Gabe Newell: Game "Piracy Isn't About Price" - <AUTHOR> http://games.ign.com/articles/121/1213357p1.html <comment><USER2> Gabe Newell makes good points. Piracy is about price, but it's not just price. Piracy for me has been about cost / value decisions:

      Useful software for < $50 on the App store? Buy.
      Useful iPhone app for < $10? buy
      Useful software I use rarely for $800 (Adobe CS5.5)? Pirate
      Drm free music album for $10? buy
      Movie rental I can't find on iTunes for < $5? Pirate
      TV Show season on-demand without commercials? Netflix, or Pirate

Any time it's easier and relatively inexpensive to buy, I'll do that. Any time it's a pain to buy, obscenely expensive or a worse experience, I'll pirate.

I don't justify that behavior, but I've noticed I buy when it's easier, and I pirate when it's easier.

<comment><USER3> I'm pro pirating RIAA artist music, even if it's more difficult than buying through iTunes, since money paid to RIAA artists funds the RIAA (and corrupt artists like Lars).

I sort of feel the same way about the MPAA, but they were less obnoxious in the late 1990s/early 2000s (mainly due to technology not allowing video piracy to the same extent).

I also think all Disney content should be pirated as much as possible, due to the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998.

<comment><USER4> Why pirate though instead of simply not buying?

<comment><USER5> Why not buy instead of simply pirating? If you don't care about the industry and would prefer in the long run to see it die always, what's the difference?

<comment><USER6> Pirating still serves as free advertising for the labels, and gets people angry at you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Except this isn't true either and I would suggest it's nothing but pandering.

People pirate because they're cheap, the amount of people that pirate because of DRM is _tiny_ and anyone who takes part in these online communities (gaming.reddit for example) will be part of the small small group that pirates for "moral" reasons.

2DBoy, creators of World of Goo, a game that had 0 DRM and was available, as Gabe says, to EVERYONE without any conceivable inconvenience (beyond the need to purchase) reported over 90% piracy rate: <http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/>

Steam have very high purchase rates because it's a convenience, most definitely, Steam is a fantastic convenience and encourages me to purchase some games much like it encourages others, what it does not do is encourage pirates to purchase instead. It seems most people that share Gabes view are just hoping if they say it's true enough then bad DRM will go away...

Minecraft for example has huge piracy rates, yet it's available to anyone (same purchase requirements as Steam) and there's no real DRM, there's no conceivable justification for pirating Minecraft beyond "I don't want to pay" yet people do it...

<comment><USER8> Piracy rate is a bit of an odd number, because of how easy it is to pirate literally thousands of games and play them each for a small amount of time, when there is zero chance those people would've/could've bought all the games they pirated.

The Wolfire team suggests (<http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Another-view-of- game-piracy>) that a better metric would be proportion of the gaming audience that pirates. For example, if 5% of the gaming audience pirates, but pirates download 50x as many games on average as legitimate users purchase, then it'll look like >70% of users pirate games, when the real number is 5%.

<comment><USER9> Don't forget that many people with licenses eventually end up "pirating" the software they use. It is usually just much easier to download an ISO than to attempt to rummage around and find your CDs and then rummage around and find your manual for the key. Also, the pure version of the software usually installs crap and/or bloatware. Additionally, I will sometimes be at a different location where the CDs are not available but where I need to use the software. This even holds true with many digital download platforms (but not Steam) -- they will make you create a username and password, they will make you jump through a bunch of hoops to download something you've already bought, which is complete BS and in that case I just download a torrent and end up using the "pirated" version even though I paid for the software. I have a license for WOG and have downloaded it from a torrent at least twice, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Piracy is also about bullshit DRM. I apply "nocd" cracks to software I own, for the convenience of not needing a flat, round dongle to use it.

<comment><USER11> This is especially for me because I have 3 computers which don't have an optical drive, things that are becoming increasingly irrelevant thanks to the internet. I share a single USB DVD drive amongst the three computers; it's a pain in the ass to move the drive and find the disc.

Even worse is when the DRM software tells me to _uninstall my virtual disc drive_ which isn't related to the game at all. I use it to make a copy and store it on my HDD so I can use the image rather than the physical thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think it's probably closer to "Pirates have heterogenous preferences", in a way where motivating X% of pirates who could be convinced by either a) convenient purchasing or b) risk of discovery or c) stick-it-to-the-man rhetoric or d) tribal loyalty or e) exclusivity of desired content or f) feature enhancements like online play... could all be viable strategies at making money.

Of course, sooner or later all the important code will be on the server (again!) and we'll chuckle that this was ever an issue.

</comment><comment><USER13> If there's one thing that makes me want to pirate steam games it's being charged a large premium because I'm not in the US.

The money is immaterial, it's the feeling that I'm being taken advantage of.

</comment><comment><USER14> Valve does a lot of things that gamers love. They make universally acclaimed games, and they often offer them for absurdly good prices. They also managed to defeat piracy of their games with a platform that has proven surprisingly tough to crack. I remember when Steam used to garner almost as much hate as others' DRM, but its been several years. My friends used to be very vocal about hating how much memory it used and that you couldn't move it from one harddrive to another or back it up. Those things were eventually solved though. I wonder if popular opinion favoring valve is more due to these being solved, the fact that steam has been around so long and we got used to it, or the goodwill garnered from good games and/or good offers on games.

<comment><USER15> Steam used to be an additional thing you had to install/run in order to play the game you already bought on DVD from the local game store. Now it's a service you use to buy games (often at ridiculously low prices) and automatically download them. That's what changed popular opinion of Steam.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but it still is an additional thing you have to use/run/install when you buy a boxed game from a B&M store. I found this out only after buying one such game. This is the reason I cracked it and then vowed to never buy another one that does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> When I pirate content, it's for one of a few reasons:

* The content isn't available in the US yet. Being a big fan of British television, this is probably the biggest reason.

* I want to watch a TV show and the full series isn't available instantly on Netflix or Hulu. I don't bother with the hassle of mailing back DVDs anymore. I suspect this is really a ploy to get me to _buy_ the DVDs. Sorry, but I'm not buying all 7 seasons of House for $15-$30 a season.

* My options are: 1) Pay and get something later, or 2) don't pay and get something now. This is why I don't buy shows off of iTunes.

Ultimately, I doubt my motivations are much different from most people who pirate that would otherwise be paying customers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Part of the problem is ignoring why consumers download digital content through unofficial channels, and instead call any such download a case piracy. Rather these are holes in the business models of media providers, as such they're only losing money because they're not offering a product that suits the consumer. (Thus falsely claiming that they have lost a sale.)

For example a consumer may be downloading the content for the following reasons:

\- Trialing

\- Replacing lost/broken content

\- Replacing content that is outdated VHS/DVD/Bluray/HDDVD/Cassette/Vinyl, you name it.

\- Countering simulated geographical boundaries

\- Getting around censorship or getting the uncensored version

\- The media is simply not available (e.g. special editions, or event recordings.)

\- Dealing with maligned DRM schemes

\- Updating to a version of the software which isn't buggy as hell (adobe)

\- Acquiring media that is no longer in distribution/supported by the author.

\- Dongle keys are either incompatible, broken or taking up a free port on the computer.

In many examples here the consumer was never likely to buy or repurchase content, it's no money lost, and often saving the company needless harassment.

Here are reasons why people circumvent paying:

\- They don't have the money to begin with

\- The price is unreasonably high (microsoft learned this with office, when will adobe follow)

\- The content is DRM'd, or locked to a particular system. (e.g. streaming services.)

\- There is no way to purchase the content legally (regional or otherwise)

\- The company has a monopoly on a file format or operating system. (many feel if they're forced to use something they shouldn't have to pay for it too.)

\- The media does not present a value offering (differing to a high price, i.e. software that is known to be buggy, or is purposefully single use.)

\- Exploitation of consumers (buy our product and we'll spam you forever or require your software to check with our servers every time you use it.)

As you can see there is a gamut of reasons why people turn to non-official channels, and the motive is not always greed or theft, often these are replacing other legal methods of acquiring the media.

What Steam, the iTunes music/app/book stores, amazon and Google(heck even allofmp3 knew it) have all realised is that removing artificial limitations on digital content allows consumers to buy digital content to satisfy their various requirements before even looking up a torrents site. It's not only easier and less risky (malware/getting sued), but it's usually faster, supported and reasonable.

<comment><USER19> One _huge_ source of piracy, I suspect, is children who have no income and no way to buy anything without negotiating with their parents. For them, piracy is about _independence_.

<comment><USER20> When I was researching for my micropayments startup, I found out that not only children, but young women as well, don't like asking their parents or couples for the credit card / paypal account for online purchases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Piracy is and always will be about convenience.

</comment><comment><USER22> That may be true to some degree but I think for younger people especially piracy is a simple act of frugality. A crime with no perceivable victim that saves you a fair amount of money. Kind of a twisted over entertained version of stealing bread to feed your family. It's not so much that they don't want to pay. They simply don't have the money for all the things they want so they prioritize. The old MPAA tagline of 'Would you download a car?' always made me think about having a free downloaded car and a wallet full of non-car-payment money to go with it. Put into that context it's very alluring. For some people who really likes music, movies and games the money saved via piracy could actually be most of a monthly car-payment. In that sense you _can_ indirectly download a car by saving money.

</comment><comment><USER6> > Our goal is to create greater service value than pirates, and this has been > successful enough for us that piracy is basically a non-issue for our > company.

I think there's an impedance mismatch between this guy's definition of success and that of a lot of other people engaged in business models involving materials covered by copyright. Most of the idiots in these industries think of "success" as "having the most" -- having more of the market than a competitor, having money from as many people as possible, and so on. They are so focused on a comparative measure of "success" that they are probably more willing to operate at a loss than to let anyone "get away" with enjoying what they make without paying for it or to let a competitor operate at less of a loss than them. Gabe Newell, on the other hand, seems to measure success by making enough profits for everyone to benefit, getting people involved in the industry as customers, and having a sustainable business model that is not dependent on the forebearance of the vagaries of momentary changes in circumstance. His company is working on developing a business model that is largely independent of copyright, and is enjoying great success as a result; everyone else is trying to use copyright to punish anyone who isn't buying a product through official channels, including those who are buying a different product instead, and some people who are buying the product, because to them "success" is more about who's prevented from doing what they don't want than about providing value in exchange for a comfortable level of revenue generation that isn't likely to dry up tomorrow.

I think saying that piracy isn't about price is overly simplistic. Computer performance is about CPU and RAM and efficient code and storage media seek time and a lot of other things, but in a given circumstance seek time might e the bottleneck; I think that in this case what he has identified is the fact that service and delivered value constitute the _bottleneck_ that creates a piracy "problem" for vendors, and that price is not the major bottleneck in most cases. That's different from price not being "the problem", but it's close enough for government (or journalistic) work.

</comment><comment><USER23> Some people pirate simply because they can. Most people will never use 75% of what Photoshop can do yet they will pirate it when Gimp could serve their needs just as well. They simply collect software because it is there.

Others, I feel, pirate from a sense of entitlement. You do not have to look very far to find people complaining about people making profits while talking on their iPhone while carrying a laptop. Where "World of Goo" is concerned some Linux users think all software should be free.

Side note: Notice how most media outlets will tell you pirated software is always full of viruses? In my experience most distributors/hacker groups take great offense to saying their releases contain viri.

<comment><USER24> Some people just don't believe in so called "Intellectual Property", or don't believe that the current IP regime fulfills its supposed goal of "promoting the development of the arts and sciences".

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> """Russia is now about to become our biggest market in Europe"""

I have read things like that a few times recently. Since when is Russia considered a part of Europe? They have this small Exclave in Europe, but really the bulk of Russia is Asian. I mean, you could probably hide Europe somewhere in Siberia and no one would notice!

Saying that Russia is about to become the biggest market in Europe is like saying that the US is about to become the biggest market in Ohio. It just doesn't make sense.

<comment> guard-of-terra The legal boundaries of Europe is mountains of Ural.

Five Russian federal districts are located before the Urals: Northwestern, Central, Southern, North Caucasus, Volga.

Only two are located beyond.

European ones total for 105 mln of population, so even if we could only count those the picture would not be dramatically different.

<comment><USER26> Exactly. Almost 80% of the Russian population lives in Europe [1].

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Russia></comment></comment></comment>


Newton, the Man (1946) - <AUTHOR> https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Extras/Keynes_Newton/ <comment><USER2> I recently read Gleick's biography of Newton and highly recommend it. It's pretty short, quotes part of this article by Keynes with a lot more context, and paints a portrait both fascinating and disturbing: to come from nothing, to start with nothing, not even having the concepts of velocity or force; to invent them, and calculus, and to develop such a deep understanding of nature to successfully compute the shape of the earth as an oblate spheroid, all from first principles, in the 1600s; to conceal nearly all of these discoveries; and then pursue things that "should all seem a crass and empty ambition once you have written a Principia."

<comment><USER3> I also like Michael White's "Isaac Newton: The Last Sorcerer", which stresses the weird conflict in his character between mysticism and science.

<comment><USER4> Which only seems like a weird conflict from modern eyes, obviously. The ideas that, paraphrased, "the world is made of math" and "spirituality and science are one" are at the heart of western mathematical mysticism, from the 6th century BC Pythagoreans onward.

<comment><USER4> BTW, if you want your mind blown, check out Penelope Gouk's "Music, Science and Natural Magic in Seventeenth Century England". It deals with the magical ideas that were present at the formation of the Royal Society.

Note that we consider magic today to be "that which doesn't exist". Natural magic then was "that which works through unknown forces".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If curious see also

2019 [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20415880](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20415880)

<comment><AUTHOR> Notable: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20421170) is true this time as well. The catalyst for this submission was [https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/12792622549830819...](https://twitter.com/michael_nielsen/status/1279262254983081985?s=19) by way of [https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1279530659753553921?s...](https://twitter.com/Meaningness/status/1279530659753553921?s=19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although rather dysfunctional as a human being, Newton is undoubtedly the greatest physicist of all time. And probably one of the greatest mathematicians. I wonder what else he would have achieved if he hadn't so much of his time and energy on alchemy and bible study.

<comment><USER7> I also wonder what benefit the study of alchemy, the Bible etc may have had on his other discoveries? Sometimes 'flashes of insight' come from patterns developed in other fields.

Gutenberg, for example, made a breakthrough with the printing press because his earlier career as a goldsmith taught him enough metallurgy to develop movable type; Charles Babbage credited his work on silk weaving machines with helping him visualise his adding machine (with Ida Lovelace, creating the first 'computer').

<comment><USER6> I agree that knowledge of a different field can be very useful. I don't think I would pick alchemy or scripture as that other field though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing with Newton's Principia is that's an exposition of the laws of his dynamics using proofs from elementary geometry but no calculus as such.

Newton and Leibniz separately discovered calculus but the calculus they created had no rigorous basis - it took until the middle of 19th century to formulate the axiomatic system that calculus is framed in today.

So it's natural Newton would want to write his results in a form that was rigorous and unassailable. But this meant that, as Keynes says, the final form didn't bear a relationship to intuition it was taken from.</comment>


Linux memory overcommit (compared to airlines selling tickets) - <AUTHOR> http://opsmonkey.blogspot.com/2007/01/linux-memory-overcommit.html <comment><USER2> Along these lines, I had a fun encounter with the Linux OOM killer the other day.

The scenario was roughly this. Process A consumes 55% of available memory but has stable memory usage and has been running for days. Process B has a memory allocation bug and rapidly goes from low memory usage to consuming the remaining 45%. Which process gets killed first on my system? Process A.

I'm not up on the latest OOM scoring heuristics (they keep changing), but if it's only looking at instantaneous memory usage when things go critical, and not the trend, that seems dumb. I'd be willing to bet memory leaks are an especially common cause of OOM.

...then again, putting all these heuristics in the kernel with no tunables seems dumber. Does anyone know if delegating to a userspace OOM killer is possible or being contemplated?

<comment><USER3> it seems the latest kernel doesn't use the more complex heuristics that it used to (preserving longer running tasks, for example) and just goes off the proportion of memory used by the process, with a 3% bonus for the superuser. However it does also adjust the score by the value in /proc/pid/oom_score_adj (which can completly disable or completely favour the process) and so you could probably write a userspace daemon which updated this value based on whatever heuristics you want (although you'd have to do it before the OOM condition).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I liked the article. It was a simplified explanation, which is a good thing in its own right: not everyone reading it cares about the gory details. I'll provide some such details for the curious, though.

Technically, malloc() is not a system call; it is a library function that calls either brk()/sbrk() or mmap() (or just uses memory it already "has"). The choice depends on the situation and just what it's doing.

mmap() engages the VM subsystem, backing a chunk of RAM with part of a given file on disk (in this case with a special flag to not actually do that, but just give the RAM). Of course this will never require actual RAM until you go to use it: that's the whole point of the call. Normally mmap() will not cause OOM issues, because it creates exactly as much virtual memory out of thin air as it requests physical memory. That's not true in this usage, though. I suppose in this usage, it could block off a chunk of virtual memory.

brk() and sbrk() are the more "normal" ways to get extra memory, by expanding the heap. The new memory must be initialized manually (or not, as the runtime prefers). The main reason to not do this all the time is that the heap itself must be contiguous. Using mmap() lets malloc() return pages to the system under more varied conditions and work around parts of the address space that contain other things[1].

Calls to mmap()/brk()/sbrk() are rather expensive compared to malloc() calls. They are system calls, after all. That's why programs will normally ask for more memory than they actually need at the moment: it reduces the amortized runtime cost of malloc(). Linux tries to take advantage of this.

So, the strange Linux behavior is that if a process calls mmap()/brk()/sbrk() (and doesn't hit the addressable limit) Linux will simply record that the process has requested mapping of a particular region of memory. Then, later, the VM subsystem hands out the memory when the process tries to do something to it. The question is, what to do if there isn't any memory to hand out?

There's no way to cause an arbitrary memory access to fail with ENOMEM, so Linux has this hacky workaround where it semi-arbitrarily selects and kills something.

The historical way to avoid this was to have a huge amount of virtual memory, hence the suggestions like "twice the amount of RAM in the system". The system would become unusably slow before the OOM killer would engage, and the user would manually kill some relatively unimportant processes.

[1]- In older versions of the Linux kernel, the program code would be stored in memory about 1G away from the heap. So, as soon as you used about 1G, you'd run into your code and malloc() would no longer be able to brk() for more memory.

<comment><AUTHOR> The post linked from the article is really nice:

<http://lwn.net/Articles/104185/>

"in rare occasions however the amount of fuel was insufficient, and the plane would crash. This problem was solved by the engineers of the company by the development of a special OOF (out-of-fuel) mechanism. In emergency cases a passenger was selected and thrown out of the plane. (When necessary, the procedure was repeated.)"

I always thought that mapping of virtual memory should succeed only if there is enough virtual memory available (i.e. when not in RAM than in page file). Why is the overcommit concept better? Because malloc takes way too much VM unnecessary? Then why not just correcting malloc?

<comment><USER4> Well, malloc() is very much doing the right thing in a world where (virtual) memory is plentiful. The performance of the program improves substantially, without impacting memory usage that much.

I never understood why the system doesn't do the accounting strictly, even if it waits to actually hand out individual pages. Then, it could give an error on brk() or mmap() when the memory would be "overbooked". Memory "saved" this way would be unusable to other processes, but it would be usable as buffer cache, and fork() would still be fast.

edit: Another possible solution would be a special "out-of-memory" signal. The program could trap that signal and do the right thing with it. The problem with that is that it's difficult to program for out-of-memory conditions. Something as simple as printf() won't work at all, and could cause a signal loop depending on implementation. Given that, almost no programs would do it, so there would be little benefit.

<comment><USER5> Why would you deny allocation requests larger than immediately available physical memory when they could be serviced perfectly well by paging?

On modern systems malloc and friends manage address space, not physical memory. Failure should only be reported if _that_ resource is exhausted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Overcommit was a design decision that seems wrong at first, but when taken with a wide viewpoint makes some sense. The motivating reason for overccomit is to make fork cheap. (the article even briefly touched on this). It's a trade off between the speed of spawning new processes (and threads) and ease of understanding how your system will behave in low memory situations. I think they made the right choice.

Another thing to note. The systems in the article were in trouble regardless of the overcommit, it's just that overcommit hid the problem and made it occur in a non-obvious place.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, if I'm reading this correctly, my usual null-checking of malloc() returns is insufficient?

What the hell? How did this ever get put in?

As an application developer trying to write code that can run on machines I have no control over, how is this reasonable? This seems like it pretty much neuters my ability to accurately detect potential out-of-memory conditions with a hackish workaround.

<comment><USER8> Your null-checking has always been insufficient. Nothing you can do in the context of a single app can fix things anyway. Actually try it some time: hack up a malloc() that "fails" beyond a certain heap size and start testing all your "handling" code. I guarantee you it won't do what you think it does.

And this isn't about "malloc" anyway. It's about mmap. Mappings are overcommited because mappings are routinely undercommitted. How much stack do you use for each of your threads? How much stack is mapped? If you don't know the answers to these questions (or worse, don't know how to find out), then you need to do a little more research before pontificating on kernel memory allocation strategies.

Sorry, pet peeve. This is one of those areas where too many people think they understand something that they simply don't.

<comment><USER7> The thing that bugs me about this is that I'm pretty sure there is some way to make a damned good effort at at least saving results out to disk or dying gracefully even when malloc starts asploding.

Also, this means that I can screw up other processes for no good reason, even though only my proc should get killed for going over quota.

"Mappings are overcommited because mappings are routinely undercommitted"

Could you please explain this again? I'm not quite sure I parsed that out correctly. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> Saving results to disk requires disk buffers, which can require the kernel to allocate, which won't work on an OOM system. This is how you get deadlocks: process trying to "handle" OOM ends up trying to allocate, and the system freezes. Which is why the OOM killer exists.

I should have said "underutilized" above. But the point is very real: applications map stuff all over the place. It's quite rare that they actually fault in those pages.

The stack thing is the obvious example: measure the stack size of your application (easy trick is to subtract the address of a local variable "deep" in the tree from the address of one of the arguments to main, or pthread_create, or wherever the top is). Now check the size of the mapping that contains the stack. And tell me if you want to actually reserve all that memory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a nice surprise to wake up and check HN to find an article I'd written four years ago trending on the front page. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Inspiration came reading the comments here:

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/05/12/10163...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2011/05/12/10163578.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always felt this should be settable per heap.

I would happily set it in my programs explicitly.

<comment><USER11> You can disable overcommit globally (/proc/sys/vm/overcommit_memory).

At the application level, you can allocate as much memory as you want and then write to it all. You are not guaranteed not to die of OOM while doing this, but at least you will know right away that you will have enough memory in the long run.

The point of overcomitting is that it reduces the possibility of OOM errors. I think people are just offended that the kernel is killing their process. With overcommits turned off, the OOM would have happened sooner, and I doubt most applications would have handled it any better than the kernel did. If you think the kernel is wrong, or if you don't like this behavior, you can both customize the OOM killer and turn off overcommitting.

Also, overcommits are by no means specific to Linux. FreeBSD, OS X, HP/UX and so on all have it. I _think_ Solaris is the exception here. But if you want the Solaris behavior, you can have it under Linux too.</comment></comment>


The 16 Golden Rules of Financial Safety - <AUTHOR> http://www.harrybrowne.org/articles/InvestmentRules.htm <comment><USER2> Three simple rules:

1\. Build up an emergency fund ASAP

2\. Save as big a percentage of your income as you can (see [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly- sim...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math- behind-early-retirement/))

3\. Read the FAQ at [https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)</comment>


Spam? Not Spam? Tracking a hijacked Spamhaus IP - <AUTHOR> https://greenhost.nl/2013/03/21/spam-not-spam-tracking-hijacked-spamhaus-ip/

<comment><USER2> The _idea_ of reducing spam is great, but the _method_ of using blocklists has some unfortunate side effects, specifically, it concentrates far too much influence (power) in the hands of a few individuals. Sadly, there are occasions when said individuals abuse the power they have acquired. [1, 2, 3]

The recent massive DDoS against spamhaus and this new BGP based routing attack make it painfully clear that spamhaus has upset someone, but the question of who they upset, and whether or not they are justified in fighting back are still unknown. If you were a legitimate, non-spamming business and some vigilante shut down your capacity to send email, you'd be rightfully angry.

If spamhaus considered you "acceptable collateral damage" in their war against spam, you'd be absolutely livid.

These kinds of situations happen with blocklists.

[1] <http://paulgraham.com/sblbad.html>

[2] <http://paulgraham.com/spamhausblacklist.html>

[3] <http://paulgraham.com/spamhaussbl.html></comment>


Show HN: Simple Email Reminders - <AUTHOR> http://remindmebro.com/ <comment><USER2> Very clever. I can see the use in this.

Might also be a good way to schedule reminders for myself. Get a reminder after three months to change my home's water filter by just send an email.

Some privacy concerns you could address about how emails you receive are handled. I assume you need to retain some context of the original email to make the reminder useful – recipients, subject, body – what are you storing, in what way, how long?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I will address the concerns I am storing the subject, and the from address. I am not storing the email body hence not providing context in the reminders. I am using sendgrid's inbound parse api to receive emails and posting it to my service which adds reminder to the database. There is a service in the background which runs every minute and sends reminder based on the time to remind and delete the email once the reminder is sent. I think you are correct in your feedback about the original context of the email. for that I will have to store the email content as well.

<comment><USER2> Well, I tried the service for a two-minute reminder, but I received it right away, not two minutes later.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just checked the logs, looks like there is some bug. What email(reminder) did you used ? and where did you included it, in the "To" or in "BCC" ? Right now it works only in bcc. I will make it work with "To" and "CC" as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> See also: [https://www.nudgemail.com/](https://www.nudgemail.com/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi Community, Do try out the service and please give feedback. Thanks,</comment>


Ask HN: Visas - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys,
My first post here. Not the best one to start out with I guess, but it's something that's on my mind. I'm 15 years old, and I'm launching my startup in the coming few months. Thinking about my future, I'd love to move to the states.
Is there anything I can do to greater my changes of getting a visa or greencard now? Anything particular to startups?
Cheers, Lachy <comment><USER2> I'd say getting a university degree would be the single best thing you could do. Yes, some will argue you can have experience without a formal education, but immigration programs are very bureaucratic.

Learn the things you'll hear people dismiss as "academic". They do that because those things are hard :) There are many people out there capable of figuring out how to use jQuery after reading a few tutorials. Much fewer understand how computers actually work. Learn the theory. You can start before university.

This isn't meant to be insulting. It's just something I wish someone told me at that age. When you are young, it is easy to impress those around you who "aren't good with computers". When that happens, briefly congratulate yourself, then keep working.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I really don't plan on going to university! I've been quite successful sofar, and I'd like to continue what I'm doing on my way out of school.</comment></comment>


Tom Keegan Interview on Battlefield 3 - <AUTHOR> http://gamingbusinessreview.com/consoles/business-consoles/interview-business-consoles/performance-director-tom-keegan-discusses-battlefield-3

<comment><USER2> interesting take. "More and more detail means more and more depth to the acting and emotional performance."</comment>


Related: Pure Ruby Relational Algebra Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seansellek/related <comment><USER2> Oooh, this is nice. While learning ML, I was stumbling a bit with python, wishing that Ruby were a good language for working with datasets.

For all the faults people find with ruby's performance, I don't think much can be found wrong with its syntax; it is such a wonderful language to code with.

Might I suggest aliasing `<<` to `add_tuple`?

<comment><USER3> Ruby's syntax is one of the worst I've seen. Ambiguous, hard to parse, and inextensible.

[http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to- par...](http://programmingisterrible.com/post/42432568185/how-to-parse-ruby)

<comment><USER4> It's awful to work on, and wonderful to work with. Awful for machines, great for humans.

<comment><USER3> I write Ruby for a living and I completely disagree. S-expressions are the gold standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like that it doesn't have any dependencies. Makes it easier to read and understand the source, casually (one of my favorite pastimes during lunch breaks lately).

</comment><comment><USER6> See also: Axiom[0] and rom-rb[1] (which did use axiom I believe), although, I don't know what does or doesn't make them 'pure' relational algebra libraries.

[0] [https://github.com/dkubb/axiom](https://github.com/dkubb/axiom)

[1] [http://rom-rb.org/](http://rom-rb.org/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me a bit of Project:M36 Relational Algebra Engine, written in Haskell. No nulls allowed.

[https://github.com/agentm/project-m36](https://github.com/agentm/project-m36)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11465145)

<comment><USER8> At Standard Chartered they are using relations as data structures in their Haskell-like language.

It works very well. (The biggest hurdle for a really nice integration is IMHO stuff like typing the join operator. But even the dynamically-typed only version was useful.)

<comment><USER9> We have a typed version now - it's awesome

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I've heard the praise. I tried to rally Gergo into porting the idea to GHC. (Using the new pluggable constraint solvers in GHC seems like the best bet.)

I still remember when I hadn't had any clue about functional programming, and I was moving from stuff like QBasic and C to Python. I thought dicts were awesome. And they are---by comparison to only having arrays.

Relations do everything dicts do, but you don't have to decide on the structure beforehand. Exactly the same argument that Codd had.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice. I'm not a Ruby person, but I'm glad to see someone flying the relational flag.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is neat. It's nice to see learning tools like this in a language like Ruby, as many implementations of relational algebra codebases in ruby are pretty complicated (see ActiveRecord/ARel and Sequel).

</comment><comment><USER12> How does this compare to a pure, recursion-free subset of Prolog? Not counting cosmetic differences, e.g., in Prolog, relation arguments are positional, whereas in the relational model, attributes have names.

<comment><USER13> Prolog allows unification, which doesn't have a parallel in relational algebra. I'm not sure how much more power this gives you without recursion, though.

If you're interested in connections between relational algebra (and SQL, and databases) and logic programming, you should look at Datalog, which is a restricted subset of Prolog that is akin to relational algebra plus fixed points (transitive closure, for example). In particular, Datalog forbids compound terms (like lists) and recursion in a negated position.

I think Datalog without recursion/fixed-points is precisely as powerful as relational algebra, but I don't have a proof handy.

<comment><USER12> Computing natural joins requires unification.

<comment><USER13> Natural joins only require equality testing. General unification is stronger. Prolog can unify [X,3|T] with [2,Y,4,5] to find X = 2, Y = 3, T = [4,5], for example.

<comment><USER12> What you're talking about requires compound data types in the first place (e.g., lists in your example), whereas in the relational model, attributes are normally assumed to range over primitive types.

But, even in the absence of compound data types, the answer to a Prolog query may contain free variable, whereas the answer to SQL query may not. So you do have a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Excellent piece of work.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm a big fan of ruby but doesn't saying "Pure ruby" kind of detract from rather than improve a libraries value? Ideally it would have rust/C bindings for all the computationally difficult stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> The reason I said that is because a lot of the other libraries I found, like Arel or Sequel, just build off of SQL to interact with databases. And the problem with that is that SQL is a terrible way to get a handle on relational algebra. It is entirely based on RA operations, yes, but it is so high level you barely feel connected to what's actually happening.

Not good when you're trying to learn basic operations and how they interact with each other.

That's the only reason I said "pure". Wasn't really coming from a point of view of performance or compatibility.</comment></comment>


How to Ask Questions the Smart Way (2001-2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html <comment><USER2> Cunningham's Law - "The best way to get the right answer on the Internet is not to ask a question, it's to post the wrong answer."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_L...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Cunningham#Cunningham's_Law)

<comment><USER3> Obviously not true. Not everyone gets upset over seeing wrong answers on the internet

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems dated. Especially the RTFM and STFW parts. Learning should be a fun experience. There are people who love explaining things without having to use RTFM and STFW.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find that when asking questions to strangers, its best to think of it as building something for someone else to build something on top of—-that question has to have a certain amount of polish.

If you are struggling with the thing in general, its better to find a way to get someone to agree to give you their focused attention. That probably means hiring someone on [https://codementor.io](https://codementor.io)

Within a company however, you can often just say "I'm working on X and would like a walkthrough about Y. Can I put some time on you calendar?" However, you still delegating a task to your answerer and so you still want to put thought into how you can set your answerer up for success. There is a post by Julia Evans on asking questions of coworkers which is really helpful for thinking about how to do this: [https://jvns.ca/blog/good- questions/](https://jvns.ca/blog/good-questions/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another good resource

[https://ideas.redpepper.land/asking-great- questions-15eb31e6...](https://ideas.redpepper.land/asking-great- questions-15eb31e6eeaa)

Which includes a link to Humble Inquiry, the best book on the topic.

Required reading for consultants.</comment>


BRiTi - <AUTHOR>

BRiTi provides you an online platform to share buy, sell, auction and product reviews. <comment><USER2> No link, so tried to Google, can't find you there. The name is way too similar to British to rank at the moment.</comment>


Detroit Dont Play Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://maps.google.com/maps?q=+18800+block+of+Brinker+Ave,+Detroit&hl=en&ll=42.430687,-83.073882&spn=0.000016,0.00825&sll=42.430615,-83.073884&layer=c&cbp=13,322.27,,3,-0.47&cbll=42.430597,-83.073884&hnear=18800+Brinker+St,+Detroit,+Michigan+48234&t=m&panoid=tHKZuWR0Als4j4S8cIzC2Q&z=17

<comment><USER2> There was a dead baby found at that house.

local news story about it: [http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/detroit/SOURCES-17-month...](http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/region/detroit/SOURCES-17-month- old-girl-found-dead-under-pile-of-clothes-in-Grandmothers-house)

thread discussing it vs that google map [http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?13987-Baby- Zyia-...](http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?13987-Baby-Zyia-Death- on-Brinker-Street)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you move one position to the right, you'll see a clearer image of the gun</comment>


Ask HN: why does Gmail keep getting more complex? - <AUTHOR>

Once upon a time, I used Gmail because of its straightforward and simple design. But it just keeps getting more and more complicated. What's the deal? <comment><USER2> You can keep tweaking the settings and get pretty close to 2005-style.</comment>


Flynano - Personal Flying Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.flynano.com/ <comment><USER2> US definition of Ultralight requires that engine-off stall speed be at most 45km/h, and max speed at most 102km/h at full power in level flight.

flynano's "landing speed" is 70km/h, and "cruising speed" is ~140km/h, so it's not going to happen as an ultralight in US. It will probably be classified as an LSA (light-sport aircraft), which makes more sense, but requires a pilot's license.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand all the hate around getting a pilot's license. Flight is dangerous and even with a fair amount of regulation and training plenty of people still mess up and die. There are many situations where the natural reaction of even a seasoned pilot will get you killed. EX: Letting go of the stick can be the correct thing to do, try thinking of that while spinning wildly and falling rapidly.

The LSA pilot's license is fairly easy to get. It takes 20 hours of instruction and some solo flights which you can for around around 2-3k. And a written test which seems reasonable before you fly something at 120km/h.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely no hate here. I myself wouldn't fly that thing without some considerable preparation. I just mentioned it because the aircraft was designed to fit into Europe's restrictions for the lightest aircraft category there, but it doesn't fit into US definition of ultralight, and the Engadget article linked in another comment says it does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here are more photos and some additional infos:

 _<http://www.eaa.org/news/2011/2011-04-14_aero.asp> (scroll down a bit)

_[http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/23/flynano-plane-is-super- li...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/23/flynano-plane-is-super-light-pretty- cheap-a-little-scary/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd rather go for a real 'plane:

<http://www.google.co.uk/#q=cri-cri+aircraft>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colomban_Cri-cri>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGRB2UsH3AE>

<http://www.flight.cz/cricri/english/>

Quoting from WikiPedia:

        The MC-10 Cri-Cri has a cruising speed of 170 km/h
        (92 knots, or 105.6 miles per hour) and a range of
        750 km (466 standard miles, 405 nautical miles).

        The MC-12 model has a cruising speed of 185 km/h
        (100 knots, or 114.9 miles per hour) and range of
        500 km (310.6 standard miles, 270 nautical miles)

</comment><comment><USER6> Ooh, I like the design where there is no canopy and a propeller right in front of your face. There's a nice protective pillar.

I'm certain it's safe.

<comment><USER7> Sitting right behind that propwash with no windshield isn't going to be fun either. Even if you're cruising at 70 the wind is going to feel more like 140.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Far edge of that wing hits the water first, you are going for a 180 degree tumble at full momentum.

</comment><comment><USER9> What about some visual demo - maybe a YT movie or few pictures on the web site. The idea sounds fantastic, but will it actually work well in practice? Good Luck.

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have a video of these in action? They look like fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> _Everyone's dreamt of flying free as a bird. Nano is for the fun of flying_

Interesting how true this must be. We've heard promise of practical personal flying machines for _decades_ , usually complete with artists renditions or renders, but few have seemed to materialize yet.

Ultralights are probably the closest, fairly cheap and requiring little infrastructure. Just a seat with a big fan attached to a parachute really.

Even these though take a surprising amount of work to be able to operate safely.

<comment><USER12> Iconaircraft.com is a realistic attempt at making flight more widely available. They are designing their aircraft around the "sport flight" rules of recent years, which mean you need less training but you can only fly in good conditions. They haven't shipped yet, however.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for posting this, it looks fantastic, and as if it will actually hit the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm not quite clicking with the design. I'd figure you'd need at least the wing span of an ultralight to get that off the ground, plus a bit more for the weight of its fully paneled body. I'm just not seeing how you fit an engine and enough fuel for a reasonable flight in that package. The doubled wings buy you a little span, but it just doesn't seem to have enough surface area.

<comment><USER14> It seems it'll have a theoretical range of 70km. It's more a toy than a real plane (like JetSky vs. real boats).

Probably fun though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I don't see ailerons, but I do see wing sweep, so are they expecting this to be a steer left/right only type aircraft?

What about pitch control? There's going to be quite a pitch down moment with that high mounted engine.

And with the small wing giving a high wing loading, this aircraft looks like quite a little handful to fly.

That's worrying enough, without even thinking about stall / spin behavior.

</comment><comment><USER16> That's not a good sign when there's not even a picture of the thing.

<comment><USER14> Check Entlin's previous comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2478475>

<comment><USER17> A video of it actually flying would be nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks a bit Romulan if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER19> You may not believe this, but I invented all of these concepts independently of these guys.

Someone want to hire me? I'm really innovative young engineer...</comment>


Writing Hacks, Starting - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/54-writing-hacks-part-1-starting/

<comment><AUTHOR> "when people can't start they're imagining the precision of the end, all polished and brilliant, a vision that makes the ugly clumsy junkyard that all beginnings are, impossible to accept"

</comment><comment><USER2> >Maybe revise something old and unfinished to get warm.

Are you kidding? _Everything_ I've written is old and unfinished.</comment>


Roger Ebert on Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/03/the_human_race_on_a_key_ring.html

<comment><USER2> Usually I enjoy Ebert's writing, but I didn't really get the point of this piece. I don't see why the future he envisions is inevitable, and I don't see why it's tragic.</comment>


LamPORE: Molecular screening for SARS-CoV-2 infection based on nanopore seq - <AUTHOR> https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.08.07.20161737v1 <comment><AUTHOR> (Apologies, I had to truncate the paper's title somewhat to fit with HN's rules)</comment>


Majority of Digital Media Consumption Now Takes Place in Mobile Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/21/majority-of-digital-media-consumption-now-takes-place-in-mobile-apps/

<comment><USER2> But - mobile bandwidth is so small! I can believe the number of events may be larger in mobile, but on my wired desktop I can consume scores of megabytes in seconds. 'Digital media consumption' sounds like bytes not views.

<comment><USER3> I have the same bandwidth on my mobile device the vast majority of the time: wi-fi at home.

Home is also the primary place I consume digital content on my mobile device.

I doubt I'm alone in this.

<comment><USER2> So most mobile web access is while at home? I guess that makes sense.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: I need an idea - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in making an app/ service that is based on locations. I don't have a good idea for a location based service or app. If you get the chance to build a location based app what would it be? <comment><USER2> Location based dating, location based search, location based shopping, location based ___anything_ __. insert anything you know and build it.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would be more interesting to people? I'd like to be the tool more social than we just giving a service.any idea?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am working on a project, it is very basic at this point. Email me or provide your email and I will send you more information.

<comment><AUTHOR> i can't see your email address. What your email address?</comment></comment>


eBay's new feedback policy: no real feedback (no neg feedback for buyers) - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080206-ebays-new-feedback-policy-no-real-feedback.html <comment><USER2> What about us sellers who get fraudulent buy requests from Nigerians? (It really happened). What do we do about the buyer at that point?

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like requiring sellers to leave feedback first would take care of 90% of the tit-for-tat problem.</comment>


The "Getting Shit Done" Sleep Cycle - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/better-humans/f8b43ea455aa

<comment><USER2> _Not much is known about sleep and why we need it_

Wasn't there some research posted recently about how sleep is when toxins are cleaned from your brain or some-such?</comment>


Why most kanji textbooks suck - <AUTHOR> http://kanjidamage.com/introduction

<comment><USER2> He brings up many great points about the shortcomings of many textbooks and even software for learning a language like Japanese. That's why my favorite introductory kanji textbook is Tokyo University's 250 Essential Kanji for Everyday life (Vol 1 and 2). The chapters are broken up by areas of life that you'd need to know words for (the train station, the post office, the hospital) and they go over the etymology of the ideographs if that helps you remember it.

With regards to software, what I see as the holy grail of computer assisted language learning would be a free open standard for documenting one's progress through a language. If I could keep track of all the words/grammar points I've learned from day 1, and it was in a globally available format (online) then any software application that didn't want to be dumb could integrate that knowledge for some awesome applications (Smarter flashcards, smart kanji level adjuster for reading online articles or ebooks, etc.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Most kanji textbooks suck because learning kanji sucks for westerners. Westerners are generally trying to learn several things at once: the stroke order, the readings, and the meaning. This causes information overload.

For example, looking at the word "knowledge" -- imagine that you've never learned to write the alphabet and you're expected to learn to write the letters, the order of the letters, and the pronunciations of specific combinations of the letters! It's simply overwhelming.

The easiest way to tackle this is to reduce the information given, which is what books like Heisig's Remembering the Kanji try to do. He tries to teach the stroke order and associate it with a meaning through a mnemonic -- no worrying about the various readings. It's an interesting idea and works great for some people, not so great for other.

Kanji in Context is a really good series that focuses on an intermediate learner who already knows enough Japanese to intuit the stroke orders of kanji and can read Japanese sentences. It gives sentences with kanji compounds in them -- you then have a context in which you can focus on learning ONE reading and meaning for that particular kanji in a context.

After all, that's how we learn words in our native language -- in context.

There are a bunch of other noteworthy books and approaches, and they work for different people. Some people are a lot better with brute force memorization, some people are a lot better with a Japanese context, some people want a story in English, some people remember better with some kind of etymological history... all of these preferences have led to a bunch of different books.

I wouldn't really say any of them suck, but the approaches may not work for you or your friends.

That having been said!

I'm always up for looking over a new book, so Kanjidamage looks interesting, even though it's not actually a book. The slang and "hipster" talk is a major turnoff, though. For people like me who don't use or see that kind of slang often, it just makes another interfacing problem that makes learning kanji harder.

Even after reading all of the stuff on the site, I still don't really understand how it's meant to be used, though. It's too long-winded.

<comment><USER3> And it's a bit of a turn-off when I see something like "二日酔い" with an explanation that it literally means "paying for your drink" when it doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > the most logical, efficient way to study was going from simple-to-complex. > They said, "Start with a set of the most basic kanji. Then try to combine > every kanji in that set with every other kanji in the set – and lo! You will > be able to construct several new kanji just by re-arranging the kanji you > already know.

Yep! We Westerners learn to write our own language letters first, then words. That's how we naturally want to learn Kanji/Hanzi.

So for 我爱你 "I love you": 我=手+戈, 爱=爪+冂+(十+又), 你=人+(勹+小), I find it's easier to learn the character when I've already learnt its components.</comment>


Encryption Works: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://freedom.press/encryption-works <comment><USER2> Assume all systems are compromised and act accordingly.

Remember when no one trusted the net and said it was foolish to put your credit card or anything important online ?</comment>


Taxiing accounts for more than 1/8 of fuel consumption [slides] [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://flight.nasa.gov/pdf/18_jung_green_aviation_summit.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> I got the number 1/8 from

> 25% of the emissions are produced during the Landing Take-Off (LTO) cycle > (for flights over a 800km range)

and

> Taxi operations are the largest source of emissions in a standard LTO cycle

It seems almost unbelievable, but the sources seem solid. I would love to hear other input on this.</comment>


Everyone tries to make lightning strike twice in the same place - <AUTHOR> http://garry.posterous.com/everyone-tries-to-make-lightning-strike-twice

<comment><USER2> I've wondered why people believe things about science which just aren't true. The author wrote "science is a repeatable act", but that means astronomy isn't a science. For that matter, nothing can be repeated exactly. I personally blame route memorization of "The Scientific Method" in school.

(Not that my comment here has anything to do with what the author is trying to say, which is more like 'if people don't give your startup money then it might not be because your idea stinks - perhaps you just don't fit the expected pattern and you can change that pattern', with extra ... philosophy ... added for flavor.)

<comment><USER3> According to the author and in the context of your comment, what the investors are doing is engineering. Engineers apply known principles to new situations, and in fact the engineering analogy is very appropriate for people looking to invest in and build a company.

<comment><USER2> Could be, but the author wrote "startups are more like art than science" and didn't use the word "engineering" at all. Plus, the same thing could be said of craftsmanship, sports, relationships, and more.

But really, I was only complaining about the general misunderstanding of what science means.</comment></comment></comment>


Kerry vows to put the screws to Venezuela over Snowden. - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/news/kerry-threatens-venezuela-snowden-308/

<comment><AUTHOR> He threatens to ground any Venezuelan aircraft which proceeds over NATO or US airspace if there is any (he says "the slightest") suspicion Snowden is on board.

I guess the Bolivia fiasco was not enough. This is getting pretty ludicrous.</comment>


Nasty icons - <AUTHOR> http://nastyicons.com/ <comment><USER2> I hate to be _That Guy_ , but could we get an NSFW warning on the link?

(I figured the icons were going to be "nasty" in terms of being very shoddy quality. It turns out that they depict "nasty" subject matter.)

<comment><USER3> Getting fired for looking at these icons could actually be a great start towards working for the right people.

<comment><USER2> On the tiny outside chance that you're not just trolling:

I just spent a solid year looking for work while watching my bank account slowly dwindle. If I walked out of the job I just got, I don't think I would even have enough money to break the lease on my apartment.

<comment><USER4> possible you shouldn't be browsing HN at all while working that new job?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think it's interesting that in conceiving "nasty" icons, the images are almost entirely either violent or scatological, rather than sexual (the bare- breasted woman being the only exception I noticed). I imagine a few possible explanations: a) the creators considered sexuality too risqué for what they were doing, b) they considered it not nasty at all, or c) the emphasis was on a childish nastiness, rather than a grown up one.

It may speak to the relative acceptance of violence vs sexuality in our culture?

<comment><USER3> There is also the stripper and the vibrator

<comment><USER5> Ah, so there are! I don't know how I missed those. Still, that's three out of 45.

<comment><USER3> We could do a kickstarter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not providing on-site info about implementation details and not letting users download without sharing first on Twitter/Facebook is not a good combination. From what I can see on the site, it's SVG images but I'd like to know the implementation details.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well that was not exactly the thing that comes to my mind when I see the menu item "cut", but yeah, why the hell not =)

I wish I had a page where I could use these when AB testing. Think about it: Using nasty icons increased the click-through rates by 200%!

<comment><USER3> Ew, don't get me started on "paste"

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The middle one here: [http://nastyicons.com/img/icons-09.svg](http://nastyicons.com/img/icons-09.svg)

Great for a 404 icon :-)

</comment><comment><USER9> Startup inspiration ... come up with an MVP that utilizes each of these icons at least once.

<comment><USER3> Sadistic tamagochi?

<comment><USER10> That made me laugh, thanks :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Ahah neat, going to check & save this for later... Oh, tweet 3rd party paywall. Nevermind."

</comment><comment><USER12> I wish I could download these but I have no Twitter or Facebook account :( I don't see a public repo so I guess these are proprietary? What is the licensing besides the "Free For Commercial Use"?

</comment><comment><USER13> Eh, the "bête et méchante" school lives on ...

<comment><USER14> could you explain your reference to me, I'm completely lost about what you mean and/or refer to :)

<comment><USER15> it means "stupid and nasty"

edit: why did I get downvoted? That's a literal translation, not what I think of the icons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I need some Vans with those icons printed all over them. That would be schweet!

</comment><comment><USER17> Hilarious.

</comment><comment><USER18> What's the one in between the tank and the guillotine?

<comment><USER19> Riot police. Shield, full facial helmet, baton.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If LT IE10, smelly-garbage.svg.

</comment><comment><USER21> these would make great tshirts!

should check out teespring.com ;)

</comment><comment><USER22> haha love it!

</comment><comment><USER23> This was a cute break from the normal srs bsns of HN, thanks!</comment>


This website is not a blog - <AUTHOR> https://kolemcrae.com/why-this-website-has-no-dates-or-why-i-refuse-to-call-it-a-blog/ <comment><USER2> > This means everything on here should always be up to date.

Oh no. I will view any article on that website as possibly from 1990.</comment>


Sony Demos PlayStation 5's Improved SSD-Powered Game Load Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/sony-demos-playstation-5-storage-spider-man,39395.html <comment><USER3> " People simply aren't willing to wait for stuff to load now that SSDs are so common."

You would think that. But, I have a 10 year old that is willing to wait 5 - <USER2> minutes for fortnite to start up. What a world.

"A research firm recently claimed that many PC gamers will switch to consoles as Moore's Law slows down."

I find this intriguing. I wonder if the next console generation coming up will be that time. Currently there is still a huge parity between the two regarding fidelity and frame rate (With PC being the clear winner.). I do recognize the gap is closing in though.</comment>


Chipotle to test burrito delivery by drone with Project Wing at Virginia Tech - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/08/chipotle-to-test-burrito-delivery-by-drone-with-project-wing-at-virginia-tech/ <comment><USER2> 10,000 workers are currently suing Chipotle ( [http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/29/news/economy/chipotle- lawsui...](http://money.cnn.com/2016/08/29/news/economy/chipotle-lawsuit- nearly-10000-workers/) )

Automating their workflow, at least part of it, will go a long way to stopping labour disputes in the future. No workers = no problems!</comment>


Top porn sites 'pose growing malware risk' to users - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22093141 <comment><USER2> I love how people are afraid to comment on a porn article.

<comment><USER3> I don't think people are afraid to comment, it's simply not worth commenting on. I read the first paragraph of the article and closed it because it was crap. Do I need to waste more time to leave a comment, like I do now?.</comment></comment>


The Causal Theory of Views: A Conversation with Lee Smolin - <AUTHOR> https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-the-causal-theory-of-views <comment><USER2> Pretty interesting stuff, mainly addressing nonlocality (as does "amplituhedron theory"). In both theoretical frameworks relativity and quantum mechanics are unified, with spacetime and QM as emergent properties.

Additional reading.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Amplitudehedron [Nima Arkani-Hamed et al.]:

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics:

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover- geometry-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-discover-geometry- underlying-particle-physics-20130917/)

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>

Causality [Lee Smolin et al.]:

The Causal Theory of Views: A Conversation with Lee Smolin:

[https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-the-causal- theo...](https://www.edge.org/conversation/lee_smolin-the-causal-theory-of- views)

Causality (physics):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_\(physics\)))

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>---

Smolin has obviously been thinking about this for a long time; e.g. note discussions of causality peppered throughout this 1997 discussion"

A Possible Solution to the Problem of Time in Quantum Cosmology:

[https://www.edge.org/discourse/kauffman_smolin.html](https://www.edge.org/discourse/kauffman_smolin.html))</comment>


Show HN: I built a collaborative flashcard tool - <AUTHOR> https://memordo.com/launch/hn <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. As a University student I was struggling a lot with the huge amount of information I needed to remember for my courses. I started using spaced repetition (Anki) and it worked great! I enthusiastically shared this method with my family but they got overwhelmed by the complexity of the Anki interface and all the options. I wanted to change that. So I built memordo. I focused on creating a minimalist but still productive interface for creating memory cards that supports image, latex, code and clozes. I have also built a sharing feature when users can share their decks and collaborate on building decks together.

I have already received some feedback from the HN community and I would love to hear what you guys think again.

Thanks for reading!

</comment><comment><USER2> FYI, when a site has had significant attention (like yours did last month in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23947659)), folks are asked to wait a year before re-submitting. Here's more: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html). Otherwise we'd be reading the same stuff over and over :)

Instead of submitting your own site again, maybe submit the most interesting or useful other sites you encounter while working on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know. Since then I have built major changes to the design and functionality so I thought It was ok.</comment></comment>