Apple Founder "Woz" Visits Kim Dotcom - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/apple-founder-woz-visits-kim-dotcom-120621/ <comment><USER2> Woz is a great guy. He gets involved in a lot of things. I remember watching the show 'Dancing with the Stars' just to see him dance. He is a great character.

Personally, I don't support Dotcom's case because he has some blame in the entire 'Megaupload fiasco'.

<comment><USER3> If you look into [Kim Schmitz'] history, you can see that he is a total sleazebag.

His achievements are still impressive though.

Edit: clarity

<comment><USER4> I'm guessing you're talking about Dotcom and not Woz here? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to consider how different the world might be if Jobs and Woz had been busted for selling blue boxes: <http://paulgraham.com/bluebox.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> I love that he owns kim.com. Never thought to check.

<comment><USER7> That alone could buy a nice house if he sold it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Hey, can I get my files back?"

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not Woz, but I would venture that Woz probably pitched Kim Dotcom on his new startup FusionIO, which is relevant to file hosting.

Also, it's awesome that Woz turned Kim onto the EFF.

</comment><comment><USER10> Had no clue DotCom was on Twitter.

<https://twitter.com/#!/KimDotcom>

<comment><USER11> Reading through his tweets, one really interested me:

> _The major Record Labels thought Megabox is dead. Artists rejoice. It is > coming and it will unchain you.<http://instagr.am/p/MHNAsPMkep/> _

Just another piece of evidence that Megaupload doesn't want to hurt the artists; they intend to do quite the opposite.

<comment><USER12> _> Just another piece of evidence that Megaupload doesn't hurt the artists and actually intends to do the opposite._

I wouldn't want to be the one arguing that case.

Sure, some artists used Megaupload to share their own works, but these uploads were far outnumbered by their illegitimate counterparts.

<comment><USER13> > Sure, some artists used Megaupload to share their own works, but these > uploads were far outnumbered by their illegitimate counterparts.

Has this been demonstrated yet? (I currently slightly favor your belief but I could see it being the other case.) I know that Megaupload provided tools for the labels et al. to remove infringing content in a very easy way (just like Youtube offers), and there was a lot of outcry from people over their personal files being lost because they were treating it like dropbox.

<comment><USER12> It was an unspoken truth, as for any other platform or protocol used primarily for the unauthorised distribution of copyrighted works (P2P networks, torrents, usenet, etc.)

When called into question, users will argue these platforms/protocols can be used for legitimate purposes, and point to examples of people using them as such. In this case it was Megaupload attempting to do this to defend itself.

It doesn't, however, change the reality of the situation.

<comment><USER13> Unspoken truths often turn out to be false. Without hard figures it's a tough call to say what the reality really is. (I'm still amazed Netflix itself takes up ~20% of the US internet traffic, and it's all authorized.) For torrent sites it's easier to get the figures, for Megaupload it isn't. Hence my curiosity, I guess I'll just have to wait for the trial.

The more interesting case to me is whether one paints a service on distinct counts of items or on total traffic per item. PirateBay makes it easy to see what the hottest torrents are (<http://thepiratebay.se/top/all>); I'd be surprised if any are authorized. If we assume a power law then most of torrent traffic certainly infringes. For Megaupload, perhaps it was the same. But I'm more inclined to think Megaupload's distinct counts fall closely in line with Youtube's--it's trivial for copyright owners to take their content down with either a DMCA request or the tools the sites provide, meanwhile tons of user- generated content is appearing that actually belongs to the user. MediaFire seems like the place to go these days for sharing your songs, even professional artists use it sometimes. I don't think it's that much of a stretch to consider that for Youtube and perhaps Megaupload, there is more non-infringing content than infringing in absolute terms even if the infringing content takes up the supermajority of traffic.

<comment><USER12> I would personally be beyond astonished if this one turned out to be false.

It's interesting you point to The Pirate Bay's list of most popular torrents though. The Mega indictment cites an email from one of the alleged conspirators to another employee instructing said employee to alter the Megaupload 'Top 100' list. Elsewhere it is alleged that this list did not accurately reflect the most popular downloads on the site, and that this was done deliberately to make the site appear more legitimate than it was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hmm, Woz is a great guy but Kim Schmitz(Dotcom) is an idiot and fraudster.

</comment><comment><USER15> Well I know that he made Apple Inc back in 80s, but really, what did Woz do since then?

Steve Jobs made iTunes, iPod, iPad, iPhone. Woz said some things and was on dancing with the stars.

<comment><USER16> Steve Jobs did _not_ make iTunes, iPod, iPad. He might've drawn a picture and said, "I want it to look like that.", but he didn't make it.

If I simply drew an interactive touchscreen toilet seat, and had an army of minions to actually get it to the market, all I'd need to do is sell it. That's what Steve Jobs did. I'm not saying he's not worthy of your love, but to say "Steve Jobs did XYZ... what has Woz done?" is quite ignorant, considering Woz did make the original Apple machines!

<comment><USER17> Firstly, Steve Jobs name is on many of the key patents associated with those devices and I doubt anyone would think that he didn't have a role in the design and development.

Secondly, engineers are a dime a dozen. I am one and have met hundreds over my lifetime. The really key people in business and most rare are those that can unify the business, marketing, design and technology elements together in a way that doesn't suck.

<comment><USER18> You should read _Founders at Work_ and _Steve Jobs_. Both paint pictures of Woz as the guy who quite literally designed and built the Apple I and Apple II (although not quite as much as Apple I), off of which the company was built. Without Woz, there is not Apple. There is not technology elements to unify without him. He is not a dime a dozen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Finland Ends Universal Basic Income Experiment - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/04/23/finland-ends-universal-basic-income-experiment/ <comment><USER2> I think this BBC News report has more details [1]:

\- the government is now examining other schemes for reforming the Finnish social security system

\- the pilot's full results will not be released until late 2019

[1] [https://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-43866700](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-43866700)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why is support petering out? The article didn't say, which while disappointing is good journalistic practice provided there isn't a clear answer. However, I'd love to know why support is petering, if there is evidence that it didn't work, or if some other reason.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't work because it doesn't address the root causes of the problem and instead tries to use the money illusion to mask it.

In human society if I'm giving up some of my finite lifespan to produce things for the consumption of others then you need to be seen to be doing the same - giving up hours for others.

To fix that you need a job guarantee. As Beveridge put it idleness is a different evil to want.

The job guarantee is wildly popular. [https://www.thenation.com/article/why- democrats-should-embra...](https://www.thenation.com/article/why-democrats- should-embrace-a-federal-jobs-guarantee/)

<comment><USER5> How did you come to the conclusion that UBI doesn't work? I've yet to see any experiment supporting either view.

I'm curious what you think 'the root cause' is. Because I don't think - whatever the root cause - that forcing people to dig holes and then fill them up again is going to help anyone. Because that's what a job guarantee will be in the long run as we progress towards more and more automation.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: what jars do you use on your android projects? - <AUTHOR>

As a follow up to my rant about android development I am currently thinking on how to implement a cocoapods like system for jar files. Should not be that hard to implement. But the important thing for this would be a list of jars that are commonly used by android developers.
So what do you use?
Btw: this gist explains what I am up to: https://gist.github.com/3603015 <comment><USER2> The most important Android libraries do not come in jars because it is impossible to package Android library projects (projects that define stylable views, provide resources, etc.) in them. Just as an example, one of the most important libs for a modern application is ActionBarSherlock (<http://actionbarsherlock.com/>).

<comment><AUTHOR> But there is a maven dependency available. I haven't used this, but what exactly is the problem when you can even use maven to load the file?

And do you know more libs are important? Please post them all to give me a possiblitiy to analyze them all.</comment></comment>


RSS: A Reply (Author's follow up to "RSS Is Dying") - <AUTHOR> http://camendesign.com/blog/rss_a_reply

<comment><USER2> Great piece. I have a couple of comments, here..

[http://scripting.com/stories/2011/01/11/krocCamenProvesRssIs...](http://scripting.com/stories/2011/01/11/krocCamenProvesRssIsVeryMu.html)

<comment><USER3> I don't think the tech industry wants to kill RSS. I think the tech industry wants to get pageviews by proclaiming it's dead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's all this about forking the browser? That is WAY over complicating the matter.

Both Chrome and Firefox extensions are essentially Javascript. So while they aren't 1-to-1 compatible they could use 95% of the same code.

The real problem is there's seemingly no money to be made off the suggestions he gives and it will take a lot of effort so no one wants to do it. I don't know how to fix that problem but if there's someone out there who does want to put the effort into this they should know it wouldn't require forking a browser to do it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Site's currently down (8:24 PM GMT, 10th) due to massive bandwidth. It is just a shared host and it suffices for 99% of the site's uptime. Google cache here: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcamendesign.com%2Fblog%2Frss_a_reply)</comment>


US Math Achievement: How Bad Is It? - <AUTHOR> http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/everybody-is-stupid-except-you/201211/us-math-achievement-how-bad-is-it

<comment><USER2> Yeah, it's a shame that math is taught mostly as procedures and not concepts. I was never much of a "memorizer," but once I got it I was good.

As such I got a "D" one 9 weeks in algebra 2, but later graduated as an engineer with over a 3.0. I think I just had to 1. work harder and 2. learn how I had to understand stuff, not just memorize.

</comment><comment><USER3> That doesn't really surprise me at all yet it still manages to upset me quite a bit.</comment>


Personal observations on the reliability of the Shuttle (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/shuttle/missions/51-l/docs/rogers-commission/Appendix-F.txt <comment><USER3> Related: Gregg Easterbrook's article "Beam Me Out Of This Death Trap, Scotty" [1] is long but remarkably prescient, having been written a year before the first shuttle flight. It goes into the dangers of the tiles, how the costs would spiral, the danger of relying on a single launch vehicle, the benefits of disposable rockets, and other warnings that ended up being right.

The article talks about how unlikely the shuttle was to achieve the expected 500 flights, and would more likely only have 200 flights. (Real number: 135)

Some of the quotes from the article are scary in retrospect:

Quote: "Here's the plan. Suppose one of the solid-fueled boosters fails. The plan is, you die."

Another quote: "When Columbia's tiles started popping off in a stiff breeze, it occurred to engineers that ice chunks from the tank would crash into the tiles during the sonic chaos of launch: Goodbye, Columbia."

Remember, this article is from 1980, before the shuttle launched.

[1] [http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbr...](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/8004.easterbrook- fulltext.html)

<comment><USER4> Gregg Easterbrook wrote the following about simulated shuttle landings:

> They've never flounced like a twig on the crazy rapids of "bias"\--the bland > physics term for unexplained variations in the earth's gravitational and > magnetic fields.

I can't make heads or tails out of it -- I can't find any reference to such a phenomenon called "bias" and I don't see how gravitational field variations (I assume he means the ones caused by uneven density) could have any effect at their minuscule amplitude. Is this a result of some misunderstanding or am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> [http://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/](http://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/viewers/historical_declination/)

<comment><USER4> Thanks. I didn't know that the differences change in space in such weird fashion. I guess what was meant were spatial differences, not temporal ones and it now the part about magnetic field makes some sense to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, a thorough risk assessment of the Shuttle was done much later by NASA (near the end of the program) and it concluded that the risk of losing a Shuttle in the pre-Challenger era to be much higher than 1 in 100, closer to 1 in 10. Many people look at Challenger and Columbia as instances where the Shuttle program hit a patch of bad luck. In reality the Shuttle program has been extraordinarily lucky, there were many other close calls, some not well publicized, that came within a hair's breadth of causing loss of crew and vehicle (STS-1, STS-8, STS-9, STS-27 being examples of such). It was always a tricky bird to fly, and in the early days there were about half a dozen different things that could kill it outright with a shockingly high probability (not just the SRBs or foam/ice strikes on the TPS, also the APUs (which caught fire and exploded on one flight), the computer (which was completely inoperable just before landing on another flight), the SSMEs (which came close to causing loss of the orbiter once or twice), and other components). Over time some of the systems were improved to such a degree that they were no longer serious risks, but the whole system was so complicated and there were so many elements of risk that even at the end of the program many substantial risks still remained.

</comment><comment><USER7> The last sentence from this piece is just beautiful, it has become my personal motto:

 _For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled._

It captures in a capsule form the reasons for a huge fraction of all the big engineering catastrophes, maybe even most of them. For everyone interested in similar case studies, and in reliability from a wide engineering perspective, I strongly recommend the book "Design Paradigms: Case Histories of Error and Judgment in Engineering" by Henry Petroski.

<comment><USER8> Collectively, the public has a similar approach to nuclear power plants, which make vast tracts of land useless for agriculture if they melt down.

We've had three meltdowns in 40 years, about one per 13 years so far. Have we been lucky? Or have we been unlucky? Time will tell.

<comment><USER9> _We 've had three meltdowns in 40 years, about one per 13 years so far._

This is not a fair comparison. The shuttle was a bad design, with a high failure rate, and it doesn't make any sense to lump it in with tried-and-true rockets, which have a far lower failure rate. Similarly, it doesn't make sense to lump the dangerous RBMK reactor design used at Chernobyl with the far safer reactors designed in the West.

How many people died _in flight_ during the Apollo missions? The answer is the same number that died as a result of the events at Three-Mile Island and Fukushima: zero. Design matters, and if you're trying to be objective on this topic, you have to distinguish between good designs and bad ones.

Also, not all meltdowns are created equal, as your post suggests. If you look at Three Mile Island on Google Maps today, you'll see all sorts of arable cropland _in active use_ all around the site.

EDIT: Why the downvote? Is there anything I've said that isn't factual?

EDIT 2: here's a link that explains the differences between the Soviet RBMK and the Western LWR designs: [http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/RBMKvsLWR.html](http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/RBMKvsLWR.html)

<comment><USER10> Wow, NASA-think redux!

I really don't think you want to use Three-Mile Island as some sort of exemplar of safe technology:

 _The lessons of Three Mile Island have been, for the most part, forgotten. The nuclear industry changed and improved somewhat, but the deep understanding of what went wrong was lost on the public in general and the real lessons that we could have learned as a society were, too. The financial mess we are experiencing right now isn't all that different from Three Mile Island. If we'd taken better to heart the true lessons of TMI we might not be in our present jam._

 _Looking back at the accident with the benefit of knowing what it took to clean it up and what the workers found when they were finally able to send robots inside the containment, the TMI accident was very bad indeed. There were pressure spikes during the accident that would have cracked an average containment vessel, releasing radioactive gases into the atmosphere. Fortunately the Unit 2 containment wasn't average. TMI-2 was built on the final approach path to Harrisburg International Airport, a former U.S. Air Force base, and was therefore beefed-up specifically to withstand the impact of a B-52 hitting the structure at 200 knots. A normal containment would have been breached._

 _TMI wasn't caused by a computer failure but the accident was made vastly worse by an error of computer design. Specifically, TMI-2 had a terrible user interface._

 _What happened at Unit 2 was a little more complex. A cascading series of events caused the computer to notice SEVEN HUNDRED things wrong in the first few minutes of the accident. The ONE audible alarm started ringing and stayed ringing continuously until someone turned it off as useless. The ONE visual alarm was activated and blinked for days, indicating nothing useful at all. The line printer queue quickly contained 700 error reports followed by several thousand error report updates and corrections. The printer queue was almost instantly hours behind, so the operators knew they had a problem (700 problems actually, though they couldn't know that) but had no idea what the problem was._

 _So they guessed._

 _Not good._

[http://www.cringely.com/2009/03/31/three-mile-island- memorie...](http://www.cringely.com/2009/03/31/three-mile-island-memories/)

<comment><USER9> I don't think you understood my point at all. I'm not saying that _any_ nuclear incident is minor, or that there will never be one again.

A Chernobyl-style incident will never happen with a LWR reactor. That much is known, and the experts - _nuclear engineers_ \- are unanimous on this point. Feynman's point was, "when judging risk, ask the engineers that actually design and build the technology, not the management." The article I linked to ([http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/RBMKvsLWR.html](http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/RBMKvsLWR.html)) was written by nuclear engineers (who were students at the time, but have been in their field for many years now). The article you linked to was written by ... a journalist that writes about the computer industry? Now I'm left with the idea that _you_ have missed Feynman's point.

<comment><USER10> You're right. I don't think I understand your point because I don't think you know what your point is.

Are you trying to advance the theory that _management_ had no hand in the terrible decision-making around TMI, including the numerous shortcuts that Cringely noted (nb: you are hardly using an _engineering_ approach when you resort to ad hominem criticism of Cringely as a "journalist" without responding to any of the legitimate problems he noted). Or are you trying to advance the theory that no engineering mistakes were made at TMI?

And are you trying to advance the theory here that somehow, magically, _management_ will not continue to make NASA-like _management_ mistakes in current and future nuclear facilities?

Because if so, that's _precisely_ Feynman's point, which you seem to be ignoring.

And c'mon, you're merely moving goal-posts around when you focus on the severity of Chernobyl vs TMI. That isn't speaking at all to how technology was misused in both instances by people making exactly the kinds of errors Feynman emphasizes.

> A Chernobyl-style incident will _never_ happen with a LWR reactor [emphasis > added]. That much is known, and the experts - nuclear engineers - <USER2> > _unanimous_ on this point [emphasis added].

Really? _Never?_ _Unanimous_? That sounds like a really interesting _engineering_ judgment. Could you kindly link to the unanimous consensus statement from _nuclear engineers_ that support that strong but odd statement?

Because that sounds an awful lot like NASA management who claimed that the chances of loss of a space shuttle were so remote as to be negligible.

And your statement is even more curious when we read review papers like the one[1] from _nuclear engineer_ Bah Sehgal[2] of the National Academy of _Engineering_ , who concludes:

"The presently-installed LWR plants in Western countries have been addressing their safety performance from the day they were installed and operating... _Clearly, not all the severe accident issues have been resolved for the presently-installed plants_ [emphasis added].

"The presently-installed LWR plants made improvements in components, systems, operator training, man-machine interface, safety culture, etc., thereby significantly reducing the probability of a severe accident occurring. They also instituted severe accident management backfits, systems and procedures, which are providing assurance of the elimination of an uncontrolled and large release of radioactivity even in case a severe accident occurs. _Still, the presently-installed plants can not provide assurance of coolability of a melt pool /debris bed, which could be formed during a bounding severe accident. In that situation, the LWR owner can not assure the public that the accident has been terminated and that there is no further danger of the release of radioactivity._ [emphasis added]"

Sorry. It is you with your pronouncements of _never_ who is absolutely not getting Feynman's point whatsoever. In particular, he decried _management_ and others with their own wishful pronouncements of _never_ , which stood in stark contrast with the concerns of _engineers_ who were well aware that there were quantifiable and real risks associated with their technology.

[1] [http://www.kns.org/jknsfile/v38/JK0380697.pdf](http://www.kns.org/jknsfile/v38/JK0380697.pdf)

[2] [https://www.nae.edu/69277.aspx](https://www.nae.edu/69277.aspx)

<comment><USER9> dmfdmf wrote the following right here on hn five years ago. I'm reposting for the benefit of those that won't click on his comment:

"As a former design engineer in the nuclear business I have to make the following comments;

1) The lessons of TMI are far from forgotten. TMI is one of the most studied accidents and the lessons learned are incorporated throughout engineering and technical training.

2) Anyone who claims TMI was worse than Chernobyl is an idiot. One of the major lessons learned from TMI was that the design basis and safety strategies of western reactors work. This despite the serious operator training and control room design flaws that were exposed by the accident.

3) Anyone who mentions Chernobyl and TMI in the same breath does not know what they are talking about. A few facts about Chernobyl; these RMBK reactors were originally designed to generate plutonium for bombs and then scaled up for electric power generation which created all sorts of operational problems. When I was an undergrad my nuke prof said the design was inherently unstable and an accident was inevitable. The western countries had tried for years to get them to shut them down. On the night of the accident the engineers disabled 4 or 5 safety systems in order to run a turbine spin down test. This test was ordered by Moscow and the previous lead engineer was fired for not completing it prior to the last planned shutdown.

4) TMI experienced a partial core melt. I read an engineering report after the accident that it was technically and economically feasible to fix the damaged reactor. The PR nightmare this would create dictated that it would not be fixed. Chernobyl's core was blown sky high by a steam explosion and fuel rods littered the plant site, thus killing the responding firemen with lethal doses of radiation. There is no dispute regarding which core had more damage.

5) The claim that the containment would have cracked due to "pressure spikes" except that TMI was specially reinforced to protect against aircraft impact is engineering nonsense. First, these are different design requirements and operate on different physical principles. Second, if the accident exposed such a serious deficiency in the design of "normal" containment buildings it would have resulted in the shutdown or at least a reduced operating power at all other plants of similar design. No such regulatory action ever occurred.

6) While it is scary to write about "releasing radioactive gases into the atmosphere" the reality is that such releases are pretty harmless. These gases are typically biologically and physically inert and quickly dissipate in the wind to harmless background radiation levels. One of the major lessons learned from TMI was that the more dangerous biologically active materials like radioactive iodine or potassium do not escape and tend to stick to other material even in a core melt. That is if you have a containment building, unlike Chernobyl.

7) It is insulting to say that the operators did not know what was going on with the reactor "so they guessed" as if they started pushing buttons and pulling levers willy-nilly. The operators knew that the information they were receiving was not complete or wrong. The biggest problem was that their training was flawed and incorporated an assumption that was incorrect -- thus leading them to take actions that made the situation worse.

About the only thing that I agree with Cringely on is that we should be building nuclear reactors now."

<comment><USER10> I reckon your kind, single posting to HN from a "design engineer in the nuclear business"... who thinks the events leading to a partial nuclear meltdown at a LWR like TMI reflect a kind of engineering triumph and the kind of statistical confidence (that Feynman calls out) that would lead engineers to conclude that LWRs could _never_ suffer a nuclear meltdown....instead of the requested posting of a link to a consensus statement about the _impossibility_ of a major nuclear reactor accident by _all nuclear engineers_....is better than nothing.

Just kidding with you some. But I think we're done here. Have a nice day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There were 135[1] Space Shuttle missions with 2 resulting in human casualties (Challenger and Columbia disasters).

Thus, a failure with loss of vehicle and of human life of 1.48 in 100.

 _The estimates range from roughly 1 in 100 to 1 in 100,000. The higher figures come from the working engineers, and the very low figures from management._

The reality was even more dangerous than the engineers had predicted, and far more dangerous than management had.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_shuttle_missions](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_space_shuttle_missions)

<comment><USER12> I would suspect the engineering estimate had one or at most two sig figs, which isn't bad compared to results. I'm sure the management estimate had six sig figures of course.

<comment><USER3> When NASA was comparing designs for their post-shuttle rocket recently, they literally used four significant figures in the risk estimates [1], and used this estimate to pick the design. It seems crazy to me to have four sig figs of reliability for designs that were basically at the PowerPoint stage.

NASA started with the requirement that their new rocket have less than 1 in 1000 odds of loss of crew (LOC). They concluded that using an existing Atlas V had LOC odds of 1 in 957 (unacceptable), while the paper design of putting a capsule on top of a Shuttle booster had LOC odds of 1 in 1918 (totally acceptable). They then quoted this 1,918 number in a lot of places to justify the program.

This rocket was the Ares-I [2], which turned into a fiasco and was canceled four years ago.

My conclusion is that NASA's current risk assessments are as bogus as the ones for the space shuttle. They start with an unrealistic goal (1 in 1000 risk), make totally unjustifiable estimates to meet the goal, and then make bad decisions based on these estimates. Coincidentally, the decisions based on these estimates line up with the politically-desirable outcome.

The 1 in 1918 risk assessment turned out to be totally wrong, of course. The Air Force pointed out that the launch escape system wouldn't work since burning fuel would melt the parachute and everyone would die. [3]

My personal view is that NASA needs to admit that rockets are dangerous and you probably can't get the risk below 1 in 100. Then NASA can focus on doing the best job they can. [4]

[1] See for example [http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/140649main_ESAS_full.pdf](http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/140649main_ESAS_full.pdf) figure 1-26 [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_I) [3] [http://archive.is/YD1sh](http://archive.is/YD1sh) [4] See "Safe is not an option" for discussion on how NASA's focus on safety is harming the space program: [http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2435/1](http://www.thespacereview.com/article/2435/1)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is an absolute classic of engineering literature. The last sentence, perhaps deservedly, gets most of the glory, but the whole piece should be under every engineer's and every manager's fingers.

I constantly see the dynamic observed in the first paragraph, and it would seem that the question "What is the cause of management's fantastic faith in the machinery?" is eternal.

<comment><USER14> I think management's big problem is that they are often confused by the difference between _what they need_ and _what they have_. Of course I've spent a lot of my career working for venture capital-based startups where this problem might naturally be more prevalent.

<comment><USER15> I would phrase it slightly differently: the problem is that when human beings know that they need something, and also know that _they will not be allowed to get it,_ they are remarkably successful at convincing themselves that they don't really need it after all.

Take the infamous O-rings from the Shuttle's solid rocket boosters, for instance. As Feynman notes in this appendix, the appearance of erosion on the O-rings was an indication that their design was fundamentally flawed. So why did NASA's engineers twist themselves into pretzels to argue that everything was fine? The reason is because they knew that _there was no chance that those boosters were going to be redesigned._ The political will for that, in NASA and in Washington, just was not there. Even if the engineers threw down their tools and refused to launch any more Shuttles on the grounds that they were unsafe, all that would happen would be that the Powers That Be would come down on them like a ton of bricks and force them either to shut up and get back to work, or to get out of NASA and therefore wreck their careers.

When people are forced to choose between bad options, the easiest thing to do is usually nothing. So that's what NASA's engineers did. And since "I know this thing I work on is likely to kill people, and I'm not going to do anything about that" is the kind of self-knowledge that leads to cognitive dissonance ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)), they put together ad-hoc rationalizations to help them live with it. Rationalizations like the misuse of the term "safety factor" that Feynman flagged, for example; if you can twist that term so it fits the facts in front of you, you can convince yourself that the Shuttle isn't _really_ unsafe. Which takes care of the cognitive dissonance.

You can see this cycle all the time in software development, too. How many systems have you worked on that weren't really secure, but you know that management doesn't have the stomach to accept the tradeoffs -- the extra cost, the reduced convenience -- it would take to _make_ them secure? What happens in those cases? In the ones I've seen, the people involved just convince themselves that the system isn't insecure after all. "We've never been hacked; if the system was insecure, we would have been hacked; therefore, the system is not insecure." It's not great logic, but when you desperately want to believe something it doesn't _have_ to be great logic to convince you. It just has to tell you what you already want to hear.

<comment><USER16> The engineers _knew_ why there was blow-by on the O-ring -- joint rotation. The obvious solution was to redesign the field joint to resist this rotation, so that the O-ring would never be exposed to hot gases. All they needed was time and money.

Then _Challenger_ happened. Now, no Shuttle could ever launch again until the joint was redesigned and proven to work. Time and money were no object.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For anyone else interested in how the organizational incentives and institutional culture at NASA helped to set the stage for the Challenger disaster, I highly recommend _The Challenger Launch Decision_ [1] by Diane Vaughan.

From the New York Times review[2]:

In "The Challenger Launch Decision" Diane Vaughan, a sociologist at Boston College, takes up where the Rogers Commission and Claus Jensen leave off. She finds the traditional explanation of the accident -- "amorally calculating managers intentionally violating rules" \-- to be profoundly unsatisfactory. Why, she asks, would they knowingly indulge such a risk when the future of the space program, to say nothing of the lives of the astronauts, hung in the balance? "It defied my understanding," she says.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995029.The_Challenger_La...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/995029.The_Challenger_Launch_Decision)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/19074.html](http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/04/13/nnp/19074.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Even with Feynman's carefully reasoned essay, the next shuttle disaster was a mirror of the first: chunks of foam falling of each flight, careful monitoring but no serious action until the foam resulted in a loss of a vehicle.

The first loss was after careful monitoring of near-burn throughs of the SRB o-rings on many flights, but no decisive action.

<comment><USER18> It really astounded me when I learned no shuttle was inspected for damage while in orbit until after the loss of the Columbia.

The shuttle was an experimental vehicle. It was their job to gather as much data as possible on it. With that, the foam problem would have become evident long before the deaths of the Columbia crew.

<comment><USER19> As I recall, part of the rationale, was that even if there was an issue, there was literally zero way for it to be fixed. So now you spend the next 2-3 days in the shuttle, "doing your job" knowing that you will not return alive. With that in mind, the though initially was, "let's just not check".

<comment><USER16> Not true, there would've been options available. After the loss of _Columbia_ , engineers came up with two ways to save the crew: a rescue mission, and an emergency repair EVA.

The rescue mission would've been hazardous, but the expected loss of life would have been negative. (More likely to save seven astronauts on the _Columbia_ than to lose two astronauts on the rescue mission.) The repair would've been jury-rigged and may not have worked, but it would have been better than reentering without attempting to repair the damage.

Once you'd inspected the Shuttle, you'd know that it was in pretty bad shape. And then you've have moved into _Apollo 13_ mode -- how do we come up with a way to save the crew? And maybe it would've worked. It's only because the Shuttle was not inspected that NASA proceeded as though nothing were wrong.

Incidentally, they had the STS-27 astronauts check for tile damage, back in 1988. The astronauts were convinced that they were going to die on re-entry, but they still did their jobs for the rest of the mission.

This also means that NASA had 15 years to develop in-orbit repair methods before _Columbia_ needed them. But nothing was done in this area either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think root problem is that shuttle was starting and landing with people. They should use it just for cargo, second rocket with Apollo should have transport people from/to orbit.

<comment><USER21> Wings were the real problem.

They stuck out where they could be struck by stuff. They precluded the capsule eject system. They cost Shuttle tons of fuel. For a system used in only one part it's flight regime.

Why _why_ did Shuttle have wings? The Air Force insisted. So they could launch Shuttle into polar orbit from Vandenberg. Shuttle would need the wings to come _back_ to Vandenberg.

Then the Air Force withdrew from the program. Too late to get rid of the terrible wings, however.

<comment><USER22> Curious, how would it land _anywhere_ without wings? Apart from splashing down.

<comment><USER23> Lifting Bodies

[http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-011-DF...](http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-011-DFRC.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> In case you missed it Discovery Channel aired a pretty interesting Challenger docu(drama?) in November. The show portrayed Dr. Feynman's path to reaching these conclusions. Pretty interesting and disturbing at the same time.

[http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/the-challenger- disaster/ch...](http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/the-challenger- disaster/challenger-disaster-videos/combing-through-the-wreckage.htm)</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to learn SQL? - <AUTHOR> I need recommendations on the best introduction to SQL.
About 10 years ago, "Access Database Design & Programming"  http://www.amazon.com/dp/0596002734 was my introduction to relational algebra, and "The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL" http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201615762 filled in the details on queries required for each day's new minor emergency.
Today I'm looking for the best online CBT options (teamtreehouse or whatever), online courses, better books, and/or any other options I might not even have considered ([online] user groups/communities, tutorials included with database servers, etc.?)
I was promised "an upcoming blog post specially focusing on learning SQL" back when Zipfian Academry rounded up their "Practical Intro to Data Science" a month ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5508261 , but I'm out of time to wait. (If anyone has additional recommendations specifically for learning more about business intelligence and/or data warehousing I'd greatly appreciate those too!)
Thanks for your time, and keep up the good work! <comment><USER2> I am writing an ebook (leanpub) for beginner-intermediate SQL and if you are interested, check it out:

<https://leanpub.com/sqlfromscratch>

<comment><AUTHOR> I look forward to checking it out!

Hopefully I'll already have the bases covered by the time you release; I certainly will try to get you some usable feedback.

<comment><USER2> definitely. Would love any feedback. To be honest, I am writing this because I get a lot of queries like yourself in my field of work and I decided to give something back to the community. I am expecting to have this ready in next 30 days.

<comment><AUTHOR> Recommendation number one: if you're wrapping it up in less than a month, don't leave your sales page saying you are 1% done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I swear by O'Reilly's SQL Cookbook ([http://www.amazon.com/Cookbook-Cookbooks- OReilly-Anthony-Mol...](http://www.amazon.com/Cookbook-Cookbooks-OReilly- Anthony-Molinaro/dp/0596009763)). The examples start of easy and get more complicated as you go along, all with detailed explanations. The book is a bit out of date but it's still useful. IMHO, it will turn you from a novice to an intermediate in no time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Old but good: <http://philip.greenspun.com/sql/>

Supplement with a good resource specific to the RDBMS you are using.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice to know this is still worth digging into... I'd forgotten about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Joe Celkos books <http://www.amazon.com/Joe-Celko/e/B000ARBFVQ>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Is there a specific one that has been the most helpful to you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For something interactive, checkout <http://sqlzoo.net/></comment>


US ambassador: Internet fee proposal gaining momentum - <AUTHOR> http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/261863-us-ambassador-warns-internet-fee-proposal-gaining-momentum-abroad

<comment><USER2> Can we just call proposals like this: 'double charging'

So we'd rewrite this to be: 'US ambassador: Internet double charging proposal gaining momentum'.

We all know that we pay for our internet access to websites. Those websites shouldn't be charged again. We should have that fact built into the language we use discussing these issues. I think it's easier to oppose this type of thing when stating the problem states your argument.

EDIT:

Actually I've just reread the article. This is just FUD being spouted by the US government to scare it's citizens. They want the US to retain control of the internet (which is totally understandable) and are saying bad things will happen if they let the UN take control. It's building a justification for not going along with the rest of the world if all the other countries agrees to something it doesn't like.

It's possibly not worth worrying about as long as you live in a country with a competitive telecoms market.

<comment><USER3> Can you make the case that it's better off under the control of the UN? I'm not too keen on the stewardship of the US especially with regards to copyright, and this "promote a global Internet free from government control" Congressional resolution is double-speak bullshit as they are trying their hardest to do the exact opposite. But I can't say allowing countries like Iran, China, North Korea, etc., _any say at all_ in the functioning of the Internet at a global level sounds any more appealing.

Ideally we just need an Internet that is inherently unmanageable at the most basic levels. Wireless (or wireless enough, anyway), distributed DNS, end-to- end encryption, onion routing, etc.

<comment><USER4> Many millions of people feel the same way about US control of the Internet. Now what?

<comment><USER3> Devil-you-know. I don't like US control of the Internet either (said as much in my post in fact). But that doesn't mean I think we should hand it over to the UN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm confused. Some _are_ already charging fees to carry international traffic. Or rather, they do it indirectly, by offering packages that offer access only to their peering relationships at specific interchanges or full transit.

E.g. at work we have a customer that has 95%+ UK traffic, and one operator offered us bandwidth at about 20% our current price for a peering package that included access to pretty much all UK and most larger European ISP's, but no transit, that we could mix and match with a smaller amount of full transit. If our bandwidth needs had been larger, we'd have looked seriously into it, but as it stands, our customers UK only traffic is low enough that the cost difference isn't worth the hassle of managing our own BGP routing and an extra port.

In other words, it sounds like what these operators really want is to make this mandatory in some form, so that they won't have to deal with those pesky competitors that might undercut them and offer prices actually based on what it costs to provide the service. Many of them will also see it as a way to prevent relative strength in negotiations from deciding on peering costs.

It also means that today, when buying full transit, you _are_ paying a substantial premium for the costs your provider incurs in procuring substantial capacity for international traffic. Almost nobody forgoes paying the premium today because almost everyone _does_ have substantial international traffic, and pretty much nobody can afford not doing so. You can bet your provider does everything they can to peer with everyone who can lower their transit bill, but all but the very largest will still end up paying for transit for a fairly substantial percentage of their traffic, and that cost is of course passed on to their customers.

I ran an ISP in the mid 90's in Norway. At the time, we had "massive" international bandwidth, because we bought 512kbps full transit via Sweden. For that privilege we paid about twice what it would cost us to get a 10Mbps port at the switch at NIX (the then only Norwegian interchange) and suitable line capacity to our office. Our nearest competitor in terms of price and size had 128kbps full transit + 1Mbps to NIX (it was a mixed bag: our customers were ecstatic about the speed of international downloads - personally I remember waiting up to download the newest version of Netscape a few days after we'd upgraded from 256kbps, and had the line almost exclusively to myself and found it absolutely amazing to download at a speed I'd find shockingly slow on my home connection today... But they were annoyed at the performance for Norwegian sites, especially latency - see below).

The only reason we didn't connect immediately is that at that point, to be able to connect you needed at least one peering agreement in place first, which required you to first demonstrate a reasonable amount of traffic.

But it demonstrates the cost differences this industry operates with: If you could fill that 10Mbps with traffic via peering arrangements, your bandwidth cost would still be only twice what someone would pay for 512kbps full transit. Even worse: Those 512kbps of pure transit at the time did _not_ guarantee your provider had peering at NIX (ours didn't for the first year or two), and so you might find massive lag as your traffic went via D-GIX in Stockholm and back to Norway...

I don't know current relative prices, since I've not been directly in that market since '99, but I do know the gaps are still massive and there's probably still also money to be made in arbitrage in some locations in offering custom "bandwidth mixes" for someone who can do a good job of negotiating the right contracts given the 5-times difference I mentioned I was offered. Even more so because of a proliferation of peering points.

Effectively this is what companies that are large enough to do their own peering gets - but it is far harder to make it pay for itself if you're "only" buying in the <200-300Mbps range or so (guesstimate). We "only" do an aggregate of 45Mbps at the moment), and bandwidth makes up less of our operating costs than the personnel cost to my employer of the time I'd have to spend configuring and managing a BGP setup and peering arrangements alone, much less equipment and interconnect fees.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ugh, now we're going to have to stretch our already practically non-existant political capital even further to defend against this shit. Do the CCC and the Pirate Party have official positions on this?

Edit: In case they don't (and that's what it looks like from some cursory googling), here are some talking points that might be effective. Disclaimer: I'm not European, so I probably have a bad intuition about what would play over there.

* This measure is a form of trade protectionism that will result in retaliation from the US (think import duities). That retaliation will harm EU companies more than American ones, since the US is far larger than any single market in the EU

* Many EU startups have grown in the US market first, even though they are based in the EU (soundcloud and last.fm come to mind). Higher costs across borders would at best limit new companies like these to their home markets and at worst kill them on the vine.

* Popular services like Google and Twitter (Facebook seems touchy, so I would leave them out) have no domestic alternatives, so jeopardizing access would harm consumers.

</comment><comment><USER7> There is no sense to this proposal. If it cost a telecom more to relay international traffic, they could charge their customers more for it to make up for the expensive peering costs. The telecoms must not be able to charge their customers more to relay traffic through expensive peers due to market forces -- which is why they want the government to be involved. It doesn't compensate the telecom for anything, it's just mandated jealousy.

<comment><USER8> I have to wonder how many of the members of government pushing this also happen to be shareholders of telecoms companies. (I long for the day somebody builds such a graph of all influential people so such questions could easily be answered).

<comment><USER9> Oversimplified, The caller-pays model of telephone compensations was a way to funnel money from richer countries to poorer countries with government-owned telephone monopolies. This fell apart with the internet where the state telecoms had to pay for pipes to western carriers because they had all the desirable content. This situation with the ITU is all about recreating that money flow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Ah .. rent-seeking telecoms companies. Imagine for a minute if these companies had to compete to the death with each other. I guess I wouldn't have to pay more for the same service now as I used to have to back in 1999 (with no discernable increase in the service over 13 years).

<comment><USER11> i just moved to the us, and I'm really wondering where on earth you can find more expensive service than here.

<comment><USER12> Canada, where the competition is even less.

<comment><USER13> Add Australia to that list, where you can pay $80 per month for a connection with a 50GB download limit.

[http://www.telstra.com.au/internet/home-broadband-bigpond- el...](http://www.telstra.com.au/internet/home-broadband-bigpond-elite-plans/)

<comment><USER14> At least Australia has a good excuse - they have to pull wires underwater for many miles to get any connectivity, so there's some scarcity there. The U.S. is the hub of the internet, the costs must be the lowest.

<comment><USER4> The US is much less dense than Europe and East Asian.

<comment><USER12> I really view the "US is less dense" argument with a grain of salt. If it were true, then we would have _awesome_ connections within highly populated cities, and it would maybe just be the suburbs or rural areas that were complaining. As it stands, everyone is complaining, with the exception of a handful of suburbs across the nation that got experimental FIOS roll-outs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The only thing this would accomplish would be to further distance the internet-centric innovations developed here in the US from the rest of the world. Consumers in tariff enforcing territories would be at a disadvantage. Fragmentation of the internet would surely ensue. Fees would no doubt be passed along to consumers who, in some non trivial fraction, would simply not make use of new innovative services. But perhaps, obviously, this is the intended result.

This is complete political buffoonery.</comment>


The Devaluation of Music - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/cuepoint/the-devaluation-of-music-it-s-worse-than-you-think-f4cf5f26a888 <comment><USER2> _> and streaming royalties_

Stopping the author here. Streaming royalties are fine. Labels keeping 80% of those streaming royalties due to exploitative record deals is the problem. Furthermore, playing live gigs and selling merchandise has _always_ been how artists earn their money unless they're one of the superstar artists who are too big for the label to let go.

Streaming services pay more than radio and have better statistics to track how many people actually heard/listened to the song. Streaming services can help promote CD sales or influence merchandise sales.

Furthermore - I'd place a large wager that streaming has _lessened_ piracy. It has made music easier to obtain and listen to on-demand and you don't need to go to some shady site (for those unaware of private trackers, which is most people) to download the album.

#1) Few people ever cared.

 _> maven class that infuses the culture with informed enthusiasm_

To most people, this is a nice way of saying "pretentious asshole who won't shut up that they can name any minor detail about an album".

#2) I can agree with this point. But the value of radio in general has gone down with on-demand/XM, being able to play an iPod in the car, etc. Why do I need a radio station to help me find new music when I can use Spotify's "similar to [___]" feature?

#3) This is a problem with media as a whole. For most places it's about views, clicks, and ad impressions now and that means trendy/viral/pop. Not covering some obscure up-and-coming Jazz artist.

#4) No. That's because of hipsters and music snobs who believe in special copper wiring. This seems to be a case for analog vs digital ; because there are music players that aren't _media_ players. They're just less popular because people would rather have a program that does both.

#5) Look harder. I like the picture of ICP. Staying in the same genre, would you say Aesop Rock is anti-intellectual? The thing is people listen to music for entertainment. Not to think critically about things or have to decode metaphors to understand what is being said.

#6) I didn't follow the point being made.

#7) Citation needed. I've always been huge on music, I avoid concerts at all costs. Also define "serious" concerts. Do you mean classical? Methinks the author has a huge Jazz/Classical bias here.

Closing paragraphs: Define "serious music". I'm thinking you mean Jazz/Classical?

 _> Complex instrumental music has become marginalized to within an inch of its very existence_

That's because most people find it boring. Next you'll be telling me people are reading less!</comment>


Build hybrid apps with the Ionic Creator - <AUTHOR> http://ionicframework.com/blog/ionic-creator/

<comment><USER2> From the Site.

"Totally free!

We want to help more web and mobile developers become hybrid developers with Ionic. Having great tools like Creator will lower the bar for getting started with mobile development in general, and we love that!

To achieve this dream, we have decided to make the Ionic Creator 100% free. While we might charge in the future for heavy usage, we will always have a free version of Creator available, so you can quickly build Ionic and Cordova apps."

</comment><comment><USER3> If only it were actually this easy to set up ([http://ionicframework.com/getting- started/](http://ionicframework.com/getting-started/)) - just spent 45 mins trying to get it working with an android target on an ubuntu box and I've had enough, uninstalling everything

<comment><USER4> This is why I have up trying to write BB apps. It was just so hard to get going.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Surely this approach has gotta get some serious uptake soon/finally? For your average CRUD app, coding in iOS and Android (and web) makes little sense. Titanium was promising before it made the big shift to Alloy. Jquery Mobile is oddly "meh". Ionic looks quite nice so far.

I see 37 Signals is making this approach work, too (albeit with different tools): [http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took- baseca...](http://signalvnoise.com/posts/3766-hybrid-how-we-took-basecamp- multi-platform-with-a-tiny-team)

<comment><USER6> I don't think jquery mobile was ever a good idea for making hybrid apps. Aside from the name, it wasn't nearly as flexible as original jquery. There's also a distinction between what's needed for a mobile site vs a hyrbid app. If the .js files are baked into the app, bandwidth and latency are non-issues. What you need is to optimize performance only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not familiar with Ionic. It describes itself as a framework for Hybrid apps, which sounds interesting, but all I can see described on the website is html and css. Anyone mind enlightening me on what that means here?

<comment><USER8> It's angular, with cordova/phonegap packaged alongside it, and then a whole load of ionic sauce in the form of css and angular directives to make the thing work on mobiles in a polished way. They're doing stuff like catching every touch event and doing debouncing, while actually improving performance. Some of it is quite impressive.

I'd recommend it if you need to make an angular app look and behave like a native app as much as possible.

Unfortunately if you want to deviate from ionic's currently small pool of iOS- ish design metaphors, then it's not flexible at all, that's what you sacrifice for having everything else work with minimum fuss. I believe they are working on remedying this, there's lots of stuff on the issue tracker about enabling iOS Mail style layouts and so on.

In the end, it's just angular, and ui-router: this is its strength. Take a look at the repo.

<comment><USER6> If you want flexible, you can just use vanilla Cordova. There's always a trade-off between features and flexibility.

<comment><USER8> That's exactly what I did in the end. I was hoping to use some of ionic's general optimisations without using its UI components, but I wasn't clever enough to work out if this was a good idea in the short time I had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cant't find either pricing or other hints of a valid business model anywhere. That makes me a bit wary to try it out - how long can ionic exist without income?

<comment><USER10> Hey, one of the founders here. :) Rest assured our company is financially strong and Ionic will only be getting _more_ love going forwards. We did raise some money recently , but we actually have some nice revenue already (imagine that!).

Unlike our past products, we aren't trying to build a company around just Creator. It's a tool to help existing Ionic devs and train the future of Ionic devs, and so we want to keep it free as much as possible to just help more people build with Ionic.

<comment><USER6> That's awesome. I'm such a hater of the iOS dev requirements so I really hope that the hybrid app space really takes off. Do you have any plans for mitigating JavaScript performance on mobile devices? Do you see any movement in building cross-paltform plugins?

<comment><USER11> JavaScript is fairly fast, the DOM is what is slow in my experience. I too am hopeful that the hybrid app space takes off as well.

It would be really cool to see Ionic have some support for windows. Then I could really see this being adopted at my company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Sign up below for early access to the Creator beta.

Annoying.

<comment><USER13> Yes, annoying that Ionic wants to beta test their new software package. How annoying of them.

<comment><USER12> Yes, but it's not an instant access beta program. So whilst I appreciate they want to beta it, I'd like to have a little play knowing that it's in beta.

<comment><USER10> Sorry for the confusion. It's not in beta yet. No one is using it and it's not quite ready. The list is for when that opens up, and we will be liberal about letting people in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Uber Will Win Music - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@yoroomie/uber-will-win-music-c369b15bf420#.qtx4oavrp <comment><USER2> Music is too limiting. Might as well just provide wifi and let the passengers use their personal devices to entertain themselves whatever way they want.

<comment><AUTHOR> Adding wifi is something that I totally agree with. Music could be their first entry into content, which I am sure would be followed by video and other forms. This also opens up to the question of what do people consumer or use to pass time when in transit and not the driver?</comment></comment>


SEA 'Hack' Of The NYTimes Was The Exact Remedy MPAA Demanded With SOPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130828/15432924343/syrian-electronic-army-hack-nytimes-was-exact-remedy-mpaa-demanded-with-sopa.shtml

<comment><USER2> Just when you think TechDirt couldn't be a bigger rag.</comment>


Ask HN: Confirm email or password? - <AUTHOR>

When a user is signing up to a new service(twitter, forum) the standard is that they enter their email once or twice, and their password twice.
The only company to lean away from this that I've noticed is Facebook, who have you enter your email twice and password once.
Which would you do if you were starting a project? I can understand that many Facebook users will be reusing their dictionary-word password everywhere, but I can see both pros and cons to only asking for a password once.
WWHND? <comment><USER2> This is a great question and on that I asked myself last week. I am seeing a growing number of people register on my site and with that a larger number of rejected emails because they entered the email wrong. (Note: who ever owns gmial.com probably sees a ton of email sent their way). This made me rethink how people get registered. I think it is probably time to change gears and validate the email and not the password. Sure doing both would be better but I dislike having to double enter everything on a form.

Here is my rational for making the switch. I want users to become engaged. The fact that they are registering means I did something right that motivated them to act. I require, like many others, to validate their email and account by clicking on a link that gets emailed to them. If they never get the link they never get fully registered. I am sure a large number of users would not follow up on this. They were motivated at the time to register but that motivation might not be strong enough to persuade them to troubleshoot their registration. This results in turning a motivated user into a disgruntled surfer.

Plus if the password was wrong they can always reset it with their validated and confirmed email

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on your audience.

For a tech audience, maybe one of each is fine without confirmation. Technical users would be more careful.

For a much less technical audience (at least 50% of FB users) you can never be too careful. FB would probably ask the user 3 times each, but they'd be guaranteed that their users would then enter it once incorrectly, and may never be able to correctly submit the form.

Seriously though, it does depend on the audience, imo.

</comment><comment><USER4> <https://twitter.com/signup>

Username once, password once, and email address once. If by some twist of fate I enter my password wrong, they have my email address. They send a confirmation email right away, while I'm still on the signup page, so if I got my email address wrong and that confirmation bounces, I get notified, and I have a chance to correct it (since I'm logged in after account creation).

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops, my bad. I was running on memory there</comment></comment>


Things I've learned as an entrepreneur - <AUTHOR> http://elver.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/things-ive-learned-as-an-entrepreneur-part-1/

<comment><USER2> Some things actually take 2 weeks... perhaps this should be adapted to understand how someone is making an estimate, do they know what they are talking about and/or do they come with good references you trust?</comment>


Against Pinker's Violence - <AUTHOR> http://ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=702

<comment><USER2> TLDR version of this critique might be: "Violence can be emotional, too, and Pinker is myopic for focusing, with reductionist logic, on physical harm and death in his definition and analysis."

I, personally, find Pinker's analysis incredibly thorough and compelling, and focus on death and it's systematic avoidance over time an extremely meaningful measure. This critique seemed to imply that if ones definition of violence is merely physical, then better to throw out the whole thing. I almost get the impression that Ben Laws never fully read the book, as many of his points are dealt with directly.

I do, of course, think there's room to think about the impact of emotional harm from and within societies, but that subject matter doesn't moot the impact of more animalistic harm.

Further, I have difficulty being swayed by appeals to logic that logic is, itself, unappealing.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is largely academic posturing, which is the case with a lot of critical theory. Pinker makes it clear throughout Better Angels that his working definition of violence is limited to the physical kind. He's also adamant that his choice of topic is not an endorsement of any specific moral hierarchy, and if you read the book, you would know the tone is not entirely self- congratulatory, but often somber and introspective.

What this article claims is Pinker's "exercise of circularity" slash discursive violence is merely a sin of omission: because Pinker chose not to make his book about modern problems, the author jumps to the conclusion that he is partly responsible for these problems.

By this logic: Yesterday I didn't have a single conversation about inequality or racism—I guess that makes me complicit! That strikes me as kind of absurd, I don't know about anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER4> Pinker wrote an interesting and thought provoking book. Certainly he is trying to make a point, and is a bit selective in the data and how he presents it. But this critique is not so much about the substance of the book, or any data that contradicts Pinker's thesis. It is more a blur of relativism and fancy language. I think it is interesting that physical violence has on many measures and timescales been declining, which the critic doesn't seem to refute. Instead he makes a very odd attack on Pinker for not writing a different history of different meanings of violence. I mean you could make this same critique about anything anyone has ever written, but that would be mere sophistry.

I seriously question if this isn't a parody of modern academic criticism.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have not read the book in question, but I have read Pinker's previous book _The Blank Slate: the Modern Denial of Human Nature_. In it, there is a section on the same topic where he argues that our belief that indigenous peoples lived simple and naturally peaceful is just a Western romanticization. After spending several chapters elucidating the origins and extent of this incorrect belief, he provides statistics on why indigenous societies are actually much more warlike than they are today. Since the section is too long to fit in here I've linked to Google Books. Just keep reading the text until you reach highlighted stopping point.

[http://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&pg=PT95&dq=tha...](http://books.google.com/books?id=ePNi4ZqYdVQC&pg=PT95&dq=thanksgiving+editorialist#v=onepage&q=thanksgiving%20editorialist%20universals&f=false)

From looking at the graph, it is quite clear that modern society is much less violent than many other indigenous societies. It seems quite reasonable to conclude that societies are becoming increasingly nonviolent. I wish that the author of the review addressed this in his article.

[1] In the first paragraph of the section, Pinker references a Thanksgiving editorialist quote from Chapter 1. Here's the quote:

"I would submit that the world native Americans knew was more stable, happier, and less barbaric than our society today.... there were no employment problems, community harmony was strong, substance abuse unknown, crime nearly nonexistent. What warfare there was between tribes was largely ritualistic and seldom resulted in indiscriminate or wholesale slaughter. While there were hard times, life was, for the most part, stable and predictable.... Because the native people respected what was around them, there was no loss of water or food resources because of pollution or extinction, no lack of materials for the daily essentials, such as baskets, canoes, shelter, or firewood."</comment>


Softbank to sell 25% stake in ARM Holdings to Saudi-backed investment group - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-39204744 <comment> awinter-py The saudis are desperate to use their sovereign wealth fund to diversify (i.e. save) their economy.

The country has a lot of problems but I'm legitimately excited to see what they come up with. The first step to getting out of a hole is to recognize you're in one, and they have.

With any luck, economics-driven policy will lead to social change as well.

<comment><USER2> It's not clear to me how making investments in companies not based in Saudi Arabia help them diversify their economy. They need to be investing in building domestic companies not based on oil. This will require investments in infrastructure, education, health care, etc.

And, as you said, social liberalization as well.

<comment><USER3> Norway's wealth fund invest primarily abroad as well for the simple reason that while it is important to diversify the local economy, pouring vast amounts of money into the local economy drives inflation.

The Saudi's _are_ already pouring money into the local economy as well. But there's only so fast their economy can make efficient use of that money without overheating.

Investing abroad is a way of creating a lasting income stream without those problems.

<comment> awinter-py This inflation argument sounds right to me.

Can you point to an article which talks more about how SWFs balance their in- country out-country investment?

<comment><USER3> I don't have any handy articles, I'm afraid. The Norwegian fund that generally gets discussed only invests out of country. There is another fund that invests in Norway (as well as a number of government development banks), but it is much smaller.

There are more details about both the global and domestic funds here [1], which does contain some bits on how it splits its investments and has a decent number of references.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Nor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the headline is misleading at best.

It's transferring 25% of its stake into fund into which it has joint ownership. The headline makes it sound like its dumping its investment.

The mods changed the BBC's clickbait to something more accurate. Thanks mods!

<comment><USER5> I, for one, much prefer TheRegister's headline:

> _Softbank tears off chunk of ARM, feeds it to hungry Saudis_

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/08/quarter_arm_sold_sa...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/08/quarter_arm_sold_saudi_investment_fund_reports/)

<comment><USER6> El Reg's headlines are the best. Full of snark and wit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, does the availability of almost infinite oil money(i know, maybe not a realistic assumption, just an hypothesis) change the chances of ARM overtaking Intel in servers or PC's ?

<comment><USER8> Legacy device markets are pretty firmly entrenched on both sides. Intel with server/PC MCUs, ARM with any silicon at the SoC/MPU level and below for smartphones, embedded systems, etc. (also gaining share from migration away from MIPS and Power architectures). Throwing money at these mkts probably won't help much, and many are low growth anyways.

The interesting, high-growth spaces where ARM and Intel are currently battling for hardware mkt share are the IoT Gateways market and the autonomous vehicle SoC market.

The supporting software ecosystem will also become increasingly important over the next few years - this is a spot where ARM could really outpace Intel if it receives a big infusion of resources (see ARM mbed cloud/OS).

<comment><USER9> High performance computing is also a competitive space. While it has historically been dominated by x86, next generation architectures, such as ARM or GPUs are expected to be necessary as the systems grow in size.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Softbank also just started a merger of Intelsat and OneWeb. [https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/oneweb-is-merging-with- int...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/oneweb-is-merging-with-intelsat- softbank-to-invest-another-1-7b-in-new-satellite-co/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Saudis own stakes of Turkish Telekom. And guess what telekom company is worse in Turkey.

Saudis only milk. No research or development.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was always wondering why Softbank bought ARM. ARM is of course market leading processor design company but it is almost solely fabless and intellectual property company. I don't see how ARM would benefit Softbank.

</comment><comment><USER13> Thats nice. For anyone wondering the Saudi-backed investment group is called "Mubadala".

Mubadala owns 100% of GlobalFoundries ( which brought the hardware division from IBM)

<comment><USER14> Mubadala is Emirati, not Saudi. From the article, it seems that just the Vision Fund run by Mubadala has the backing of the Saudis

<comment><USER15> Mubadala is Abu Dhabi's sovereign development company; its "mandate is to facilitate the diversification of Abu Dhabi's economy" [1]. The SoftBank Vision Fund is "managed in the United Kingdom by a subsidiary of" SoftBank Group Corp [2].

Saudi Arabia's "Public Investment Fund was established in 1971 to provide financing support for projects of strategic significance to the national economy" [2]. It is the Saudi analog to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. PIF is an LP in the SoftBank Vision Fund, albeit a significant and likely influential one.

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

[2] [http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sb/2016/20161014_0...](http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sb/2016/20161014_01/)

<comment><USER16> Mubadala also owns a large part of AMD iirc. edit: they sold the stake for $600M two days ago

<comment><USER17> AMD stock has had a hell of a run over the last year.. wonder if they anticipate that that slowing down</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


MongoDB backend for Django-nonrel released - <AUTHOR> http://www.allbuttonspressed.com/blog/django/2010/05/MongoDB-backend-for-Django-nonrel-released

<comment><USER2> Until full Query and QuerySet support is handled, and creating and using index tables for relationships dynamically behind the scenes, I wouldn't even begin to call this a backend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it's impossible to support absolutely everything of QuerySet. Also, it's likely that Django's official NoSQL support will be nothing more than what you get with this backend, so I'd say you can not actually call this a backend. :) In fact, this backend already provides more features than App Engine provides natively! So, you can actually get very far with it.

Indexing is planned for a later phase and we'll implement it in a way that is reusable between nonrel backends. In particular, this will be a separate optional module. The Django team probably will only support features that are the DB provides natively and that map to QuerySet (IOW, no map/reduce or other DB-specific features for which no SQL equivalent exists). By moving the indexing features into a separate module we can have the best of both worlds. Beginners don't get disturbed by automatically created indexes and advanced developers can achieve higher productivity because they can understand the automatically generated indexes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Is anyone interested in helping with some other backend? For example, SimpleDB or CouchDB would be the next great candidates.</comment>