The physical beauty of a woman can be measured? - <AUTHOR> using AI ? <comment><USER2> Why woman?

Of course you can come near the percieved beauty of people, just take a good sample set with ratings and let it learn.

In general though, people will also disagree about beauty and luckily, when you get to know the most amazing people, they will appear much more attractive to you than just their physiology.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm going to have to go with, "Who is Scarlett Johansson?"

But in all seriousness, I think AI would still need some type of way to understand what it is measuring and what it means. Is the physical beauty determined by her measurements? And who sets those measurements? Men? Women? In essence, what defines what "beauty" is. How can beauty truly be measured objectively?

<comment><USER4> Even within a culture and ethnic group (and time period), beauty standards can vary considerably. Outside of those there can be large differences.

There are however heuristics that may work cross culturally. For example clear skin, and average sized generally symmetric facial features are generally considered attractive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You're going to get into trouble with the PC Police when trying to build an AI Hot or Not.

Just look at the Microsoft AI chatbot who turned racist.

</comment><comment><USER6> No. It must be felt--emotionally.</comment>


Saturday – a fun way to capture and share video (iOS) - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/saturday/id1242436347 <comment><USER2> "Saturday is the best and most fun way to share video with your friends and the world around you!"

Hmmm it'll take a lot to convince people of that. Downloaded it and so far it's an alright copy of Snapchat with maybe one or two 'new' features.</comment>


Zen Coding – a new way of writing HTML and CSS code - <AUTHOR> http://www.digimantra.com/tips/zen-coding-writing-html-css-code/

<comment><USER2> I really hope people don't actually use div#id</comment>


IOS Dev Weekly - <AUTHOR> http://iosdevweekly.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It is just starting out, but looks promising! Looking forward to the first issue.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this! Hopefully it will be a useful recap of the week.</comment></comment>


Why shouldn't China ban Tesla? - <AUTHOR>
 * Tesla collects tick-by-tick driving data from Chinese Tesla drivers.<p>* Tesla knows and has access to the identity of their chinese drivers and where they are traveling to, tick by tick.<p>* Tesla performs OTA updates initiated from their HQ in the US, directly to their Chinese drivers' cars.<p>* Tesla EVEN proposes to drive their cars automatically, without human intervention!<p>Why shouldn't China ban tesla? <comment><USER2> The U.S. mindsets doesn't apply to the Chinese government.

Chinese government has banned countless things from the world for one reason. They believe those things will jeopardize their ruling.

They had banned fb, Twitter, bullied google, youtube, because if Chinese citizens criticize the government on those platforms or see the truth, they will have no good control. They fear their own people more than anything else. Do they care about people's privacy ? Especially with that intense surveillance? Is any high tech data worth protecting if the data was stolen in the first place?

Will an electronic car jeopardize their ruling?

<comment><AUTHOR> The same applies to the US. It would be extremely naive to think otherwise.

The US government/congress has one thing going for its ruling (and global reach): its control over all globally significant media platforms. The most recent example being that the congress could invite tech companies to testify before the congress and accuse them of political biases without much evidence ("why did Google censor conservative contents? My father can't see my political ads!"). If Tiktok were to succeed in the US, for the first time ever US lawmakers would not be able to exert influence on a social network with real reach to the US demographic. That would be terrifying to U.S lawmakers.

Separately, the comparison between China banning Google and US banning huawai, DJI, tiktok is moot: China set their (extremely authoritarian, no denying of that) rules, Google complied initially, censored search but decided it was too much and pulled out. In other words, regardless of the merits of the rules, China was applying the same rules to all companies. Google decided to not comply, others did not.

U.S. at the moment outright target specific companies, without specifying any rules being violated and in the process leverage its tech dominance in the private sector (app stores) to bully foreign companies to sell.

It's unfortunate that US has effective monopoly over tech platforms. Even the EU is toothless facing US in this space (GDPR).

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh by the way, isn't Tesla an AI, mobility, computer-on-wheel company? Surely that's no less dangerous than DJI or Huawai?</comment></comment></comment>


Day 25: It's all about the users - <AUTHOR> http://theaspiringprogrammer.com/day-25-its-all-about-the-users/ <comment><USER2> > I'm in the process of getting a lawyer to look at my Terms of Service and > Privacy Policy documents prior to any onboarding.

I don't think that's really necessary for onboarding users and not very important if you are not accepting payments.

Have you incorporated yet?

Great idea keeping track of your progress through blog posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> You may be right. Though, as much as I complain about not being able to show the MVP to users, waiting to be sure feels like the lesser of two evils; part of the problem is that I don't even know what risks I'd be running by not getting an attorney's counsel.

No incorporation yet. I'm hoping a lawyer can help me determine if that's necessary, too.

Thanks. I'm glad you checked it out :)</comment></comment>


How to get press for a startup (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/user-acquisition-for-hackers/how-to-get-press-for-your-startup-the-complete-guide-b79c57318113#.8gvv4jvzn <comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, didn't expect to see this on the front page.

If you enjoyed this I have a bit more content on user acquisition that is a similar actionable, step-by-step style.

SEO: [https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step- by-s...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/seo-is-not-hard-a-step-by-step-seo- tutorial-for-beginners-that-will-get-you-ranked-every-single-1b903b3ab6bb)

Instagram: [https://austenallred.com/the-growth-hackers-guide-to- instagr...](https://austenallred.com/the-growth-hackers-guide-to- instagram-3f084d7d2d0a)

Pinterest: [https://austenallred.com/how-to-growth-hack- pinterest-699d29...](https://austenallred.com/how-to-growth-hack- pinterest-699d295909b1#.pi1xj8dig?utm_campaign=Submission&utm_medium=Community&utm_source=GrowthHackers.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Though the article is 2 years all, it is still relevant good thorough read and a great piece of knowledge, thank you for sharing. Having a talk with our PR manager recently about newsworthy events interesting for media like launch, update, new cool features etc and what to do between them to stay on top, we came to confusion (again) that content like research, analytics, tests, content cards etc should cover those gaps and the questions we still have is whether to pitch it to media as an exclusive content for them or put in on your blog, create dedicated landing page designed for this content and share it with media? I know that it works both ways for different companies, but as a marketer I am more interested in the second option, while PR likes the exclusivity of course. What are your best practices to stay on top while there are no real product news in-between?

<comment><AUTHOR> These are different things in my mind. Content marketing is much more sustainable and is a slow-moving day-to-day process, while getting press is a quick hit and big boost that dies very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you like this article, check out the book Secret Sauce: [https://www.secretsaucenow.com](https://www.secretsaucenow.com).

Same author. Expanded content.

</comment><comment><USER4> > The Press Kit, basically a .zip file of all of the content for the reporter > to use

Don't do that. As a reporter, would you want a .zip file dropped into your inbox everytime someone pitches their company?

Build a simple website, use dropbox, or one of the many saas that make it simple to build a professional press kit, e.g. my own [https://presskithero.com](https://presskithero.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> You only send that after they request it

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess with all the scrapper APIs one should expect a site that scrapes pages just to find contact data and then provides you with a form to mass email them all. I'd use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I actually think they are mediocre at best a lot of the time, though Buzzstream is the best and is building out a solid database. I usually personally use Mechanical Turk to find the real email addresses, but some human rights group got bothered that I would recommend a service that doesn't provide a living wage and gave me hell for two years. So I took that part out publicly, but it's still in the book version.</comment></comment>


The change in America's debt by presidential term - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/11/daily-chart <comment><USER2> Interesting. It seems that only Truman's debt-cutting is responsible for 'outweighing' Obama's dramatic increase in the debt (relative to GDP). Even Reagan and Clinton increased debt relative to GDP.

That being said, this definitely over-represents the increase in debt when a president increases the absolute debt while the economy shrinks/stagnates, and vice versa.

<comment><USER3> My understanding of the recent debt is that it is caused less by increased spending and more by a dramatic drop in revenue because of the economic collapse since 2008.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Eyeballing the chart, it looks like the debt change was following its own function irrespective of the president.

<comment><USER5> The ordering is not chronological.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty sickening. 90% top tax rate though - that's pretty ridiculous.</comment>


How to get a politician to say just what you want to hear - T-A https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/03/22/how-to-get-a-politician-to-say-just-what-you-want-to-hear/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Eventually we will need digital signatures to discourses and interviews.</comment>


Patching Is Hard - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2017-05/2017-05-12.html <comment><USER2> One of my favorite stories involving patching and security vulnerabilities comes from Jonathan Garrett at Insomniac Games:

"Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal was an online title that shipped without the ability to patch either code or data. Which was unfortunate.

The game downloads and displays an End User License Agreement each time it's launched. This is an ascii string stored in a static buffer. This buffer is filled from the server without checking that the size is within the buffer's capacity.

We exploited this fact to cause the EULA download to overflow the static buffer far enough to also overwrite a known global variable. This variable happened to be the function callback handler for a specific network packet. Once this handler was installed, we could send the network packet to cause a jump to the address in the overwritten global. The address was a pointer to some payload code that was stored earlier in the EULA data.

Valuable data existed between the real end of the EULA buffer and the overwritten global, so the first job of the payload code was to restore this trashed data. Once that was done things were back to normal and the actual patching work could be done.

One complication is that the EULA text is copied with strcpy. And strcpy ends when it finds a 0 byte (which is usually the end of the string). Our string contained code which often contains 0 bytes. So we mutated the compiled code such that it contained no zero bytes and had a carefully crafted piece of bootstrap asm to un-mutate it.

By the end, the hack looked like this:

1\. Send oversized EULA

2\. Overflow EULA buffer, miscellaneous data, callback handler pointer

3\. Send packet to trigger handler

4\. Game jumps to bootstrap code pointed to by handler

5\. Bootstrap decodes payload data

6\. Payload downloads and restores stomped miscellaneous data

7\. Patch executes

Takeaways: Include patching code in your shipped game, and don't use unbounded strcpy."

source: [http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/194772/dirty_game_deve...](http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/194772/dirty_game_development_tricks.php)

<comment><USER3> This is my favorite comment. I would like to propose an additional takeaway; validate all content downloaded from the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > we have to get updated database software from a vendor, and to install it we > have to update the API the billing software uses

And so why haven't you updated the API the billing software uses, long before now? Why haven't you updated the database software before now?

CIOs create risk when they don't prioritize keeping their products up to date. When you can't even install security updates without breaking your installations, _you have a problem._ And your problem is more than some technical problem, it's a cultural problem.

Yes it's risky to update a large number of machines. But as a CIO, it is _your job_ to mitigate that risk. There's no such real thing as "unexpected security fixes" in this day and age. They are entirely expected, and if you cannot deal with predictable occurrences then you are quite simply incompetent.

<comment><USER5> I think the reason that the billing software's API hasn't been updated is right there in it's name: "billing". Billing is one of those things in an organization that can't suffer much downtime. Nobody wants to be that guy who who endangered revenue because there was no possible way that the security patch should have been able to break the billing software.

Does billing work? Yes? Then don't mess with it. Billing is only to be messed with when the cost of not messing with it is that it will never work again and all prior data will be lost forever. Nothing short of that risk is sufficient justification to touch anything related to billing.

I'm being hyperbolic there, but conservatism around systems that presently work shouldn't be terribly surprising, something like billing especially.

<comment><USER4> > Does [a service with high uptime requirements] work? Yes? Then don't mess > with it

Ah yes, the "don't fix what ain't broken" canard. And it would be completely understandable if we didn't understand that, in general, the best way to ensure overall uptime is to encourage small, frequent updates over large, infrequent updates, because change is inevitable and the risk of the update is proportional to its size.

I understand that you're being hyperbolic, but that kind of conservatism is born of ignorance. Expecting CIOs to be educated about mitigating risk in the systems they are in control of is not a high expectation for someone in a CIO role.

<comment><USER6> A lot of this is a social issue too - it's IT professionals over-committing with SLAs and being too passive when it comes to discussing terms to set realistic RPOs for fragile systems when the resources aren't available for proper patch testing.

It's very difficult to explain to end-operators of systems the importance of having things like redundancies, test systems, and the ability to have downtime for patching, but it's something that IT Professionals need to be way better about. It's very tempting to throw out goals like 99.9% uptime, but many operations run with an employee bandwidth that in no way can support such a goal for the number of systems they need to deal with.

To be fair, sometimes the end-operator needs require some absolutely antiquated pieces of technology that rely on voodoo like rituals to keep the systems running, and trying to shift organizations off this technology is the diplomatic equivalent of a land war in Russian during winter, and IT administrators [1]want to avoid getting into such a battle.

Hopefully, this Ransomware outbreak will help provide disruption to such pieces of technology that are stuck in the past, but part of it is going to require that the new technology makers be willing to respect why so many organizations hang on to older technology. (This tends to revolve around pricing models) I think there is going to be a lot of opportunity to review major systems that have big restrictions on legacy software and hardware and overtake the incumbents that aren't willing to shore up their products.

[1] Edit: removed too many mixed metaphors from one sentence O.O

<comment><USER7> > _(This tends to revolve around pricing models)_

Care to elaborate? Do you mean that newer software comes with mandatory maintenance costs that users are unable to unwilling to bear? In that case, paying for security patches and maintenance should be palatable to customers in this context, shouldn't it? Or did you mean something else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The vulnerability used by this worm could have been mitigated by disabling SMBv1, hardening the machine, network segmentation .. the list goes on. If you couldn't patch, you could have still prevented this worm from impacting you organisation.

It's a case of inadequate security management and negligence.

</comment><comment><USER9> "We've got to install MS17-010; these are serious holes."

"We can't just yet. We've been testing it for the last two weeks; it breaks the shipping label software in 25% of our stores."

But in this case its bollocks. The patch is easy and doesn't fuck too many things.

at $work, we've had the same issue. We have three estates Windows, Linux and some solaris. The Linux estate is patched within hours of upstream fixes. Staged, starting in dev, and bubbling up to prod.

Windows, I've discovered has auto updates turned off. The servers are not in config management, or monitored.

Its not because patching is hard, its because its not seen as important, despite being repeatedly hit with cryptolocker malware.

Its just utterly pathetic.

<comment><USER10> Any insight on how this is going with Solaris? The boot environment feature seems like it should ease the uncertainty of patching a bit.

<comment><USER9> Its not new solaris, so I have no idea what the mechanism is, we just run the patch and reboot...

<comment><USER10> Ah. I believe it's Solaris 11+ where this is best supported.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He is right, but patching is a single layer in your defenses. Where was network segmentation? What about IPS/IDS?

You would hope one layer of failure doesn't take out an entire business.

<comment><USER12> The issue is non-technical people don't understand what those are and care even less what some IT nerd is complaining about. The more intelligent ones with more sociable IT staff might even be brought to agree in principle, but talk about taking the network offline for serious upgrades (and the money to buy equipment/software/extra staff for said upgrades) and the door slams shut.

On a micro-scale, I got my sister (a political science major now working for the UN) an SSD for her aging HD-based MacBook two years ago and offered to install it for her, do a complete system transfer. She was all gung-ho until I said I'd need to take her laptop offline for a few hours to do the transfer. She'd rather deal with firefox taking 30 seconds to load, and waiting minutes to switch tabs, instead of taking a few hours on a weekend for an upgrade. She simply thinks she can't be out of contact with her coworkers for that period of time.

Sadly I think she's more representative of the general population than anyone here is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you upgrade early and often, life will be tough but consistently so. If the operation is big, roll the patches. If you know there's a problem ... it should never take 3 months to fix. If it takes you 3 months to deploy a software update you have 2010 procedures in 2017.

<comment><USER14> > Upgrade early and often.

This is my motto. I have the suspicion that Microsoft and other companies don't QA older software as hard as their latest & greatest.

Some folks say I'm crazy but I auto-approve all security updates in WSUS. In 5 years at my company, updates have only broken important software twice. In both cases I just uninstalled the updates with WSUS and everything was okay. In today's environment, I feel that the risk of not patching is greater than the risk of patching—even when you consider buggy software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the problem is more that budgets don't take into account for enough integration testing, packaging, or automated patching to support enterprise environments.

There was a time when there were fewer threats to Internet based infrastructures and skipping patches didn't matter so much. Those times have passed and there are now significant threats arrayed against Internet systems. Additionally, commerce and government services are now predominately Internet based, putting far more at risk than before.

It's time to start putting more money into fixing the patching problem. I'm really tired of fixing broken systems that I was trying to patch. No good deed goes unpunished...

</comment><comment><USER16> Ransomware is crippling hospitals. People's lives are on the line. And the tech community is in a frenzy of excuses, whining, and hypothetical bullshit about shipping labels. Sagely pointing out to each other that hospitals aren't tech companies, like only tech companies know how to use computers.

Sometimes this industry disgusts me. "X is hard" \-- what the fuck is your profession? Easy shit? Fine, step aside.

We have let our civilization down. Whining that X is hard is not going to fix anything. Take the week off and put in some pro bono consulting time with any nearby organization that got hit. Make things better. Fuck your blog posts.

<comment><USER17> Sorry, I didn't catch where your volunteer shifts are happening?

In the very first sentence you shame commentators for presuming to be more competent than hospital staff, then you go on to suggest riding in on a silver steed to bless them with your powerful expertise.

Frankly, a bunch of startup hackers showing up and trying to play hero is not going to be any more effective than this blog post. This doesn't get solved with arrogant cowboy antics, and it doesn't get solved in a week even by seasoned experts. You have no knowledge of the ecosystem of devices operating on their network, and the constellation of concerns they must balance, and thus you can't offer anything but the most general of advice with which their IT staff is certainly already familiar.

If you really want to make a difference, go apply for a job there and put in a few years of work—that is likely to have impact. Short of that, there's worse things you can do than write a blog post; at least a few of them are probably providing useful perspectives to those actually tasked with solving this problem long-term.

<comment><USER16> My shifts are happening in two elementary schools, three urgent care clinics, and a local nonprofit's office. Why did you think I was speaking hypothetically? I've already taken the next two weeks off. When I'm done with this batch I've got more to do.

Your entire second paragraph is bullshit. The affected are _being_ affected because their existing technology deployments are broken. This isn't just some nightmare that happens to everyone, _and_ it isn't some abstract structural issue that only affects large organizations. There are a lot of groups getting screwed here. They need help. If they didn't need help, they wouldn't have got hit. I am helping.

You can sit by and armchair-quarterback the incident response, that's fine. We don't need you anyway. Useful perspectives can go pound sand. There is work to be done.

<comment><USER17> The OP is talking about big orgs, so it's kind of a dick move to hijack the conversation and proclaim your agenda to be morally superior. You don't have to put other people down to make your point. It's childish, counter- productive, and you leave yourself open to criticism that your work is also The Wrong Thing because you're not volunteering for some greater cause like helping sick and dying people in developing nations. But I guess if a desire to be better than everyone else motivates you to do some good then I guess it's not a total loss?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Patching is Hard", yes but the brick wall of a massive cyberattack is harder. It's not an excuse, not patching is a bet, its people saying "This is difficult so I'm going to skip it, in exchange for increasing the chance of a huge amount of difficulty in the future"

I bet all the hospitals are really glad their managers/IT staff avoided the difficulty and small uptime impact of patching now ...

Hopefully budgets will be allocated in the NHS at least to prevent future incidents like this.

</comment><comment><USER19> I would say that patching is maddeningly difficult in the absence of automated end-to-end tests. It's much easier with those in place.

<comment><USER20> Absolutely. And for a flaw in your OS you need an OS with automated end-to-end tests. Good luck!

(Speaking as someone who's trying to imagine OSs with automated end-to-end tests: [https://github.com/akkartik/mu](https://github.com/akkartik/mu))

<comment><USER21> I have automated end-to-end OS testing. It's basically a small bash script which spins up a number of VMs in various network configurations (since my OS is only useful in a cluster, as it provides Ceph and a cloud API to KVM). One of the fully automated tests is even an upgrade test where the previous release is installed and then the currently built version is constructed into a patch, installed, and verified that all the VMs it started pre-upgrade are still running, then builds some more VMs (these are nested VMs since the test systems themselves are VMs). It's pretty simple, it starts by installing the ISO and driving the systems over their console.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Microsoft used to do decent testing of their updates.

In the last two years, they seem to be saving money by letting their users to the testing.

When a patch comes out we need to weigh the unpatched security risk vs the risk of the patch breaking things.

<comment><USER23> Microsoft, training the next generation of operations teams to use staging environments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Nice to see a sober reaction to all the victim blaming that's been going on. Reality is eventually more complex than some commenters would like to acknowledge, even on HN.

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://marc.info/?l=patchmanagement](http://marc.info/?l=patchmanagement)

</comment><comment><USER26> It's certainly an argument in favour of adopting PaaS wherever possible, but then you're making the assumption that the people running your PaaS are competent...

<comment><USER27> Operational compentency _is_ something which a sufficiently well-funded and -capitalised organisation can accomplish.

Though there are systemic risks involved ehre as well.

I'm quite torn, myself.</comment></comment>


Google Article Rich Snippets Guide Updated for AMP - <AUTHOR> http://www.seoskeptic.com/google-article-rich-snippets-guide-updated-for-amp/ <comment><AUTHOR> I thought this post would be relevant since this seems to be an active discussion on here today:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10729464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10729464)

Aaron is also one of my favorite bloggers in this space, if you are into structured data / search etc you should def check his website out.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a way to see only technical posts on HN? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I wrote a greasemonkey userscript for Firefox to reduce the number of non- technical articles. It works alright, I never meant it to be perfect, just get rid of the stuff that never is fun for me to read or is about topics that come up too often.

[https://github.com/ErikHarmon/hncleanse/blob/master/hncleans...](https://github.com/ErikHarmon/hncleanse/blob/master/hncleanse.user.js)

<comment><USER3> I did something very similar with dotjs before I realized it was introducing a 1-5 second delay in the loading of every webpage. How's the performance of this script?

<comment><USER2> It's imperceptible to me. The number of search terms is pretty low. My regex isn't as sophisticated as it could be because the script started as a simple terms list using indexof, so it could be improved a little bit as more terms are added.

Mainly I filter by entire sites, which helps a lot. I won't miss many technical articles by filtering nytimes, and if I do, I can live with that.

I'll take PRs or suggestions, this was a ten minute project to scratch an itch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The political and current-events stuff is very interesting, and I tend to get distracted!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, there's so much great content here, sometimes I too seem to not get to the purely tech stuff. You may be interested in lobste.rs. I've found that they have nearly the same tech content, but lobste.rs is tech only.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for reminding me about lobste.rs. Last time I checked it out there weren't many comments which didn't inspire me to leave a comment. My favorite part of HN was the potential discussions to be had and its great to see lobste.rs now has more comments than what I used to remember.

Odd, I was sure I had a lobste.rs account but it says my username is invalid. Do you have an invite available?

<comment><USER6> This is my first time hearing about lobste.rs - care to explain what it's purpose is (aside from a tech spin on HN)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I guess it wouldn't be too hard to implement a basic app that would allow you to do this. HN has an API, fetch data, then filter by keywords or links. If I have some time,i'll hack something.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, but it takes effort and cooperation: flag the political stories.

<comment><USER9> I've flagged this comment because I disagree with it.

EDIT: Let me elaborate: This use of flagging, like the suggested flagging of political articles is an abuse of the HN flagging system. If you do not feel that a story is upvote-worthy, don't upvote it. I, and most other users, have never flagged anything. Using flags as some sort of ersatz downvote to enforce your personal preferences is abuse of the system.

<comment><USER10> What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about _politics_ , or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tags would be useful.</comment>


A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1102783

<comment><USER2> I've had asthma my whole life. Just a few years ago I realized that my nighttime asthma problems were caused by acid reflex and I stopped taking my asthma medicine and replaced it with acid reducers. My asthma medicine wasn't helping. The most important thing now is that I sleep on my left side.

This is something I figured out myself based on Googling. None of my doctors ever suggested it.

I am not sure if this was my entire problem my whole life or if its just gotten worse recently and that's why I notice it more.

<comment><USER3> You need to change doctors. Any doctor worth their salt would have made this diagnosis. Seriously.

You should see a gastroenterologist for proper treatment of your reflux.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interesting timing, my friend's son was recently hospitalized (in the ICU) with a severe asthma attack. Very scary, and a week later he's still in the hospital -- but improving and out of the ICU.

His treatment? O2 and a nebulizer of some sort.

I can't help but think that with how common asthma is, that we'd be further along in treating it than a 5 or 6 day stay in a hospital for a bad flare up.

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting. In many ways we are still in the dark ages of medicine (treating symptoms). In the future we will know the causes of asthma, and directly fix them.

<comment><USER6> I would argue that the dark ages of medicine were the dark ages. Yes, we might still be tilting at windmills in our battle with symptoms, but this is no dark ages, rife with misinformation, superstition and a complete lack of records.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. Our ignorance will invariably overshadow our knowledge, the universe is too vast and too complex for it to be otherwise. But we shouldn't let perfection be the enemy of good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even better would be a cost analysis of what each of those visits ran the patient.

<comment><USER9> That would certainly be different, but by no means better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> _A Patient with Asthma Seeks Medical Advice in 1828, 1928, and 2012_

Seems like his asthma didn't prevent him for living for almost two centuries!</comment>


Show HN: A.I Bitcoin price predictions in your wallet - <AUTHOR> https://getportal.co/earlyaccess <comment><USER2> If the AI price predictions were any good then the creator would trade using them and sell them to others.

<comment><USER3> Yes, that would be the logical conclusion of all these types of products.

However, but if more people use this then the prediction will become more likely to be true. E.g. predict price goes up -> users starts buying -> price does go up.

Would require _a lot_ of users to affect price this way though I suppose...

<comment><USER4> Not to be narcissistic, but I can guarantee no whales are coming on anytime soon. Unless you control the keys and it supports cold storage, don't think it'll take off.

<comment><AUTHOR> it is totally non custodial. target audience is prosumer, not a whale

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks fantastic.

But I can't in good conscience recommend anyone trust their Bitcoins to any wallet product that's not completely open source.

Hopefully it'll be open sourced sooner rather than later.

If your proprietary AI models run locally, I'd recommend separating them out into a separate process which paranoid users [1] can run as a network service on another machine.

A bit of business model advice: Don't give away the AI models as a binary blob. Instead, host the AI models on your own server. Make them your proprietary "secret sauce" your users pay a monthly fee for. The models are harder to reverse engineer if they're remote API's. Plus you get recurring revenue and can potentially do analytics.

[1] IMHO, _everyone_ should be paranoid about security when it comes to high- value Bitcoin private keys.

</comment><comment><USER6> Can't see any company information, or location of domicile anywhere. It's a financial product and some admission of propriety is required

Furthermore is this a rebrand of a product? [https://www.cryptonaut.org/](https://www.cryptonaut.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> How far has you gone and what's your prediction model. Would it be an open source project ?

<comment><AUTHOR> models are not open source, they are proprietary, but anyone can backtest, we timestamp it. The wallet/exchange is going to be open at some point

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool. What is the source of price predictions? Is the model open source?

<comment><AUTHOR> Third party models are not open source, they are proprietary, but anyone can backtest, we timestamp it

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool looking tools! A few questions: When will the atomic swaps be operational? What will a swap cost? What's your business model? Will you charge institutional customers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Swaps are already operational in testnet and we demo'd them at various public presentations. Its currently in beta testing and will be launching in a few weeks into the app. Re: business model, product is free to use but there is a maker/taker commission in swaps. In addition, some users can run the node for swaps, that generates passive income without any hardware investments.

<comment><USER9> Re: Running swap nodes: sign me up. I have spare capacity.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, please visit [https://getportal.co](https://getportal.co) and join waitlist

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really like the interface, but think the atomic swaps are the real key here. Is there any market maker / counterparty finding application for atomic swaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed.real value is Layer 2 swaps that are faster than coinbase without custody

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks cool. Any pointers where can we read about your price prediction models?

<comment><AUTHOR> a whitepaper will be publicly available soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks promising. When will the white paper be available?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, coming out end of the month

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Super great. I think this will be a game changer!

<comment><USER14> yeah, sounds exiting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sounds promising, looking forward to the wp!

</comment><comment><USER16> Promising. UI looks great, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I dont actually care about predictions. the atomic swaps look fire af

<comment><AUTHOR> its also much needed, considering geopolitical risks to bitcoin

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> great looking product!</comment>


Google updates Docs, Sheets and Slides with new collaboration features - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/16/google-updates-docs-sheets-and-slides-with-new-collaboration-features <comment><USER2> > To be fair, this may be useful whenever you want to save a canonical version > of a document, though I'm not sure this was near the top of most-requested G > Suite features.

You're dead wrong there. Document version control with explicit checkpoints has been a major missing feature since Google introduced the change history. Its absence meant that you had a platform which combined the speed, stability, and interactivity of a heavy web-based app with the retro delight of managing multiple copies of the same file with names like "Version 1.3-final- beforeSandrasTweaks-APPROVED-legaltosignoff", only stored in the cloud with no central place to keep track of them all.

This feature, if it's what I think it is, has been a long time coming and very welcome for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> How about improving Google DOc's screen utilization? On a typical wide monitor, half the screen is taken up with the OS taskbar, Chrome's menus, Doc's menu, the doc paper margin, etc, etc

Its horrible even with full-screen mode

<comment><USER4> You can hide both Google Doc's menu (the double up arrow button on the far right of the toolbar) and the ruler (under the View menu). Then when you go full screen it's just the toolbar at the top -- which is not bad in my mind, but yes it would be better if you could hide the toolbar too.

<comment><USER5> You can. It's literally "View > Full Screen". (The Docs menu, not the browser menu.)

And if you combine that with your browser's full screen mode... all you see is 100% document.

Perfect for when you want total concentration on writing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Related question: Has anyone here used Dropbox Paper and Google Docs? How do they compare?

<comment><USER7> Just started using Paper, and I really like it so far, especially for documents with high degree of collaboration / cross-referencing like meeting notes and project plans (person and document mentions, hashtags, date tags, etc). Editing experience is also solid in Firefox, which is more than I can say for Google Docs. Markdown auto-styling is a nice feature for me as a coding guy, but that's a matter of preference.

My biggest gripe with Docs, though, is that documents are impossible to find (ha!). Sharing does not seem to preserve folder structure, and I can never get relevant search results for some reason. I am yet to discover if this is implemented better by Dropbox.

<comment><USER8> Yeah google's insistence on search for docs (over making organizing into folders easy) is really stupid. I agree this is the #1 worst feature of docs.

#2. Can't use custom fonts, #3. In drawings, paste always pastes where the item was copied from which gets really irritating when you are trying to paste something you copied from the other side of a large drawing, #4. No embedding one type of doc into another

<comment><USER5> Curious what would make organizing into folders easier?

From what I can tell it's literally drag-and-drop, no different from any other GUI filesystem. It has search _too_ , but not instead?

Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your "Shared with me" folder, but you can still drag them anywhere into your own folder structure in Drive, and they work like a shortcut.

<comment><USER7> >Files and folders that are shared with you show up by default only in your "Shared with me" folder

This here is exactly the problem; it makes folders useless in a team setting. A colleague creates a document and files it under "Project Name/Engineering/Architecture/". She then shares it with me, we have a bit of a chat about it, and move on. A week later, I try to find said document, but it is not in "Project Name/Engineering/Architecture/". Was I supposed to file it there myself? What about the other ten people it was shared with?

My "Shared with me" folder has a thousand items and no useful structure.

<comment><USER9> There are "Team Drives" now which give a shared file/folder structure to files shared between a team of people.

<comment><USER7> Good to know. Looks like this is now a feature of "G Suite Business". [https://support.google.com/a/answer/6034782](https://support.google.com/a/answer/6034782)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


GCC switches from C to C++ - <AUTHOR> http://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=commit;h=2b15d2ba7eb3a25dfb15a7300f4ee7a141ee8539 <comment><USER2> >>we'd have to get used to using auto_ptr

>auto_ptr is broken. We should use shared_ptr instead

It has begun!

One of the most enjoyable features of C++ is the arguing over which parts of the language should be allowed.

<comment><USER3> Just to be clear, the replacement for auto_ptr is unique_ptr, not shared_ptr.

The vast majority of allocated objects have unique ownership semantics, not shared. If you use shared_ptr everywhere, it's far too easy for your design to degenerate into object soup.

<comment><USER4> > If you use shared_ptr everywhere, it's far too easy for your design to > degenerate into object soup.

You mean that it's usually better design to have only one "owner" of an object? That's true.

It's worth noting that shared_ptr is also necessary for containers, so you might get into a habit of using it even if you're not creating multiple references.

<comment><USER5> shared_ptr isn't necessary for containers, it's only necessary for bad containers.

Edit: Of course I'm being a bit stupidly snarky here, obviously if you have a standard container you need a shared_ptr, or an intrusive_ptr, or some other pointer, the moral of the story is that std containers aren't good for holding owned pointers in C++03.

I don't think boost ptr_containers are particularly good either, but that's mostly because of the huge cost of putting the string '#include "boost/' in your code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A useful discussion of the conversion and its motivation in the GCC Wiki:

<http://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/cxx-conversion>

<comment><USER7> Here's the rationale from that document:

* C++ is a standardized, well known, popular language.

* C++ is nearly a superset of C90 used in GCC.

* The C subset of C++ is just as efficient as C.

* C++ supports cleaner code in several significant cases.

* C++ makes it easier to write and enforce cleaner interfaces.

* C++ never requires uglier code.

* C++ is not a panacea but it is an improvement.

It's interesting to me how defensive many of those justifications are. "It's just as efficient!" or "It's just a superset anyway!" Not until halfway through the list do we get any real description of expected benefits: C++ makes it easier to write and enforce interfaces, and C++ supports cleaner code in several significant cases. The last item is the most telling though: it's clear that these developers feel they've hit a point of crisis, and they are willing to take risks like this in order to lift themselves out of the problem.

<comment><USER8> > * C++ never requires uglier code.

No... but it sure tends to encourage it.

<comment><USER9> You've not seen ugly code until you've read 90s-era Win32 UI code written with Hungarian notation everywhere. Ugly code comes from the programmer, not the language.

<comment><USER10> I blame the early Windows team by mistaking what Simonyi meant with Hungarian notation by misunderstanding what 'type' means. Which is why Office uses his notation in a much cleaner fashion.

<comment><USER11> Can you give an example(or a link to an article discussing this)? I've never had the displeasure of working with the Windows API(though I often shook my head when I saw code for it)

<comment><USER10> Basically he intended 'type' as not 'datatype' as in 'dwSomething' (for double word) but the purpose of the variable. For example, if you're using an integer variable to store the length of some entity, you would name it something like 'lenSomething' as opposed to 'dwSomething'.

Storing the type of the variable makes little sense as in most cases it is only a quick grep away.

<comment><USER12> In the example you used, "context" seems to be a more appropriate word than "type".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is apalling. The argumets seem to boil down to "I don't like VEC and how hash-tables are done". Oh and the usual bs about interfaces. The result is that now there is a monstrous dependency (a c++ compiler) in place of something that an undergrad can build for a class (a basic C compiler).

I wonder what rms thinks of this. Too bad he is not calling the shots in gcc anymore.

<comment><USER14> It would take a smart undergrad a bit of hand-holding to write a C complier in say, less than a year. (If you can write a C compiler, you should probably be in the Masters' program.)

<comment><USER15> A nonoptimizing C compiler is pretty easy (a friend of mine wrote one in high school), and that's all you need to bootstrap GCC.

He didn't even finish his parser for C++ though.

<comment><USER16> Strictly speaking, C++03 can't be parsed, only interpreted (into a typed AST); it is not a context free grammar.

<comment><USER14> You can parse languages that are not context-free. "Parse" just means that you figure out the structure of the file, the word has nothing to do with the techniques used.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "What would Linus do?"

<comment><USER18> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if he was writing a 'normal' application or even a compiler he'd be tempted to use some subset of C++ or maybe even Java.

As it is, for the kernel you'd be crazy to use something other than C.

<comment><USER19> > I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that if he was writing a 'normal' > application or even a compiler he'd be tempted to use some subset of C++ or > maybe even Java.

And you would be wrong:

<http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/c++/linus>

<comment><USER18> Well maybe. We won't and cannot know, because Linus will never be programming websites for a bank or writing games for Windows.

My feeble point is that the kernel (and git) are computer programs for computer people doing computer stuff.

Subsurface I'll give you. Mostly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It will be interesting to see the OpenBSD project's response to this.

<comment><USER21> OpenBSD has been using their own fork of GCC since the switch to GPL3. They still use the last version on GPL2, 4.2.1.

Later versions of GCC are available as packages or ports but they aren't included in the main system.

<comment><USER20> I wouldn't be surprised if the folks at the project abandoned their branch of gcc in order not to be "tainted by association". There is a revulsion to C++ that is close to the core to OpenBSD's philosophy. Perhaps pcc or clang will get more attention.

<comment><USER21> The people in the OpenBSD project seem pretty happy with their toolchain. pcc was removed from the source tree due to lack of progress. Making a really good c compiler is hard and I don't think they have the people or interest at this time.

I don't think they would switch to clang. LLVM is also c++.

<comment><USER20> >pcc was removed from the source tree due to lack of progress.

That's a shame. PCC seemed an interesting alternative to gcc, though I do recall PCC's v1.0 "revival" coinciding with an April Fools day several years ago. Perhaps it always was to be taken as a joke.

OpenBSD's simplicity in implementation is laudable. The less moving parts there are the less parts there are to break. It's the same philosophy that keeps me driving my 25-year old pickup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> build change to require a C++ compiler is a no go.

One of the reasons to install gcc on a machine is the absence of a descent C++ compiler. 20 years ago, the C compiler of Sun was completely broken and we were happy to have gcc.

<comment><USER23> Converting the stage 1 bootstrapping compiler to C++ is a bad idea IMO. There any many embedded platforms without a C++ compiler (except perhaps downrev gcc).

<comment><USER24> so cross compilation is the only option for these embedded platforms?

<comment><USER25> Don't you generally cross compile on embedded platforms anyway?

<comment><USER26> If you don't cross-compile, I would say it's not an embedded platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The demise of gcc has begun. Not because I don't particularly like C++ but because the folks actually have an interest to gradually start moving a C codebase into C++ as if they didn't have better things to do. Sure, some syntactic things will look cleaner (let's just exclude those that will look uglier for the sake of fairness)--in five years or whenever their transition could be considered complete.

<comment><USER14> The GCC folks are feeling the pressure from Clang/LLVM, which is a good thing. Under the guidance of the FSF, GCC has intentionally tangled the front end with the back end. The purpose of this was to make it hard to modularize GCC, because if GCC were modular, then you could write a proprietary component for it (like you can write proprietary Linux modules).

Their goal here is to make it easier for new developers to write their own passes or front ends or whatever. GCC may be more mature, but Clang/LLVM are way easier to dive into.

<comment><USER28> > Under the guidance of the FSF, GCC has intentionally tangled the front end > with the back end. The purpose of this was to make it hard to modularize > GCC, because if GCC were modular, then you could write a proprietary > component for it (like you can write proprietary Linux modules).

Surely you must be joking... do you have a reference for this? Sure, I sometimes the motives of the FSF but this would be quite outrageous from a software engineering perspective.

<comment><USER26> <http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2000-01/msg00572.html>

<comment><USER29> Just out of curiosity, couldn't the FSF release GCC under the AGPL or something like that and then modularize it all they want? That was my first thought when reading that message. That way they can promote freedom and still have modular software.

Of course, the AGPL might not have existed in 2000, but I haven't heard about GCC moving to the AGPL since then either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I honestly never thought I'd see the day.</comment>


Jeff Rubin: Oil and the End of Globalization - <AUTHOR> http://www.theoildrum.com/node/7095 <comment><USER2> I think one of the issues with the thesis that oil prices will lead to a drop in globalization is that it's actually quite fuel-efficient to ship goods. Grabbing fast stats from Wikipedia ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportati...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_efficiency_in_transportation)), we see that it takes 246kJ to transport 1 tonne (2,204.6 pounds) 1km by freight rail in the United States. By contrast, a car carrying a single person takes 3,594kJ to transport that person 1km. Also, I think ocean-borne freight is even more favorable than rail, but I would assume that we would also have the option of creating nuclear-powered ocean-borne freight transportation given that we do this today for military vessels.

Freight has the advantage that it often doesn't care if it arrives 6 hours late or has to wait around a bunch. That means that we can hit maximal loads nicely. Businesses also tend to pre-plan (at least the ones that do well) so that they can take advantages of the efficiencies offered by going slower.

Passenger transportation just isn't as efficient and would seem to be under a greater squeeze. Even if you go by Amtrak's rail service, to transport a tonne of humans (assuming the average North American body weight of 80.7kg) would use 80x as much fuel as transporting a tonne of freight.

Getting back to freight, a lot of the world's goods are transported by freight truck over land. Freight trucks use 2,426kJ per tonne-kilometer. So, something coming from China over water to the Western US would use considerably less fuel than something from New York trying to get to the Western US. It's under 8,000mi from China to SF and (as the crow flys) 2,500mi from New York to SF. If water-borne transit is 10x more efficient, goods from China still have a fuel advantage over freight truck.

If anything, we'd see the end of freight trucks before we saw the end of globalization. Something coming from China to the Western US and then onto New York by rail would likely use less fuel than something coming from the Western US to New York by fright truck.

I guess I just see freight trucking and passenger trips ending considerably sooner than the water-borne and rail transit that would enable globalization to continue.

<comment><USER3> "I think one of the issues with the thesis that oil prices will lead to a drop in globalization is that it's actually quite fuel-efficient to ship goods."

Manufacturing them, on the other hand....

<comment><USER4> Taking your idea further, we'd expect mass shipping to continue as manufacturing will be much cheaper in countries that aren't so hamstrung about nuclear energy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Energy density per unit of weight of natural gas is in fact about 15% higher than the gasoline. The problem is compression, but not a big problem really, just about any car can be switched to use natural gas aftermarket, with some loss of engine power, but improvement in engine life span btw.

Overally, i feel these concerns of 'peakers' are nonsense, the free market will help switching for other sources of energy, and science and technology already brought us to the point where it is possible, it's all about scaling now.

<comment><USER6> Are the physical capacities of space and time capable of getting us to scale in these technologies? Only so much energy comes from the sun per square foot. Batteries can only store so much of that. There are only so many tons of required metals on the planet to create all the infrastructure, solar panels and electric motors we will need?

I don't know yet for sure if it's possible to maintain our current quality of life given the resources we have at our earthly disposal.

<comment><USER7> The long term solution to electric cars is electrified highways not better battery's. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irisbus_Cristalis_ETB18_C1...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Irisbus_Cristalis_ETB18_C1_Lyon_TCL_PDVM_Ibou.JPG) Also, we use ~474 exajoules of energy per year, the sun provides ~3,850,000 exajules. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy> Collecting 1% of that energy could easily support a western style lifestyle for 10 billion people.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Collecting 1% of that energy could easily support a western style lifestyle > for 10 billion people.

Yes, but how can we collect that 1%? Even considering 100% efficiency for solar panels, we'd need to cover 1% of the global Earth surface (land _and_ oceans). Even more, we'd need at least to double it in order to have a 1% covered 24h/24. I'm afraid we don't have all the required material.

<comment><USER7> Wind and Hydro collect far more solar power than a solar panel as far a surface area is concerned and requires little in the way of rare materials. Also, we cover more than 1% of the earth with plants, but they don't tend to be all that efficient bump them into the 15+% range by say genetically engineering something to collect wavelengths that Chlorophyll skips over and the numbers get intense. We also farm the oceans but focus way to high on the food chain to get much in the way of efficiency.

PS: There are also plenty of raw materials to cover the earth in solar panels but that's hardly unnecessary. But as far as the raw numbers go, covering 10% of the worlds oceans with floating solar collectors is vary doable and has a lower impact. (At the cost of significant climate change.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't his argument contradicted by cheap natural gas? I would think energy is energy, why is the oil form of energy so important?

I do wonder why we're not switching from oil to natural gas a lot faster though.

<comment><USER9> Trouble with natural gas... people are almost as terrified of frac'ing, and shale gas as they are of the evil "tar sands". That said, the rest of the world is investing heavily in Canadian natural gas - it's one of the primary motivators behind the current national debate (in Canada) over pipelines out of Alberta.

Can a large cargo ship be run using only liquid natural gas? Can we power generators using just natural gas?

I'm very curious about the limits of natural gas as a power source.

<comment><USER10> The only real limit is compression. Many public service vehicles locally are switching over to natural gas.

<comment><USER11> Not just compression. NG also has a much lower energy density than oil/gasoline. Not as compact

<comment><USER9> Does a natural gas engine work similar to a gasoline engine?

<comment><USER12> The internals are essentially identical.

The fuel system needs to be adapted to handle the natural gas though. Looking around, it appears that there are vehicles on the road that can switch at pretty much the push of a button.

<comment><USER13> Yep. Where I work we have a fleet of cars that do just that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know about his assertion that suburban sprawl will revert to farm land. That would be quite the undertaking. I've had a garden in my front yard since 2008. I've learned a lot over four years about how to grow vegetables. I would hope that we could take the common areas in these sprawling suburban neighborhoods and convert much of it into community run gardens, chicken coops and pig farms. That would make much more sense to me.

Also,

>What is peak oil going to do to population carrying capacity?

>I've heard mass food production is very dependent on synthetic fertilizers made from natural gas. How long before peak natural gas affects food production capacity?

>How big of a mess will the grid become when we have a bunch of electric cars on the roads?

>Without a substitute for oil-powered automobiles, just how much higher will the unemployment rate go, and how much civil unrest will that cause?

<comment><USER12> Given that agricultural land use in the U.S. is ~50% and urban areas are around 3% or 4%, some big disruption would probably result in far more abandonment than it would conversion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow, it feels like I stumbled on James Kunstler's site today: <http://www.kunstler.com/index.php>

The way I see it, we really only have two choices: nuclear (fusion) power; or "A World Made by Hand".

Solar doesn't provide much energy density. (unless you can build a Dyson sphere or a "Ringworld" and convert huge amounts of solar radiation for transport)

Methane has more energy per KG than oil, but much less per cubic meter. (in addition to low density, you need a strong/heavy tank to put it in). And it's a fairly finite fossil fuel.

Uranium and the like are also a somewhat finite fossil fuels (even if from extinct supernovas, rather than ferns and dinosaurs).

Hydrogen (fusion) on the other hand, pretty much defines the useful lifetime of the universe. That's how I define "sustainability".

<comment><AUTHOR> > Hydrogen (fusion) on the other hand, pretty much defines the useful lifetime > of the universe. That's how I define "sustainability".

That's true! That's true and funny! Hydrogen fusion does define the "useful" lifetime of the universe (ie: the interval before the entire universe becomes mainly full of cold heavy metals), but the stars are going to be burning for a few more billion years because fusion is an "unlikely" process. Yes! The solar system is still as we know it, with the planets well separated from the Sun and not yet conglomerated into a big red giant, for the same reason for which we are struggling to get fusion in our labs: because that's difficult! You need enormous temperatures to convince hydrogen atoms to come together and mix their nuclei, and so you get a lot of problems in controlling the overall process.

Sure, we can try with cold fusion, but unfortunately we have not yet got a useful result. But we can insist. Actually, I think we must insist! I can't imagine a better source of energy than cold fusion, _if_ we ever get there. Yes, we must definitely insist!</comment></comment>


The Google Ventures Cheat Sheet - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/04/the-google-ventures-cheat-sheet/

<comment><USER2>
       # One-way mirror policy to protect startups from prying eyes.
       "We can look into Google, but Google can't look into the companies without asking," promises Miner.

and then they say:

        # But that doesn't mean strategic considerations will be ignored either.
       "If a company comes in the door and it looks like something important for Google to acquire," says Maris,
        "we will defer to Google's corporate development department to take a look."

So pretty much Google won't look at your startup, unless the guys running things get the idea that what you are doing might be interesting to Google, so how exactly does that protect startups from Google getting a full look about your company?

<comment><USER3> There seems to be many ways that this could work. One is asking the company if their information can be passed on to the corporate development department. Another is simply telling the department a very limited amount of information, e.g., "I think you might want to look into acquiring newTechStartup.com", and no more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shouldn't we all be treating this like just another VC? Everyone seems to be caught up in the fact that it's money coming from Google. But at the end of the day, it's money coming from an investor.

Obviously, because it's Google, they will be doing it differently. A couple of hints they give us are that they will "focus on seed and early stage startups across any industry". So obviously, amounts will be different than typical VCs. Also, the fact that it is pretty much a two person team (or that's how they are representing themselves), makes me think they are not offering the mentoring of a YC or the management of a VC.

<comment><USER5> We think VCs are stupid. We think Google is smart. Both opinions are simplifications, but this explains the excitement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll submit that it's _safer_ to show your startup to GV than to a regular VC. A regular VC has a whole mess of portfolio companies, across many vintage funds, to share your stuff with (and in the case of DFJ, a whole 'nother mess of associated funds).

The odds that Google will rip off your idea to build something in-house as quickly as you can are astronomically small.</comment>


The last known unidentified marking on the Saturn V S-IC - <AUTHOR> https://apollosaturncom.blogspot.com/2018/05/solved-last-known-unidentified-marking.html?m=1 <comment><USER2> > I posted some images in the Saturn Rocket History group on Facebook

It saddens me that Facebook has become this big, opaque data hole in the Internet. Even searching for that group name only returns one reference back to it.

All that accumulated recorded knowledge that exists only so long as Facebook determines that Groups have financial benefit. All that knowledge that can't be archived for the greater Internet.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention that, depending on how active the group is, after a few days / weeks / month the content will be impossible to find even through Facebook itself.

<comment><USER4> Some groups are so large and post so frequently that it's not even possible to find postings from the same day (happens sometimes when I'm reading on my phone and want to reply afterwards on my PC).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That... was a tough read, nay, more of a plod, it never came to a solid conclusion after a laborious build up, BAH! And I'm a space/tech geek too, with an appreciation of the arcane, but it needs to be easy to read for those who may not have all the details the author clearly does. My father worked on the A-12 (OXCART), several space probes, Mariner, Pioneer, etc., Project Gemini and Project Apollo. He used to bring me green Anole Lizards that he'd find on the Pad at the Cape and he shot 8mm family movies most times he went down for a launch. Sadly, no cameras allowed in the block house, so I never saw the inside and no home movies of the launches, because he was busy in the block house with the launch. The Saturn 5 on the crawler slowly headed for the Pad was always my fave movie reel, but also the rain storm inside the assembly building when it's clear outside, that was a trip.

<comment><USER6> > My father worked on the A-12 (OXCART)

The most beautiful airplane ever built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I watched a history of the Saturn V on Amazon last night. Unfortunately, frustratingly little of it was about the technical details of it, which is mostly what interests me. The only good bit was an explanation of the pogoing problem, the rest was just the usual stuff seen on every "failure is not an option" Apollo documentary.

Reminds me of the locomotive buffs who are interested in every detail of markings on the locomotives, their routes, schedules, and paint colors. Whereas there's very little about the engineering evolution of those locomotives. Sigh.

For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.

<comment><USER8> > For example, I'm interested in the transition between trial-and-error seat > of the pants engineering and mathematically based engineering.

It is difficult to know how best to document this kind of thing, the people who know about it probably don't want to write books or create their own websites.

My grandfather was responsible for part of the engineering side of the early British radar equipment, Wikipedia only really describes the scientific experiments that led up to it. I have plenty of stuff that I could add that he told me when teaching me electronics when I was a kid, but I would expect it to get deleted if I can't point at an external source.

<comment><USER9> Post the extra stuff to your blog, then cite that blog on Wikipedia.

<comment><USER10> Then you'll just need to get a newspaper to write an article on it, so you can have an 'authoritative' citation. /s

<comment><USER11> Paging Steele...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can imagine him trying to explain his excitement about finding this to his wife, then her patting him on the head and her saying "that's nice honey". Underscoring the amount of effort involved in such a seemingly trivial things that nerds enjoy digging into.

<comment><USER13> I'm confused by this comment. Do you know this is specifically know that John Duncan has a wife and that this is how she'd react? Or does this mean something else?

<comment><USER14> It is a hypothetical that means there are very few people in the world that would share the unique obsessions of Saturn V model makers who care about every detail. So his hypothetical wife, who likely doesn't share the same obsessions, wants to be supportive but doesn't feel the same excitement that he does.

<comment><USER13> If this is correct, it doesn't seem very healthy.

While quite possibly statistically likely, it doesn't seem very healthy to make these assumptions for the purposes of a joke.

Might have been better to just say "a friend" rather than "wife" which makes a number of assumptions...

<comment><USER15> Meh?

Basically no one is as into the markings on the Saturn V first stage as this guy, so I don't see how assuming his wife (if he is married) wouldn't be super into it is offensive.

<comment><USER12> Also if I had said 'partner' or 'friend' instead of 'wife' the comment would probably have been less humorous, as it plays on a cliche situation. I'd rather not live in a world where I'd have to neuter such a statement in the name of absolute correctness over common sense.

<comment><USER13> The cliche draws upon a stereotype. It's not a great stereotype to perpetuate in my opinion. Better to just not make the joke than to perpetuate a stereotype.

<comment><USER14> What stereotype? Sounds to me like you are the one making negative assumptions here.

<comment><USER13> That men in tech all have wives and that their wives are not interested in technical things that interest them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks like a metal ruler glued or welded to the surface of the rocket. After all that build up in his story, I wish he explained what it was, and a bit more about what it does, even if it seems obvious to him.

<comment><USER17> It is referred to as an 'alignment mark', the print on it being in reverse because the instruments used to check said alignment might have an odd number of mirrors which would cause the image to be non-reversed. I'd say the purpose of the strip to be to align the stage either in relation to the other stages or to the launching platform.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I mean I'm pretty into space stuff and I read the article.. maybe it's a bit niche for me.. :)

<comment><USER19> I'm into space stuff, and I could just feel his excitement in his words. It's always nice to see people really enjoying their hobby I think. If you have any level of OCD then this sort of article would appeal to you.

<comment><USER20> This is not what OCD is. I wish people would use the term appropriately.

<comment><USER19> I wish people would use the terms Depression, Anxiety, and Suicidal appropriately, but they don't do that either.

Apologies if I offended you/anyone with my use of the term OCD. If he can ignore it and move onto something else then it's clearly not OCD. However, the author is obsessed with finding out everything he can about Saturn V, to the extent he travels across the country to look at a sticker on one of parts that on display. Some people would call that an unhealthy level of obsession.

<comment><USER20> I'm not offended, I'm just perplexed why people (and not just you) use "OCD" when "obsessive" expresses their meaning better, and without involving a medical diagnosis that they're not actually referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thank you. I always appreciate reading the tales of those who are so deeply passionate about an extremely niche hobby.</comment>


Nokia could soon find itself in the middle of a 5G power struggle - <AUTHOR> https://www.protocol.com/nokia-5g-power-struggle <comment><USER2> Nokia gets 5G deals just fine.

Nokia's trouble with profitability is supplier (Intel) for their ReefShark 5G NR chipset family. Nokia's ReefShark is really advanced design and Intel could not manufacture the chip for the specs and price range they promised. This caused huge additional R&D investment increase because Nokia needs to redesign parts of their 5G architecture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why did they go with Intel, which has a spotty record the last decade? Apple even ditched them for the iPhone.</comment></comment>


Neat Infographic renderings of Girl Talk's Album  - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1707948/girl-talk-all-day-infographic

<comment><USER2> <http://mashupbreakdown.com/> has not only diagrams of the samples used in each track, but also plays the music and highlights the annotations at the appropriate time.

Also, as well as Girl Talk's latest album "All Day", it covers their previous "Feed The Animals" as well as The Kleptones' classic "A Night At The Hip- Hopera".

</comment><comment><USER3> Wired did this too with a track off of _Feed the Animals_ in 08: <http://www.wired.com/special_multimedia/2008/pl_music_1609>

</comment><comment><USER4> I want to like Girl Talk, but that's just too many samples per track.

<comment><USER2> That's exactly how I feel - it's too ADD for my liking. By contrast, The Kleptones tend to have one main lyric track and one main music track for the entire duration; an arrangement I feel is easier to listen to, has more scope for brain-bending combinations[1], and generally I think it takes more skill to find two tracks that match up for an entire three-to-five minutes, rather than just 30 seconds.

[1] <http://vimeo.com/15385734></comment></comment>


Ask HN: SOPA in America - Will IT go overseas? - <AUTHOR>

From my comfortable (regarding IT-laws, not the financial crisis) watching post in Europe I've been following the frenzy in the American Internet industry, that has been stirred up by SOPA. Some people even think that Google might move its DNS-Servers to Europe. Do you think other firms might also migrate overseas? Will there be some kind of new IT-boom in Europe (or somewhere else, like India) whilst America is simply left behind by "fleeing" companies? Or is this simply a hype with negative results only for the users?<p>Regards,<AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I would guess that some IT flight would occur, but mostly, SOPA will be (and it will pass) a bonus for lawyers. Nothing will happen for a while, some really egregiouis sites will get Great Firewalled. Then someone with really deep pockets and user-generated content will get sued. There will be a frenzy of removing blogs, sites with user-generated contents, etc etc. After a while, a few big sites will get enough lawyers on-board to censor user-generated content, and we'll be back in the situation of the 1970s, where a few large newspapers could have lively "letters to the editors" pages, but nobody else could afford it.

Welcome to TV 2.0!

</comment><comment><USER3> The UK could be in for a treat...

</comment><comment><USER4> Two points:

1) In my opinion, the U.S. has already pushed a similar agenda abroad (e.g. New Zealand), as a prelude to and argument for introducing it domestically.

2) If I were part of the "still free" "rest of the world", I would be actively planning and working to "route around" the seemingly inevitable and impending "damage". (The problem with this being that the damage is becoming so widespread that it may soon pass critical mass.)</comment>


Supply-Side Economics Has Failed - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/tebelorg/supply-side-economics-has-failed-98876519fa0e <comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to add that this is re-posted from a Facebook post a year ago. As the voice of universal basic income gets louder, it gives me more courage to post something like that.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Otherwise, in my part of the world, I would sound like a mad person to even talk about the idea.</comment>


What we learned from building custom analytics over Amazon Redshift - <AUTHOR> https://www.alooma.com/blog/custom-analytics-amazon-redshift <comment><USER2> Probably the biggest challenge I had in my last startup was setting up the analytics platform. Obviously building an analytics platform wasn't the top priority (probably the last).

So you put Google Analytics on your website, then you need the tracking code from Facebook for the ads. And you add Flurry because it provides different analytics (e.g: Funnels and Cohort Analysis). We also logged on the DB some actions difficult to capture on analytics. Then you need mobile ads, so you add in your app the framework to track the install. And, I forgot, you have another platform to track your mailing lists.

The final result: for every business question you have data in at least 3 different platform that gives you three different answers. Even worst, when you are still struggling with the product your "hard tech" co-founder could not understand why you push to re-implement the analytics framework (not necessarily building it in house) while your business co-founder decide to don't ask questions and doesn't understand why you want better data. If it looks like a recipe for disaster is because it is.

We really need better analytics platform, easy to use like Google Analytics and MixPanel for the beginning but with the ability to build custom analysis for the growing biz.

<comment> jon-wood I'm a big fan of [Segment]([https://segment.com](https://segment.com)) who do a great job of putting an abstraction layer on top of the massive selection of analytics platforms you're likely to end up using. A particularly nice touch is some of their plans having a feature where you can replay your entire event history into new analytics tools you add, allowing you to almost immediately start analysing all your data with them.

<comment><USER2> That's not quite right what I have in mind. It solve part of the issue, the maintainability of 10+ integrations, but it is not really the biggest pain point.

The biggest pinpoint is having 10 different service that gives you quite the same answer but:

1) they cover different needs and you need a patchwork to customize to what you need (and when you are small it is not even sure you know what you need so the patchwork is biggest than needed).

2) they measure things in slightly different way making comparison difficult.

3) they have vastly different interfaces, thus requiring a lot of time to learn them (I like to learn new things, but my time is valuable and better spent on product features)

4) they create a mess in your code. This is the problem segment try to solve. It is relevant but not top priority. Actually, I'm not totally sure of the effect of inserting a level of abstraction doesn't actually make more complex to solve point 1 and 2 (it is not a critic, just a real problem I faced when I tried to abstract the analytics call in the app with few functions).

<comment><USER3> Segment actually provides you access to the raw data so if you can layer a BI tool on top of it, then you have solved your main pain point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not, as billed, about building a custom analytics solution.

This is SQL as BI, which is great for small technical teams, but hardly a good or scalable solution.

If anything, this is a vague argument to have a data warehouse. Data warehousing is only an intermediate step in any analytics or BI solution and the hard problems are not in moving data or writing one-off queries.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of solution would you suggest? What is missing?

<comment><USER4> BI or an analytics solution would be more all-encompassing than an ETL tool (Alooma) and a database platform (Redshift).

ETL is much more than just moving data around. I haven't dug too deeply into Alooma's offerings, but it does appear to have workflows for more than just data from system A to destination B. Some of the important things to look at in ETL are change-tracking for slowly changing dimensions, business logic transformations, and mashing up data from disparate sources against conformed dimensions. Master Data Management is its own practice, but is intimately involved in ETL. Some ETL tools include Alooma, SSIS, Kettle.

Beyond ETL there is the data warehouse platform which usually consists of a RDBMS, sometimes with an OLAP layer as well. OLAP is distinguished from something like Redshift, which is a columnstore RDBMS, by including a metadata layer with the data. MDX is probably the granddaddy of OLAP languages. Think something that a pivot table can speak to directly. The data warehouse can really be any RDBMS product.

At the data warehouse layer, there's much more than just flattened source tables. A good deal of effort needs to go into the dimensional modelling for end-user consumption and reporting. We could take an aside for Inmon vs Kimball here, but it's spurious, because Inmon recommends dimensional data marts for end user consumption, just like Kimball - the data warehouse is never exposed in the Inmon methodology and dimensional data modelling is required for either.

If we are utilizing an OLAP engine, then there is a lot of measure definition to be done, encapsulating a lot of the logic that is displayed in the single- purpose queries of the article's examples. The data model will be based on the dimensional model from the data warehouse, but there's a lot more metadata in an OLAP database, which helps make self-service reporting much easier. Many more people are comfortable building a pivot table than even a simple SELECT statement in SQL. Some OLAP engines are SSAS and Mondrian.

Regardless of whether we have an OLAP solution, we need a presentation layer (typically several, as there are different types of reporting needs, and different strata of sophistication among end users). This is something like Tableau, Qlik, Quicksight, Cognos, Power BI (all prior products purport to cover varying degrees of the data ETL and modelling process in addition to providing a presentation layer), Crystal Reports, and SSRS are just some samples of many in the commercial space (I'm not as familiar with open source presentation layers).

This is just a high level overview of the major components of a BI or analytics solution, and fairly barebones. The article spoke to ETL a little, and at best hit tangentially on data warehousing and presentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Was going to suggest Google BigQuery (faster, cheaper, more scalable) but then looked at the rest of your workflow, and it looks like ETL would get more complicated, and the visualization options wouldn't be as extensive (although BQ does seem to support Tableau). On balance, not worth the hassle.

Looks pretty neat, job well done!

<comment><USER6> Hi melted! I have to agree with you that BigQuery is probably faster, cheaper and more scalable than Redshift for this and other use cases. Specially given the "join multiple datasets" angle.

But why would you say that ETL would be more complicated? Specially since BigQuery is the best way to get raw Google Analytics data (for premium customers).

Re: Visualization options - All of the options mentioned by Itamar work well with BigQuery, except one (Quicksight) - and I know for sure how much re:dash, Mode, Looker and Tableau love Bigquery.

Anyways, great article - and I love the real use case queries.

<comment><USER5> Because the actual analytics (the part that BigQuery provides) is maybe 20% of this solution, and judging by the slides their ETL is very easy to use. What would I even use on Google Cloud to do ETL? Dataflow? Javascript UDFs? Something else? All of that seems clunky compared to what these guys are offering. And they have a bunch of data sources available "out of the box" that would be a hassle to deal with manually.

Another issue with BigQuery seems to be unpredictability of cost. One typo somewhere and you can easily run up a bill in tens of thousands of dollars because your dashboard isn't caching something. In a similar situation Redshift will merely get slow.

<comment><USER6> Clunky ETL: Please correct me if I'm wrong, but what I saw about ETLs in the article "One example we encounter quite often is that Mixpanel stores timestamps in seconds, while Redshift expects timestamps in milliseconds." \- that kind of transformations I would much rather run inside BigQuery in a couple seconds than going through a whole pipeline. Other things I could outside, just as what they are doing now - but I didn't see any RS specific advantages for transformations?

Cost: Cost should be way below other solutions - and to prevent problems BigQuery now has cost controls at a user and project levels: [https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/cost- controls](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/cost-controls)

Thanks for your comments!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nothing here about "what you learned". This is a straight up tutorial on how to use your product!

<comment><USER8> A lot of this does showcase how to use Alooma's product, true.

However, I hope that the SQL queries provided would be helpful to anyone who would like to build it on their own.

FD: I am Alooma's CTO

<comment><USER7> So, what did you learn? That bit is completely missing from the article.. Surely not how to write a (very simple) SQL query?

<comment><AUTHOR> What data warehouse to choose, what are the different visualization tools available, what events to send, how to setup Redshift, how to choose the keys for the tables, and yes, how to recreate popular dashboards with simple SQL queries.

Of course, we also have more complex queries for analysis, that we will share at a future post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's actually hilarious that your SDK's are just modified versions of Mixpanels'...

[https://www.alooma.com/docs/integration/ios- sdk](https://www.alooma.com/docs/integration/ios-sdk)

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes integration a breeze :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> so if I use Alooma android SDK, I can push event data straight into RedShift ?

I'm not very clear about how to use Alooma.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, exactly. You'll push events from Alooma's Android SDK and they'll land in your Redshift in seconds. You can have a look at the documentation here: [https://www.alooma.com/docs/integration/android- sdk](https://www.alooma.com/docs/integration/android-sdk)

<comment><USER11> I couldn't really understand how you replaced Mixpanel and other analytics services with Redshift. AFAIK Redshift is optimized for bulk inserts so the micro-batch approach (a few seconds) is not is not optimal and in fact quite expensive. Also the data in Mixpanel is not structured and if you're using JSON in Redshift, you can't take advantage of the columnar storage format which is actually the main point of using Redshift. Do you care to explain how you solve these issues?

<comment><USER8> Hi, Alooma uses batch size appropriate to the data volume, the bigger the data volume is, the bigger the batch size will be.

Alooma not loading into a JSON column, but provides mapping UI and transformation layer to in order structure and normalize the data into different appropriate columns, thus leverages the columnar storage properties.

FD: I am Alooma's CTO</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mike Posehn, Creator of Desert Strike Interview - <AUTHOR> http://www.arcadeattack.co.uk/mike-posehn/ <comment><USER2> I loved these games as a kid, nice to read a bit about their history.</comment>