2> Side Note: Wired.com articles are very annoying. Few seconds after the post is rendered, a video ad pops up which you have to close to go back to your article. I find such kind of invasive ad targeting extremely annoying.

<comment><USER3> Agreed - would have preferred that the original blog had been referenced rather than Wired. That HN standard has been falling into greater disuse in recent days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can see the 289 completed ones here: <http://365supers.blogspot.com/>

I can't draw, so this is very cool... but dreaming up superheros seems to be like 20% drawing and 80% persona, so this doesn't seem as cool as I figured it would.

<comment><USER5> Any character drawing and/or painting follows 80/20 rule too. Animation is also 80/20, where 80% is acting, where animator is the actor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Reminds me a bit of The Superest. In the case of The Superest, two artists take turns creating super heroes/villians that could defeat the previous character. <http://thesuperest.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> I'd guess I drew at least 365 new heroes from 1st to 8th grade. I doubt many of them look as good as his do, though.

</comment><comment><USER8> I love art like this. Does anyone have any goto spots for more work like this?

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


Show HN: A new way of blogging about Lua - <AUTHOR> http://blog.klipse.tech/lua/2017/03/19/blog-lua.html <comment><USER2> One of these things that feels natural after 1 minute. I never want to go back to the rest of Internet now :-(

</comment><comment><USER3> The other place "live" coding snippets has taken off is in webgl, the other language your browser probably supports. The Book Of Shaders uses this to good effect:

[https://thebookofshaders.com](https://thebookofshaders.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> "\--the evaluation will appear here (soon)..."

Does this mean my browser doesn't support web assembly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes :(

<comment><USER5> Then use ASM.js, at least it's JS and works with all browsers.

Then it would work on mobile browsers too.

<comment><USER6> Worked for me on Firefox for Android 52.0.1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My browser doesn't (yet) support web assembly.

Is there a reason you picked wasm_lua over (e.g.) lua.vm.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was not aware of lua.vm.js Thanks for the pointer

<comment><USER7> See my comment from yesterday: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13900372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13900372) as a quick comparison of the various lua-in-js implementations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. It does work on Firefox 52

Edit: working on Chrome 57.0.2987.110 on Mac OSX (just check for the latest version)

The funny thing is that <= gets converted to the actual symbol (less than or equal to) automatically when typing.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is done by FiraCode fonts: [https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Also works on current Chrome (v57.0.2987.110) on Mac. Nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's fantastic! I've updated the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This obviously doesn't work everywhere, but I just want to say it's really awesome that it's possible altogether. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER11> Crashes the tab after a second or two in Chrome Canary 59.0.3044.3 on a OnePlus 3 running Android 7.0

</comment><comment><USER12> I really enjoy making coding notes in org mode because you can do stuff like this. Be nice to see it come to the web.

</comment><comment><USER13> Works with Firefox on Android. Nice!

</comment><comment><USER14> I typed -1 in factorial demo and script ended responding :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I fixed it by returning 1 for negative numbers.

With clojure snippets, Klipse protects itself from infinite loops - but not with lua snippets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Amazing. klipse gets better and better.

</comment><comment><USER16> works well on ubuntu 14.04 and Chrome Version 57.0.2987.110 (64-bit)

</comment><comment><USER17> Does not work on iPad and safari or Chrome.</comment>


Judge Koh asks Apple's attorneys if they're "smoking crack" - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/16/3247092/judge-to-apple-youre-smoking-crack

<comment><USER2> Judge Koh is an interesting figure. I have a feeling she's going to go a long way in the judiciary.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe Judge Koh isn't familiar with the Reality Distortion Field.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's 1 sentence surrounded by a webpage...

<comment><USER5> And hundreds of comments.</comment></comment>


An annotated version of the Bitcoin paper - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/bitcoin <comment><USER2> Fermat's Library is a great idea. Curating who can annotate documents (professors, scientists, domain experts) will add a lot more value than Genius's scheme to have everyone "Annotate the World".

The Bitcoin whitepaper was also a great choice for this type of project. Terse, spartan language where every word of every sentence is completely necessary and contributes meaningfully in some way. It's not hard to understand (unlike the majority of academic research which seems to be intentionally obfuscated), but it benefits _greatly_ from a bit of context and color.

Nice work! Hoping to see more interesting papers in the future.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, this project (Fermat's Library) looks so awesome. It's similar to an idea I've had for a while, but my pedagogic skills are feeble. I started translating some collected works of the famous, old French mathematicians, but ended up with just a few fragments due to other interests and my weak French skills.

</comment><comment><USER4> Agreed that this is awesome! Would love to also see Genius-style annotations, where the comments are on lines instead of the margins. I think this makes it slightly easier to read the text without scanning back and forth between the text and margins to check if what you're reading has been annotated

</comment><comment><USER5> If papers would be text formatted or if GitHub could render latex on the fly then this would exist already. It doesn't b/c PDF is how papers are dissemeniated - so it's great somebody took care of that gap!

Maybe a another good occasion to mention that coursera currently offers a Bitcoin MOOC run by some guys from Princeton - it's quite awesome.

[https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech](https://www.coursera.org/course/bitcointech)

</comment><comment><USER6> I suggested:

        Alan Turing - On Computable Numbers, With an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem
        C. E. Shannon - A Mathematical Theory of Communication

<comment><USER7> "The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold is what you are after for the first one. It is great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is great. Regarding the tools used to do annotations, has any thought (possibly elsewhere) been given to (a) format(s) one can easily save, modify, share etc? I.e. doesn't require a (proprietary?) server, or even something that could be integrated with a federated wiki?

</comment><comment><USER9> I always wished there was a platform that allowed us to annotate any paper, collaboratively. I've always found it rather strange that e.g. Google Scholar doesn't offer something like this.

Anyway, this is cool. The only thing missing is a comments section.

</comment><comment><USER10> Getting weird bug in Safari (Version 8.0.7 (10600.7.12)) where if I click an annotation then close it, I don't see the rest of the annotated bubbles on the left.

<comment><USER11> Got something similar in Firefox for a moment, then i scrolled a page down and back up.

What i find more annoying is the behavior of the annotation scroll bar in combination with the Facebook and Google+ login buttons.</comment></comment>


Complete Course on Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.computervisiontalks.com/tag/machine-learning-class-10-701/ <comment><USER2> I am under the impression that to learn statistics one must first have a working knowledge of probability theory which rests upon grad level math analysis. Can machine learning be studied without any of that?

<comment><USER3> A lot of this is done in discrete math. You know, the actual probability is defined by this integral, but there is no closed form solution to the integral, so we do sums to find the approximate answer. Anyone can understand sums. And, it's probabilities, so the sums must equal one. Not _that_ hard, right ;)

It sure helps to understand the integral equations, especially if you want to read the original literature. But realistically you are going to need to understand summing, normalizing, algorithms for clustering, and so on. You probably don't want to write your own numerical code anyway; someone else did it, and they handled all the edge cases that a naive implementation misses.

You can find PDFs of the James, Witten, Hastie, Tibshirani book "An Introduction to Statistical Learning" [1]. Scroll on through - there is nothing intimidating math wise. All the heavy lifting is left to R.

Jump in, the water is fine!

[1] [http://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/pub.htm](http://web.stanford.edu/~hastie/pub.htm)

<comment><USER4> If you're serious about the math, read "The Elements of Statistical Learning' instead. Same guys, just as much R code, but harder.

[http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/](http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/)

<comment><USER5> What online beginner machine learning courses or templates would you recommend that utilize R?

<comment><USER4> I don't really know what you're looking for. If it's a replacement for that Coursera ML class in Python, then I don't think there really is one. The basic tenets of ML aren't going to change depending on your language, though.

Some good R-specific resources:

[http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/](http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~gareth/ISL/) [https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/MachineLearning.html](https://cran.r-project.org/web/views/MachineLearning.html) [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of- management/15-097...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of- management/15-097-prediction-machine-learning-and-statistics- spring-2012/index.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Here's the complete course: [http://alex.smola.org/teaching/cmu2013-10-701/](http://alex.smola.org/teaching/cmu2013-10-701/)

<comment><USER7> This is the 2013 course. The original post is for the spring 2015 machine learning course

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some nice courses there, also check out Dan Cremer's lectures on variational methods for computer vision if you're interested in that sort of thing. There's also a nice series on computer vision for special effects.

[http://www.computervisiontalks.com/variational-methods- for-c...](http://www.computervisiontalks.com/variational-methods-for-computer- vision-lecture-2-prof-daniel-cremers/)

</comment><comment><USER9> That's really nice. Dan Cremer is impressive.

Here's a great Laboratory on Amazon ML for Human Activity Recognition (w/ Python). [https://cloudacademy.com/amazon-web-services/labs/aws- machin...](https://cloudacademy.com/amazon-web-services/labs/aws-machine- learning-human-activity-recognition-21/)

Totally worth a look.

</comment><comment><USER10> A bit off topic : what are the best recommended way/resources to learn linear algebra and basic probability and statistics ?

<comment><USER11> For linear algebra, I like the "No BS guide to linear algebra" ([https://gumroad.com/l/noBSLA](https://gumroad.com/l/noBSLA)) which also includes a high school math refresher for people who need it (I did).

For probability, "Probability Demystified" is a good basic intro.

For statistics, I would really recommend Allen Downey's Think Stats ([http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats2/index.html](http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats2/index.html)), especially if you're coming from a programming background. Most introductions to statistics focus heavily on the mathematics needed to enable certain analytical approximations to difficult probabilistic calculations (e.g. the t-test), whereas Think Stats just bites that bullet and focuses on simulation / brute force so you can spend more time on the actual fundamental theory behind statistics.

Brian Blais' "Statistical Inference for Everyone" ([http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais/statistical-inference-for- ever...](http://web.bryant.edu/~bblais/statistical-inference-for-everyone- sie.html)) also looks really good, but haven't had a chance to review it in depth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some of the videos in the link are cut short, and the full videos are much better. Here's a link to a playlist of the full lectures: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZSO_6-bSqHQmMKwWVvYw...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZSO_6-bSqHQmMKwWVvYwKreGu4b4kMU9)

<comment><USER7> The videos on computervisiontalks.com are exactly the same as videos on youtube because the site is pulling these videos from youtube. The post points to the spring 2015 lectures. You are pointing to earlier lectures in 2014,2013

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just want to shout about this very comprehensive course by Caltech professor Yaser S. Abu-Mostafa [http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html](http://work.caltech.edu/telecourse.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like his teaching style, but it seems some of the lecture videos (1.3, for example) are cut off - very frustrating! For anyone watching nonetheless, I recommend going into YouTube and changing the speed to 1.5x.

<comment><USER7> The lectures on computervisiontalks are directly being taken from youtube (but tags, navigation, bookmarking and in-video search capability is added). The lecture 1.3 (for spring 2015 class) is exactly of the same length. However on youtube, the lectures for machine learning class 2013 (also by Alex Smola) are available which are of a different length.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like Smola's ML book, and it's great to see a full-depth ML course online, I'll certainly watch some videos. Other than that, the audio quality could be better.

</comment><comment><USER16> Have anyone seen some and can tell if the material is well explained?

<comment><USER17> I took the course (Alex Smola's 10-701, Spring '15) in the classroom. Personally I don't like his lecture style -- too vague, too many assumptions, too much reliance on jargon he hasn't already explained. YMMV.</comment></comment>


Tacit Meta Programming in C++ - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/odinthenerd/tmp <comment><AUTHOR> Neat introduction to template metaprogramming, SFINAE, and what metaprogramming libraries can do for you.</comment>


Facebook abandons broken drilling equipment under Oregon coast seafloor - <AUTHOR> https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2020/08/facebook-abandons-broken-drilling-equipment-under-oregon-coast-seafloor.html <comment><USER2> This appears to be a case of no harm, no foul.

There is no environmental damage and no danger to the residents.

The residents that didn't want to see a small construction project, the size of a residential lot, will now have to put up with it for another year.

</comment><comment><USER3> outline link: [https://outline.com/DWN7nS](https://outline.com/DWN7nS)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is extra-disappointing because Oregon has previously successfully gotten Facebook to cooperate when planning its large infrastructure projects. The Prineville facility was designed with local environmental and labor concerns in mind, but this coastal venture looks disastrous.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand what the actual issue is. The chance of environmental damage seems very low. And probably less than if they put heavy machines onto the beach and coastal zone.

<comment><USER2> the chance of environmental damage isn't low, it is zero. The drill site is tiny and the neighbors simply don't like the noise.

<comment><USER6> Would _you_ like the noise?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Okay so fb has 180 days to remove the equipment. What's the problem?

<comment><USER8> They won't

<comment><USER8> No, seriously, just go set a reminder to catch up on this story in 6 months. Let's come discuss this again then.

<comment><USER9> They might come to an agreement with regulators to leave the equipment there, however it seems like you're implying that facebook intends to act in blatent contempt of the governments order. That is difficult to imagine. Have they ever done that to the usa gov in the past? (not on a hurr durr media thinks facebook is evil kind of way, but in an actual, here is an order and we intend to ignore it)

<comment><USER10> That's actually the case? Did anyone else here read the article? "Facebook has no plans to retrieve the equipment."

<comment><USER9> When i read it, i thought it meant - original fb plan: fb leave the equipment in place. Gov didn't like that, so gave them 180 days to either remove it or get approval to leave it there. Now ball is in fb's court on how to respond to government order.

To me though this sounds less like - gov wants fb to remove and more like gov wants fb to fill out appropriate paperwork

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Where exactly are these 6500 gallons of drilling fluid and how would they have been retrieved if the project was succesfull?

They are not boring a tunnel... So is there just a quite thin pipe in the ground? is it filled with the fluid? Or is there some storage for the fluid?

<comment><USER12> The drilling fluid(mud) is both inside the drill pipe and in the annulus between the pipe and the rock.

After the drilling is complete, cement grout is pumped into the annular space, replacing the mud. then the mud in the pipe will be replaced with sea water. Then they will pull the fiber optic cable through the pipe.

Drill pipe comes in various sizes, probably about 4-8 inch diameter for this job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is it normal to drill a 1km hole under the Beach and out to sea to land a trans-ocean cable? I was under the impression you merely digg it into the Beach for 1-2m?

<comment><USER14> They are commonly drilled out quite a distance with HDD, as the landing point may not be actually at the beach, etc.

I have some pictures here of submarine cable landing stations in Hawaii, including the Hawaiki CLS under construction with some HDD being done. [https://photos.app.goo.gl/H2Y7K112wcAoSjtN2](https://photos.app.goo.gl/H2Y7K112wcAoSjtN2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just like Zuckerburgs trouncing on the rights of native Hawaiians, Facebook has shown a deep, callous disregard to the rights, needs, and concerns of everyone else.</comment>


Vaping-Related Lung Illnesses Rise 52%, CDC Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaping-related-lung-illnesses-rise-to-805-cdc-says-11569521732?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Propylene Glycol and Vegetable Glycerin are not good to inhale. How is this 'Vaping' related?</comment>


On me, and the Media Lab - <AUTHOR> http://www.ethanzuckerman.com/blog/2019/08/20/on-me-and-the-media-lab/ <comment><USER2> > _I also wrote notes of apology to the recipients of the Media Lab > Disobedience Prize, three women who were recognized for their work on the > #MeToo in STEM movement. It struck me as a terrible irony that their work on > combatting sexual harassment and assault in science and tech might be > damaged by their association with the Media Lab._

Perhaps the anti-harassment movement should expand to also promote the fact that people's work (or person) should not be damaged merely by association?

<comment><USER3> Media Lab Disobedience Prize looks like the Aaron Swartz Prize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The related Epstein-academia connection which deserves scrutiny is with Martin Nowak at Harvard. Certainly far more money involved in terms of donations. And many articles referenced him visiting with Epstein extensively, including his island.

<comment><USER4> As a follow-up to the Harvard connections that remain under-scrutinized, here's an alarming tweet from a Caltech professor:

'Around 2007 I attended a dinner at @Harvard during which someone told me about a professor who was flying to New York, and to some island, to visit a millionaire. With that millionaire, I was told, he was raping girls. "Everybody knows" they said..' [https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1163608101443928064?s=21](https://twitter.com/lpachter/status/1163608101443928064?s=21)

<comment><USER5> _he was raping girls. "Everybody knows" they said_

Again with the parallels to Harvey Weinstein. All the happy, smiling people photographed with him also scrambled to distance themselves once the allegations reached a critical mass, but they all knew all along what he was. And as long as it suited their interests they were perfectly willing to look the other way.

<comment><USER6> Really? How would they know?

I'm asking sincerely, I've not deeply read into this (or the Epstein story). I just always suspected that rich and influential people would generally be able to keep secrets under wraps.

I guess I just think it's kind of odd to assume that everyone who ever posed on a photo with Weinstein knew he was a rapist. That's quite a far stretch of "guilty by association"

<comment><USER7> You can read deeply here [https://www.miamiherald.com/topics/jeffrey- epstein](https://www.miamiherald.com/topics/jeffrey-epstein)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Nathan Matias is also leaving for the same reason: [https://medium.com/@natematias/leaving-the-mit-media-lab- ea3...](https://medium.com/@natematias/leaving-the-mit-media-lab-ea3066dfeb21)

<comment><USER8> BTW, he already has a job at Cornell. He was already going to leave. I'm not sure he's sacrificing much of anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like very much his addendum:

> So thank you for all the kind words about bravery. Truth is I'm privileged > enough to afford to be brave. For those of you who love the Media Lab and > want to see it sail through these rough waters, please take time to reach > out to people who may not be able to be as visible in their next steps. Make > sure they're doing okay. Support them whether their decision is to leave or > to stay. So many of my colleagues at the Media Lab right now are hurting, > and they need your support and love too. Hope we can redirect some of that > love folks are sharing with me to them too.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I'd previously only heard about Zuckerman in passing, but that post really gave me the impression of highly empathetic and considerate person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd love a brief explainer on why exactly Joi Ito and the Media Lab are supposed to be such a big deal.

<comment><USER12> Dunno about Joi Ito - his biggest claim to fame prior to directing the Media Lab seems to be as a venture capitalist who invested in Flickr, Kickstarter, Twitter, Six Apart, etc.

The Media Lab has a long history of innovations that you've probably heard of: E-ink, Formlabs (3D printers), RockBand/GuitarHero, the touchstick on IBM Thinkpads, OLPC, Lego Mindstorms, and Scratch were all developed there.

<comment><USER13> It's a short list, and some "inventions" are dubious at best. OLPC for instance.

<comment><USER12> Those were the ones _I 've_ heard of - the actual list is quite a bit longer, but includes a lot of B2B technologies in industries I don't care about.

That's pretty good for an organization with a budget of $75M and a permanent staff of 80. I'd be hard-pressed to think of an organization of similar size that's had greater impact - maybe YCombinator or Stanford's CS department. Bell Labs was orders of magnitude bigger - in their 1970s heyday they had 24,000 employees and a budget of around $6B in today's money.

<comment><USER14> Bell Labs can just show up in this competition, say 'the transistor', drop the mic and walk out. Media Lab has always been, by design, about outreach and demos and fundraising as much as (if not more than?) about research. Comparing it to real research institutions on the basis of research is never going to come out flattering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Was the connection just that they took money from Epstein? Did they already know about the things he was doing when they took the money?

<comment><USER16> Literally the first sentence was that Marvin Minsky was implicated in his crimes[1].

> Did they already know about the things he was doing when they took the > money?

Clearly yes: "Joi asked me in 2014 if I wanted to meet Epstein, and I refused and urged him not to meet with him." The first cases against Epstein were in 2008 and Epstein's reputation has been well known since then.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky- jef...](https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/9/20798900/marvin-minsky-jeffrey- epstein-sex-trafficking-island-court-records-unsealed)

<comment><USER17> Let's not forget that it's an allegation against Marvin Minsky, not a proved event. He's not even alive to confirm or deny the charge. As someone who was around Minsky, I have a very very hard time believing this for a number of reasons.

Our culture has gotten to the point where an accusation is enough in the court of opinion. It's good that these issues have brought awareness to places where victims have been otherwise minimized in the past, or have been proof less of the action despite it happening. And that's a tough thing. But occasionally these accusations are proved to be false. I think we're getting carried away here, at least as far as Minsky goes.

<comment><USER2> > _Our culture has gotten to the point where an accusation is enough in the > court of opinion_

That's true. On the other hand, out culture was for far more decades (nay, millennia) to the point that people could not care less about such accusations, and the power figures could do whatever they liked...

Also, it wasn't just an accusation in the "court of opinion", but a deposition to an actual court.

"In a deposition, Giuffre, née Roberts, claimed she was trafficked to MIT professor Marvin Minsky, who died in 2016 at age 88, as well as former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, ex-New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and money manager Glenn Dubin, whose wife, Eva, is an ex-girlfriend of Epstein's."

Still, it's not proven and I'm against the "court of public opinion", at least in more shallow cases (e.g. Woody Allen). But here it's at Weinstein and worse level.

I can see some fake-victim badmouthing a powerful figure to bring them down. Or to blackmail them. Or for revenge (e.g. from a bad relationship, etc). So I'd understand it if e.g. it was fake accusation just against one person.

But it seems too much for a fake-victim to name names of several people, and powerful people at that, on top.

<comment><USER18> Not to mention that, if you believe Giuffre was grandstanding, why on earth would she name an academic whose name nobody outside of the CS world would recognize? If she was just pulling names out of thin air, how many famous names would the average person go through before they got to Marvin Minsky?

It's the very out-of-left-field-ness of the allegation that makes it seem credible.

<comment><USER19> Er, they aren't out of left field, any more than naming Steven Pinker or Dershowitz is 'out of left field'. Gosh, how many names would you have to go down to think about those guys? Well - not that many when you consider that she's just naming people who were already known to have gone to Epstein dinners etc. That's not _that_ large a set of people, and why would you name random people who had never had any kind of association with Epstein when you can pick ones you knew were at least around at some point and thus plausible?

<comment><USER20> dershowitz is a public figure. he's constantly on national talking heads news type shows and has had very public spats (thereby making him more visible) with other talking heads.

Pinker, while not as famous as dershowitz, is also a public figure - he's published several pop sci books and also makes the rounds on various morning shows (to promote his books).

Minsky was purely an academic - as far as I know he never published pop books and only spoke at academic conferences. he's much much further down the list.

Furthermore this was admitted into the record as sworn testimony, lying being punishable by perjury laws. And note she gave the deposition before epstein committed suicide (so conceivably she could've proven to be lying). Who are you to cast doubt on criminal procedures simply because it suits some narrative of yours about perceived witch-hunts?

<comment><USER19> You are ignoring my point. No one is doubting that Minsky associated with Epstein. _That is all that is necessary for her to know his name and be able to accuse him, and her knowing his name is not dramatic evidence of truth._ What would be valid evidence of truth would be something like a third party (like, say, Greg Benford) confirming it.

> Minsky was purely an academic - as far as I know he never published pop > books and only spoke at academic conferences. he's much much further down > the list.

This is not even accurate. Minsky was the oracle of AI, the head of the MIT AI Lab. He influenced AI from the 1950s to the 1990s. Any pop article about AI might quote or interview Minsky. And what is 'Society of Mind' but a popularization, widely read?

> Furthermore this was admitted into the record as sworn testimony, lying > being punishable by perjury laws.

Oh, well, that settles it. I'm glad we had this discussion about critical thinking.

Incidentally, for all your huffing about witch hunts and perjury law, I would point out that she could easily be telling the truth. The deposition only claims that she was _told_ to have sex with Minsky, and not, as far as any media coverage I've seen goes, that she actually _did_ , and Greg Benford states he was there and that Minsky turned her down: [https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/](https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/)

<comment><USER20> >You are ignoring my point. No one is doubting that Minsky associated with Epstein.

i am not. your point is that since he was a famous academic his name was as easily recognizable as dershowitz and pinker, who are generally famous.

>What would be valid evidence of truth would be something like a third party (like, say, Greg Benford) confirming it.

sorry that's not what we as a society has deemed sufficient proof. though you are welcome relitigate literally all of common law dating back to the magna carta though if you believe it should be otherwise.

>Minsky was the oracle of AI, the head of the MIT AI Lab. He influenced AI from the 1950s to the 1990s.

means literally nothing to general public and therefore doesn't substantiate your claim.

>And what is 'Society of Mind' but a popularization, widely read?

i concede this one. i was not aware of this book.

>Oh, well, that settles it. I'm glad we had this discussion about critical thinking.

so do you then doubt all depositions or just the ones that implicate oracles of AI?

>The deposition only claims that she was told to have sex with Minsky, and not, as far as any media coverage I've seen goes, that she actually did, and Greg Benford states he was there and that Minsky turned her down: [https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/](https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/339725/)

my point was only about the validity of her testimony. yours (initially) was the defense of minksy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I will probably be tarred and feathered for this comment as well but:

I think this whole thing has turned into a witch hunt / mob assault on anyone who has had any ties to Epstein. The attitude of many of the comments seem to essentially suggest that if one has been at the same party as epstein sometime in the past, such person must be a child molester.

Now people are falling over themselves trying to one up each other on who can display the most moral outrage.

It is an example of how public discourse has degenerated to the point where we are attacking people first and refusing to ask even some basic questions before branding someone as guilty by association.

( __edited out "come on it is ridiculous" as it seemed unnecessarily inflammatory)

<comment><USER22> Odd take - almost all of the stories are about people who ended up engaging extensively with him after he'd already been convicted of being a sex offender.

Sure, you can associate with whomever you want to, but the media highlighting the fact that notable people continued to not only be friendly with, but often appear to be in the pocket of financially, someone rather heinous is not really a "witch hunt".

(Especially considering many of the allegations are of using this financial power as a pawn in a larger blackmail operation means those financial ties do have to be investigated)

<comment><USER23> I have befriended and helped (provided housing and other support) convicted felons who have done their time. Where do you draw the line?

Edit: I agree with those who have replied, and appreciate that my question was answered with genuine effort.

<comment><USER24> Did Epstein finish doing his time before these people were willing to recieve investment money from him?

<comment><USER23> No, but that's sort of my point. Ambiguity and fear shouldn't be used to dissuade helping those who did do their time, so it's important to point out exceptions and why they are exceptions (Epstein was unable to be reformed IMHO, which is both tragic and a cautionary tale).

It's hard to discern the reformed from the monsters sometimes, but the reformed still deserve another chance.

<comment><USER24> Your point was that you assisted people _after they did their time_.

Epstein did not do his time. He did not go through any reformation process. People were willing to take his money and his professional connections even knowing his recent conviction for which his time was upcoming.

This isn't a case where someone is reformed and people aren't forgiving them. Epstein was not reformed, did not serve his time, and people were still actively engaging with him. Those people were not engaging with a reformed man. They were engaging with a predator.

I entirely agree with you that reformed felons deserve a chance after they serve their time. Epstein was not reformed and he did not serve time, therefore what chance did he deserve on account of these people?

<comment><USER23> Aren't we debating how to determine if someone is reformed? I thought we were, and if not by judicial process (prison sentencing), what? I absolutely agree Epstein wasn't reformed, and that the challenge is to suss out who is and isn't a danger to society any longer ("reformed"). I don't know how to do that besides gut feeling and guardrails to minimize blast radius when poor judgement has occurred.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It is known that Epstein's main way of operating was blackmail, and it is baffling to think of what kind of motivation he had to blackmail academics. Media reports that at least some of the academics were involved in the sex crimes.

I know he had an interest in transhumanism, but I still fail to understand the logic.

<comment> nappy-doo I don't like promoting conspiracy theories.

Now that that's out of the way, here's a doozy:

[https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/jeffrey-epstein- money/](https://jamesaltucher.com/blog/jeffrey-epstein-money/)

<comment><USER18> There's an even more Occam's-Razor-compatible explanation for where his money came from than the "Club Epstein" one: it wasn't his money at all. It was money he stole from Leslie Wexner, who had mysteriously entrusted him with vast sums, and even gave him his power of attorney (!). See [https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/10/20689134/jeffrey- eps...](https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/7/10/20689134/jeffrey-epstein-les- wexner-l-brands-victoria-secret-limited) for more details on the Epstein- Wexner relationship.

 _Why_ exactly Wexner chose to put Epstein in a position to steal so much from him remains a mystery, but if you buy that Epstein was a blackmailer a reasonable assumption would be that he had something on Wexner and used it as leverage.

<comment><USER25> Or both are true simultaneously.

<comment><USER18> Yes, it's possible that he blackmailed Wexner, and then used Wexner's money to bootstrap the "Club Epstein" scenario.

But if you're trying to lure people in so you can blackmail them, why would you bother charging them $20 million at the door? They can afford it, sure, but wouldn't that risk some of them saying no and thus denying you the opportunity to blackmail them?

<comment><USER25> I suspect that people would get suspicious if someone is offering them free sex parties. If there's a fee then it would probably be less suspicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Once you read the Epstein interview with the New York Times writer, you start to understand that there's probably more of these "unconventional thinkers" in tech connected to Epstein and his behavior than we are ever going to find out. The whole "being ostracized for an attraction to teenage girls is a very new idea" thing sounds exactly like a lot of what someone would hear at the late end of a Silicon Valley dinner party.

Anyone who is apologizing for this behavior or who thinks this is a "witch hunt" may want to consider using a throwaway name, because these comments aren't going to age well. And yes, we will remember.

</comment><comment><USER27> requires login</comment>


Advertising Works on You - <AUTHOR> http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advertising-works-on-you

<comment><USER2> I agree with the premise that you can be primed by repeated exposure to brands. Can anyone point me to any systematic analysis of advertising that proves it works at a more granular level than that e.g. can we prove that a video advert with a beautiful, smiling person using your product is more effective than simply displaying your logo for 30 seconds?

I assume there's some science behind it, but I also wonder who the advertisers are taking advantage of more, the people buying the product, or those buying the advertising.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I create a web based group SMS application? - <AUTHOR>

I have heard about Groupme but I want something that can work here in Africa. I have an idea of how it will work but I don't know how to start. Anyone willing to help me especially on building a web based application where users can login to check who has joined/left the group. <comment><USER2> If I were attempting to solve this problem I would...

) Find an African SMS gateway which offers an API to send/receive messages. You could probably make this work with an SMS to email gateway as well, although it would add some complexity.

) Build a web application which acts as a multi-group chat server, where people can join/leave groups and chat to other members of the group. If you're not familiar with the process of building a web app, this will be a lot easier than going straight for the mobile version.

) Add a REST API to this web app, and build an Android/iOS app which connects to the API.

) Add SMS support to the web app. Use control messages (e.g. "/join some_channel") to join/leave groups. Figure out how to route SMS messages to a particular group - when an SMS is received for that group, use the API to send the content to other group members.

This could be implemented with a variety of stacks - personally I would go with Django for the web app, with Redis as a backend. Redis would be great for storing group membership, and I'm sure you could do something interesting with pub/sub for the messaging component.</comment>


Google+ v3.3 for Android with 18 new features - <AUTHOR> http://gplusproject.appspot.com/tis-the-season-for-shipping/

<comment><USER2> Broken link, and why post twice?</comment>


Show HN: Tiny module to replace optimizely - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/tiny-experiment <comment><AUTHOR> Optimizely is expensive and time-consuming to use as a developer, so I made a small package to handle concurrent, split testing and populating experiment data on any JS application. I appreciate any feedback.</comment>


How I got 50,000 page views by simply being me  - <AUTHOR> http://www.jgc.org/blog/2010/01/how-i-got-50000-page-views-by-simply.html

<comment><USER2> I think the tribal aversion of engineers to marketing is coming out in force here.

Being authentic is wonderful. Of course, we know authenticity is prized by this community (and many others). So if we get up on a soapbox and say "Be authentic!", are we being authentic or are we marketing?

I think the answer is "both".

The prior post rubbed me wrong not because it was "Give people what they want!" and not because it was introspective, but because it seemed to glorify pageviews for the sake of pageviews, as opposed to there being some strategy to actually create value. If folks had perceived value creation, they probably wouldn't have cared if titles were optimized for their interests.

I'm not particularly enthusiastic about personal promotion via scaring people into thinking Facebook exists to out gay people, but at the bottom of that post, there was a brief aside about how you should take the hint if people retitle your post when tweeting it. That is a SOLID piece of concrete, actionable advice about writing good titles, which is a core competency for marketing It also provides value to all parties. There is a reason I don't title my blog posts "Something I thought today."

I think if people perceived the posts as "creating more value than they captured", they would have no problem whatsoever with optimizing the execution of them.

<comment><USER3> Read the first article - I think there is more actionable and useful stuff in there that people just starting out can use.

But I think I overshot my targets and my attempt at exposure is leading to a backlash. I'll just stop talking now and go off and write my next article, which will be more 'me'.

<comment><USER4> I think arguing about what you did is right or wrong misses the point. You're free to say whatever you want on your own blog. For the record though, I had no idea who you were before reading your previous two posts, but after reading your third, I'm left with a negative impression of your writing and probably will not be coming back and will probably associate that with your HN username as well.

<comment><USER5> How is a blog post different than websites in this respect.

90% of the posts here speak about improving conversion (A/B testing and such) instead of adding features.

How much value that adds ? _ZERO_. But you accept that.

Now explain to me how that is different than iterating/engineering your blog posts ?

<comment><USER6> Improving conversion rates may very well add value. 'Value' != 'features', it's entirely possible that a site has a bad conversion rate because it's confusing or hard to use. A/B testing helps to improve this, which is certainly 'more value' in my mind.

<comment><USER5> So does a well written and targeted blog post.

Website owners do it for money. Bloggers and Twitterers do it for fame.

I would personally love to see more posts on Good writing, Audience targeting and Engagement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank you. If I'm reading your blog, it's because I want to hear what you have to say, not because I want to be pandered to. Write what you want to write, and I'll take it or leave it. Attention-whoring gets you looks, but it builds no real value; writing about what interests you -- while it can be hit or miss -- does.

<comment><USER8> >> "Attention-whoring gets you looks, but it builds no real value;"

Huh? 37signals and similar do pretty well out of it.

<comment><USER9> I think you mean techcrunch, right?

<comment><USER10> Wait, you're both right!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well- I'm not impressed. This post provided no insight to me besides the message "Interesting posts get lots of views" and "I can get as many posts as some guy who spams on my website by being me"

Those two messages seem very irrelevant to my life. The post didn't even have an interesting story =/

If anyone got something better than that out of the post, please tell me because this is at the top of HN and I don't know why. No rudeness intended.

<comment><USER12> I read the whole thing as sarcasm. Where content is more important than self promotion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ironic that his follow up post about just being 'you' also just happened to pander to the HN crowd which as a result will probably bring him another 25K plus in traffic?

Simply writing and waiting for the traffic to roll in is unrealistic. You can still author great content _and_ promote it via social/news/blog platforms. Just because you market yourself well doesn't make your content crap.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's the funny thing, Johns 'Ikea' post, in spite of not being of much practical use to me, as opposed to Max' post, will actually get me to visit his site more often rather than less, simply because it was genuine.

I read for all kinds of reasons, sometimes to further my business goals, sometimes to learn. The simple fact that you'd go out of your way to get the answer to a question that bugs you really impresses me. That's _exactly_ why I am a programmer to begin with, the kid in my just simply never stops wondering about questions like that and every now and then I have time enough to find the answer to a few of those.

So, likely your next post will be inspirational in some other sense.

Keep them coming, and I'll definitely be reading.

</comment><comment><USER15> I've written several blog entries where I say, basically, that the blog is for me. If the rest of you like it, fine, but that's not the point.

I find the truth is a little more complex, however. Analytical guys being what they are, I look at my blog stats from time to time. (Look! Shiny numbers and graphs!) When I start doing this too much, then I end up trying to "game" the system, and my writing goes downhill.

So I had a very visceral response to John's post: if you really are just writing "you", then you aren't looking at your stats (and not caring whether other people do or not) If, however, you're looking to the community for validation (and don't we all do that to some degree)? That's when you start writing posts that are basically "Look at me! I'm much more honest/trustworthy/humble than that other guy"

Write for you, yes. But if you tell us too many times "I write for me" then you're really not writing for you anymore, are you?

Sorry if that sounded like Mr. Asshole Guy. Like I said, the criticism comes from my doing the same thing.

<comment><USER16> Looks like you're overreacting here. All John said that he didn't go out of his way to get more pageviews. I think it's different to writing for yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My attitude to blogging has shifted over time.

At first I took it all at face value. Gradually I started hating the apparent dominance of snake-oil-selling bloggers. Then I decided that there was more to it than I first thought and am preparing a strategy that fits in blogging with my other goals.

Consider: what is the art of promotion, but another form of power? It can be abused, just like programming skills can be abused for malicious purposes, but it can also be applied to contribute to other efforts.

Blogging is a worthy cross-promotional tool, and it could give you the star power necessary to start a community or a collaborative project from scratch. And in the meantime, ad monetization gives a little bit of reward for building a strong site.

And you don't have to work within the "make regular posts on vapid topics" cycle to succeed: Good posts on niche subjects can go a long way, especially if you stick to making them search-friendly "evergreen" articles and not pure news/rumor/opinion. While you can't compete with the likes of Demand Media on quantity, you can exploit specialty subjects far better.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think Max Klein's posts are more about "learn the tricks how to get 50000 page views on will", as opposed to "write good posts and they'll come"

Edit: studying at school also doesn't create value by itself, and many people never get much value from their studies, but these who know for what they learn get the most

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, Max Klein was also being himself and was posting things he considered interesting. Even though he himself thinks he was manipulating people, I don't actually think he was manipulating anyone but himself.

</comment><comment><USER19> never change. <3

</comment><comment><USER20> I just wanted to say, because I did a bunch of blogging recently about how you can drive traffic deliberately by picking fights, and did it while driving traffic deliberately by picking some fights: in the past I was getting these occasionally 10K+ pageview days just by being me (which is small compared to the 50K+ these guys are talking about), and then sort of either graduated or devolved (depending on your frame of reference) to getting similar numbers deliberately. Basically I figured out what was happening, out of curiousity, and once I had figured it out, that meant I then had the ability to do it deliberately. So now, sometimes, I do.

I think the "tribal aversion of engineers to marketing" thing is very valid - being able to drive traffic is useful, and engineers seem to think that building systems that reward driving traffic (such as Google) makes you a better person than using such a system successfully (if you want to make money with Google, you're going to need to drive some traffic). It's such an arbitrary thing. If the system is worth building then it must be worth using too.

</comment><comment><USER21> Moral of these recent stories: Write something good and you'll get a lot of uniques.

Monetary value of those uniques: $0.00

Self esteem/social confirmation/confidence boosting value of those uniques: very high.

<comment><USER22> My 'hobby' site gets around 4.5m page views a month. It makes a bit of money, but not enough to live off.

It has, however, been the main reason i've got my past few jobs. Having something that you can point to that has some sort of impact can open a lot of doors.

<comment><USER21> 4.5m pageviews a month? 150k/day? That's not bad at all. What's the site? : D

<comment><USER14> With 'goat' in the gps username I'm really not sure I want to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> why is this at the top? Great you had a post that everyone liked. Do we really need to re-validate that it was a good post?

<comment><USER24> I think it's a response to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1038779></comment></comment>


A Ruby programer trying out Meteor.js - <AUTHOR> https://semaphoreapp.com/blog/2014/11/19/meteorjs-getting-started.html?true

<comment><USER2> What's wrong? Why did you title this "Ruby programmer trying out Meteor.js" while the original article is simply "Meteor.js: Getting Started" ?

Also, the article does not mention Ruby even once!

Also you've just done that 3 days ago -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8641719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8641719). You posted this same article with this same wrong title. And I had already commented you on that.

Oh wait, wasn't it you? Right, my bad, it was another username posting that...

What a strange coincidence we have here, two different users both using a brand new HN account, who submit exactly the same article naming it exactly the same wrong way in a 3 days time span...

That's not good. What are you trying to do?</comment>


Poyozo - Make Life Make Sense - <AUTHOR> http://mypoyozo.com/ <comment><USER2> Your audio on that video sucks. Seriously. I almost gave up on your pitch. Also, rethink the text superimposed on the whiteboard--I didn't see it until after it was gone.

It took me well into the video to figure out what the project actually was. Being on HN, my context was immediately "this is a startup". When I saw the donate button, my first reaction was "Why should I donate to a startup?" It took me a long time to figure out that you were actually a non-commercial OSS project.

I know you probably put a lot of thought into your huge tagline (which is great!) but consider adding the words "open-source" in there to maybe kick me out of startup mode.

<comment><USER3> Also, the project seems to be affiliated with CSAIL. Your everyday user has no idea who CSAIL is, but I think it's got some huge geek credibility. I wouldn't "hide" the affiliation behind the link to David Karger at the bottom of the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't tried it out yet but I really, really like the idea of saving all my online activities to my computer. I put a lot of effort and I actually spend time worrying about how to make sure these things will not get lost when these companies go out of business or decide to delete old entries, etc. So, I look forward to trying this out!

And, I agree with another post here which says you need to emphasize that it is open source (and with local storage) vs. a startup which will fail/get purchased and then all my data is gone.

<comment><USER4> I just tried it out and it is not what I hoped it would be. It only stores a little bit of gmail - subject plus a little text from the unread mails (maybe IMAP works better). It didn't seem to get any of my facebook posts... so I'm going to uninstall from Firefox. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I find it endlessly frustrating that people's best plan for making my life easier is to add more software and more things for me to look at every day.

</comment><comment><USER6> This software tries to solve a real life problem, that I feel everyday more important to me. Their intuition is right: the problem can be (partially) solved with good presentation of data. But why using only Firefox as a platform? They almost had me, but I'm using Chrome and I really don't want to install another browser just to use as a platform for another software.

</comment><comment><USER7> Nothing for Chrome? I seriously thought the web was past non-universal apps.

I absolutely love the concept of it. I played with building something similar. But, I'm not going to stop using Chrome for my daily browsing.

Oh well, maybe next time. Good luck with the Firefox people!

</comment><comment><USER8> As much as I like the idea of centralizing all of that, unless it's on my own machine; I don't like the idea of making Big Bro's work any easier.

<comment><USER9> From the "Paint your data" section:

 _And it's all hosted on YOUR computer, so there's no chance we can use it for evil or marketing!_</comment></comment>


The future of the web and native apps - <AUTHOR> http://ilyabirman.net/meanwhile/all/web-or-native-future/ <comment><USER2> It's an attractive idea, especially to web developers, but I think it requires strong evidence. The main problem with the web is that it gives users and developers too much control, while apps favor centralized control, convenience, and safety. Users generally prefer the latter. It is hard to see why the current trends would reverse.</comment>