Skype banned from China - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1713155/skype-illegal-in-china?partner=homepage_newsletter <comment><USER2> This is entirely unrelated, but it reminds me of a comment I saw on reddit that was very telling. Someone was talking about a colleague of his who was Chinese and had come to the US, and who, over dinner with some other colleagues, said: "I can't believe how smooth your propaganda is here in the US. In China it is crude and everyone can see through it, but here you almost miss it." To which all of the other colleagues replied: "What are you talking about? We don't have propaganda in the US!"

I wish I could find it, it was very telling of the climate in China (I assume, I've never been).

<comment><USER3> I'm an American expat in China and I've lived here for several years. I completely agree with the Chinese guy's statement and have thought the same thing myself many times, though I've never heard anyone else openly express it.

Living in an extremely alien culture allows you to see things about your own culture that are hard to notice when you're immersed.

I can be a little more specific about how the propaganda systems work.

The Chinese system:

According to the news, there are more blue skies in Beijing this year than last year, and more blue skies last year than the year before. The pollution situation is getting better and better very rapidly. It's definitely false, but they print it anyway.

Youku and Tudou (Chinese Youtubes) will often have videos of advanced Chinese missiles or other weaponry as the featured video on the front page.

When the Chinese media runs a story on the US, there is a high probability it is discussing some negative aspect of the US (high murder rate, copious drug usage, poor governmental handling of environmental disasters).

And of course you have the censorship end of it: Sina Weibo (Chinese Twitter) and Kaixin (Chinese Facebook) posts are ajax-filtered for sensitive keywords and give you a big red warning if you try to say "bad" things. Or sometimes you'll come back to your computer and some posts you made a couple hours ago are just deleted. Clearly someone monitoring the networks noticed and removed your undesirable content.

I think we can agree the system is used a bit like a blunt instrument. But it works. People, especially the mass population with relatively poor education, really do believe the stuff. America loves war. China is an extremely peace- loving country. Americans love guns and drugs. Chinese pollution is significantly better than a few years ago. Etc.

In the US, on the other hand, "propaganda" is more closely woven into consumer demand and people's value systems.

If an organization wants to convince you of a message, they don't lie outright, they omit information that would cause you to believe to the contrary.

Let's talk about Iran for a bit. In China, there have been a series of articles about recent terrorist attacks in Iran and evidence that the bombers were supported by US intelligence agencies. I don't have strong feelings about how America should treat Iran one way or another, but I find the notion that we were involved at least plausible. But the headlines in the US papers don't mention possible American involvement. If it is mentioned in the article bodies, it's usually as a passing statement which the reader is likely to casually dismiss ("the Iranian government issued a statement that the US was involved in the attacks").

So the emphasis is different.

If you looked at the NYT on the first day of the Wikileaks stories, they wove stories from the cables, and the story they chose to focus on was how Iran was angering many other nations in the Middle East.

Again, it's a matter of what the media chooses to focus on and what it chooses to neglect. There were tons of potential stories in those wires - why did they choose that one as the most important?

And a lot of information in the US media is conveyed on top of a set of assumptions. When Wikileaks broke, the major news organizations mentioned that not all of the cables were being revealed, as some of the information might have posed a threat to national security. Whose national security? The US's. Why is that necessarily a bad thing? What if the cables had contained information that posed a threat to Chinese or Russian or Iranian national security? Would that have been a bad thing too? Or would that, instead, have been a matter of freedom of speech?

And we can also look at how people in the US choose to consume information that confirms their existing beliefs. Fox News and the Huffington Post. The fact that liberal and conservative news exist at all should tell you that the information inside is politically biased. I think they could fairly be called conservative and liberal propaganda. In these cases, Americans are not bludgeoned by unwanted propaganda, they actively seek it out.

In short, in the US, people actively pursue biased information and news organizations don't blatantly lie, they just emphasize and deemphasize certain facts in accordance with a value system that the consumer already holds. I would call that a more subtle propaganda system than what happens in China.

There are, of course, a few similarities between the two systems as well. A short commercial that says "Support our troops!" may not seem like propaganda to you until you've seen one where there's a Communist flag waving in the background.

<comment><USER4> Your post is interesting but it misses a key point: Selection bias is everywhere, but in the US and most other countries you do not get run over by a truck if you watch Fox News, run your own blog or decide to make fun of politicians.

<comment><USER5> Yes. It's a long, well thought out post that's entirely non-sequitur. The poster doesn't understand the difference between true propaganda and spin.

The NYTimes has its own opinion, but it is definitely not an instrument of the US Government.

He also implies that because China has clunky methods which are obvious they don't have any subtle ones. Having clunky methods doesn't rule out having subtle ones. I don't speak Chinese, but I find it exceedingly hard to believe that China doesn't employ both clunky and subtle forms of propaganda.

Having clunky and detectable methods isn't better, either, as you claim, it's worse, because they're more invasive. That's the whole point. That's why we don't want censorship, or the great firewall, or our non-violent dissenters rotting in jail.

Anyway, maybe you live in a relativistic world where everybody's country is only as good as they're told, but I'm smart enough to discount my own bias, and I know that the US is a freer place to live than China.

<comment><USER6> "I'm smart enough to discount my own bias"

I am genuinely interested, how did you establish that you have the ability to correctly compensate for your biases?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most people forget or don't know that Skype was created by the founders of Kazaa and they are hackers (like us) at heart and they built strong encryption into it protecting (actually) the privacy of their users' audio conversations. Skype's encryption has been a heated issue to governments who cannot wiretap Skype for various reasons law enforcement or otherwise.

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Skype_securit...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Skype_security)

<comment><USER8> > Skype's encryption has been a heated issue to governments who cannot wiretap > Skype for various reasons law enforcement or otherwise.

China has a customize Skype build called TOM-Skype. It has a built-in "sensitive words" filter and backdoor keylogger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The thing to remember with China is that there is a law on the books so that practically everything is illegal. The law isn't there to tell you what you can or can't do, it's there so that if you piss off the wrong people they can come down on you like a ton of bricks "legally".

<comment><USER10> _The law isn't there to tell you what you can or can't do, it's there so that if you piss off the wrong people they can come down on you like a ton of bricks "legally"._

Ahh, then it's like the US tax code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I hate making generalizations about huge entities like states, but I can't resist on this one. I think this kind of thing will ultimately trip China up, and prevent China from ever gaining a significant technological lead. The more closed their internet is, the less ideas people will be exposed to, and thus there will continue to be less innovation.

<comment><USER12> Obsessively trying to force toothpaste back into the tube does not telegraph a general sense of well-being and confidence. China may be a 'superpower'. But a 'superpower' like the US? Or the USSR?

Obviously they've avoided the worst tendencies of the latter, but will they every master the best aspects of the former?

Alternately, will we continuing relentlessly undermining our own advantages to the point where China doesn't have to bother taking civil liberty seriously?

<comment><USER11> Indeed, the US could kill the goose that lays golden eggs as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ironically almost every external device/accessory for skype is made in China (and we keep buying them from them, which empowers their government).

</comment><comment><USER8> false positive? just used skype few hours ago (in china). Tom-skype actually does have a VOIP license. The original news was circling in chinese media days ago but no one really gives a $@/7 coz bans like this occurs every year

<comment><USER14> Skype's been deemed illegal, but that doesn't mean it won't work in China (like so many other illegal things there). As the story says, no one is sure how the government will enforce the ban yet. This is likely a stall tactic to allow state run competitors to play catch up.

<comment><USER15> Apparently all they have to do is go after Chinese supernodes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm reading <http://craphound.com/ftw/> For The Win By Cory Doctorow right now. In it some of the main characters try to join a Gold Farmers Union, and the argument of how they can effectively mobilize is that now anyone in the world can instantly communicate and organize for workers rights and fair wages. Before these communication tools only the rich had the ability to organize countrywide and worldwide, but with access to skype or other VOIP tools the workers can have the same level of organization.

Maybe Cory Doctorow has a fan in the Chinese Communist party and they decided to nip that particular problem in the bud.

</comment><comment><USER17> Update (can't believe no one else posted this as a comment): Skype denies this. <http://mashable.com/2010/12/30/china-skype-ban/>

</comment><comment><USER18> Wait, China allowed Skype? Where has their protectionism gone?</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg calls for internet regulation - <AUTHOR> https://todayheadlines.live/article/fa4fcbc7-fe1c-424d-9fd4-55248c5ecc5f <comment><USER2> My knee-jerk reaction is to rephrase this as "Facebook calls for regulatory moat." A lot of these ideas seem reasonable, but I suspect they'd build Facebook's advantage. See [Ben Thompson]([https://stratechery.com/2018/the- bill-gates-line/](https://stratechery.com/2018/the-bill-gates-line/)) for instance on how data portability isn't as beneficial as it might seem.

</comment><comment><USER3> Large companies like Facebook love government regulation. They have enough money to pay attorneys to navigate the regulation framework and it keeps out future competitors.

<comment><USER4> This was my first thought, as well. Facebook can handle it. And they'll build a service for the little guys to use. Win, win!</comment></comment>


Vagueness - <AUTHOR> https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/vagueness/ <comment><USER2> My eyes were starting to glaze over until I came to this wonderful H. G. Wells quote:

"Every species is vague, every term goes cloudy at its edges, and so in my way of thinking, relentless logic is only another name for stupidity — for a sort of intellectual pigheadedness. If you push a philosophical or metaphysical enquiry through a series of valid syllogisms — never committing any generally recognized fallacy — you nevertheless leave behind you at each step a certain rubbing and marginal loss of objective truth and you get deflections that are difficult to trace, at each phase in the process. Every species waggles about in its definition, every tool is a little loose in its handle, every scale has its individual. — _First and Last Things_ (1908)"

<comment><USER3> Damn, that is a great quote. And I went and read late-Wittgenstein[1] to get that idea nailed down (admittedly with a hell of a lot more but he is not an easy read). His concept of "word games" is an excellent thinking tool to have available.

This general idea is also a necessary vaccine against a lot of terrible ... LessWrong style "philosophy" (sigh, of all the place to feel compelled to make that statement)

[1] [https://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/meaning...](https://philosophyforchange.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/meaning- is-use-wittgenstein-on-the-limits-of-language/) and [https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was- wittgen...](https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/03/was-wittgenstein- right/) are pretty good

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're intrigued by this SEP article I would recommend going through [1] and [2] together, since they are both grouped in similar order by schools of thought on sorites paradox. The former is a well edited collection of papers on each position, and the latter is Timothy Williamson's frequently persuasive critique of each. I'm generally disinterested in analytic philosophy of language, but find myself returning again and again to this discussion because it is a frequent analog to a vast set of related problems.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Vagueness-Reader-Rosanna- Keefe/dp/026...](https://www.amazon.com/Vagueness-Reader-Rosanna- Keefe/dp/0262611457) [2] [https://www.amazon.com/Vagueness-Problems- Philosophy-Timothy...](https://www.amazon.com/Vagueness-Problems-Philosophy- Timothy-Williamson/dp/0415139805)

</comment><comment><USER5> Are there any terms which are not vague?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is a joke, right?

<comment><USER7> Why do you think it's a joke?

<comment><USER6> Strikes me as a Sokal-style joke about bad writing in philosophy.

"A glut is a proposition that is both true and false. The rule for assigning gluts is the mirror image of the rule for assigning gaps: A statement is true exactly if it comes out true on at least one precisification."

<comment><USER7> It's not bad writing, and it's certainly not a Sokal-style hoax. These are the kinds of things that philosophers think about and this is how they write about them. I take it you're just not familiar with modern academic philosophy? Is it the terminology that's throwing you off? For comparison, here's a random snippet from the Wikipedia article on algebraic geometry:

"Like for affine algebraic sets, there is a bijection between the projective algebraic sets and the reduced homogeneous ideals which define them. The projective varieties are the projective algebraic sets whose defining ideal is prime."

Wouldn't that also sound like nonsensical or bad writing to someone unfamiliar with the field? But of course, it's not nonsense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Genius Pairing of Technology and Innovative Art - <AUTHOR>

Nowadays, if you want to take a photograph, you do not need to look for a studio – everyone has a camera in his smartphone, tablet, etc. The first photo was taken more than 150 years ago. Shortly after, the first frame was made. Since then, the evolution of photography has continued and brought to us some different variants of photo devices. We live in a new progressive millennium – everything around us is growing and innovating. In our opinion, photo frame design should be both technically innovative and fashionable.
Inspired by revolutionary photo technology, we created the perfect gift for someone special in your life. TRIVOLTY is the first LED-light CRYSTAL with laser engraved photo from your iPad, iPhone, camera, tablet, laptop or any other device.
TRIVOLTY is not just a souvenir but it's an awesome service where anyone can upload an image and immediately assess how it looks in the real crystal in few minutes on our website. As a result you can buy a unique gift for someone special in your life very easily and fast. The project will be launched on Indiegogo in April. We hope that you like TRIVOLTY! Follow us on Twitter and Facebook! <comment><AUTHOR> TRIVOLTY demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUN1S-SXO88](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUN1S-SXO88)

Twitter: @TrivoltyCompany Facebook: [https://www.facebook.com/trivolty.crystal](https://www.facebook.com/trivolty.crystal) Instagram: trivolty.crystal</comment>


Supervised racing with Donkeycar AI - <AUTHOR> https://markku.ai/ <comment><USER2> We've updated the link from the main blog page ([https://markku.ai/](https://markku.ai/)) to the latest article, since individual article discussions are the convention here.</comment>


How Doom Fire Was Done - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/doom_fire_psx/index.html <comment><USER2> Previously [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18782902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18782902)

</comment><comment><USER3> This reminds me of the good old times where I learned programming by reading Denthor's Asphyxia Tutorials [0]!

[0] [http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?c...](http://archive.gamedev.net/archive/reference/listed82.html?categoryid=130)

</comment><comment><USER4> Since creating this article, there have been implementations for various platforms and languages. If you check out @fabynou on twitter, he has been retweeting them. iOS, android, watches, etc)

</comment><comment><USER5> A playground of experiments related to this algorithm (more than 40 experiments): [https://github.com/filipedeschamps/doom-fire- algorithm/](https://github.com/filipedeschamps/doom-fire-algorithm/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I literally just started a project to recreate this and eventually riff on it. Feedback welcome. :)

[https://github.com/tehcorwiz/demofire](https://github.com/tehcorwiz/demofire)</comment>


Xi Jinping Calls for 'Cyber Sovereignty' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-35109453 <comment><USER2> President Xi, please don't concern yourself with what the people of other countries think about your government's internet policies. Instead, concern yourself with what the people of your own country think.</comment>


Hackers swipe e-mail addresses from Apple Pay-competitor CurrentC - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/cvs-rite-aid-supported-alternative-to-apple-pay-already-hacked/#p3 <comment><USER2> no personal data or payment card data was beached [http://www.techworm.net/2014/10/currentc- hacked.html](http://www.techworm.net/2014/10/currentc-hacked.html)</comment>


Wittgenstein's Legacy: The Principles of the Private Language Arguments (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://doi.org/10.1111/phin.12186 <comment><AUTHOR> If you'd like to read Wittgenstein but don't know where to start I would recommend reading "How to read Wittgenstein" by Ray Monk, as an introduction before moving to "Philosophical Investigation" (rather than starting with his first book, the Tractatus, which is really cryptic). I saw this advice on another HN thread a while ago and for me it was it spot on. I also read Ray Monk's bio of Wittgenstein but found it a lot less interesting.

I can't pretend I understood 100% of his Philosophical Investigations but it definitely made me see things differently. I like his approach to try to "turn unobvious nonsense into obvious nonsense" and show that a lot of the seemingly "natural" ideas we rely on to describe our mental activity rest on very shaky grounds.

<comment><USER2> I'll let professional philosophers try to peel apart every nuance of the Investigations. It is a thoroughly enjoyable and approachable—if not chaotich—book for anyone used to reading academic papers in CS, math, or linguistics. The topic is deeply scrutinizing our everyday language, especially language about mental states. He is a very persuasive and poetic writer. Some excerpts:

\- To utter a word is to strike a note on the keyboard of the imagination.

359\. Could a machine think? ... Well is the human body to be considered such a machine? It surely comes as close as possible to being such a machine.

583\. ... And the word "hope" refers to a phenomenon of human life. (A smiling mouth _smiles_ only in a human face.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> When I first read about Wittgenstein in some junior encyclopedia, it said that he discovered that many problems in philosophy were meaningless because words might mean different things. I imagined he was talking about words like "socialism" or "equality" \-- words that are obviously slippery. But it turns out that words like "is" and "have" cause just as much trouble.

Wittgenstein is famously hard to read. I have the book (translated by a group including the author of this article) with side-side German-English text, the better to puzzle over his more inscrutable pronouncements. But this article is worth your time.

<comment><USER4> > When I first read about Wittgenstein in some junior encyclopedia, it said > that he discovered that many problems in philosophy were meaningless because > words might mean different things.

That's how I've always intuitively felt about the Ship of Theseus thought experiment. It only seems paradoxical when people try to apply imprecise language to a precise situation. The way I see it, it's technically a new ship with every part that gets replaced. Nothing unusual about it.

<comment><USER5> It's unusual because our ordinary language does not talk about objects being new with every change. The ship that sets sails is supposed to be the same ship that returns. And yet change is part of life. Everything undergoes change, as Heraclitus noted a long time ago. So why do we talk so imprecisely about objects as if they have permanence? Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?

<comment><USER6> > _So why do we talk so imprecisely about objects as if they have permanence? > Why is it the same river the next time we step in it?_

Because the concept of river describes a body of water in flow starting from and passing through specific geographical locations.

Those all remain, even if the water at any point X of the river changes...

<comment><USER5> Those all undergo change as well. In context of the parent, any change whatsoever results in a new object. Which was the point of Heraclitus not being able to step in the same river twice. It's all flux.

That's what motivated Plato and Kant to come up with their philosophical responses to the flux. One with eternal forms and the other with categories of thought.

<comment><USER6> > _Those all undergo change as well_

And we are free to disregard small changes, like we do everywhere.

I'm aware of Heraclitus' thought (and other pre-socratics, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Hegel, and many others besides) but it's not a binding observation (that one should fell compelled to respond by resolving some great paradox).

"Yeah, the river undergoes small changes all the time, and bigger changes from time to time. Still enough remains common for us that we still don't care and will call it by the same name, what are you gonna do about it?" is a nice common sense response...

<comment><USER5> Right, but the paradox is that a bunch of inconsequential changes lead to major changes over time, such as the ship being replaced plank by plank until it has none of the original material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My favorite self-quote: technology development is applied philosophy. Wittgenstein taught it; we're the people living it.

When philosophy and science existed mostly as words handed from one generation to the next in written form, it was possible to amass enough of a web of meaning for any one general field for a body of practitioners to gain useful applicable knowledge for the rest of humanity. But as philosophers found out early enough, and the sciences are learning too, it's also possible to create not only webs but islands of meaning, such that localized progress can appear to be made without having any impact, positive or negative, on mankind as a whole. We mind our knitting so well that nothing ever gets knitted.

We technology developers have this problem; but we not only have it, we have had it over and over again with each new domain we absorb. We start with (spoken) languages, jargon, and cultural knowledge, combine various tribes together, create a mezzanine language among ourselves, then translate all of that into math. Hopefully it's provable, rock-solid math. But however we do it, we deal with mapping ideas to bits.

In the history of mankind, nobody else has ever had the job of doing that over and over again across dozens or hundreds of domains. Instead, the typical approach was to become good in one domain, then continue to specialize. In this sense, technology solution development is applied polymathematics.

Because of that, it's been really interesting watching the tech community interact with the academy. I don't think there's much love lost on either side most days, but both groups have important things to offer the other. I've seen several attempts to formally bridge the gap, but it's usually done through some quasi-formal symbolic system such as UML. The light hasn't come on yet. We are getting close, though, as it's a hoot to watch.

History nerd note: when Wittgenstein first began down this road and realized the impact of what he was doing, he announced that he had "solved philosophy". Philosophy was no longer something that needed work. This had to have driven Russell bananas; as he was trying to "solve" it by going down an almost diametrically-opposite path.

<comment><USER8> While natural languages and mathematics are two important formalisms by which technologists communicate, it seems to me that we also use a much broader set of visual symbolic systems. These include tables of data in various formats and figures that incorporate drawings, diagrams, charts, pictures and videos. These are now as important as the text and formulas. Problems with tables and figures are one of the main reasons for retractions.

It seems that philosophers like Wittgenstein deal with all text communications (like a law book) or at most with text and formulas (like a math book). It not clear how their work relates to something such as a complex, detailed structure diagram of a molecule like a enzyme, such as are frequently published.

<comment><USER7> I'm using the term "mathematics" in a deliberately hand-wavy fashion because people keep wanting to poke at this from various angles and even though the underlying theory is the same, it can appear that you are receiving different answers simply because you are asking the question from different epistemological frameworks. There's a reason Wittgenstein was the man and I'm not.

If you like, we can assume that different numbers have a concrete, discrete meaning. We can then add commutation and association, maybe induction. At some point, however far down the rabbit hole we want to go, these numbers in a table represent some physical thing: six apples or whatever. These diagrams and other visuals represent some tangible, agreed-upon thing: a diagram of an enzyme, perhaps.

The mapping of various calculii to either physical things or commonly-held concepts is not on the table here. The point is that the concepts themselves can have subtly-different meanings for any two practitioners or observers. A doctor in the middle ages may check your humeurs and a modern nurse may check you blood pressure. Imagining for a second that both operations look similar, even though you may have the same number, you have a completely different understanding of what those numbers _mean_.

So whatever formal rules of mathematics you'd like to have, and whatever visuals or measurements you'd like to take or produce, the end goal is analysis or language creation around a shared interest. If I hold up a coconut and want to trade it, then you make some odd sound, it means nothing. But then if you hold up two bananas, we may be beginning to converse and exchange meaning. (In this case by way of commerce, but this is just one example of thousands) The visuals enable higher-bandwidth conversations. Do I then think that 1=2, since I had one coconut and you had 2 bananas? I might. I might not. If we're from completely different cultures we have a lot more work to do.

That's an obvious example, the deeper and much more profound truth is that the same thing can happen with a vapor trail in a particle accelerator. I'm reminded of John Wheeler's idea that maybe there's only one electron in the entire universe. Once the web of meaning reaches some degree of complexity, the human brain shuts down and stops evaluating all the possible alternative meaning paths; we are not aware of this. In our mind we've thought through everything and are sitting on top of thousands of years of received wisdom. It has always been like this.

So yes, they are much, much more important than text or formulas, but they're more important because they assist us in the drive for common language creation. Frankly, many times they do a much better job than the others. But the job in both cases is the same.

I will make another stupid analogy. Ever see the scintillating grid optical illusion?[1] It looks like you can see every other black dot except the one you're looking directly at. Meaning is similar in that whatever the concept under observation, it appears like some analysis can work out the problems. The other ones, farther away, don't need any work. They're all set in stone. But then, given time, when you look at those, you realize that no, actually there's some problems over here. That area you were looking at before? That's all fixed now.

The lesson here is that there is a cognitive limit to the things that you can simultaneously ponder about their meaning, relationships, and relevance to any one situation. After that limit, it's all just "common knowledge" or received wisdom. It has to be this way. (no time to go into why). But then you realize that it's all a web, we're all living in our own constructed grid that's different, and the goal is to align both the concepts under observation and the "given" concepts among several of us such that we can erect a language scaffold sturdy enough to make progress towards some common goal.

I know that sucks, but that's the best I've got in ten minutes. Hope it helped. There's an entirely other conversation about how we construct these grids, how we share them, and more importantly why this is a feature of sentience and not just a stupid primate trick. No time for that.

1\. [https://www.illusionsindex.org/i/scintillating- grid](https://www.illusionsindex.org/i/scintillating-grid)

<comment><USER8> Apparently the ideas and mental concepts in one person's brain are roughly similar to those in another's, at least similar enough so that common sets of symbols, semantics, and syntax can be agreed such that communication is possible. The fact that various observers get the same impression of the scintillating grid is evidence for some commonality, although I think that in this case it arises from processing in the retina.[1]

I don't see how this obviates the possibility that individuals can have a private language that is in principle not understandable by others, per Wittgenstein. Consider an oenophile who has a most sensitive palate, and who can describe a wine using a whole set of adjectives that are meaningless to most and which must only vaguely represent the actual sensations being enjoyed by the expert. The expert may have a whole internal vocabulary, and due to imprecision of terms, one expert's internal vocabulary may be different from all others. You could say the same for perfumers, cheese mongers, color experts and others who have extraordinary powers of sensation, and which well might be unique to the individual. And the internal language of the individual may not be intelligible by any other because their olfactory or retinal apparatus may not be exactly alike.

I also suspect that this applies to conceptualization as well as sensation. Quite possibly Einstein's internal language was unique to him.

[1]There was an excellent MOOC on the visual system. "Light, Spike, & Sight: The Neuroscience of Vision" \- [https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/9.01x/3T2014/course/](https://courses.edx.org/courses/MITx/9.01x/3T2014/course/)

<comment><USER7> The universe, fortunately, has a plethora of similarities, such that some basic edge detection and a bit of neural net work in the retinal layers, combined with a bit of proprioception correlation, provides an enormous amount of 90%+ confidence-level shared realities, or at least a good enough fake. Just not 100%. GANS are doing a great job of showing us that not even all of that is required to begin the "faking-out" process.

But the illusion here is the same: that given this natural input we begin processing before birth, that these concepts extend to completely invented terms. Most folks never look there, they never wonder why a car is called a car, and there's no downside at all. It's a pernicious concept and a wickedly- difficult thing to eventually realize.

I don't see where we disagree. The only thing I'd add is that whether you have a completely private language or not, in terms of problem-solving/goal- seeking, is not important. For non-formal, non-tech things, using common words and gestures provides the quickest way forward. Once you start creating a self-consistent system of symbols representing state and behavior, though, you might actually be better off if everybody has completely different private languages. The illusion of common understanding where there is none is more dangerous than misunderstanding. There are no red lights or sirens that go off when human communication failures happen. It's all silence. It could be no other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not to diminish Wittgenstein's influence, quite the contrary, but I for one first heard about the idea of a "private language" while reading the works of Wilhelm von Humboldt [1], written around the 1830s (so about a century before Wittgenstein). I remember Humboldt saying something along the lines of "at the limit, we each speak our own, private language". I read his work in translation, as I don't speak German, so I cannot tell how much of a direct overlap there is between von Humboldt and Wittgenstein in terms of the nomenclature they were both using.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Wittgenstein didn't come come up with the idea of a "private language" but in his Philosophical Investigations he famously argued that the concept itself is nonsense (not via a single logical "proof" but using several thought experiments).

The idea that a private language exists (ie. 'mentalese') is taken for granted by a lot of authors. I recently read Stephen Pinker's book The Language Instinct and he never seemed to doubt the concept for instance.

<comment><USER9> I have not read Pinker so I don't have a good idea of what he meant by "mentalese", but Humboldt was using the concept of "private language" more on the lines of two different people having different "understandings" (for a lack of a better word) for concepts bearing the sama name. For example when I think of a "red apple" I might think of a different thing compared to when you think of a "red apple" on your turn (leaving aside the issue that we still need to settle on what "thing" from the previous sentence actually means).

I must admit that I last read some Wittgenstein about 15 years ago, but even so, I don't find that this understanding of what a "private language" really means is that far off from his writings. If anything, it completely invalidates the 2000-year old platonic "ideas", as me and you thinking of different things when presented with the words "red apple" practically means that there is no underlying "red" or "apple" idea behind those concepts. That is something very valuable, Plato's interpretation being debunked, that is.

<comment><USER10> >practically means that there is no underlying "red" or "apple" idea behind those concepts. That is something very valuable, Plato's interpretation being debunked, that is.

This is one of my favorite parts in a fictional book Anathem. The question of syntax and semantics is explored there, and even a solution is suggested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > So the resultant sentence, for example 'I know I am in pain', is nonsense

I found this amusing. It's definitely possible to not know one is in pain.

> And if that were so, it would be possible for me to make a mistake about > whether I am in pain or not, and it would be possible for me to doubt > whether I am in pain, but not to be sure. But none of these are genuine > possibilities. So, this route is closed.

But they are, though. I think anyone who has suffered from chronic pain and/or dissociation has experienced these 'impossibilities'. I think this might be beside the point of the argument, that the author chose a naive working example that makes sense to him, but I need to further think about what it means to say "I was in pain" a while after asking myself "Am I in pain?" likewise "I wasn't in pain". It seems to me that the arguments laid out here rest on a transparency of language that doesn't actually exist.

> But it does not describe an impossibility either – for a logical or > mathematical impossibility is not a possibility that is impossible. The > sequence of words has been shown to have no sense – to be a nonsense.

Ok, but if something is nonsense, i.e. nothing, then it has no meaning. But the demonstration of an impossibility theorem in mathematics most definitely has non-trivial meaning. It is not obvious that you can't trisect the angle, and there is a minimally complex way to obtain the result which is certainly more complex than, say, the impossibility of 1 = 2 in the integers. But if they're both nonsense (i.e. nothing, as the author says), then I can't ascribe this complexity of proving their impossibility to them, for I would be able to make some sense of nonsense.

Now, even in most constructive logics there is no sense ascribed to a theorem of "A => 0", but this, in my opinion, should be considered a flaw in logic, the absurd does have meaning! No one thinks that Wiles proved that nonsense was nonsense, an immediately _obvious_ statement. Nonsense can appear as sense for so long that you would never know it was any different.

\--

I think my rumination above as I read are very shallow (and I have spared y'all from many more), but I have been wanting to read Wittgenstein for quite some time now and I think this writing will motivate me to do it sooner. At the very least Wittgenstein is irresistible to engage with. I think one of my main problems is with the reliance on logical possibility as fully coherent.

</comment><comment><USER12> For those who enjoy Wittgenstein, I highly recommend the works of one his greatest students - Elizabeth Anscombe. Possibly one of the most prominent women philosophers of all time.

<comment><USER13> Thank you for the Recommendation. I have read little of Wittgenstein, but he is on my "to be read" list. I had a quite brilliant but ne'er-do-well friend who opened by eyes to so many great authors and philosophers: Herman Hesse, Idries Shah ( story teller?), Doris Lessing, and quite a few others. These little nudges on HN get me back to reading content more worthwhile than what I am bombarded with in other venues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This works only if one accepts that philosophical problems (itches) can be dissolved by analyzing ordinary language use to find out where philosophers, scientists or lay people have abused language to create the problem. One example the article gives is of failing to notice the disanalogy of people hiding thoughts behind the curtains of their faces.

> Then someone reports what he thinks, he is neither describing what he > thinks, nor is he describing anything he sees.

So what is the person describing? If I was thinking it would be nice to take a break and walk around, and you ask what I was thinking, so I tell you we should take a break to stretch our legs, am I not telling you what I was thinking? This sounds like a denial that I was thinking anything at all in order to block objections to the private language argument that we do have private thoughts and feelings we can tell other people about.

Maybe the "disanalogy" came about because people do have thoughts which are only made public upon telling others. We're not a telepathic species, and I'm as sure about thinking as I am about anything else in experience, including the world and other people.

</comment><comment><USER14> "This has dramatic implications. For it immediately illuminates venerable puzzles concerning what non-human animals can think or experience, and whether they can reason or act for reasons. It sheds no less light on the question of whether machines can think, or whether we shall be able, sometime in the future, to make machines that can think. It is not surprising that Wittgenstein exclaimed 'How much one must be able to do before one can be said to think'. It has equally dramatic consequences for theology, both for the belief that we survive, bodilessly, after death and for the idea that there can be a supreme thinking being that has no body."

Wittgentein's ideas have echoes and deep relationships with modern subjects like cognitive science and artificial intelligence (and sensitive ones, like religion and beliefs in the supernatural). In the case of AI, what is interesting is that his ideas do not discuss whether it's possible or not to create a thinking machine (i.e. technically or scientifically), but rather what it would really _mean_ (conceptually).

</comment><comment><USER15> For someone so obsessed with language, I never understood why his writing is so cryptic. I haven't read the original, but in translation, his writing seems almost purposefully ambiguous. To people here versed in philosophy, was there really a purpose for this? Could his ideas not have been expressed more clearly or explicitly?

<comment><USER16> The less clearly you write, the more chance you give people to read in your texts what they want to see there. And then they will feel good about you having the same opinion.

Someone expressing himself clearly would not become so famous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can you forgive me if I take this opportunity to share a link to the brilliant Avantgarde artist M. A. Numminen singing Wittgenstein?

[https://youtu.be/57PWqFowq-4](https://youtu.be/57PWqFowq-4)

</comment><comment><USER18> A professor of mine once referred to Wittgenstein as "Bertrand Russel, through a mirror darkly". I like the analogy, and wonder which of the two it would have annoyed more.

</comment><comment><USER19> The older I get, and the more I read Wittgenstein, the more I am astonished that we are able to convey ideas to each other other all. Language is lossy, and perilous.</comment>


Pandora Is Said to Have Held Talks About Selling Itself - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/12/business/dealbook/pandora-is-said-to-have-held-talks-about-selling-itself.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> It would be really cool if Netflix bought pandora, I can see Netflix doing really great things with the underlying tech and expanding on the general idea of pandora. Also the pandora recommendation engine could be leverage to provide improved Netflix recomendations.</comment>


Ask HN: What to do when you have no tech founder? - <AUTHOR> Please, recommend some tools for building a web app to someone who has no technical skills and got no tech co-founder, or budget to hire one. <comment> git-pull I get requests to be tech co-founder from time to time.

To the point I'm beta testing a canned explanation of why programmers aren't interested if you don't have funding raised.

[https://www.git-pull.com/consulting/will-i-work-for- equity-o...](https://www.git-pull.com/consulting/will-i-work-for-equity- only.html)

If you can't raise funding, or self-fund, what do you bring to the table at that stage other than talk?

The issue is, I already have ideas and a mile-long backlog. When I work by myself, I retain the intellectual property and can continue to expand and improve upon it.

I have the _chance_ to be financially independent and have control of my own life, that is my goal. When you ask me to be your partner, you want me to take on responsibilities and give up my prized autonomy, and transfer all the byproduct to you.

What are you going to do to pull me away from potential revenue streams, remote work opportunities, my own startup, and so on?

There are people out there with bad ideas, no track record, that still manage to raise funds by being charismatic. How committed can a prospective co- founder be if they're not securing seed funding, getting family pitch in, self-funding, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a great read. I indeed agree with most you are saying and that is why I do not want to make people work for equity. What if at the end it is worth nothing. That is why I was wondering if there is a way for me to learn something basic, to get things going before I do something else. Any advice on courses or simple instruments?

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> "Web app" is pretty broad spectrum, from things you can do manually (or with very little learning) with an online form tool, to "we have 20 programmers working on this for a year."

The simpler the idea, or at least the simpler the first iteration, the faster you'll be able to learn the necessary skills. You _can_ learn them, it's just a question of how important it is that you do, and how much you have to learn.

So maybe start with "what's the simplest thing I can build, and how can I prototype it". Something like airtables might allow you to prototype easily, though perhaps not go live.

<comment><USER3> I think this is the most reasonable advice. Zero Cater (or something similar) supposedly ran their business for quite a while off of spreadsheets, for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree this is the most reasonable advice. I have never heard of Zero Cater, will make a research. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have friends who work in Technology? If so, I would start there and inquire. If not, before you go spend money on consultants who will drive your cost up, try building a network of technologists, programmers, and computer scientists. If you can, try to learn about the technology involved in building the product from them. Of course, this could be topical, but ultimately should help you in understanding the effort and consequently the cost to build what you want. Ideally this spike should reveal the tools we use, and hopefully, any intermediate applications of them (squarespace, wix, etc) to full fledged web frameworks (django, rails, etc).

</comment><comment><USER5> There are SO many things you can do before you need any technical skills

* Research the problem you are trying to solve, read and analyse ridiculous numbers of forum threads on what people are complaining about, save their words, phrases and deeply learn about who needs what you want to make

* Map out the smallest solution, it might be a method, or a checklist, or a blog post. This is just research and writing, build your audience list

* Draw up the first version of what technology you would like to create on paper, every screen. Create clickable prototypes, use Balsamiq or inVision

* Show it to people, get feedback. Don't be scared to tell people what your idea is. Make it better, clearer.

* Work with designers to mock up some example screens, consider the branding and the copy

* Get a wait-list, pre-orders, get people excited, Write about what you are building

* Consider building a v1 with existing tools like Bubble or even WordPress and plugins, or connecting tools with Zapier.

After that you will have got further than most ever do with their projects. If you have a validated product, with paying customers - you can then hire the development skill you need.

</comment><comment><USER6> No, this is not going to happen. Find someone you can trust and that will compliment you in areas where you lack knowledge and experience. In other words, find a co-founder that will handle all tech stuff. Offer him equity instead of money. Find someone that will be passionate about the idea as much as you are.

Ask your friends and acquaintances for recommendations. Go to a tech/business meetup and meet people.

This is not going to be a google search "how to build an app". Sorry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for bold feedback. I heard about tools that help you build apps even if you don't have technical skills. They are supposed to help at least to get something out there. But I was wondering what they are and if anybody tried them.

<comment><USER6> Just to clarify, I wasn't trying to stop you from doing your app or starting your own business or what is your trying to achieve. I respect and admire that.

I think that this is not the right strategy to apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I understand. I appreciate your opinion and boldness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have two answers:

1.) Fuck being technical. Become a CEO.

This is the more simple of the two and it relies upon a really horrible truth. Getting your product built is nothing. I'd like to say it's only half the battle, but that does the battle a disservice. At the end of the day, the difference will be whether or not you, as CEO, can hustle your way to either profitability or positive cash flow. (Profitability is better, but it doesn't sound like you're at any risk of becoming profitable any time soon.)

Today, your biggest issue is that you need a technical product built. When you get the product built, you'll replace that issue with another stack of big issues, many of which are way more ambiguous than this one.

So, go out there and jfgid (just fucking get it done), and hold on tight.

2.) Become technical.

Want to hear another secret? I'm very technical, but I can't think of one single thing I know that an intelligent, driven person couldn't figure out in a weekend. The difference between me and you is that I've just invested more time into learning how to do these things. There aren't any magic powers involved in being technical. For me, it's really just stubbornness.

Find a tutorial. Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial is quite good as it shows everything from version control through unit tests and everything in between. Go through that tutorial and then start hacking on your ideas. The first version you put out will be really bad, and in a few years, you'll be embarrassed by it. But keep going and if you enjoy the slog, you will learn.

I say this with absolute certainty. If you work hard and put in the hours, you can be your own technical founder.

JFGID.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love this. You know I really would like to learn some coding, so I think I would like to go with number two. Yet, I agree that ultimately it goes to JFGID.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> One solution to having no tech skills is to obtain them. The webapp is important, it probably isn't urgent. To the degree it is urgent, starting now is better than hoping for an unlikely event.

The tools needed to build a web app are HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Building something yourself that shows your idea also shows other people that you are serious enough about the project to invest in the hard critical work and do whatever it takes.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> y, you aren't really going to find a tool to build it for you.

Depending on what it is you might be able to build an early version putting together a basic website and some existing tools and manual steps that you perform behind the scenes till your idea is validated.

You're going to need a technical co-founder.

Or if you're interested learn how to develop one on your own.

I'd recommend Rails or Laravel as the framework.

If you already know html, css and javascript that's a good start.

From there you can go to

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

or

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

That's a long slow road to build something, but if you're interested in it and spend a year or two learning it. You can be your own technical co-founder on this project and on the next one. Or at least have a better understanding of the technical side of things.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Learn to code and become the CTO you wish you had.

There's plenty of advice in the comments about learning to code. I don't want to assume that you want to become technical. If that is the case, I'd consider looking at bubble.is, and other 'point and click' visual software builders.

</comment><comment><USER11> That is a hard one, I would suggest trying to find a programmer that you trust that would even be willing to meet every week or few weeks to spend a good chunk of time with you on strategy and technical stuff. Maybe that would be open to some smaller equity arrangement with the agreement of a co-founder level if the product / service takes off. It can be very difficult to navigate the technical waters / get ripped off if you don't have a basis for how complex or difficult various tasks are.

</comment><comment><USER12> even with all the resources available today you're gonna spend six month minimum learning the basics, self learning is not cheap if you factor in cost- opportunity.

splitting equity either with a tech or financial founder seems much more attainable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I was indeed thinking that could be the best idea, yet I read an article (somebody commented in this thread) and made me re-think this idea. But that you for the comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Find a budget, have it built ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> haha. I wish :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I might be interested in helping you build it, my contact is in my profile.</comment>


Seafarers in limbo as coronavirus hits shipping - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52289303 <comment><USER2> Oh damn, I was always a bit idealistic about seafaring, and now I read that someone would describe it as prison? Yikes. And it's terrible that they can't even go home after their contracts are over.</comment>


Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming

<comment><USER3> Fascinating:

        ... China ... the first party-approved science fiction and
        fantasy convention in Chinese history. And at one point I
        took a top official aside and asked him Why? SF had been
        disapproved of for a long time. What had changed?

        It's simple, he told me. The Chinese were brilliant at making
        things if other people brought them the plans. But they did not
        innovate and they did not invent. They did not imagine. So they
        sent a delegation to the US, to Apple, to Microsoft, to Google,
        and they asked the people there who were inventing the future
        about themselves. And they found that all of them had read
        science fiction when they were boys or girls.

Just an anecdote, of course, but this would be a wonderful "proper" study - <USER2> look at the correlation between early SF readers, and "makers" versus "workers".

Correlation doesn't imply causation, _etc, etc,_ but it does suggest an interesting and intriguing possibility.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Stand-out quote for me:

 _" I was once in New York, and I listened to a talk about the building of private prisons – a huge growth industry in America. The prison industry needs to plan its future growth – how many cells are they going to need? How many prisoners are there going to be, 15 years from now? And they found they could predict it very easily, using a pretty simple algorithm, based on asking what percentage of 10 and 11-year-olds couldn't read. And certainly couldn't read for pleasure.

It's not one to one: you can't say that a literate society has no criminality. But there are very real correlations."_

See also the recent discussion on the possible role of literary fiction in assisting emotional insight, theory of mind, and empathy [1].

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6545881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6545881)

</comment><comment><USER4> Much like Neil, I think that physical made-out-of-dead-tree-books are pretty fantastic devices for delivering information to our brains. But the stats for digital book take up are pretty staggering.

I don't think this means anything in itself, but coupled with the fact that more and more people are choosing to read on tablets as opposed to dedicated e-reading devices does worry me. Do tablet manufacturers care about reading? Probably not. So it's not just that books exist in a noisier world. They are also increasingly sharing a platform with noisier content.

<comment><USER5> I love reading in physical books. However, they're too bulky to carry several around for a trip, bus ride, etc...

So, I love my Kindle because it lets me carry around a ridiculous library in a small form factor.

Yet, I sometimes need to be in just my business wear, so don't have place for the Kindle, and end up reading in a smartphone.

Much like carrying around a dedicated camera has been superseded by cell phones (even though no-one can deny that dedicated cameras take superior photographs), paper books are superseded by e-book readers, tablets and smartphones, because of the convenience factor.

And, as you say, they have to compete with apps, the Internet, etc...</comment></comment>


Ask YC: What tools do you use for notifications of server/site uptime? - <AUTHOR>

Wondering what the best tools for notifications are. Specifically, something to monitor the server and the site to make sure its up. What do people use? Is it best to use a built-in notification tool on the server for the site uptime monitoring? <comment><USER3> We use a monitoring service called Wormly... <http://www.wormly.com/>

It's run by a friend of ours who used to work at Sitepoint and was frustrated by the limited options for good, affordable, distributed monitoring. He's been running it for over 2 years and is growing fast.

It's a great service and recommended as a YC-style startup worth supporting.

</comment><comment><USER4> We use Pingdom (<http://pingdom.com>)

Simple but it works.

</comment><comment><USER5> I use two different scripts:

1\. dwatch [http://nubyonrails.com/articles/2006/03/29/surviving- rails-1...](http://nubyonrails.com/articles/2006/03/29/surviving- rails-1-1-with-server-monitoring)

2\. a PHP script that accesses a URL on the other server; if the server does not respond as expected, it sends me a SMS and emails the server admin

</comment><comment><USER6> To monitor more than uptime and service availability, the high end of this is automated performance measurement analysis by Keynote Systems (keynote.com). They have a lower end product called <http://redalert.com/> (formerly its own service) which is comparable to pingdom.

</comment><comment><USER7> Cacti and Pingdom (www.pingdom.com) for external monitoring.

</comment><comment><USER8> I use Monit on my server to make sure my services are running. It also restarts them if they fail.

I use a free uptime service to make sure that my servers are reachable: <http://uptime.openacs.org/uptime/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Python script + e-mail to your cell phone number.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've used nagios and before that, ganglia for some monitoring. I've been looking into cacti lately for monitoring qmail message status and an asterisk installation for the number of active channels.

Many of these systems use rrdtool and even though I've used that tool directly before, with Cacti at least its a bit tricky to get familiar with the way the gui and the different templates are interconnected. The look and feel sure does seem polished though.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks for all the great feedback. We're going to try Pingdom first. I also liked nagios for its ability to restart services automatically - <USER2> cool.

If anyone wants an invite to NewsCred, shoot me a mail: shafqat at newscred.com. Its not much, but thought I should say thanks!

</comment><comment> M-MZ Monit! Highly recommended. You can easily set it up to monitor local daemons, watch disk space, memory, external systems and more. Monit can also restart failing daemons.

<http://www.tildeslash.com/monit/>

</comment><comment><USER11> GroundWork (<http://www.groundworkopensource.com/>). It uses Nagios under the hood, but I wouldn't want to set up Nagios by hand (without the GroundWork config tools) at a largish site like ours.

</comment><comment><USER12> Pingdom and Alertra. Alertra has had a perfect record for us for three years, meaning no false reports over that time (as far as we can tell). A bit more expensive, we use a single Alertra alert and multiple Pingdom alerts.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been using hosttracker.com for years because they have a 2-site free service.

</comment><comment><USER14> nagios

<comment><USER15> Is there a way to configure Nagios to send MSM text alerts when your site is down? I haven't fully dove into the documentation yet.

<comment><USER16> u mean SMS text (not sure what's MSM as you put it). If SMS, yup, we're doing it with Nagios.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> rackspace provides support for verifying our sites are operating properly.

in addition we use monit and then finally we use wormly as a catchall

</comment><comment><USER18> Nagios and Pingdom

</comment><comment><USER19> Monit.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hyperspin

</comment><comment><USER21> munin and nagios

</comment><comment><USER22> pingdom</comment>


Mobile App Users Are Both Fickle And Loyal: Study - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/15/mobile-app-users-are-both-fickle-and-loyal-study/ <comment><USER2> If you are using the benchmark that 10+ uses = a loyal user, wouldn't that mean 76% of users are fickle.</comment>


Show HN: My Girlfriend and I built this over the weekend - <AUTHOR> http://charmgenius.com/

<comment><USER2> I can't tell if you're trolling or just did not actually test your UI, but beyond the fact that there are three fields that make no sense, submitting the form merely results in: """ (Hidden field pledge_fsq_id) This field is required. (Hidden field turn_fsq_id) This field is required. (Hidden field prestige_fsq_id) This field is required. """

So I'll just post my entry here and y'all can do with it what you will:

Name: A Factory Floor

Description:

If you're looking at this, you probably came from hackernews. You're probably an engineer or someone who can at least tolerate us. Yet, most of y'all are in software so ask yourself: Have you ever been on a factory floor? Or have you just been watching How Its Made on the discovery channel? Google for a local manufacturing business. Some give official tours. Others will gladly do so if you show interest in their business. Fellas: Does your main squeeze yet have a cute picture of you standing looking studly and confused in front of a piece of equipment whose function you can barely describe? Ladies: You may have fingernails that shine like justice, but are you able to tour the facilities while _also_ picking up slack?

Pledge: What is this, NPR?

Turn: Left.

Prestige: Was an OK Movie. Thomas Edison was actually pretty cool though.

Also, if you're not trolling, why does your source code seem to indicate that this is a music player?

</comment><comment><USER3> The experience for anyone not in a major US hub (?) is pretty horrible. All I get is:

"The Best Date Ideas No dates here yet...why not add one?"

And no real suggestion why I'd want to add one.

I didn't realise the content I may or may not see would be location-specific until I came here to read the comments. Instead of "Why not add one?" you could have:

"There are no date ideas yet for your area. Do you have a few minutes to tell us about a great date you've been on in your city? Alternatively, have a look at date ideas for New York or Los Angeles to see how Charm Genius works."

(That said, even searching for New York and looking at the site then, I still didn't know what to do - not much seemed clickable.)

</comment><comment><USER4> I see the Reddit-style "My Girlfriend" headlines have made their way to Hacker News.

<comment><USER5> Show HN: My diabetic kitten inspired me to create this app! Check it out and maybe he'll get insulin! /s

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Pledge"?

"Turn"?

"Prestige"?

I tried filling these fields in with silly text and got this error:

(Hidden field pledge_fsq_id) This field is required. (Hidden field turn_fsq_id) This field is required. (Hidden field prestige_fsq_id) This field is required.

I'm browsing on an iPad.

</comment><comment><USER7> Getting this message:

Application Error An error occurred in the application and your page could not be served. Please try again in a few moments.

If you are the application owner, check your logs for details.

<comment><USER8> On it — forgot to scale up Heroku workers before posting!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand what this is, there is no real explanation on the homepage.

<comment><USER7> Click on About:

"Charm Genius is a best friend that wants to help you impress your date. We all know that thoughtful date ideas take time and effort, but we want to take out some of the dirty work for you."

Also, an easy way to see data is to set your city to New York City. (There is presently none in San Francisco.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> dns is resolving for me on comcast. could I get the relevant IP or cname so I can check it out?

</comment><comment><USER11> localdatespots.com was an idea some microsofties worked on in 2006 :)</comment>


Ratification of the RISC-V Base ISA and Privileged Architecture Specifications - <AUTHOR> https://riscv.org/2019/07/risc-v-foundation-announces-ratification-of-the-risc-v-base-isa-and-privileged-architecture-specifications/ <comment><USER2> I wish they had waited until the riscv-formal work was a little farther on. I have a distinct feeling we're going to uncover some goofiness in the spec from that work.

<comment><USER3> At some point you have to ship, and thanks to the awesomeness of semantic versioning, they can always release RISC-VI :)

/s

<comment><USER4> There is no reason "move fast and break things" should not work for hardware too

/S

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I haven't looked hard into it, I hope they didn't throw in assumptions that affect context switch speed, particularly on pure microkernel multiserver systems that depend on it and are used in critical applications that require high assurance and low, bounded IPC and interrupt response times.

<comment><USER6> What are examples of such systems?

<comment><USER7> There are none of any practical use, but we live in hope.

<comment><USER8> If you use a phone with a Qualcomm modem you use one such system, based on OKL4 (or at least they used to use OKL4 + L4 Linux for non hard RT parts)

<comment><USER7> Not a multi-server operating system. Source: worked on it.

Unless it changed, L4 is used with additional code co-located as the base-band modem on its own cpu. Small RTOS is not a multi-server micro-kernel based os.

<comment><USER8> I suspect we might be using different meanings of multi-server microkernel OS, unless the modem software is even more limited than I thought - I meant that the system is composed of multiple communicating servers. Does the modem just have few independent colocated "big" servers (like the ancient 4.2 BSD server for Mach)?

EDIT: Also, had some fun in the past learning about the modem software on Qualcomm modems, back before iPhone or Android so nice to meet someone who worked on it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I haven't read the latest version, but early versions had a mechanism for kernel entries that was too simple. An interrupt that happened right after a kernel entry but before any instructions executed would be unrecoverable. A good CPU design should help enough with exceptions and interrupts that state won't be lost.

As an example of the wrong approach, x86's SYSENTER just switches to kernel mode and updates the program counter. x86's interrupts are better — they push all clobbered state to the stack.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just hope it's not too late to make the ABI represent Boolean false with ~0.

We won't get another chance to do this right for a long, long time.

<comment><USER11> This would utterly break the expectations of anyone coming from another platform, and a substantial amount of existing C code. (Whether that C code was _allowed_ to make that assumption or not, it _did_.)

Leaving aside whether the behavior you propose qualifies as "right": no, I don't think there is any chance to change the encoding of "bool", any more than you can redefine the size of "char" or the value of CHAR_BITS. The world uses 8-bit bytes, the world uses twos-complement (C recently wrote that into the standard), and the world uses 0 for false and 1 for true.

<comment><USER12> There is a concrete advantage to using a scheme where 0 is true and all other values are false: error codes. True means the operation succeeded correctly, or false because of insufficient permissions, false because there file doesn't exist, false because of io error, false because of timeout etc. bash uses this scheme.

However, this ship has sailed for general purpose programming languages. 0 is false, all other values are interpreted as true, operations that create a bool create 1. As you say, that's just how the world works.

False = ~0 is just zany though.

<comment><USER11> > There is a concrete advantage to using a scheme where 0 is true and all > other values are false: error codes. True means the operation succeeded > correctly, or false because of insufficient permissions, false because there > file doesn't exist, false because of io error, false because of timeout etc. > bash uses this scheme.

That works perfectly fine if you write the type as an integer type and define 0 as "no error". You can't call that a C "bool" though.

<comment><USER3> > You can't call that a C "bool" though.

In hardware, C _Bool is just an scalar integer type (1 byte wide almost everywhere these days).

If you define 0 for false, and true otherwise, you can emit much better machine code for all scalar comparisons. For example, when doing scalar == 0 or scalar != 0 (e.g. in null pointer checks) the result is always the scalar itself. The test is a nop, and with "branch on non-zero" instruction, you can just directly branch.

If you define true to some value, you need to actually test whether the scalar is zero, and give it some other value otherwise. That goes from zero instructions to often two instructions (e.g. if the hardware comparison returns 0xffff and you need to convert that to 1).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Identify dog by image - <AUTHOR> https://www.what-dog.net/ <comment><USER2> This tool just isn't very good. Needs to be calibrated. It misses the dog or it misses the mark on virtually every photo I tried to upload.

* Bad Dog Match - Album on Imgur || [http://imgur.com/a/v8jin](http://imgur.com/a/v8jin)

Only got 1 picture right... (but it couldn't identify this same dog in other pictures).

* Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet || [http://imgur.com/C4dXSfj](http://imgur.com/C4dXSfj)

<comment><USER2> I've updated the gallery with some more pictures. On the whole... my opinion stands. The tool stinks.

But really it's setting out to do something stupid. Dogs are just dogs, this concept of breed... it's not a great way to identify them.

We took some wolves, bred them down to get gentle and obedient pets... then started getting silly about wanting dogs that were tiny or dogs that were big or dogs with brown spots... and really that's all the "breeds" are is us saying, "That's a dog with a red nose and pointy ears."

But once that dog has puppies with another dog, say one with brown nose and floppy ears, the puppies are anyone's guess. They're back to just being domesticated wolves again -- mutts.

My "Cattle Dog" is way too small, she's mixed with something else. She's only 30 pounds... The DNA test said that my "Pointer" was "Pit Bull" and "Grey Hound" \-- which, if you accept "Pit Bull" as a breed, is roughly what "Pointers" were made from -- and the tool sort of got some of the traits right.

Correct -

[http://imgur.com/C4dXSfj](http://imgur.com/C4dXSfj)

[http://imgur.com/e7KkUTk](http://imgur.com/e7KkUTk)

[http://imgur.com/8YTVFnd](http://imgur.com/8YTVFnd) \- ish

[http://imgur.com/iUOYWP8](http://imgur.com/iUOYWP8) \- ish

Just humorously bad -

[http://imgur.com/CTJhpZx](http://imgur.com/CTJhpZx)

[http://imgur.com/Tep32aA](http://imgur.com/Tep32aA) (relative size of dog in shot = chihuahua)

[http://imgur.com/ItkWja4](http://imgur.com/ItkWja4)

[http://imgur.com/dHIJJDl](http://imgur.com/dHIJJDl)

[http://imgur.com/yMxCoyR](http://imgur.com/yMxCoyR)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Running off the cognative services APIs I guess?

Already well-known, but for anybody who hasn't seen them and is interested in playing with this sort of thing on the cheap, Microsoft have free (rate limited) rest APIs available if you want to have a mooch...

[https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en- us/apis](https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/apis)

</comment><comment><USER4> Tried with Lierre the Borzoi [https://www.instagram.com/zoifeathers](https://www.instagram.com/zoifeathers) . Incorrectly guessed Golden Retriever, probably based on the fur length. Skull length should be taken into account to help guess sighthounds.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's also an iOS app DogSnap by Columbia University ([https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dogsnap/id532468586?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dogsnap/id532468586?mt=8))

I haven't tested it on dogs, but it is fun to use on human faces with kids (might be fun at parties, too)

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm not so good in dogs, but is this correct? [https://imgur.com/a/cMSnT](https://imgur.com/a/cMSnT)

</comment><comment><USER7> I love fun, kinda dumb demos of really sophisticated technology. Nice job!

</comment><comment><USER8> Puppies come out as chihuahuas.</comment>


How to build companies that matter - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/03/lean-startup.html <comment><USER2> "And here's where working on something that matters to you more than money is critical. When you're committed to something larger than yourself, every minute counts."

"our business plan: that we could get people to pay real money for virtual clothes"

Virtual clothes??? THAT really matters? THAT is larger than yourself?

<comment><USER3> If your question is sincere, read <http://bit.ly/q2Sp>

<comment><USER4> By selling "virtual clothes", you're going to reverse "America's declining social capital" and revive democracy?

<comment><USER3> I'm sorry you can't see the connection. It does require more than reading the subtitle, though. If anyone is interested in a serious conversation on this topic, feel free to get in touch. There's a lot more at stake than virtual clothes.

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I don't have the time to read an entire book to understand the master plan behind a bubbly-looking startup. Surely you can give us a brief summary of what's "at stake" beyond virtual clothes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this is one area where the economic crisis can work for startups.

Previously, the market was so hot it was difficult to grow organically. There was so much competition and so much heat that you felt compelled to "go big" as quickly as possible. You had to launch bigger, quicker and with more features or somebody else was going to come along with millions in technology/marketing/etc and stomp on you.

Right now we have a market that favours growly organically and slowly... Perhaps towards something that is a more refined end result. You can grow your customer base slowly, and listen more to what your customers want and need.

All just my conjecture really - But I hope this will turn up some really interesting results over the next 12-24 months.

<comment><USER6> The company I'm with was founded literally right after September 11th, then funded in early 2002; basically at the nadir of the original tech bubble. But it had exactly the effect that you've described; there was no hurry to make a land grab, and far less pressure to try to get big quick to score a fast exit for the VCs. Starting in a down market gave us time to actually build something real and valuable and to build the company for the long haul instead of having to worry about the short term. It also let us hire an all-star team that would have been hard to assemble in boom years (and, incidentally, the most recent downturn has again made hiring easier for us).

The downside is that you'll get a comparatively lower valuation for the same amount of funding, meaning the founders will retain less of the company, but that company will probably have a higher probability of being worth something significant. So as a founder, it's still a net win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Maybe I'm in an extra-cynical mood today, but its hard to take advice about building companies that matter from someone that makes a cut-down version of Second Life.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I'd also say, that all these advices about building companies that matter apply to you only if you care about it. We all know businesses that sell crap successfully. It's just that they can't proudly say "We love what we've built". But, well, at least they've got rich. Maybe they are working on what they really love now, having all those money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How come all this has to lead to "at IMVU....". I keep seeing this pattern from the company.

<comment><USER10> In order to sell, offer value first. There's nothing wrong with that. He's doing a good job too, because I went from never having heard of him to having heard about him from four trusted sources in the matter of a month. All the sources were passing on the material he was providing rather than his company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The scariest/most exhilirating challenge is one he plucked right from the running monologue in my head: "is our company vision really the path to a brave new world, or just a delusion?" <http://bit.ly/bdS0>

</comment><comment><USER12> "In fact, it wasn't the risky part of our original vision that had to change. It turns out that people really will pay good money for virtual goods. By discovering the other problems with our concept early, we were able to preserve our larger long-term vision. And, most importantly, we were then able to prove that it could work."

This was a big cliffhanger. I was very disappointed that the article ended without discussing "the other problems" and how they were discovered.

</comment><comment><USER13> very succinct ... brings together a lot of current thinking in tight read. i think it's well said - must've been a great experience also to see adaptations finally work to bring vision to life.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you plan to learn in 2019? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I guess this is the other side of the question I answered:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745974)

Certifications: I have a slightly negative bias against certifications as far as resume building, but I do like them as a forcing function as far as learning and my company pays for them:

AWS Sysops Certification

AWS Advanced Networking - I'm first and foremost a developer/architect but networking is a weakness I want to improve.

AWS Big Data - it's half AWS specific technologies and half just hosted versions of non AWS technologies like Hadoop

JavaScript/Node - and the rest of the $cool_kids JavaScript back end stack.

Docker

ElasticSearch

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd really like to improve my intuition around linear algebra. It's been a little while since college, but sometimes I find that my natural understanding isn't as rock solid as I'd like. I guess its a matter of where to start...

Maybe I'll dive into some Three Blue One Brown videos now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Programming -.-"

</comment><comment><USER5> \- TDD

\- AWS certified developer

\- Patience

\- Optimism</comment>


19 Year Old LulzSec Hacker Gets Arrested By The Police - <AUTHOR> http://www.chiphazard.com/2011/07/27/19-year-old-lulzsec-hacker-gets-arrested-by-the-police/

<comment><USER2> What these guys are doing is cowardly. They continue to push that they are doing it for the greater good, and that they are morally just. They continue to push that they are up there with the great dissenters. MLK, Ghandi, Mandella, they didn't hide behind anonymity. Facing death they made it known who they were and what they stood for.

Instead they wear their masks. V for Vandetta, really? Guy Fawkes did NOT hide behind a mask.

LULZ AND ANON. IF YOU ARE SO SURE WHAT YOU ARE DOING IS GOOD AND JUST, STOP HIDING. REMOVE YOUR MASKS. BE WILLING TO FACE JAIL FOR YOUR ACTIONS. MARTYR YOURSELVES FOR YOUR CAUSE. STOP LETTING OTHER PEOPLE TAKE THE HEAT. STOP SAYING THAT YOU DON'T FEAR THE GOV'T AND AUTHORITY WHILE SITTING BEHIND THE DARK WALL OF THE INTERNET.

It's turning out that they are what we thought they were all along, a bunch of young punks with no guts.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I'm reading between the lines here, but it seems like you want them to push harder and take more risks?

<comment><USER2> "they didn't hide behind anonymity" "they made it known who they were" "did NOT hide behind a mask" "STOP HIDING" "REMOVE YOUR MASKS" "SITTING BEHIND THE DARK WALL OF THE INTERNET"

There are no lines to read between. If by take more risks you mean that they should stop on one hand saying that they have no fear of the government/police or the repercussions of their actions, that they fully believe that what they are doing is good and just, and on the other hiding their identities. Than yes, that's exactly what I mean.

If they are so sure they are right and that this "movement" is supported and needed by the masses, they should come forward and publicly reveal their true identities and locations.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: HackerTable.com, reservations at elusive restaurants (3-day project) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackertable.com

<comment><USER2> Nice. I like the concept of "best" though it's obviously (purposefully?) vague. What does best mean here?

An idea I like, is allowing eateries to accept reservations for specific tables. After the visit the diner could review the actual table and rate its appropriateness for specific occasions (first date, business meal, group of guys, etc.)as well as a short writeup. There are many places that have different vibes depending on where the table is, of course this can change on a nightly basis depending on crowd, day of the week, and other variables.

Adding this extra level of reservation personalization by allowing the user to choose their own table might encourage repeat visits. Imagine if a couple had "a table" that they always liked to eat at. It would also allow individuals to sort not by "Best" but by "Best for Intimate Conversation" or "Best for Great Bay Views".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just for fun, Joe (hn: joe6pack) and I decided to code up a 3 day side project. It surfaces the best reservations currently available in the SF Bay Area. Certainly the ranking algorithm could be improved, but we hope you enjoy this little bit of amusement.

Please review and let us know if you find it useful.

<comment><USER3> Is that real data? You've got reservations at The French Laundry four days from now?!?

<comment><USER4> Indeed it is - that was the point of the site.

<comment><USER3> That's fantastic. I assumed that they kept a waiting list in order to keep the restaurant full. This is really interesting.

Does OpenTable have an affiliate program?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> exclusive? or are these restaurants constantly hiding?

<comment><USER6> More like you can never get reservations there. They're constantly eluding you, if you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The_ Abe Froman? The Sausage King of Chicago?

</comment><comment><USER8> nice. except now i need to take more consulting work to actually afford to go to one of these places.

</comment><comment><USER9> itsabitpointlessdontyouthink?

<comment><USER4> At surface value, sure - although if you want a table at one of these places, it's fairly useful.

The backstory is that we used this mini-project to see how we work together as a team. We're working longer-term on NivNav.com, but wanted a short, isolated project where we could feel out our collaboration style. HackerTable.com was born.

I'd recommend this approach to any early-stage startups that are looking for co-founders. Obviously don't distract yourself with side-projects if the timing isn't right, but seek out short, isolated projects where you can get a sense of how you'll work together.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Swaddle wraps your programs as ready-to-go signed package repositories - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/raphaelcohn/swaddle

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. fpm's a good tool, but it requires a lot of command line fu, and isn't source control friendly. One of the reasons for swaddle was to get more of this stuff into source control and less into complex build scripts. One of the others was a major headache we once had with broken ruby versions on build servers breaking things like fpm (especially when multiple versions were needed). Swaddle fixes this, too.

</comment><comment><USER2> Coming from fpm, this tool is much more complete while maintaining the same simplicity. With fpm, you have to pass everything on the command line which I don't like. Swaddle allows you to save your packaging config in your repo in separate config files. It helped us substantially at ReleaseQueue.com to live by our own product rules: package everything!</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do if you run out of ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I consider myself as a man with creativity. But recently I suffered serious drain of ideas. I have no idea what to do to improve the result of my research interest. When read an article, I can get every word of it, but that's it. I cannot derive any thoughtful idea from what I read even the total amount of my daily reading hasn't changed.<p>Because cannot find any interest idea to implement, I didn't write serious code (> 100 lines) for half a month and I don't feel comfortable about that. <comment><USER2> I did run out of ideas, and I ended up taking a job at Google as a result.

If you're really out of ideas, I'd suggest you permute your life as heavily as possible. Take a different job. Move to a different city. Hang out with a different group of friends. Get interested in topics that you've overlooked until now.

Most good ideas don't just spring fully-formed from someone's head. They come from the random recombination of a bunch of strains of experience. You're doing something, and you're doing something else, and you think they have _nothing_ to do with each other, and then suddenly they kinda juxtapose and you realize there's a really good third idea hiding in there.

</comment><comment><USER3> I get like that when I'm in the same environment day after day. I got over the ideas drought by taking a notebook (dead tree variety) with me on walks, dallying in art galleries, coffee shops, park, etc. When I'm in a "different space" the creativity flows again. I then take my notes and return to the computer and implement the ideas. Rinse and repeat ;-)

Talking to people and hearing about their problems / challenges is another great source of inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER4> One thing that I've found is that a change of environment and work helps dramatically. One TED Talk I enjoyed discussed why he tales every 7th year off at his consulting business- It lets him recharge his mental battery of ideas for the next 6.

<http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/649>

</comment><comment><USER5> I came up with the best ideas just talking with friends. I think "evolution is a result of contamination", so the more your thoughts are "contaminated" by conversations with other people, the more are the chances that they sparks into real ideas.

</comment><comment><USER6> Go for a bike ride! I find exercise is a great way of clearing your head. Long walks and bike rides and things like that do wonders for letting my mind wander.</comment>


Study Results: Memory Loss from Alzheimer's Disease Is Reversible - <AUTHOR> http://www.universityherald.com/articles/32186/20160620/memory-loss-from-alzheimers-disease-is-reversible-treatment-for-alzheimer-condition-student-news.htm <comment><USER2> abstract:

[http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v8/n6/abs/100981a.html](http://www.impactaging.com/papers/v8/n6/abs/100981a.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do with MVPs you no longer have time for? - <AUTHOR>

I built this about a month ago: http://www.iosuserfeedback.com<p>It's really just a front facing site that accepts credit cards via stripe. The backend is manual entry into mechanical turk by me. Since launching I haven't had much time to devote to it, have only managed to drive about 100 uniques to it and haven't sold a single package. So I'm curious, what should I do with it? <comment><USER2> Open Source it!</comment>


Java exception tracker screenshots - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackhunter.com/2014/04/23/stack-hunter-screenshots/

<comment><USER2> Seems like it could be useful but you could do more with tools like Taikipi [1].

[1] [http://www.takipi.com/features.html](http://www.takipi.com/features.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link introex.

Taikipi looks good, but it seems to be a cloud/SaaS product.

Stack Hunter on the other hand sits on your servers and keeps your data in house. No sending potentially private data to the cloud.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any good service for flexible cohort analysis? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I want to do cohort analysis on a custom group of users (like - cohort analysis of people who came through facebook). Please suggest some good analytics tool. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm the creator of Cohorts.co [1]

Are you using Stripe Subscriptions for recurring payments by chance? I built Cohorts.co exactly for this purpose. It only works with Stripe right now though unfortunately.

[1] [https://cohorts.co](https://cohorts.co)

</comment><comment><USER3> You would need to be more specific.

There are services that do event collection and aggregation and then allow you to do a cohort analysis on a web or mobile app. (Like mixpanel)

Or.. you could be working with an already existing dataset in a DB or CSV and are looking for a way to split into cohorts based on some condition.

Any of these scenarios ring true?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. I should have been more specific.

I am actually looking at the second scenario (existing dataset).

<comment><USER3> There are many tools and tech for doing this ranging from not powerful but simple, to the opposite. Below are just a few of these options.

If by dataset you mean CSV, you can always do a basic cohort analysis via spreadsheet software like Excel or Google Spreadsheets.

For a basic example, have a look at Daisy Deng's post on [http://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-do-cohort-analysis- vi...](http://www.quora.com/Is-there-a-way-to-do-cohort-analysis-via-Excel- for-Shopify-websites) , which links to [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lD98hOCcpjsmxUmhUq8K...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lD98hOCcpjsmxUmhUq8KtAlumPROLL746PL4A00ge-o/edit#gid=0) for a step by step guide.

If your data is in an actual database you can export to CSV first. Of course, you could always do the cohort analysis using SQL as well.

A third option for more advanced use cases is processing your dataset with R, which is powerful but takes some learning [https://www.r-project.org/about.html](https://www.r-project.org/about.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ac2u. I think I will prefer R over excel to be able to perform some advanced analysis.

I wish there could be an easy option in mixpanel where we could pull some User Profiles (already on Mixpanel) and perform a Cohort Analysis on them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


5 Monospaced Fonts with Cool Coding Ligatures - <AUTHOR> https://betterwebtype.com/articles/2020/02/13/5-monospaced-fonts-with-cool-coding-ligatures/ <comment><USER2> Iosevka is actually a number of different fonts in one, depending on the variant chosen: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invis/Iosevka/master/im...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/be5invis/Iosevka/master/images/stylesets.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> These look neat, but is there any practical way to enter them quickly while coding?

<comment><USER4> What do you mean? The whole point of ligatures is that you don't enter them, they're not specific code points in text, they're just different glyphs for specific combinations of characters in text (otherwise you're code would be turned invalid). A glyph for "=>" is just the programmer's equivalent to an old-fashioned glyph like what you often get for "fi".</comment></comment>


The Friendster Story (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/15/business/yourmoney/15friend.html?ei=5090&en=3e9438ed349f7ce7&ex=1318564800 <comment><USER2> Meh, I left my post running tech there just before this story ran. One day I'll write what really happened. It's a lot more complex than people imagine.

<comment><USER3> Can you share a few of the key points here?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Remember, if you want to create a very explosive social networking, always start with the idea of finding beautiful girls.

Proofs are everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER5> A shame these stories never gave credit to Ryze. Johnathan was an early member and basically copied Ryze feature for feature.

[Disclaimer: I was asked to be an early investor in Friendster and chose not to]

</comment><comment><USER6> "He could take the safe bet and accept the $30 million that Google was offering him for Friendster, the social networking Web start-up he began only a year earlier, in 2002. Saying yes to Google would provide a quick and stunning payout for relatively little work and instantly place the Friendster Web site in front of hundreds of millions of users across the globe."

Well, I don't really know.</comment>


Writing Physics - <AUTHOR> http://www.lassp.cornell.edu/~cew2/KnightLecture.html

<comment><USER3> So this is why Mermin and Ashcroft's Solid State Physics has been one of the standard graduate texts for the field since it was published in '76.

According to Wikipedia Lev Landau ranked physicists on a log scale - <USER2> was 0, Einstein 1 and Mermin placed himself on the scale at a 4.5

<comment><USER4> To call Ashcroft and Mermin the standard text is actually to understate its awesomeness. That book saved my bacon in grad school, more than once.

Ashcroft has a rather different personality from Mermin, but he's also a great lecturer. I took his graduate stat mech class. Man, do I wish there were videos of that, or at least a textbook.

<comment><USER3> Whoa, that's awesome! My advisor got to take Emag from J.D. Jackson himself - Taking a course from the author of a famous text is truly the kind of thing that you get permanent bragging rights about.

<comment><USER4> I have a (rather battered) signed copy of Jackson. Some friends of mine in grad school heard he was coming to town for some physics seminar, so we all went to the Ithaca airport, waited for him to come in, and got his autograph.

Man, was that my all-time personal peak of geekiness. Jackson himself was quite bemused.

If we're going to name-drop great physics teachers and texts, though, let me recommend Roald Hoffman. His course in bonding in solids was my favorite science course ever -- and he even wrote a book! ("Solids and Surfaces") It was the highest-numbered course in the chemistry department -- the one where chemistry and physics become aspects of the same thing -- and he used a deliberately simplified but intuitively clear computational model and a great many examples to give you a mental picture of how bonding works, and how band structure is a special case of chemical bonding. One of these days I've got to reread that book.

Amusingly, I signed up and took Hoffman's course without even knowing, at the time, that the guy had won a Nobel prize and hosted a PBS series. Cornell could work that way sometimes.

(God, textbooks are criminally priced. I just discovered that my copy of _Solids and Surfaces_ is worth $100, _used_ , on Amazon. That's awful. As if recommending graduate-level science textbooks wasn't hard enough...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Mermin's book "Boojums all the way through" (mostly about writing about physics, the same topic as this lecture) is well worth reading.

</comment><comment><USER6> I take it he's never written abstracts before? This article desperately needs one.

<comment><USER7> It's not an article, it's a lecture transcription.</comment></comment>


Unraveling Möbius strips of edge-case data - <AUTHOR> https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/unraveling-mobius-strips-of-edge-case-data <comment><USER2> I'm curious to see how HIPAA regulations interact with this type of research. I would imagine it would be seriously limiting (though my actual knowledge of the laws is severely limited, so maybe not?)</comment>