Big Religion May Have Gotten Too Much Credit for the Evolution of Modern Society - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/big-religion-may-have-gotten-too-much-credit-for-the-evolution-of-modern-society/ <comment><USER2> > Instead the study suggests pro-social religions appeared after complex > societies had already emerged.

This completely makes sense. I've always seen monotheistic religions in particular to be cunning policy strokes, which violently unified diverse groups and rites behind their (processional) banners. This reduced diversification and complexity, and accumulated power to the present day. In fact, the current monopolisation of the once so decentralized internet is an amusing reminiscence of that tale.</comment>


Why CloudFormation is better than Chef and Puppet - <AUTHOR> https://ilya-sher.org/2016/07/02/why-cloudformation-is-better-than-chef-and-puppet/ <comment><USER2> Puppet is declarative...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. CloudFormation, Chef and Puppet are declarative. The alternative to each one of them is a script. The main idea that in some cases scripts are better and in some cases the declarative tools are better TCO-wise.</comment></comment>


How France is surviving the economic crisis - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13610197 <comment><USER2> France economic policy doesn't look so bad if you compare it to other failed policies and look at them in a myopic way.

So they throw in a graph with life expectancy and total public spending as a % of GDP. France ranks high on both (compared to the few other selected countries). Oh great. But correlation does not mean causation. Let's look at the country with the highest life expectancy in the world: Andorra. So do they have high taxes like in France? Anyone care to guess how much income tax they have in Andorra? ;)

The Economists seems to me like a magazine like any other. Just like a tabloid they write whatever sells.

<comment><USER3> _"correlation does not mean causation"_

Stop saying that.

First, you're saying it wrong: correlation does not _imply_ cause. Second, you're misinterpreting the implication: a correlation certainly _could_ indicate a causal relationship, but it doesn't _have_ to indicate a causal relationship. In other words, you're not making an argument, unless you _show_ that there's a reason that a causal relationship should be discounted.

In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that should have been "imply". Sorry, I'm not a native english speaker.

So with that out of the way do you think there is anything wrong with "correlation does not imply causation"?

Denmark has high government spending too. But the average life expectancy is rather low compared to other similar countries.

"In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental."

Why?

<comment><USER4> _"In this case, the French spend enough money on public health and social benefits that there's reason to believe that the relationship is more than coincidental."

Why?_

Because it is common sense! If you spend money on public health you are making people _healthier_. Why do you think they call it _public health_? More money, more health. It's really very simple, don't you understand basic arithmetic?

Here's an interesting link (from 2000, sorry about that):

[http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_pub_per_ca...](http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/hea_hea_car_fun_pub_per_cap- care-funding-public-per-capita)

<comment><USER5> Well, here in the US I believe we spend more (as a function of GDP) than the French do, but the results are less good overall. India spends relatively little but they have a different philosophy about medicine (I don't mean 'alternative' medicine, but health administration, scheduling etc).

I think our heavily private system is failing in the US for two reasons: 1\. health consumers can never be fully informed without getting a medical degree, and indeed they can't get access to facilities or tools without one; and 2. healthcare isn't an asset that you can choose to buy at a given time. You can't decide to have your heart attack at 30 when your recovery prospects are very high, or to postpone developing a chronic condition while you make more money to buy better health insurance. Ill health is, to a large extent, something that happens to you rather than something you can plan for, notwithstanding the benefits of maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

With limited knowledge, limited ability to make decisions, and limited ability to schedule your healthcare spending, it's very hard for normal market conditions to prevail. Though one can buy insurance, there is a massive gulf between the information available to the supplier and the consumer, and suppliers leverage this to give consumers a poor deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't seem like they're doing that well.

The Netherlands is a more interesting case. Booming in prosperious times, yet a stable unemployment rate of around 3% during this crisis (lowest in the EU).

<comment><USER7> 3%? Perhaps by the EU's definition, according to which someone who works at least one hour/week is not considered unemployed. The latest Dutch figure was 4.4%.

Of course, that's still only for people actively looking for a job, with less than 12h/week of employment, and within a certain age bracket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Investment (French) versus Consumerism (Bush Regime)

</comment><comment><USER9> My impression is that the French did not buy derivatives.

<comment><USER10> That's a retarded statement. There are tons of derivatives. Would you care to be more specific?

A counter-example:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2008_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2008_Soci%C3%A9t%C3%A9_G%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale_trading_loss_incident)</comment></comment>


Senators want potential VPN threat investigated by DHS - <AUTHOR> https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/news/252457477/Senators-want-potential-VPN-threat-investigated-by-DHS <comment><USER2> Are they interested in finding justification for limiting VPNs?

<comment><USER3> This is actually Standard Operating Procedure for Congress. You have a bunch of non-technically literate people in theory delegating the responsibility for educating them to an agency who is responsible for either rounding-up/hiring experts to educate Congress or to collate whatever required reading is necessary.

I have difficulty understanding why this type of research isn't done by Congressional research assets though, which are free of the bias towards making operating easier which the Executive isn't.

Congress has subpoena power and budget for research staff for a reason. They should use it.

<comment><USER4> Congress used to do its own research via the Office of Technology Assessment but because the results often contradicted the positions of lobbyists it was eliminated under Gingrich in the mid 1990s.

The drug side of the FDA used to have its own research labs but they were eliminated by the same congress because their results constrained and informed the scientific demands they placed on drug development trials.

It's not solely the current government that has its (or maybe somebody else's) fingers in its ears.

<comment><USER3> That is...incredibly depressing to hear.

How is the legislature supposed to actually hold the Executive and special interests in check then? It sounds like the entire federal government has been neutered in terms of being able to actually do it's own footwork to guard against encroaching agendas..

This actually explains a lot, now that I think about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138112](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19138112)

The title is also misleading. The "VPN threat" they're concerned about is not the about VPN's per se, but VPN's _that spy on their users._ Such things are real, as was recently made clear when Apple revoked Facebook's enterprise certificate over one.

<comment><USER6> if you're an analyst, and someone voluntarily lets you into their house knowing you're there to collect information about their house, are you spying? doesn't spying require some element of attempted secrecy?

<comment><USER7> Burying the spying disclosure in the TOS, and obfuscating the language used to describe that spying, is attempted secrecy. Also, it's irrelevant, because disclosure of potentially illegal acts doesn't make them any more legal ("but I told them I was going to steal their money, and they put it in my safe anyway" is not a legal defense).</comment></comment></comment>


Everything Good Has Already Been Invented: How to Compete - <AUTHOR> https://cdn.ampproject.org/c/www.forbes.com/sites/nathankontny/2016/05/05/everything-good-has-already-been-invented/amp/ <comment><USER2> What kind of impact does a tiny niche device have?

In other words, how many people are buying this emergency phone?

Nobody ever won big by finding a tiny niche.</comment>


Fourier series visualisation with D3.js - <AUTHOR> http://bl.ocks.org/jinroh/7524988

<comment><USER2> Just in case anybody seeing this missed the post earlier:

Article: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7543691) Fourier Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7544481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7544481)

Direct link to Fourier animation: [http://math.stackexchange.com/a/738048](http://math.stackexchange.com/a/738048)

More advice from the discussion: [http://betterexplained.com/articles/an- interactive-guide-to-...](http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-interactive- guide-to-the-fourier-transform/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, that's awesome.

Speaking of fourier, you need to see this [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_a...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fourier_transform_time_and_frequency_domains.gif)

<comment><USER2> Oh yeah, I ignored this at first because I just saw wikipedia, but it's the same animation that was discussed in the other HN post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      function FT(A, N, φ) {
        φ = φ || 0;
        return function(x) {
          var n = -1, y = 0;
          while (++n < N) {
            y += A[n] * Math.sin(τ * (n + 1) * x + φ);
          }
          return y;
        }
      }

hehe, seems annoying to type. Copy&paste everytime one of them is needed?

<comment><USER5> In Vim using digraphs:

        Ctrl-K f *   →   φ
        Ctrl-K t *   →   τ

In general:

        Ctrl-K <latin letter> * → <greek equivalent>

<comment><USER6> I love Vim's digraphs!

In emacs it's

        C-| tex

then

        \phi → φ

etc, which can be quite a bit more typing but can be easier to remember if you already know the TeX instructions for everything.

Now we just need to convince other editors to add something similar...

<comment><USER7> I think you mean C-u C-\ and then change the input type to tex.

There are other ways of inputting digraphs: C-x 8 RET lets you enter the name of any unicode symbol.

I wrote about the many ways of inputting digraphs and unicode here:

[http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/2010/10/13/diacritics...](http://www.masteringemacs.org/articles/2010/10/13/diacritics- in-emacs/)

<comment><USER6> You're right, thanks. But C-u doesn't seem to be necessary, unless I have a strange setup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is incredible. The linked circles perfectly illustrate how complex functions can be constructed from many superimposed sine waves. I'm very happy with this new knowledge! :)

</comment><comment><USER9> Amazing how little code is needed to make this!

</comment><comment><USER10> Amazing. The real-time application of this is extremely powerful.

<comment><USER11> Powerful indeed. Imagine a lot of such "math demos" \--- one for each equation/principle/concept in math. Instead of just the plot of a graph, you have a "toy" that you can play with.

I never knew about <input type="range" ... but will be sure to play with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Employing similar visualizations for other Numerical Methods would also be interesting to view.

</comment><comment><USER12> The sawtooth wave seems more pathological than it should be.

</comment><comment><USER13> really impressive. note, if you accidentally add a / in one of the input fields, it gets a bit wonky and only refresh will repair it.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's amazing.. very simple code !

</comment><comment><USER15> Really nicely implemented

</comment><comment><USER16> Impressive stuff!</comment>


Show HN: A little eye-candy for the terminal (in Go) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/arsham/figurine <comment><USER2> We called this ASCII art and figlet when we were young. These keywords appear nowhere in the Git repository.

<comment><USER3> figlet + lolcat = figurine

I'm interested in the rainbow library (which does reference figlet [https://github.com/arsham/rainbow/blob/master/README.md#see-...](https://github.com/arsham/rainbow/blob/master/README.md#see- also)), but only to see if it's any faster than the painfully slow Ruby implementation of lolcat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, the name came out of nowhere (sorry!). As for comparison with ruby, all I can say is figurine is a single binary, whereas ruby's lolcat requires ruby's VM.

There are a couple of benchmarks and you can run them with: $ go test -bench=.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this sort of thing. Yes, as remarked by probably everyone here over the age of 40, we have had loads of terminal shiny stuff for decades. However, here we see the tradition continue at least one or two human generations later and in a modern programming language.

It's funny that despite the fact that GUIs with mice, menus and things have been around for a bloody long time: you can't beat a terminal prompt for many tasks. Mind you my terminals these days looks rather better than the twinax connected beasts of yesteryear that I looked after. I don't remember transparency options on those.

Have a look at [https://github.com/nojhan/liquidprompt](https://github.com/nojhan/liquidprompt) for more eye-candy for your prompt - it does look rather good and I've been using it on one machine for at least a year with no snags. However that project may be needing an active developer judging by the last commit and Issues.

<comment><USER5> I'd recommend spaceship prompt if you want an actively maintained prompt with similar features.

[https://github.com/denysdovhan/spaceship- prompt](https://github.com/denysdovhan/spaceship-prompt)

<comment><USER2> Wow, it is interesting how this project ties together the devops environment with the user interface. I feel this is higly domain dependent: As soon as I install this on my cluster system where [http://modules.sourceforge.net/](http://modules.sourceforge.net/) is commonly used, it doesn't help me any more. Same with my home brewn environment based build system for my C++ project. Obviously, the spaceship-prompt needs support to be built for such environments.

This does not reduce the enormous efforts of the author to include all the different ecosystems, thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work! Would be good to add a CLI option for specifying a font.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Please create an issue and specify your requirements and I will add them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion, done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Occasionally this outputs F'DK'M instead of GAELAN for me. Maybe an issue with some of the fonts?

<comment><USER8> Looks like an off by one error. I'm seeing this error as well for some of the fonts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> quite funny. check lolcat if you are intrested: [https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat](https://github.com/busyloop/lolcat)

</comment><comment><USER10> Would like ability to pipe cow-say into it (or any random set of strings) on which it will then just add the colour effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can pipe the cow-say to this program: [https://github.com/arsham/rainbow](https://github.com/arsham/rainbow) Is that what you're after?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This pleasantly reminds me of faders for chat programs like AIM :)</comment>


The one-line web framework - <AUTHOR> http://www.reiersol.com/blog/1_php_in_action/archive/172_the_one-line_web_framework.html <comment><USER2> "There is one and only one good reason why you shouldn't: it's totally insecure. Except for that, it's simple but perfectly viable."

Given that logic...There is one and only one good reason why you shouldn't shoot yourself in the head to get rid of a headache: it'll kill you. Except for that, it's simple but perfectly viable. :-)

(note: I am not seriously suggesting that anyone should shoot themselves in the head. It should be avoided at all costs -- much like the one-line PHP web framework)</comment>


Can national statistics be self-fulfilling? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/04/26/can-national-statistics-be-self-fulfilling/

<comment><AUTHOR> Double quote:

 _In a strange way, Britain's ONS, and similar agencies like the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) in the United States, hold the fate of politicians in their hands because they help write the political narrative.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say BEA is one of the most powerful agencies in the U.S. government. It may not have as many tanks as the Pentagon, but by measuring the success and failure of economic policies, it can make and break presidencies, as President George H W Bush could confirm and Barack Obama fears._

Well turned phrase there, "may not have as many tanks as" ...</comment>


Spreading rock dust on fields could remove vast amounts of CO2 from air - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/08/spreading-rock-dust-on-fields-could-remove-vast-amounts-of-co2-from-air <comment><USER2> This (undesired) effect was occurring within Biosphere2. ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2))

"This concealed the underlying process until an investigation by Jeff Severinghaus and Wallace Broecker of Columbia University's Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory using isotopic analysis showed that carbon dioxide was reacting with exposed concrete inside Biosphere 2 to form calcium carbonate in a process called carbonatation, thereby sequestering both carbon and oxygen."

<comment><USER3> That was one of the most unexpectedly crazy Wikipedia articles I've ever read. The level of intrigue seems completely out of proportion with what the project is. Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon) makes an appearance, a hostile takeover occurs, Federal Marshals and local police are called in on 2 separate occasions, former employees sabotage the site, experiments go awry, accusations of research fraud are constantly thrown around. It sounds like the plot of a TV show about a research project.

The drama starts in the Group dynamics section of the article amd continues to the end: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Group_dynamics:_ps...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2#Group_dynamics:_psychology,_conflict,_and_cooperation)

<comment><USER4> The documentary Spaceship Earth on Hulu is about all of this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth_(film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaceship_Earth_\(film\)). Really worth watching.

<comment><USER5> I think there's an allusion to this in Netflix's Space Force?

<comment><USER6> There is, this episode was so unfunny we stopped watching the series. I don't know how you can have that much talent in a potentially funny space and blow it that bad.

<comment><USER7> I wanted to like it, but ... just couldn't.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I couldn't finish it. Lost interest after the monkey episode. Wisecrack did a criticism video on YouTube that I thought had some fair points: [https://youtu.be/49v6m7jQPaQ](https://youtu.be/49v6m7jQPaQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Farmer Bob Cannard of Napa has been saying this for 25 something years now. All that I knew about growing, I know from him and his students. Even though I never had the opportunity to learn from him, I absorbed second and third hand. Farmers have enormous knowledge of earth and plants and trees. I wish they'd be given the recognition they deserve as domain experts. We are just wasting time.

<comment><USER9> What do you think are some ways to boost their voices and/or credibility? Seems like a no brainer to listen to these folks.

<comment><USER8> Partnerships and collaborations. Have tech companies sponsor farms by letting them use tech.

Many farmers are land rich, cash poor, labour costs eat up profit margins. Many will die. And with these farms, the knowledge. They will sell the land and retire on the proceeds as rich farmland is paved over.

What they need is accessible, affordable tech. And where their inherited generational and practical knowledge can be tested and validated and adopted by tech. It needs to be with trustworthy partners who don't see farmers as future consumers but as collaborators and partners.

Current Agtech is geared towards commodity crops and industrial Ag. All farming knowledge that is soil and environment oriented comes from small family farms. Their goal is to keep the soil fertile. The purpose of a farming corporation is to make profits. Not soil health or environment.

By asking big Ag concerns to take care of soil, we are burdening them with a job they don't want..but that requirement towards soil and environment should be part of the tech they use.

So the domain experts of soil..the ones who actually have dirty hands by working in the soil should be the ones who help create the tech. Right now, wrong allocation of responsibility to skill is what's not working.

Farming is intuitive. A farmer tries to maintain the soil and make it better. Industrial Ag razes* down soil with each harvest and supplements With inputs and brute mechanical force, they bring soil back to a threshold that is bare minimum for cultivation. That's why a farmer says that only sun, water and soil is needed to grow food. Industrial Ag needs inputs, machinery and data.

As a small acreage soil focused farmer, I say that we need soil, water, sun...and tech. Tech that would replace manual repetitive labour ..labour costs that is killing our profits can be boosted by small acreage automation/mechanization.

*i like to illustrate this with a personal example. When I wanted to redo my garden, I wanted to move a couple of structures, add a fountain, plant a few trees, remove some vegetation and put down a walking path with pavers.

When I called a landscape architect, he said that we will have to remove everything, create a blank slate and implement the landscape design.

That is the difference between farmers and industrial Ag.

<comment><USER10> Do you see any other areas in addition to mechanization that tech can be valuable?

In other words, are there problems that software alone can help solve or is it simply down to replacing some of the manual labor with robotics and smarter machines?

<comment><USER8> I think we need a systems approach in Ag ..in both small or industrial farming..too. So we can achieve systems level results.

Software can be helpful but it's enhancements contribute very little to the profit margins.

Take for example this cost analysis of orient eggplant for 2005(I picked this eggplant because it's not a commodity crop grown by industrial Ag and is niche. In other words, it's not like lettuce or strawberries or corn or soy)

[http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/crops/coststudieshtml/BpEggplantOrien...](http://sfp.ucdavis.edu/crops/coststudieshtml/BpEggplantOrientalSJV2005/)

Check the percent of labour costs and capital/equip costs wrt operating costs. Software will help as part of the bigger systems approach, but at the end of the day, the urgent problem we need to tackle is labour costs and labour availability.

<comment><USER11> Systems example: farmers are paid per pound for tomatoes. They therefore want to water heavily before harvest so the tomatoes get as heavy as possible. Then they ship the heaviest possible tomatoes to a factory to be dehydrated into ketchup, sauce, and other canned goods.

The energy loss comes in 3 different parts - water waste, extra fuel in shipping, and in energy to dehydrate. Everyone pays more.

The system solution would be to price the tomato solids, not the water.

<comment><USER12> How are you going to reliably measure the solid content without destroying the tomato though?

<comment><USER13> Sampling. It is already the case that grains are tested and priced based on dry weight, it would not be hard to do the same for some of the larger veg crops.

<comment><USER8> This point is moot. Canning tomatoes are different from market tomatoes grown for weight. Most tomatoes are harvested mechanically while green and unripe. They are gassed to ripeness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> See also the use of olivine in a similar way:

[https://www.greensand.nl/en/about-greensand/greensand- explai...](https://www.greensand.nl/en/about-greensand/greensand-explained)

[https://projectvesta.org/how-it-works/](https://projectvesta.org/how-it- works/)

<comment><USER15> I read about project vesta on HN a while back, and it seemed promising. Why do these approaches not get more attention?

Project vesta has the additional benefit that it works directly on the oceans, which may be the more pressing problem.

<comment><USER16> I'm donate to project vesta yearly. Personally, I think the lack of attention is due to its relatively slow pace (compared to the typical news cycle) and the fact that it's simply not going to ever be a revenue generator.

<comment><USER15> What is the financing and implementation plan? Will it be donor-funded, publicly-funded, or are they looking into some revenue options?

If I donate now, what will the money be used for? Will it put green sand on beaches, or be used for bureaucratic paperwork, or be used for marketing to raise awareness?

<comment><USER17> Hi, Project Vesta is a non-profit focused on advancing the science and logistics for deployment of coastal enhanced olivine weathering. Right now, your money will be going to fund our Phase I experiments focused on demonstrating the safety of the process, along with weathering rate and dissolution kinetics. The goal of our Phase I experiments is to use the data to create an open-source model that brings all of the relevant parameters together into a single model. We plan to create an algorithm called the Coastal Enhanced Weathering Integrated Assessment Model (CEWIAM) that will be able to take inputs related to a specific beach site, and combine the Weathering Rate and Safety Data with a Life Cycle Assessment so that it can output a "Net $ cost per tonne of CO2 removed per year" from a given site. The model will be open-sourced and peer-reviewed by the scientific community, in additional to having it validated by 3rd parties so that it can be the foundation for an entirely new field of carbon dioxide removal. It is our belief that once this model exists and is validated and demonstrated successfully, massive projects would be financed by the private sector potentially for carbon dioxide removal credits, etc, as well as enabling governments to deploy this on potential gigatonne scales as beach nourishment projects that also help them make up for the shortfall in their Paris Agreement emissions commitments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Just in case somebody jumps to the conclusion that this is some kind of panacea.

> The researchers are clear that cutting the fossil fuel burning that releases > CO2 is the most important action needed to tackle the climate emergency. But > climate scientists also agree that, in addition, massive amounts of CO2 need > to be removed from the air to meet the Paris agreement goals of keeping > global temperature rise below 2C.

Basically we need to stop burning fossil fuels _and_ spread rock dust. Short of some miracle, humanity is screwed.

<comment><USER19> Paris agreement is also built on IPCC models that ignored methane and many other feedback loops. The new model runs for the updated report coming out soon do not and their estimated temps are almost double in many cases (and more in some).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Spreading green vehicles on the Earth's surface would stop vast amounts of CO2 being added to the air. The fuel cost is none (and sustainable for roughly the Sun's lifetime), fuel-transportation costs much lower, the waste costs almost nil. The investment would be large, the likely return on that investment substantially greater. The more quickly we make this choice, the sooner the world benefits.

Removing CO2 may be necessary; stopping CO2 addition has to become a critical priority.

</comment><comment><USER21> US$80-180 per ton of CO2 * 16.50 metric tons of CO2 emissions per USA capita (2014)

= between 1,320 and 2,970 USD per year for keeping our planet in check. Maybe multiply by 3x to exclude children, retired and unemployed. Not too bad for a median USA income. Same for Indian - 10x less emissions so about 130-300 USD per year.

</comment><comment><USER22> Crops also sequester CO2. Breeding and/or engineering for traits like deeper roots can increase the rate of uptake and also improve yield. There is a lot of potential computational work in this area (automating phenotype data collection with robotics, growth modeling, data engineering and web development for science gateways) and more research is needed. The funding is there for this in the U.S., e.g. from the DOE.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can't find the basic science of the idea in the article - which chemical process makes rock (also which rock) capture CO2? Is there a ton of rocks out there that are rich with unbound metal oxides?

<comment><USER24> There are many minerals which are ionic compounds of silicon oxides on one side and metal compounds on the other. Grind them up real fine and many of the metals will preferably react with carbon dioxide to make, for example, calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and the silicon and oxygen become silicon dioxide which is ordinary sand.

There are indeed a ton of rocks out there bound less tightly to other things.

High heat (say, magma) would break up the carbonate so thats why the rocks arent already in that chemical state.

(simplified answer from a non specialist)

<comment><USER23> Thank you, that makes perfect sense!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> India now uses rock dust for cement aggregate since excavating river sand is causing environmental problems. Would concrete buildings help?

<comment><USER26> Concrete production emmits 8% of the world co2 pollution. Man-made concrete doesnt help us in this way

<comment><USER27> Does producing concrete use fossil fuels? Not for energy, but in the actual chemical process, like plastic does.

<comment><USER28> Carbon dioxide is emitted as a by-product of clinker production, an intermediate product in cement manufacture, in which calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is calcinated and converted to lime (CaO), the primary component of cement.[1]

[1] [https://www.ipcc- nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_P...](https://www.ipcc- nggip.iges.or.jp/public/gp/bgp/3_1_Cement_Production.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not much information about the actual mechanism at work here. Why farmland specifically? Why basalt specifically?

<comment><USER30> Farmland is a good place to put it because rock dust is also high in phosphorous and other minerals and for that reason is often used anyway as a fertiliser, particularly in organic agriculture.

Basalt is one of the types of rock that can react with CO2 to trap carbon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What's the added co2 cost of grinding rocks and transporting them to farms?

<comment><USER32> Grinding rocks to 200 mesh (74 microns) takes about 20 Kwh per ton. Using 100% coal electricity that would lead to 20 kg CO2. Transporting a ton of cargo by truck 200 km creates about 22 kg of CO2. Basalt seems to remove less CO2 per ton than other minerals, but I'm guessing it would still be more than 100 kg CO2 removed per ton of basalt (perhaps much more). Olivine (see Project Vesta) and serpentine are quite efficient; they remove about 1.2 tons of CO2 per ton. Basalt is extremely common, though, so it might win out in some circumstances.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wonder if there is a similar carbonation that can occur in sea water.

<comment><USER34> You can try putting iron in it: [https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green- scienc...](https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/iron- sulfate-slow-global-warming.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Really interesting potential application. Cross posting this on [https://collective.energy](https://collective.energy) for sure

</comment><comment><USER36> Sometimes you will hear the expression: "We think technology will save us. Technology got us into this mess"

Or, you might hear about the moral hazard of suggesting that technological approaches could reduce the need for reduced consumption [1]

These seem to be compelling arguments for many people -- including those who fund science. Geoengineering is, one might say, a dirty word in the sciences today. Are there any scientists who could weigh in?

[1] Hale, B. (2012). The world that would have been: moral hazard arguments against geoengineering. Engineering the climate: The ethics of solar radiation management, 113.

<comment><USER37> If spreading rock dust on the ground serves some function, then it is itself technology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Spreading waste from mining operations is 100% something you don't want to do to farm fields.

<comment><USER32> There are different types of mine waste. Certainly you don't want to spread waste contaminated with heavy metals, but most mine waste is just rocks that have been ground up and filtered by a sluice or shaker table to get the tiny fraction of the ore that is actually valuable.

<comment><USER38> Typically speaking, if you're mining rocks, that's a quarry. The article also suggests using waste from steel and cement manufacturing, which is crazy.

<comment><USER39> _The article also suggests using waste from steel and cement manufacturing, which is crazy._

<citation required>

If the production process is happening anyway, and if the waste exists anyway, why is it definedly crazy to re-purpose it? It isn't neccessarily the best at scale economic source of the kinds of rock dust we need, but if you have it, and it worked, then (without citing specifics like cross contamination risks or at scale problems) why is this specifically more crazy than the idea itself?

<comment><USER38> Putting industrial waste onto food, bad, bad idea. Look into the amount of contaminants in former steel mill sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Apparently this process explains a lot of the current climate.

[https://youtu.be/Yze1YAz_LYM?t=1161](https://youtu.be/Yze1YAz_LYM?t=1161)

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, maybe a mid-80's in the title as that was when I last recall hearing this line of reasoning.

\- glaciers grind up rocks \- ground up rocks end ice age promote life \- fresh ground rocks get used up and new ice age \- rinse and repeat

</comment><comment><USER42> They say treating 1/2 of global farmland with basalt dust would offset the current carbon emissions of Germany and Japan.

1\. Why did they choose the two axis powers to draw their comparison?

2\. What would be the cost, in additional carbon emissions, to procure, distribute, and deploy all that basalt?

<comment><USER43> Germany and Japan being two axis powers is so irrelevant to the given topic... GPT-2 is probably smarter than you if this is all the skill you have in correlation.

<comment><USER44> Perhaps suggest an alternative, instead of just being mean?

<comment><USER45> Suggest an alternative to… saying something dumb? …What?

<comment><USER44> Parent implies there is a correlation, but GP doesn't see it because they're stupid. My assumption is they were referring to post Fukushima nuclear shutdown.

Even if I'm misreading it and parent is instead saying there's no correlation, there's still no need to be mean.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I hate to be the bearer of bad news, as I am happy to see this issue making headlines, but this sounds like something out of Mike Judge's Idiocracy universe.

It's probably a really bad idea to spread rock dust on arable land. The mixture will probably retard the natural soil microbiota, and at worst render land unusable.

Just try adding a bunch of concrete dust to your basil plant in the window sill, see what happens. Most likely this will be the source, as concrete waste is a huge issue in most population centers. Natural microbiota, the life in soils, are our best bet at sequestering our overabundance of atmospheric ghg, because we literally have to do nothing. Just leave it the fuck alone. Most land is not past the point of no return, and most land is not being used to grow essential food crops. Our actual food is grown on a very small part of farms worldwide and has lots of room to intensify while reducing energy and chemical inputs.

Rebuilding and growing bogs, marshes, and wetlands should be our top priority if we want our great-grandchildren to enjoy the world outside of a cave or a bubble.

<comment><USER39> you know, if you showed us you are a soil agronomist, and cited something we might agree. Or, we might look at the other people commenting some of them who do cite references, who say this isn't retarding natural soil microbiota and isn't going to the at-worst case, making land unusable.

your example of "try this at home" is not actually good. concrete dust before hydration is completely different to the dust made post hydration, or fly ash, or surplus rock dust from mining. The properties of the pre-build and post- build chemical reactivity of concrete (its an exothermic reaction) need to be borne in mind.

That said, aggressive de-carbonisation of industry and agriculture, biochar, wetland remediation, re-forestation are probably vital, and urgent.

<comment><USER47> Maybe you are confusing (or I am not understanding) concrete dust with cement dust.

Concrete dust should be the result of demolition of concrete (already hydrated when it was cement to form the concrete, i.e. post exothermic reaction).

But, allegedly, the concrete surfaces (not reduced to dust) exposed in the Biosphere2 was sequestering both CO2 and oxigen, and - at least in that case - the "solution" was a supplement of oxygen, so maybe the concrete (not cement) dust uses both CO2 and oxigen while basalt only or mainly uses CO2?

Also, whether it is basalt or concrete dust, wouldn't this treatment alter the pH of the soil? (at least here historically where there is an excessively acid soil it is often corrected with additives like calcium carbonate or similar).

<comment><USER39> my answer was an attempt to get to this point because the OP said "get some cement and sprinkle it on your garden and see what happens" and the whole point was "thats not what people are doing in the farm sector here, they're not using pre-moistened cement dust, they are using post-pour concrete dust, the chemistry is different"

altering the PH can be desirable or harmful depending. thats where the 'get a soil agronomist into the convo' comes in.

from memory, there can be a significant non-bound component of concrete, and it can persist for years. so I accept there is a continuing risk of aggregation of the dust, because it doesn't completely process in immediate time-frame of the pour (I am told that the hoover dam continued to bake off for years afterward)

<comment><USER47> Sure, I was only trying to distinguish cement dust from concrete dust, the OP mentioned concrete dust, not cement, and he mentioned it being "waste":

>Just try adding a bunch of concrete dust to your basil plant in the window sill, see what happens. Most likely this will be the source, as concrete waste is a huge issue in most population

About aggregation, there are usually big differences between the different kinds of cement, modern Portland cements tend to end hydration (and thus hardening) within months, whilst good ol' Pozzolanic went on for years.

But I wouldn't be surprised if such a massive pour as a dam would go on hardening for many years.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Detroit: Why Don't We Own This? - <AUTHOR> http://whydontweownthis.com/#14/42.3819/-83.1232 <comment><USER2> I don't understand the purpose of the website related to the domain name. Could someone tell me the link between the two, I am genuinely missing it?

<comment><USER3> At first I thought it was a site encouraging people to buy up foreclosed homes on the cheap. I don't think it was just you confused by the slightly misleading domain name.

However if there is a logical connection between content and domain, I'd also like to know it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What amazes me the most is how insanely cheap these homes are assessed to be. I don't own a home in my own city, but I could buy one of these out of my pocket for less than I paid for my car! The only glitches are that I neither want to work or vacation in Detroit and I don't imagine property values are going to increase there any time soon!

The time is ripe for another 60's hippie commune movement. Instead of squatting in the country-side they could sell their VW vans and buy mansions in Detroit!

<comment><USER5> If you google, there are quite a few companies trying to sell the idea that now is the time for property investment in Detroit. Prices are incredibly low, there are quite a few people whose credit rating will not allow them to buy for a few years, and rent prices apparently haven't gone down.

Are they right? In general, I doubt it, but there almost certainly must be neighborhoods that will turn into nice small suburbs surrounded by nature that formerly was part of a larger suburb. Which ones is anybody's guess/a matter of expertise of property investors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When the map covers the entire width of the screen, it is impossible to scroll past it on a mobile phone.</comment>


Ask HN: How to edit Clojure in vim comfortably? - <AUTHOR>

I want to do more programming in Clojure, but all the current solutions for the REPL don't work well. Vim doesn't facilitate embedded REPLs and frankly I don't want to deal with nailgun + vim, or slimv.<p>Any ways to comfortably edit lisps without resorting to Emacs + Evil mode? <comment><USER2> Use fireplace from tpope. All you need to do is go to your project dir and run lein repl, then when you're in vim it will automatically connect to the repl and you can do stuff like :%Eval to eval the file, or cpp to eval the expression under your cursor. See the github and :help fireplace for more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks you! I will check it out.</comment></comment>


Is Flex/Actionscript a real programming language? Can it do what Java does? (work offline, write files, networking etc.) - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yes , it can be used to build applications with those capabilities. But depends on how you implement it ..just like Java. When implemented in browser, most of the sandbox restrictions apply.[Like java applets]. But when implemented in a desktop environment [using an OS dependent wrapper or on top of runtime like Apollo], it can write files to disk and do otherwise taboo karmas.

For updates on whats going on in actionscript community[or Adobe technologies in general], subscribe to Adobe's MXNA . Some of the finest Actionscript coders can be found at flashcoders pipermail list. [chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/private/flashcoders/]

For an opensource perspective on Flash and Actionscript visit: osflash.org

</comment><comment><USER3> ECMAScript (the standard that action script is built upon) is turing complete, therefore Actionscript is a real language.

<comment><USER4> Touche.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even Bruce Eckel who wrote the popular Java books, "Thinking in Java", has switched sides and is backing Flex.

Qs: Can your application if written in Flex;

1) can it open/close files, in Flex?

2) FTP stuff across, open network connections?

3) can it work offline?

If ActionScript is simply a scripting language in the browser, then I doubt it can do the above. So why the hype? \- Anil

<comment><USER4> <http://flexblog.faratasystems.com/?p=115>

The answer to the initial question, "Is Actionscript 3 a 'real' programming language?" depends entirely on who you're asking.

1) Flex application run in a sandbox, much as Java applets do. Locally, and currently, Flex applications can open files for parsing, but can not write to them. This is remedied with Apollo which is in alpha. Apollo is essentially a Flex application wrapper that provides a file system API, among other things.

2) This really becomes a question of whether or not someone is inclined enough to write the necessary Actionscript 3 as it supports binary sockets and byte arrays currently. Someone has already created a ZIP library.

3) Again, when Apollo launches, then yes. Although, a Flex application can run offline should it not require file system access, and even then files can be opened, just not written to.

Actionscript runs in a VM just as Java does, which is irrelevant given that the questions you're asking are entirely arbitrary. The answers to which only tangentially, and tenuously, provide support in defining whether or not a programming language is 'real'.

In the interests of providing my own answer... I would say no, it's not quite a 'real' programming language.

<comment><AUTHOR> My interest was - juwo has no users apart from myself. I was wondering about rewriting it in flex.

<comment><USER5> Do you think rewriting it in Flex will provide you new users?

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you downloaded and run juwo?

Why not? Please tell us frankly.

The answer can be revealing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why would you want to compare it to java? Ye gods man, java/c/c++/c# aren't exactly the kind of languages I'd want a new language to compare with.

Python, Ruby, Haskell98, ocaml, etc. Consider those your languages that set the bar right now. Java is 'the new' C.

<comment><AUTHOR> Never heard of them. (heard of ruby only here, in YC).

old wine in new bottles.

if-then-else by any other name... is just as tedious.

<comment><USER6> heh, that's what you think. Try building anything substantial in one of the languages I named and then going back to java.

Ruby programs are maybe a tenth the size, give or take,

Python similarly small.

Haskell will blow your mind because you basically never use control structures or type declarations.

Continuation-passing scheme, smalltalk, erlang...

Any of these things will change the way you develop, probably immensely for the better.

<comment><AUTHOR> can I write a standalone desktop program in Ruby? (I dont know).

BTW my feedback on your work <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=17871>

<comment><USER7> Yes: <http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/index.html>

Next time just Google for "Ruby standalone". Saves me the trouble of doing it for you ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> You proved my point - for me - better than I could have done so myself :)

If I have to _google_ for it and come up with a 3rd party tool, then it isnt part of the language!

And FYI, I wasnt writing my comment in complete ignorance nor laziness. I did go to the ror site when I first heard of it here on YC. When I realized it seemed to be a scripting language with a web server, I lost interest. Offline is _very_ important for me/juwo.

<comment><USER6> try python. well supported windowing toolkits. and it doesn't suck.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Language Workbenches: The Killer-App for Domain Specific Languages? - <AUTHOR> http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/languageWorkbench.html

<comment><USER2> Can some one explain to me how this is radically different?</comment>


Digital Music Couldn't Exist Without the Fourier Transform - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/digital-music-couldnt-exist-without-the-fourier-transfo-1699155287?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow <comment><USER2> A key insight for someone interested in this sort of thing not touched on in the article is the relationship between the fourier transform and a discrete consine transform.

JPEG uses DCT in particular because it has the nice property that the "top left" corner of the block will contain the DC offset (since cosine of 0 is 1) and the coefficients near the top corner correspond to half-wave and full cycles which gets you most of the way to simple gradients of color across the block with the right coefficients. So for most areas of an image only the top left coefficients will be significant. By using a zig-zag pattern for each block we are grouping the largest values to the front and zeroes to the back, which when coupled with RLE makes the rows of zero in each block a very compact, further-compressable representation.

Meanwhile, a fourier transform gives you imaginary magnitudes for frequencies which corresponds to the phase shift that is most appropriate for that frequency to match most strongly (as opposed to be aligned at the corner/beginning of the integral window). Not useful in an image format where you won't get the transformed magnitudes all nice and grouped for you. This is useful in audio compression where we care to find the location of transients that correspond to note attacks, percussion strikes, etc. Note that even in MP3 this is only used to drive the psychoacoustical model that decides the frame type and where to allocate the bits; the audio data itself is processed out of the time domain by overlapped DCT just like Ogg Vorbis.

<comment><USER3> Thought I'd chime in that for image compression (e.g in the JPEG2000 standard), the 2D discrete wavelet transform takes advantage of similar pixel intensities for neighboring pixels at various scales (i.e. "transformed magnitudes all nice and grouped for you"). The 2D-DWT is actually pretty cool under the hood. And, asymptotically, a bit faster than the FFT (DWT runs in O(N), and in 2D, O(width*height)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Digital music could absolutely exist without the Fourier Transform.

The author should familiarize himself with the history of digital audio, and its milestones such as the development of the compact disc format: long before MP3, Ogg and the popularization of the Internet, and its use for media streaming.

At its bare bones, digital audio requires time domain sampling and reconstruction, sandwiched between some filters that can be analog. It requires understanding of the Nyquist limit, which can be purely in time domain terms (sampling frequently enough to avoid an temporal aliasing ambiguity in the reconstruction).

Digital _synthesis_ of music can also be as simple as playing recorded samples in loops, and scaling them in the time domain for various pitches (or changing the sample rate, or both), which doesn't require Fourier.

<comment><USER5> Claiming that the FT is not necessary for digial audio is like claiming that the you don't need the rocket equation in order to build a missile. Sure, its technically possible, and yes, there were probably early pioneers that forged ahead before the mathematical theory was fully sketched out, but our understanding of the fourier transform has drastically increased our ability to design acoustical systems.

Those analog anti-aliasing and anti-imaging filters are designed using LTI systems theory, that fundamentally rely on the Fourier tranform to reason about their transfer functions. The Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem was proven using the fourier transform. Without the fourier transform, you need to rely entirely upon time domain representations of signals, and perform your analysis using tedious convolutions. You can't use a spectrum analyzer to examine the signal to noise ratio of your CD player. While it's true that digital music could technically exist without the fourier, there is no way in hell it would be as pervasive as it is today.

<comment><USER6> I don't agree with you. Read about ADPCM. Try it. Listen the results. Apparently ffmpeg has codecs for it.

[http://ffmpeg.org/general.html#Audio- Codecs](http://ffmpeg.org/general.html#Audio-Codecs)

<comment><USER7> The Windows 95 startup sound, created by Brian Eno, was coded ADPCM. Seemed to work okay. A billion people heard it. (8 bit MS ADPCM also sounded horrible.)

<comment><USER6> You surely mean 8 bit PCM (without "AD") sounded horrible? ADPCM encodes differences in just 4 bits but the decoded values are in the range of 16 bits.

<comment><USER7> There were 8-bit "ADPCM" (er, ADPCM-ish?) variants, too! They used 2, 3 or 4 bits for encoding but were deltas against an 8 bit target.

<comment><USER6> Not used by MS, as far as I know (you specifically wrote originally "8 bit MS ADPCM also sounded horrible").

Microsoft's ADPCM was always 4 bits encode of the 16-bit sample. The distorted sound in some files was due to reducing the sampling rate.

[https://support.microsoft.com/en- us/kb/89879](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/89879)

"ADPCM stores the value differences between two adjacent PCM samples and makes some assumptions that allow data reduction. Because of these assumptions, low frequencies are properly reproduced, but any high frequencies tend to get distorted. The distortion is easily audible in 11 kHz ADPCM files, but becomes more difficult to discern with higher sampling rates, and is virtually impossible to recognize with 44 kHz ADPCM files."

I've already linked this article and it has even more details, highly recommended.

<comment><USER7> I wrote some of those original codecs. I'm aware of what they do. :) The original SoundBlaster card was 8-bit. Creative ADPCM is 8 bit. Dialogic ADPCM -- basically every recorded sound you've ever heard over a telephone -- is 12 bit. You are correct with the modern definition but I'm talking about 20 years ago so let's not stomp on history for sake of Hacker News karma points.

The Microsoft article gets a few things wrong. The distorted sound is not due to reducing the sample rate. The distorted sound comes from taking a perfectly-good 11k file and then ADPCM compressing it. This is obviously due to throwing away information on each sample as part of the encoding process, not anything due to sample rate. (Of course it sounds better at higher sample rates. More data, more better.)

ADPCM for telephony seldom even hit 11k rates. 6000 and 8000Hz ADPCM files are common. (And nope, not 16 bit either.)

<comment><USER6> I fully agree with you re 8-bit SoundBlasters and phones. I was talking about the music recorded for CDs, 16-bits. Converting that to ADPCM was certainly not a process that was guaranteed to automatically give the good results but it was at least possible to produce reasonably good sound and save some space.

I'd be of course happy to hear something more about the work you did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> DCT, FFT, close enough I guess. No mention of Shannon or Nyquist?

Ugh, I see a trend starting here:

"This is the first in a new experimental series called Favored Equation. Each month, we'll dive into a piece of math which makes your life easier in some way without you even realizing."

This is a spin on [http://objectsobjectsobjects.com/](http://objectsobjectsobjects.com/) by The Atlantic:

"Object lessons: An ongoing series about the hidden lives of ordinary things."

I'm a fan of this type of writing. But when Sagan and Feynman did it -- hell when pornographers did it with OMNI Magazine -- it wasn't quite so rough around the edges.

I'm now a month into arguing with some ex-Gawker hack at _The Atlantic_ over quotes like "New effects can change a guitarist's playing ability completely" and a declaration that the transistor was invented in the 1960s. No corrections or retractions imminent.

No interest in battling the newer, younger, even-less-experienced Gawker editor too.

<comment><USER8> Tangent but I disagree about one point:

Effects can and do change the guitarist's playing ability. Distortion or compression, for example, generally lowers the threshold for making a note sound clearly (or at least clear enough). The result is a smoother sounding performance which can give the player more confidence when then actually results in a better performance. It hardly matters how you get to the end waveforms if they are indeed sounding good.

But more than interpreting "ability" to mean a degree of technical skill, certain effects can completely change the way a good guitar player approaches the instrument creatively, particularly if they're listening closely and reacting (not playing from muscle memory).

<comment><USER7> Rephrase it as "colored pencils can change a writer's writing ability completely" and you can see the logic error.

"Put a little reverb on it" is a good way to comfort a singer or a musician and perhaps coax a better performance out of them. But the effect itself does not change the skill level of the performer.

If the article were discussing production techniques I'd agree with you. But it says things like "Guitar effects have modified their users" and gives a comical explanation of how a rotating speaker works so I think the author is just nuts.

<comment><USER9> Rotating speakers don't require less player skill, but distortion does.

Guitar distortion reduces the need to mute adjacent strings, a very difficult thing to master, because only the strongest tone comes through.

Or, given equal skill, distortion meant you could jump around, play writhing on your back with your tongue, play with your guitar on fire, which you absolutely cannot playing without distortion.

<comment><USER7> Distortion adds harmonic content. It is not a filter that lets "only the strongest tone come through." If there's a 600Hz thump as you move your hand between strings, now you've got that same 600Hz thump plus a 1200Hz and 1800Hz thump too. That's the definition of harmonic distortion. And those 1200/1800Hz components are approaching where the ear is most sensitive. So you've made it worse.

A previous poster said that compression helps. Well, no. Compression reduces dynamic range. If there's a soft squeak between loud notes, a compressor makes the soft squeak louder and the loud note quieter. That's the definition of a compressor.

And none of this changes the fundamental skill of the performer, in the same way that an Instagram filter does not change the fundamental beauty of the object. Sure, presentation is important and changing your resume font might even get you a better coding job. But changing the font doesn't make you a better coder.

<comment><USER8> IMO The only fundamental skill that is relevant to music is the ability to express a particular feeling, and effects can "completely change" one's ability to do that.

The only way you could quantify the type of skill you seem to be referring to is to entirely remove any degree of expression or improvisation (or effects) and boil it down to the raw performance data. You may then succeed in determining who is objectively a "better" musician but you've lost all the aspects that make a Beatles song based on a I IV V chord progression sound different than one by the Velvet Underground, or anyone else.

EDIT: also, yes to some degree that is how harmonic distortion works, though the particular harmonics and amplitudes of those harmonics vary widely and there is often some filtering added to reign in those harmonics in a particular way. Distortion also effectively compresses the signal. Sometimes it starts oscillating and generating notes that aren't even being played. The point is that if you're playing _with_ the distortion (not just laying it on top) then it is changing how you play.

<comment><USER7> You're basically arguing "it's the gear" whereas any musician over a certain age and skill level will tell you "hell no it isn't."

Instagram filters don't make people better photographers; AutoTune doesn't make people better singers. Hell, the Abbey Road mic collection didn't make John and Paul better singers.

By your logic you can flip anything around and make the author's argument: Shitty British industrial towns modified their users. Beer and the tiny stage at CBGB modified their users. Cheap Seattle heroin and terrible weather modified their users.

Is any artistic pursuit highly dependent on the mood of the performer and her implicit capacity to make you _feel_? Of course.

But the author did not say "playing a guitar through a stomp box changes the way you play it" or "the Edge's signature delay effect created a new sound that nobody had heard -- or felt -- before." He said "guitar effects have modified their users" and "new effects can change a guitarist's playing ability completely."

If you read the entire article you'll see the author suffers from an bad case of "word salad" and these are not meant as debatable nuances. He's suffering from dysgraphia, ignorance of the subject matter as a whole, and a really bad editor.

Which is why he defines "clipping" with a phrase lifted from the Wikipedia article for digital clipping, applies it to slicing a speaker with a razor blade, then claims rotating motors were picked up by speakers in a Leslie after being picked up by "coiled magnets" in a guitar pickup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> ...they could at least have used a proper example. Their "squiggly sine lines" don't make sense at all:

"""But add them together, and that pleasant sounding chord actually looks altogether more messy, like this:"""

No, it doesn't look like this, at all.

</comment><comment><USER11> Or almost all forms of recorded audio for that matter. It is basically miraculous that a single speaker can create the impression of an orchestra; it obviously relies on an implicit instantiation of this same principle.

<comment><USER4> It's miraculous that pressure variations on your ear drum reproduce the impression of the orchestra; the speaker just builds on that.

<comment><USER11> From that point of view a speaker makes perfect sense, and that insight points to an even deeper importance of implicit versions of this transform.

<comment><USER7> I don't know what that means. But "Two ears = two speakers" must really blow your mind.

FFT is closer to what's going on with Cochlear Implants. Which both suck for some of the same reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> certainly could, and did. What enabled digitization and reproduction of digital audio were the works of Nyquist and Shannon, work that showed how it would work. FFT is an elaboration useful for filtering and spectrum contouring, and for compression. But "Digital Audio" is not a synonym for "Compressed Digital Audio". And digitization had to be a precursor for applying an FFT filter to the digitized result. FFT is _not_ used to implement the digitization itself, and is useless on its own with the digitzed sample stream to work on.

</comment><comment><USER13> What about Wavelet transforms: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelet_transform](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelet_transform) ?

I think it's just a total different approach to compression that doesn't use Fourier.

<comment><USER2> It's misleading to say that they don't use Fourier.

The theory around any family of functions useful for compression/feature detection (like wavelets) is going to have the property that they define a Hilbert basis. And the idea of how to conceive of such families of functions and their potential required them being generalized from the specific cases of the Fourier and Laplacian transformations. Moreover wavelets have properties/tradeoffs defined in terms of time and frequency which are couched in terms and based on theories that are derived from this early complex analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> complete space with an orthogonal basis ... without it digital music would be less of our worries (well, if "we" ever existed)</comment>


Singapore SingHealth COI Report: Dealing with IT Security Incidents - <AUTHOR> https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/singhealth-coi-report-16-recommendations-put-forward-in-dealing-11104458 <comment><AUTHOR> The full public report can be read via [1]

[1] [https://www.mci.gov.sg/~/media/mcicorp/doc/report%20of%20the...](https://www.mci.gov.sg/~/media/mcicorp/doc/report%20of%20the%20coi%20into%20the%20cyber%20attack%20on%20singhealth%2010%20jan%202019.pdf?la=en)</comment>


Probability Riddle--are you a "halfer" or a "thirder"? - <AUTHOR> http://www.maproom.co.uk/sb.html

<comment><USER2> The way I read it, the problem is ambiguous.

1/2 is the answer to "What is the probability that the coin landed Heads?"

1/3 is the answer to "What is the average probability of you getting it right if you say the coin landed Heads?"

So I guess that makes me a "Can you rephrase the question?-er"

<comment><USER3> Definitely.

If your goal is to maximize the number of correct guesses _across all questionings_ , then always answer 1/3.

If your goal is to guess the _current coin flip_ as accurately as possible, then always answer 1/2. (I interpret the question as this.)

<comment><USER4> Try thinking about it this way instead:

If the coin comes up tails, you will be asked 1,000,000 times in a row. If the coin comes up heads, you have a 1/1,000,000 chance of being asked.

I wake you up. If you had to guess if the coin was heads or tails, what would you say?

<comment><USER5> There is a 50% chance of the coin landing on Heads, and a 50% of it landing on Tails.

The events in question are not independent. You have a 50% chance of being woken once, and a 50% chance of being woken 1,000,000 times.

Therefore the correct answer is 50%.

<comment><USER6> I guess the question is whether being wrong 1,000,000 times is equivalent to being wrong 1 time.

Sadly, the problem doesn't define that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> On Heads, sleeping beauty gets asked once. On Tails, she gets asked twice. If I walk into the room and see her being asked, it's a better bet that the coin landed tails.

If this experiment is repeated many times, "Tails" will be the right answer twice as often.

You can try this with a friend. As someone pointed out later on in the page, you just answer the first question freely and if it's tails are required to answer the second question the same way as you did the first. Or just answer heads every time--no memory wiping required. If it's really 50/50 then answering heads should get you your answer.

Because the interviewer asks questions in an unbalanced manner, the interviewee actually gets more information just by being asked.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wanna fry your brains? Some time ago I was intrigued to learn about the non- probabilistic variant of the two envelopes problem:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem#A_non- pro...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_envelopes_problem#A_non- probabilistic_variant)

</comment><comment><USER8> In a slightly more evil thought experiment (Harvey Dent might approve), we could make one slight change: if it's heads we interview her once and then let her go, but if it's tails we'll keep on waking her and interviewing her every day for a thousand years.

I think this version makes it clearer: if it's heads she'll be interviewed once, if it's tails she'll be interviewed thousands of times. At any given interview she should assign a very small probability to the possibility of heads.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am a halfer.

    	 1/2      1/2
    	 /  \ 	   |
    	Mon Tue   Mon
    	1/2 1/2    1
    	 T   T     H

I think I have identified the thirder problem. They are assuming that it's Monday:

              Mon     Tue
              3/4	  1/4
              /  \	   |
             2/3 1/3   T
             |    |
             H    T

<comment><USER6> Your first diagram makes it look like something is split between Monday and Tuesday, when it's not split at all. You get both of those "tails" interviews, in sequence. So you get asked two times for the answer when it is tails, and only once when it is heads.

Try doing the experiment several times and see how well you do picking heads every time you "wake up." There's no need to have memory alteration if you set your strategy beforehand. You'll only be right 1/3 of the time if you bet on heads.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a split. Given tails, it is either Monday or Tuesday.

<comment><USER6> I think you may be misreading the question. Given tails, you are asked both Monday AND Tuesday. That's why it gets tricky--you have to double down if it's tails.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like I must be missing something, although I suppose all good paradoxes give you that feeling. If it's heads, she's asked once (Monday) what it was, if tails, she's asked twice (Monday and Tuesday). Therefore, if she has no idea which of the three states she's currently in, there's a 1 in 3 chance it was heads

<comment><USER3> There are three states, but they are not equiprobable. One-half of the time she'll be asked once, and one-half of the time she'll be asked twice. Hence, the one-half argument is because she'll only be in the "once" (Heads) state 1/2 of the time.

<comment><USER10> They are equiprobable. When the coin is flipped, it is 50% likely that it will be heads or tails. When it's tails, Beauty must be interviewed again. Therefore, the number of times she's in the state Monday+tails is equal to the number of times she's in the state Tuesday+tails. However, the number of times she's in the state Monday+tails is equal to the number of times she's in the state Monday+heads. No other possible states can occur, so these three states are equiprobable.

The answer is that at any point in time, absent other information, the coin is equally likely to be heads or tails, but as soon as Beauty receives the new information that she's being interviewed, it changes the known information, making it 1/3 instead of 1/2.

<comment><USER3> The three states are not equiprobable. Suppose that she must say instead which particular state she is most likely to be in: M+T, T+T, or M+H. Well, we know that Heads is chosen 1/2 of the time, so she should choose M+H! After all, the probability she is in M+T is only 1/4, and the probability she is in T+T is only 1/4. (Since Tails is chosen 1/2 of the time.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't know.</comment>


California DMV Rescinds Registration of 16 Uber Driverless Cars, Halts Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/tech/California-DMV-Rescinds-Registration-of-16-Uber-Driverless-Cars-Halts-Pilot-Program-in-San-Francisco-407837815.html <comment><USER2> It won't be enough, of course.

And short of an arrest warrant for Kalanick himself when his bold, "disruptive" experiment inevitably results in actual, real, human carnage (and irreparable heartbreak for the next of kind of those affected) -- most likely nothing will.

</comment><comment><USER3> This feels very much like a political skirmish. Kalanick has run the company this way for a long time, of course, but one wonders if he's attempting to provoke a showdown between the incoming administration (to which he is an adviser) and the political entity that is arguably the epicenter of political opposition to that administration. It certainly sets the stage for a conflict between 'obstructive bureaucrats' on one side and 'impatient inventors' on the other - a theatrical interpretation that may not have a solid basis in reality but which is sufficiently familiar as to give it instant news appeal.</comment>


Understanding Windows 7's 'GodMode' - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-10423985-56.html?tag=digg2

<comment><USER2> This must be some new meaning of the word "understanding" that I'm unfamiliar with. The linked article offers zero explanation, only demonstration.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand your comment.

<comment><USER2> _Understanding My Comment (cnet.com)_

My comment consisted of two sentences terminated with periods. Each sentence expressed an opinion about the article linked at the top of the present page.

I've asked myself for more details on the comment and how it came to be. But so far, I am silent on the topic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "GodMode" is basically just a folder that contains all of the options from Control Panel in a simplified list:

<http://www.edbott.com/weblog/?p=2724>

</comment><comment><USER5> Why are people so excited about this? It's not actually useful, just something the Shell folks left in and gave a weird name. They did that with other stuff too, I think the paint fumes around their new building were getting to them - they named the secret regkey to enable the Superbar (Win7 Taskbar) to be called "EnableCHS" for "Enable Can Haz Superbar"

<comment><USER4> The GodMode name is totally optional, its just the guid that points to the control mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth noting that the prefix "Godmode" in the folder name is not needed, any string will work.

<comment><USER7> I think IDDQD is more appropriate.

<comment><USER8> And IDKFA would enable any panels you hadn't acquired yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why didn't that folder was enabled on my laptop when I bought one?? So much time would have been saved

</comment><comment><USER10> Warning: If you have 64-bit Vista, explorer will crash and restart when trying to draw the folder icon. In other words, do not create this folder on your desktop.

I had to reboot into safe-mode-commandline to get rid of it. :-/

</comment><comment><USER11> Here I was hoping Windows users would finally get the chance to run as root.</comment>


Effort shock: how the Karate Kid ruined the modern world - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndiesattheend.com/updates/?p=1071 <comment><USER2> Right theory, wrong cause.

Our whole society has moved towards a philosophy that children are not allowed to fail. As a result we give people easy "successes" at every opportunity, and don't let people experience the fact that they can fail. The result is people whose self-image is like a balloon - really puffed up but likely to deflate suddenly on facing a real challenge.

Obviously the opposite extreme of beating kids down is not good either. But we need a balance. And we need to drive the message home that some things take work.

<comment><USER3> _Right theory, wrong cause._

Which theory and cause? That the world is ruined and the cause is the Karate Kid? You might have taken it a bit too literally.

 _Our whole society has [...]_

Our whole society probably hasn't. Is your argument seriously "kids these days"? Because I don't think the author is really attempting to engage in a meaningful debate on whether the Rocky montage is or is not the driving factor in our poor ability to estimate effort required. It's just a bit of hyperbole.

<comment><USER4> >Is your argument seriously "kids these days"?*

Maybe btilly's argument is _parents_ these days. It isn't like kids wanted to fail in the past. The difference is that until recently, most kids on the football team _didn't_ win any ribbons or prizes in the past, but now even the chubbiest, least co-ordinated loser is a winner who comes home with a 3rd most improved defensive player ribbon. Similarly, there was a time when an average student got a C. Now, a lackluster effort is often worth a B+.

It makes perfect sense that people will have a distorted view of how difficult success is if they are never allowed to fail, never exposed to "dangerous" playground equipment of their grandparents' day, and who are always allowed to beg an excuse to get extensions or extra test-taking time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The point of concern for me in modern mythology is not the unrealistic amount of effort required to succeed, but the portrayal of risk. If the main character is likeable, good-hearted, and he gives it his all, he never fails. Things just work out for him.

Winston Churchill said, "It is no use saying 'we are doing our best'. You have got to succeed at doing what is necessary." And at the time he said it, it was an unremarkable sentiment echoed in literature. The modern rule seems to be more along the lines of, "If you're nice and put in a decent effort, things will work out."

Some examples: Modern little orphan Annie is met with success after success and kindness after kindness in response to her charm and ingenuity, encountering only minor setbacks; her counterpart in Dickens' _Oliver Twist_ meets nothing but disappointment and injustice for a very long time. The slight justices in the story are only those which are _achieved_ by the characters with a lot of work and risk -- and even they, they often fail. _Titanic's_ Rose drifts into and out of a beautiful adventure, but _Gone With The Wind's_ Scarlet toils and schemes endlessly to gain what she has, even after losing everything through no fault of her own. The central romance of _Casablanca_ does _not_ simply work out as a modern audience would be accustomed to expect; the characters focus on doing what is necessary to achieve their aims.

The older stories have it right. In order to achieve something, one must assess the cost. You can't just do your best and hope. Rather--in the mode of Churchill--you must _do what is necessary_. And failure is familiar even to those who do that and proceed with best effort and intentions. A generation raised on Disney happy endings is learning the wrong lessons about the necessity of planning and perseverence.

<comment><USER6> Thankfully not _all_ modern stories are like that. The notable example on my mind the book series 'Song of Ice and Fire'. So many bad things happen to good people :(

I should probably read Oliver Twist.

<comment><USER7> Stephen King usually deals some pretty harsh blows to his characters as well, and his sympathetic successful characters tend to get where they are by working hard.

GRRM's stuff (most prominently 'Song of Ice and Fire') is just plain bleak. Hard work isn't rewarded, because _nothing_ is. I mean, it's good, and a valuable life lesson, but it's sure not motivational.

<comment><USER6> It may not be motivational, but god it does train you to love and cling to those tiny tiny little victories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112881>

_What's usually the biggest mental hurdle for hackers to transition into entrepreneurs?_

 _pg: Coming to terms with the effort required._

Still, it's important to remember that some people work two full-time jobs and barely make ends meet, while others work roughly the same hours and make millions. Working smart is just as important as working hard. I suppose that's a goal of YC's -- to help us work smart while we work hard.

<comment><USER9> Yep. It takes two things to succeed in your goals: intelligence and persistence.

Intelligence is necessary so you know what to do. Persistence because the universe is messed up and not always consistent, and doing the right things might sometimes not work for no explainable reason (but also because it's impossible to account for all variables and make perfect choices all the time, so we've got to be able to absorb that).

<comment><USER10> I'd throw luck in there too. A little luck goes a long way.

<comment><USER9> That's what persistence handles. It minimizes the effect of luck. What I mean't by the unpredictability of the universe is in fact the luck. To overcome luck, you simply persist. And no amount of intelligence can overcome the unpredictable (because it follows no rules). So that's why you need persistence, as well as intelligence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think the article is worth reading.

According to the author, "Effort Shock" is the phenomenon of realizing something is a lot harder than you thought it was. Then you get depressed about it and give up. This explains failed blogs, failed diets, failed restaurants, etc.

The Karate Kid and other Rocky-esque movies ruined the world because the training montages make it seem like you can go from beginner to expert in a single Survivor song.

I was hoping the author would dig deeper into the subject, but he just repeated the same thing again and again and ended with a plug for his book.

<comment><USER12> Give him a break! Do you know how much more effort it would have taken to dig deeper into the subject?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was in China teaching English when the movie "Kung-Fu Panda" came out. I was surprised at the comments. Most people said something like "I liked the movie but it was unrealistic how easily Panda became a Kung-Fu master." I can't see people in North America coming to the same conclusion.

I think people in the "East" tend to know better than people in the "West" at just how much effort is required to become a master at something.

<comment><USER14> Wait, so, an animated kid's movie about animals that talk and do kung-fu has unrealistic plot elements? Say it ain't so!

<comment><USER15> Heh, I think they meant it in the sense of breaking suspension of disbelief required to find the story engaging. Which sort of illustrates the ingrained effort level calculations we make. Perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> From my perspective, the training montage in Karate Kid demonstrated that it took a LOT of effort, not the little bit this article criticizes it for. Two months of hard work, from sunrise to sunset, to develop muscle memory? It's not the 10,000 hours required to become a world-class expert, but 600+ hours of intensive training is enough to see some pretty decent results. The other movie he criticizes by name, Rocky, was similar. Rocky had 2 months to train for his first fight, and he wasn't starting from scratch.

It's hard to become a world-class expert at anything. You need some combination of latent talent and many thousands of hours of training, hopefully with someone who really understands how to train you effectively. But I don't think either Rocky or the Karate Kid greatly misrepresent the amount of effort it would take for an exceptionally talented individual, with a great trainer, to make the leaps they did.

<comment><USER17> But the whole point is that two months is NOTHING. I ran 50 miles in an ultramarathon last year and it took me 6 months of pretty intense training (one marathon or longer every weekend in june & july). Even my six months were absolutely nothing compared to the guys who've been running for past 20 years. There is NO way I could have done anything during those six months that could have made me anywhere as good as the pros. So yeah, Karate Kid is indeed not possible.

<comment><USER11>
      6 months : 50-mile ultramarathon in real life
      2 months : Winning a city-wide karate championship in a movie

These seem proportional to me.

<comment><USER18> I'm not a runner, but I would assume that unless you're already pretty physically fit or have running experience you can't start from scratch and run an ultra-marathon in six months. Full marathon practice sessions weekly for two months! I would reckon being able to recover between those that quickly is a skill developed over years, even if not necessarily from running.

FWIW, I think the point was that even if the kid took 2 months of "moive time", the audience perceived that time to be only a few minutes. Two months of solid work is a lot, and I don't think a few minutes of film can do justice to that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My father (Moshe Yudkowsky, author: The Pebble and the Avalanche) has a similar thesis about how Star Trek caused the downfall of American engineering:

"Well, Captain, you crashed into that planet there and sheared one warp nacelle completely off. It'll take two months in dock to repair."

"Dammit, Scotty, I need it in five minutes!"

"Okay."

</comment><comment><USER20> I didn't really like the article. It's just summing up what we've known for a good time: success requires effort. I don't buy movies being the cause of it. I did find the choice of Rocky somewhat amusing though, especially when the author mentioned his book taking 8 years (albeit doing other things).

Sylvester Stallone: [Explaining to 'The New York Times' on how he wrote the script for Rocky in three days]: "I'm astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That's how long it took that guy [Gustave Flaubert] to write 'Madame Bovary.' And was that ever on the best-seller list? No. It was a lousy book and it made a lousy movie."

Effort alone doesn't make one successful, either, and in my opinion telling people it's going to take them years to succeed is just as bad as telling them they can succeed in 21 days.

<comment><USER21> If you can stomach the voice of Anthony Robbins, there's a very interesting YouTube video with some background about Stallone and Rocky: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2AXGz4rAQg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't entirely agree with the author. It all depends on how you interpret the films. For me, the karate kid did not make expertise in karate look easy, but simply possible. It is important for people to realize that, given the appropriate training system, they can achieve anything, and that no domain is the exclusive preserve of the very gifted.

In my case, the film motivated me to put in the necessary hours, and to pass my black belt in shotokan karate in my early thirties, after eight years of almost daily training, the equivalent of about 5000 hours at that stage.

I don't think I was ever under the impression it was going to be easy; but I always did hold on to the belief that it was possible. So all in all, these films were a positive influence.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is a fine example of mediocrity, making things sound a hundred times more difficult than they really are for the sake of making a point.

The blog post is so badly riddled with fallacies that it becomes hard to figure out what the author tries to convey. An example: the author mentions that you can diet for months, with incredible effort, and still not lose weight. He's basically appealing to the reader's emotions, making you remember that last failed diet in which you ended up gaining weight. But guess what? You DIDN'T work hard enough! That's all there's to it. You just have the impression that you did. I can say this from experince, after failing many times and finally realizing what it takes.

Articles like this support the invisible walls we create for ourselves, for work, for our diets, for our addictions.

<comment><USER24> "You DIDN'T work hard enough!"

Isn't that the sole point of the article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The concepts of the article are pretty foreign to me, so much so that it sounds to me like and individual who is blaming society for their ills.

My life experience has been completely the opposite of this summation. When I was a kid I was mediocre at everything, it was not until my adult life that I became exceptional, now things come easy to me. People look at me as kind of a daVinci (not claiming I have had anywhere near the impact as him) but the point is, a jack of all trades and a good enough master of them as well. I am never the best, but I am above average on almost anything I take interest in.

Anyway, wrapping this up into a point, with the ability to master anything, I stopped looking at failure as failure and looked at it as a proven iteration that does not work. I know it is cliche to say, but perception is reality and if you have a negative perception that will manifest itself in ones actions.

One of the big issues is that the human mind, unless trained, is bound to a simple understanding of time. Within that simple understanding is an internal pressure to race the clock. When one looks at time is a more spatial manner then they start to see failure as less about being set back x amount of time and rather that though the distance traveled will require some adjustment one has still traveled a distance and made progress.

I cannot stress enough that attaining the right perception can be the difference between success and resignation to defeat. The greatest key to attaining that perception, above all else is creativity.

</comment><comment><USER26> There's a clip from southpark that has to do with this topic. Hope you guys don't mind. <http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/185666/>

</comment><comment><USER27> That's called a montage! <http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/185666>

</comment><comment><USER28> I like this article; the message really resonates with me. For instance, I write music. But a good three minute song could take me days to write (and most musical artists usually take way longer than that). I like to animate, but a minute of animation could take even longer than a minute of song. Similarly, writing a trivial game or a simple app just takes way longer than it should.

But I don't think that this sort of complete inability to gauge how long something should take to do has anything to do with the Karate Kid. Instead, I think the ubiquity of complex works makes the effort required non obvious, and even difficult, to see.

Right now, I'm hearing music on the radio, typing on Hacker News, running Google Chrome on Ubuntu, with a book next to me. Incredible amounts of work went into each of these things. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for me to fathom the amount of hours put into Ubuntu, for instance. It feels sort of like our inability to comprehend huge numbers, or the Universe - and I kind of feel like there might even be a tie in to that old Wired article about the 'Monkeysphere' somewhere. The omnipresence of complex creative works makes for two related effects: we only use those works for relatively short periods of time, and we come to take them for granted.

Surely before we were totally immersed in a world full of the products of work, we took more time to appreciate the details around us. But now we are essentially incapable of doing that. I wouldn't say that that is a bad thing; it's just a change. But it does lead to problems like the article mentioned where we can't properly understand how much work some things take.

The other issue I mentioned is that we only use these things for short periods of time. No matter how familiar we become with a game or web app, we can not fathom the amount of detail put in to that app by the creator. I'll use the example of a game: every time we play through, we will only see one path through the game. But the game creator had to account for _every_ path (just like the creators of Ubuntu had to account for someone doing any possible action within the OS). So there are several orders of magnitude more depth in the game (or OS) then I could ever truly appreciate just by playing it.

I think that this sort of analysis can be extrapolated to all sorts of other creative mediums as well. We read a book in an hour, where the author probably labored an hour just choosing the right words for a sentence. There would be no way to appreciate that kind of work unless we spent ridiculous amounts of time reading, but we don't - like I said, we only use things for (relatively) short periods of time.

You probably read this comment in a minute or two, or maybe didn't even read it at all and just went down to the end to find the tl;dr. But it took me maybe 30 minutes to write. So there isn't one. Go read it.

</comment><comment><USER29> This guy is the editor of cracked.com!

...actually I don't know whether to be impressed or horrified.

</comment><comment><USER30> We need to talk about something more important here:

How they ruined the franchise:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XY8amUImEu0&feature=pyv&#...</a>

<comment><USER31> I don't understand why it's called "Karate" Kid, when he's in China and learning kung fu...

<comment><USER30> "I don't understand why it's called "Karate" Kid, when he's in China and learning kung fu..."

It seems like they are just using the name to get people to watch the movie, which is a completely different story.

There is also a small scene where they make fun of the original.

<comment><USER30> why the downvotes, it was on-topic and true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What if the main character was some karate-prodigy that didn't know it until he found his master?

This is not completely unheard of.

<comment><USER33> If it's not completely unheard of, you'll be able to cite examples...?

<comment><USER32> BJ Penn (now a UFC champion) trained in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu for 4 years before he won the world championships. Most people take 8-10 years to receive a black belt, and then a year or two to become competitive on the world level.

I don't think its unheard of that a very talented kid could find a fantastic teacher and excel in a city-wide tournament.</comment></comment></comment>


KeyBox: Web-Based SSH Access and Key Management - <AUTHOR> http://www.sshkeybox.com/ <comment><USER2> On a side note... We've largely solved the "key distribution" problem by storing public SSH keys in LDAP. OpenSSH 6.6+ (I think) has a AuthorizedKeysCommand that can execute a script. We have a script that does an LDAP search to pull the public keys for the incoming user.

</comment><comment><USER3> Requires Java.

<comment><USER2> There's nothing wrong with server side Java...

Quick glance through the code doesn't reveal any major risks, actually seems to be fairly well written. Author seems to like to write a lot of static methods/utility classes rather than rely on composition using dependency injection... not exactly a modern development style but it's good enough. Author avoids needless abuse of software patterns. It'd be pretty easy to do a security audit on this code base.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Unofficial Wunderlist API client library and CLI, written in go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robdimsdale/wl <comment><USER2> Do they still have sync problems ? I stopped using Wunderlist about 2 years ago since the sync wasn't reliable (I think I had a web, a Windows and an Android client, only the web client was reliable).

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't noticed any issues with sync. Perhaps in part because they switched from an undocumented API to the publicly-documented one about a year ago.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Quickly suggest restaurants and time to meet anyone and make plans - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/in/app/orgaknife-make-dinner-plans/id1339625101 <comment><AUTHOR> Key features include:

\- Search restaurants anywhere in the world

\- Restaurant recommendations within the event for a group of people rather than for individuals

\- Avoids paradox of choice by limiting only 3 suggestions

\- Open map with directions to the restaurants in one click

Looking forward to your feedback...</comment>