Pentagon: China Now Has World's Largest Navy - <AUTHOR> https://news.usni.org/2020/09/01/pentagon-report-china-now-has-worlds-largest-navy-as-beijing-expands-military-influence <comment><USER2> The new missile gap [1]

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

I thought Obama already refuted this in 2012[2]

[2][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK3ORgw- h_4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK3ORgw-h_4)

<comment><USER3> If you mean that vastly over estimated potential and politics from the Kennedy era, to keep increasing / justify spends on difference, yes I guess.

U.S. navy has more aircraft carriers than rest of the world _combined_. I don't see how any objective sense metric how China is even close to "largest" Navy. Sure if you count every boat/warship each navy has they might be larger. Just like Iraq had the largest army just by number of soldiers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is probably just the US Navy making an indirect play for a bigger budget. The Chinese navy and US navy are not comparable.

But there is a real change afoot, it seems likely that the Chinese will master making battleships if they put their mind to it. It seems likely they have the industrial supply chains to sustain a real military build-up if they want to. Their manufacturing capacity is a very real thing and they're are no shortage of brilliant, well educated and respectable Chinese engineers, scientists and workers.

It is notable that they probably have cutting edge capabilities in nuclear engineering, software engineering and manufacturing engineering. They definitely know how to build drones better than everyone else. Hopefully the future of warfare doesn't involve drones.

<comment><USER5> They already have a sufficient mastery in making surface fleet, mainly because they also have a robust and massive civilian shipbuilding industry (neck-to- neck with South Korea). Their next target probably is to master making submarine and nuclear propulsion.

What I am looking forward is that assuming Chinese battery maker managed to lead the world both in research and manufacturing because massive Chinese Electric Vehicle growth, will it helps Chinese's submarine and drone development?

<comment><USER6> China already has nuclear powered submarines

<comment><USER5> I'm thinking of raising the quality so that their next gen submarine will be on par with Russian submarine or even American.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> China Military spending 2019: $261 billion, or 1.9% GDP

US Military spending in 2019: $732 billion, or 3.4% GDP

China leapfrogged the U.S. by spending a little less than one third of what the US squandered. Just let that sink in.

Oh and you know what China really is spending its money on, instead of militarized local police forces? Research.

China R&D spending in 2018: 4.11% of GDP.

U.S. R&D spending in 2016 and max ever spent: 2.7% GDP

<comment><USER8> China spends a lot in the US, too. Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Boeing all sell lots to the PLA.

We are arming our enemies.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure they really count as enemies when we are so economically integrated. It's more like the nations are two bickering heads on a Cerberus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how much of the hundreds millions (billions?) of dollars China was able to save due its status as a "developing economy" contributed to its massive military buildup. Or for that matter, that high priority for all developing economies, putting a lander on the moon. [https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3004873/c...](https://www.scmp.com/economy/china- economy/article/3004873/china-refuses-give-developing-country-status-wto- despite-us)

<comment><USER11> China surpassed the US in GDP normalized to PPP in 2014, which is the statistic that captures the power of their economy to manufacture and employ military force. Given current trends, it is inevitable that China's military will surpass the US's military power based on their economic prowess and manufacturing capability.

<comment><USER12> There was a strongly held belief that Japan will dwarf the US at one point too. And true, Japan has massively developed but is nowhere near a superpower.

Also, IIRC the EU as a block has a bigger GDP than the US by some margin, and yet isn't a "joint superpower".

Money is a necessary, but not sufficient condition.

<comment><USER13> Japan could never have dwarfed the US. Germany could never have dwarfed the US.

Barring a catastrophe in the US, you need to look at the numbers: Japan is quite small, most of it land is mountains, it has barely any natural resources, its population is about a third of the US's. There was some hysteria in the 80s but factually with such numbers Japan could never have surpassed the US.

In addition to that, because of WWII Japan is basically satellite state of the US, which means it cannot do as it pleases militarily (and even politically).

On the other hand, China is larger than the continental US, has plenty of natural resources, and has a population 4x that of the US. It is also, of course, not subjected to US domination.

The role are reversed and, as China develops, the numbers indicates that China essentially _will_ dwarf the US.

This is really what has dawned on the American government and what explains their actions. They're not panicking yet but they are certainly alarmed (Japan never alarmed anyone in the D.C area since 1945).

Even the EU makes the US uneasy because, again, they know that the EU can be bigger than they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Number of warships is meaningless, given the US probably doesn't even bother including patrol boats in the count.

Gross tonnage or number of capital ships over a specific tonnage would be a better comparison.

<comment><USER15> True, but I doubt that is a good measure either. Production and logistical capabilities of missiles is probably more important. Large ships like carriers are very vulnerable and heavy pieces of metal to direct missile attacks or modern subs.

<comment><USER14> "My logisticians are a humorless lot - they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay." attributed to Alexander the Great

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Although the China Navy has more ships, the USA navy is the biggest by tonnage by a huge margin [https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/links- navy.htm](https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/links-navy.htm) USA 6.2m tons China 2.1m tons Russia 1.9m tons UK 0.7m tons India 0.5m tons .....

To put into perspective, according to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Navy) "[The USN] is larger than the next 13 navies combined, which includes 11 U.S. allies or partner nations"

</comment><comment><USER17> whether this navy is effective in a theater of war _today_ is a good question. They tend to be sub-optimal in a time dominated by PMC's and asymmetric warfare. Having a highly complex, maintenance-intensive fleet is nice for show and maybe to scare the odd South East Asian country into submission during disputes in the South China Sea. But for it to be effective it needs to be exercised in real life (kinetic) conditions. I think the PRC would get more bang for their buck by sending their troops to Africa (as they already do[1]) for them to get battle experience.

[1] [https://defaakto.com/2020/07/18/chinas-other-presence-in- afr...](https://defaakto.com/2020/07/18/chinas-other-presence-in-africa/)

edit: I personally don't support any of their current & future war mongering and naval ambitions. The right foreign policy for the US would be maximum pressure and if they don't play by Western rules we should go to war with them immediately (we should have done so the moment they said Taiwan belongs to the PLC or when the news of the Uyghurs broke). Not doing so means we're only postponing this for a later point (when they are even stronger and when the damage will be even bigger on both sides).

<comment><USER18> China already went to war with the us over korea. not unsuccesfully and in times when China wasn't considered a threat. I'd say the US needs to treat the prospect of war with China with extreme caution. Why not shore up your own alliances first before attempting to undertake such a massive project?

<comment><USER17> yes timing right now would be terrible. if those alliances would be solid however then maybe there would be less reason to escalate things (because soft power and sanctions would be more effective?).

<comment><USER18> hopefully yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> US has 11 aircraft carriers China only 2, US spends aprox. 3 times more money on military, is this announcement of a new military race?

</comment><comment><USER20> Instead of endlessly rehashing Blade Runner and ripping off Neuromancer, it would be nice to see film and TV execs produce something about the what the future world will look like when it's dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.

They won't though because the Chinese Communist Party is fucking scary and doesn't take to being commented on.

All those little plastic widgets and cheap clothes we import are paying for this navy.

<comment><USER21> China's plans aren't a big secret. There's Made In China 2025.[1] The 14th Five Year Plan is being drafted now. Unlike the USSR, China was reasonably successful in meeting the goals of the 13 Five Year Plans so far, with the notable exception of the Great Leap Forward fiasco of the 1960s.

The Made In China 2025 plan focuses on pharmaceutical, automotive, aerospace, semiconductor, IT and robotics manufacturing. The goal is to have a state of the art position in all those fields by 2025.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Made_in_China_2025)

<comment><USER22> China also has a higher average IQ than much of the rest of the world: 104, vs 98 for the USA:

[https://www.worlddata.info/iq-by-country.php](https://www.worlddata.info/iq- by-country.php)

China is also pursuing eugenic strategies with the one-child policy, and controlled migration into cities (which encourages assortative mating). The Fertility Rate of 1.6 is reasonable.

By contrast many Western countries are pursuing dysgenic strategies through the provision of mass-welfare, and the intake of migrants from lower-IQ countries.

China just needs to sit back for 30-50 years and wait for these trends to play out, if it has the patience. We're already seeing the first reports of IQ declines:

[https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are- dropping-...](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping- many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576)

<comment><USER15> Yes, you can see it in the comments sections on the internet.

If not using eugenic strategies means loosing some war, I think I would opt for defeat and welcome our new Chinese overlords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I don't know how these things wind up on Hacker News, but I oddly appreciate the break from things like "Use Vim to wash your clothes".

1\. There are websites to foster fears of warmongering (or to assure oneself that Red Dawn can never happen) such as Global Firepower. Here is the USA vs China. When I'm feeling unpatriotic, it can be fun to play with this website and imagine the torment we could cause our enemies, despite us not being able to regulate ride-sharing companies.

2\. I'm not sure why military expenditures should matter so starkly. If I buy a 10 laser cannons for $1 million, and you spend $50 million on 5 million rifles, I might still beat you with my Stormtrooper weapon. Point is, it matters more on what you're buying and building - and how you manage projects - than raw costs.

3\. This article is not really new. The NY Times made a similar clickbait headline a few years back. The Brookings Institute rebutted it then.

4\. The IQ arguments are specious. If IQ won wars, we wouldn't have any. Also, I'll take Patton, Lincoln, and Washington over their adversaries of the time, despite their adversaries being noted for their intellect. Lastly, what's IQ got to do with anything in regards to China, a country that doesn't reward innovative free enterprise. Their best and brightest aren't at liberty to try their hand in the marketplace of ideas, but are forced to build what the Party says must be built. And those are just the ones that get found out. I imagine the truly bright minds of China stay in academia, escape, or humbly work the rice fields and keep their head down. I would. Why risk notoriety?

1\. [https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison- detail....](https://www.globalfirepower.com/countries-comparison- detail.asp?form=form&country1=united-states-of- america&country2=china&Submit=COMPARE)

2\. [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from- chaos/2018/09/10/w...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from- chaos/2018/09/10/why-china-isnt-ahead-of-the-us-navy-even-with-more-ships/)</comment>


Dry water - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_water <comment><USER2> I wonder what the thermal conductivity of this stuff is.

And what happens with it below 0 and above 100 degree Celsius?</comment>


New release of Self programming language - <AUTHOR> https://blog.selflanguage.org/ <comment><USER2> Wow. For those who don't know, there was a big 'language bake off' at Sun between TCL, Java, and Self (all being funded by Sun Labs) and Bert Sutherland (then director of Sun Labs and brother of Ivan) required that the language changes stop and then we'd look at each one, and decide which one to move forward on. When the world sort of exploded at the WWW conference held in Darmstadt Germany in 1995, Java officially 'won' and both Self and TCL were de-committed. (not canceled per-se but not getting any more funding either).

I like to think that all three languages benefited from the competition.

<comment><USER3> I believe that much of the work Sun had done on Self found its way to Java in the form of HotSpot.

<comment><USER4> Not to take anything from Self, but in regards to HotSpot, a more accurate history attributes the lineage to Smalltalk and the Animorphic team. Some details here [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotSpot)

<comment><USER3> Right. Sun incorporated Animorphic's work into Self, and later purchased Animorphic and the technology became known as HotSpot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can we ever get away from the misnomer of "prototype-based OO"?

In Self we have two ways of specialization:

      1. Prototypes
      2. Parents

Prototypes are objects that are "cloned" to create instances, a very simple and direct notion of inheritance. We create an object (a "prototype") with properties that apply to a larger set of objects, and then for each instance we copy (clone) it and then add or modify properties as necessary for the instance. Self had optimizations to deal with this so instances did not end up being very fat.

Parents are objects that other objects "inherit from". At run-time property lookups are delegated to a parent. The difference between a parent and a prototype is that changes to the prototype do NOT affect the derived instances. Changes to a parent DO affect the derived instances.

So, when I read about "class-based" versus "prototype-based" languages, I cringe. It is really "class-based" versus "parent-based". How did cloning get confused with run-time delegation?

Self introduced the notion of self-describing instances. That is the essential coolness. The simplifying notion.

[http://www.selflanguage.org/_static/published/self- power.pdf](http://www.selflanguage.org/_static/published/self-power.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Relax already.

We say "prototype" to indicate an important feature of Self which its children (Python, JavaScript, etc.) inherited: Unlike classes, prototypes are open for modification. The precise mechanisms differ between the different languages in Self's family, but they all have that feature in common.

Compare and contrast with other Smalltalk children, like Java or E, where this isn't possible because classes are closed. (E doesn't have classes, but it has a similar property, in that object literal scripts are closed for modification.)

<comment><USER7> The problem is that there are two groups of languages that use "prototypes" and using the same word for slightly different concepts causes confusion.

In the original Lieberman paper[1] you created new objects that were empty and inherited from the prototype. Then you added local slots (name/value pairs) to the object for anything that was different from the prototype. Languages based on this concept often have two kinds of assignments: one that adds a new local slot and another that just replaces the value of the old slot (either local or inherited).

In Self, on the other hand, a prototype is a template for an object you want and you clone it to get a new object. Once it has been cloned, there is no longer any relation between the prototype and the new object and they evolve separately. These kind of languages tend to have only one way to assign values to slots.

Many languages that claimed to follow the Self model (like NewtonScript and Io) actually use the Lieberman model instead. In either case the prototypes are fully functioning examples of the object you want to create new instances of. So, unfortunately, it is natural that one word is used for both. But this results in very confusing discussions when someone is talking about a language with one model while thinking about the other model instead.

[1] [http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/OOP/Delegation/De...](http://web.media.mit.edu/~lieber/Lieberary/OOP/Delegation/Delegation.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Self (along with Scheme) was supposedly one of the big influences on Brendan Eich when he was creating JavaScript. Neat to know it's still out there.

<comment><USER9> Wonder how JS would have gone if it had fully embraced its prototypal nature instead of hiding it behind Java-like syntax. For as long as JS has been around, there were people clamoring for classes in the language, or thinking that it had classes, or implementing a class-like structure, until finally ES6.

But it didn't have to be that way. And now the sentiment is that OOP is bad, and inheritance is evil, and classes are the worse, forcing one to predefine a taxonomy that's likely to need refactoring.

But prototypal languages can be easily changed. Just change the parent slot(s), or modify the object itself, etc.

<comment><USER10> I honestly don't get what's better about prototypes than classes. In particular, I don't see that the prototypal style is supported empirically.

Are there any codebases around 100K to 1 M lines of code written in a prototypal style, which are actually in production use?

You can claim thousands of such systems for classes. In that sense, classes are a success. That people write horrible class-based code isn't a knock against them. People also write horrible procedural code. Most code is bad. But there is some code with classes that is very good.

There was sentiment in the 90's and early 2000's that OOP is bad. I think the world has learned how to use classes since then -- e.g. no more large inheritance chains and fragile base classes. Not everything is an object -- some things are just functions, and some things are just data with no behavior.

As far as I can see, prototypes are worse along all dimensions than classes.

<comment><USER11> Prototypes and metaclasses are equivalent in power, and both are more powerful than straight classes. You can do things like dynamically change the set of methods that an object responds to with them, something that you have to fake in a class-based system with the State or Strategy pattern. Also, because prototypes are just ordinary objects, you can do even fancier stuff like store the set of possible prototypes in a data structure and dynamically change them based on a lookup. Things like Django's ORM (where all the object has to define are a set of fields as member variables, and then it magically gets a bunch of methods for DB query/insert/update) are trivially easy to define with a prototype-based object system, and you could do even fancier things like add another object to the prototype chain to get JSON serialization, or another one for protobufs, and swap these out at run-time.

However, the flip side of this is that more freedom is not always good for more readable software. GOTO, for example, can express any control flow that for/while/do-while/if/switch can and a number that it cannot (coroutines/exceptions/etc.), but as an industry we've moved away from GOTO because most programmers can't hold this flow control in their heads. Prototypes are the same way: they grant a lot of freedom to implement fancy abstractions, but many programmers seem to be unable to understand the resulting abstractions, so they don't find widespread use.

Asking for codebases of 100K-1M lines in prototype-based languages is the wrong question. Because prototypes let people define abstractions that other programmers find unreadable, they a.) let you write equivalent software in fewer lines of code and b.) get rewritten in class-based languages as soon as you have more than a handful of programmers working on the codebase. They're much more likely to be used by a small team of hackers who sells their startup for $40M or so and then vests in peace while another team rewrites all their code in Java than by a big company.

If you broaden the question to "has anyone ever made significant money working on or with Self", the answer is yes:

[http://merlintec.com/old-self- interest/msg01011.html](http://merlintec.com/old-self-interest/msg01011.html)

(Fun fact: Urs Hoelzle, Animorphic's CTO and sender of the second message in that thread, later went on to become employee #9 and the first executive hire at Google.)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the response, but I wouldn't call that empirical support for prototypes. They took JIT technology developed for Self and applied it to a class-based language, Java. That doesn't mean that prototypes are good for writing programs. It actually indicates the opposite, because the technology in Self that ended up actually being deployed turned out to be something else.

(I also worked at Google and am somewhat familiar with the Self to HotSpot to v8 heritage.)

Your second paragraph is exactly what I think is wrong with prototypes. There's not enough structure, and not enough constraint. Constraints are useful for reasoning about programs. You might as well just have a bunch of structs and function pointers (and certainly many successful programs are written that way).

Having every application roll its own class system is a terrible idea, in theory and in practice. In practice JavaScript programs end up with multiple class systems because of this. The Lua ecosystem also has this problem.

It's analogous to every library in C rolling their own event loop or thread pool, leading to a fragmenetation of concurrency approaches. Go and node.js both unify the approach to concurrency so every application doesn't end up with 3 different concurrency abstractions.

I don't buy your 3rd paragraph. Python is class-based; it has the characteristic you're talking about with respect to a small team of hackers; and that has been empirically supported by hundreds or thousands of startups being acquired (Instagram, etc.) and even huge companies created (Dropbox).

I honestly think prototypes have failed in the marketplace of ideas and there's a good reason for that. I use metaclasses all the time but not for dynamically changing sets of methods. That seems like a horrible idea. The way I use them is for generating types from external sources like CSV/SQL/protobuf schemas.

<comment><USER11> Python has metaclasses, and they're used extensively in many of the frameworks that were critical for those startups (Django etc.). They're coming to Javascript too, in the form of ES6 proxies, which have been long awaited.

I actually think metaclasses are probably a better solution than prototypes, because they let you write the majority of your code in a class-based style and only incorporate funky abstractions when they're really necessary, which is typically infrequently. My point is that prototypes are strictly more powerful than (non-metaclass) class-based systems, and that this power lets you build powerful abstractions that can dramatically decrease the number of lines of code you need to write for an initial system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Has someone here got some examples of things that are more neatly expressed in self than javascript and other obvious suspects (e.g. python, racket, common lisp, smalltalk)?

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure about comparing to those languages but I did a post comparing other prototype based languages [https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2009/07/16/prototype-based- program...](https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2009/07/16/prototype-based-programming- languages.html)

For me though it's not about the Self language but about the combination of the language and environment. I did a screencast attempting to show some of how Self development is done [https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/11/18/demo-of- programming-in-...](https://bluishcoder.co.nz/2015/11/18/demo-of-programming- in-self.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> No Windows release. Hmm.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's on the list but a big task because of the Unix assumptions build into the VM and the need to redo the graphics backend both as primitives and to hook it into the Self level GUI framework.</comment></comment>


Why is Dreamweaver Dead? - <AUTHOR> http://aaron.vegh.ca/2012/06/why-is-dreamweaver-dead/

<comment><USER2> Dreamweaver is still a great IDE for web developing. It's not only a WYSIWYG, and I think that it's only the tip of the iceberg.

What I really like that I didn't quite find in the alternatives:

You can split your window in half with 2 different codes. You have a color picker You have auto completion Built in SFTP-Uploader Great Project manager Great searcher with regex

etc...

I have to admit I switched to Sublime Text 2 since last year and I haven't really looked back, but I miss the auto completion and the color picker a lot.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are some fairly clear indicators from Adobe itself about the future of dreamweaver.

Note what they say in the 'Code' section here: <http://html.adobe.com/toolsandservices/> "We think there's a need for a different type of code editor – we're working on something and will have more to share soon."

... which is plainly referring to this project: <https://github.com/adobe/brackets>

<comment> jack-r-abbit I don't know what their definition of "soon" is but if they are talking about Brackets then they better get crackin'. Brackets has a long way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not only isn't Dreamweaver dead, but it may shock many to know that Director isn't dead either.

Why? Well in the case of Dreamweaver you have an audience that invested a great deal of time to learn a toolset. And while under the hood there are better ways to code, jumping from WYSIWYG to looking at lines of code is a real turn off if you don't do web production as your full time occupation. The other reason is that even by offering an upgrade path to other Adobe tools a certain percentage of users will leave Adobe when a product is discontinued.

Of course Dreamweaver is dead to folks who really do HTML all day, but I suspect that those folks never really used Dreamweaver back in the day or they stopped using it when CSS for layout started to become popular.

A key lesson that many of us can learn from this is that ease-of-use is really important to a non-tech audience. When I look at developers playing with HTML/CSS it reminds me of a phototypesetting machine setup circa the early 80s before desktop publishing programs came about.

</comment><comment> jack-r-abbit I hated Dreamweaver with a passion from the start. It wrote crappy code. And no surprise that it tried everything in its power to keep you away from the code. I didn't want a WYSIWYG... I wanted to a smart text editor. The Dreamweaver we have now is a far cry from the garbage it started out as. I use it because it has a few nice features. Dreamweaver is a pretty decent "smart text editor". Language awareness and code completion are very handy things. But I never use any of the WYSIWYG and widget stuff. And I still like to use a separate FTP app for FTP rather then let my IDE do it. My favorite was Allaire's Homesite. It was purchased by Macromedia, who maintained it briefly. They were later purchased by Adobe, who attempted to fold Homesite into Dreamweaver but failed to do it right. Homesite is dead. :(

</comment><comment><USER5> Dreamweaver has only replaced ms frontpage, Nevertheless it is quite a nice tool if you are using the Adobe eco-system. Dreamweaver integrate pretty well with PHP/ASP and databases with code templates.

However it had (and probably still have) a reputation for producing bloated code (and usually use its own framework to do so), and is not evolving as Fast as WebKit nightly.

As most php shop are now relying on CMS and/or equivalent framework, dreamweaver should probably evolve toward a template creator.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dreamweaver used to be the bane of my existence when I worked on a sites that had been initially created with it.

Funny enough, I have an article on my site about tweaking mm_menu.js that gets regular visits still to this day. So I know there are still people out there using it. This is the page - [http://verysimple.com/2006/10/23/mm_menujs-and- the-firefox-m...](http://verysimple.com/2006/10/23/mm_menujs-and-the-firefox- mouse-cursor/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Besides the text-based tools mentioned, there's BlueGriffon for those who want a FOSS WYSIWYG editor.

I've been using it a bit of late and it seems pretty decent (though I still tend to do most of my HTML writing in TextMate).

Edit: add link.

<http://bluegriffon.org/>

</comment><comment><USER8> I stopped using DW when I switched from Windows to Mac and found out how slow it was at editing simple HTML files. While I initially missed the built-in FTP support, I found myself a simple text editor with text highlighting and an FTP app and never looked back. Now I have Sublime Text 2 and git deployment.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure why you think Sublime loses points for being cross platform. That's why I use it, being a Mac and Windows user.</comment>


Yes, it's worth arguing with science deniers – and here are some techniques - <AUTHOR> https://www.niemanlab.org/2019/06/yes-its-worth-arguing-with-science-deniers-and-here-are-some-techniques-you-can-use/ <comment><USER2> Pro tip: labeling people 'deniers' is not science or scientific. It is the antithesis of science, aka: politics.

</comment><comment><USER3> This has become something of a hobby horse of mine over the last few years. I was raised as a fundamentalist, so I had a lot of anti-science indoctrination to get over, both explicit and implicit.

The main problem with this sort of thing, including the methods outlined in the article, is getting past the backfire effect. The best way around that seems to be challenging the methods used to come to a belief, rather than challenging the belief directly.

There's a technique called "street epistemology", loosely based on the Socratic method, that's specifically designed to avoid the backfire effect. See [https://streetepistemology.com](https://streetepistemology.com) for more details, or [https://youtu.be/v9utXKpFxCo](https://youtu.be/v9utXKpFxCo) for a great example of it in action.

</comment><comment><USER4> People today get labelled "deniers" the same way they are labeled "racists" or "Nazis" or "fascists".

It's obvious to most people that the human population is a net negative to the ecosystem through our actions. I can look out my window and see it with my own eyes. But because I don't believe we have "12 years" or that we're on the cusp billions dying off if we don't buy Teslas doesn't make me a denier.</comment>


Startup banks on Twitter for online payments - <AUTHOR> http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2010/02/22/story3.html

<comment><USER2> Why would you rely on a service so capricious, transient and (most troublesome) public as Twitter to handle financial transactions? My experience with the Twitter API is that it's unpredictable and statuses and users can just flit in and out of existence from one moment to the next. That's not something I want to depend on to handle money.

<comment><USER3> especially when it would only take a small amount of work for paypal to add twitter integration to initiate a payment via twitter instead of an email.

i just looked at their site and saw that their entire payment infrastructure is based on paypal anyway. i don't understand why anyone would fund a company like this that is so heavily reliant on other companies' technology.

<comment><USER4> Founder of Twitpay here...our RT2Give service, which we're launching as part of this transition, will be clearing the payments directly, not with PayPal. Our personal payments service (twitpay.me) will continue to use PayPal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      The investors acquired Twitpay's assets for $100,000 and
      plan to plow an additional $1 million in product development and marketing.

[http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2010/0...](http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/blog/atlantech/2010/02/twitpay.html)

Good luck, guys.

edit: that link is to a blog post that isn't behind a pay wall.

</comment><comment><USER6> I hope Twitpay' new iteration will make available a linkable button like PayPal offers that says, "Sponsor" or "Donate," etc. We have raised money 8 times this year on <http://techdrawl.com> and used both Twitpay and PayPal. PayPal's catchy Donate button has garnered 9 out of 10 donations (correlation but not necessarily causal), although we we trying to support local southern startup Twitpay!

</comment><comment><USER7> I also think the opportunity is ripe to create a web app that allows companies that sponsor online events say... podcasts/vlgos to measure effectiveness via tweet mentions as a direct result of that show.

So I'm company x sponsoring show y. Show y says "listeners please tweet out thanking our sponsor company x on twitter" (jason calacanis does this on twist) the web app would sum up the number of people who tweeted and then count the number of followers they have to give you a general idea of the reach and allow for measurement on a per campaign basis.

Of course this could lead to the downfall of twitter which is why it has to be targeted and tasteful.

Please tell me if this sounds crazy or already out there.

<comment><USER8> actually, i came up with the idea on This Week in Tech for Audible and brought the idea to my podcast... but close enough. :-)

<comment><USER7> so are there any analytical type modules to track this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "This article is for paid subscribers ONLY".

<comment><USER10> which is not payable via twitpay.</comment></comment>


VLC 2.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/2.1.0.html <comment><AUTHOR> So, this is our new major release, and I'm going to share some stuff that should fit better the audience here on HN, and that are not part of the main announcement :)

First, this is a release that fixes some important architecture mistakes we've done in 2.0.x branch of VLC. I'm notably speaking of the lag in reactivity, notably on volume change (that was shared on the mpv thread) and seeking, but also some grave video settings propagation. I wish we could have fixed and shipped that earlier, but we couldn't (long release cycle).

Then, this is the first official release of libVLC that is LGPL for most of what you need as a developer, including the right modules. SDKs for Win32/64, MacOSX, iOS and Android are getting ready.

If you are a web developer, our VLC plugin now supports Windowless, to fill the gap between Flash and HTML5 (it should work on IE6,7,8 without too much work).

If you are on Mac OS, the interface is finally polished after the major changes of 2.0.0 :)

Finally, we decided, as a community that we will accelerate the major release cycle of VLC. The fact that we needed 1,5 year to get the fix to some critical audio core and video settings issues out is way too much. We will move towards a 6-months schedule with LTS.

Sure, there are other very good players on each platform, but we are doing our best so that you can play everything everywhere for free, using open source technologies :)

<comment><USER3> I have a rather odd question for you. I've been trying to use VLC for forensic work, specifically for viewing videos frame-by-frame. There's a way to step forward one frame at a time, but there's no way to step backwards. So it's really difficult to switch between two frames back and forth to look for differences. I've resigned myself to capturing screenshots and pasting them into an image editor then using undo/redo to switch between frames. Do you have any suggestions for how to do it better?

I know this feature probably wouldn't be useful to anyone but me, so I'm not really putting in a feature request. Just hoping to discover that someone else has already figured out a way of stepping backwards frame-by-frame, to complement the existing "step forwards" functionality.

<comment><USER4> You can use ffmpeg for this. For instance, to output one frame per second: ffmpeg -i foo.avi -r 1 -s WxH -f image2 foo-%03d.jpeg

See [http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Video-and-Audio-file-format- co...](http://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg.html#Video-and-Audio-file-format-conversion) for more examples.

<comment><USER5> If you want an interactive UI and you're on Windows, FFmpeg + VirtualDub is a great solution for doing this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I really don't like the idea of the Playlist-driven interface forcing itself in front. I have no use for Playlist, why do I have to see it, ever?

Even when I launch a file from Finder, I get a split-second blink of the Playlist. And when the clip stops, I see Playlist instead of the starting screen and can't drag and drop to play files to it anymore.

When I disable the Playlist by pressing its button on the interface, the expanding transition of the window when opening a file is oddly jumpy — hopefully an easy fix in future releases (I'm on OSX 10.8.5). Playlist still appears at times.

The standalone Controller module from the interface… I miss it, any chance of it ever returning?

Back to the two years old VLC 1.1.12 for me, it was much better thought-out interface-wise (Playlist is just a functionality, not the driving feature and Controller is still there) — and it still plays every file I need it to.

I will of course keep checking for updates.

<comment><USER7> I didn't like the interface since 2.x came out, but I thought I'd give it a shot.

In the time since,

* I have never used the playlist on purpose once

* I kept wanting to put the video always on top in a tiny window while I do something else, and always visible controls/strange resize limit make it worse than before. Compare: [http://imgur.com/c4V9k12](http://imgur.com/c4V9k12)

So I wish the VLC guys the best, but I have moved on to MplayerX and only keep VLC.app around for some hypothetical case in which the other player won't work.

I'll keep hoping for 3.x interface changes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> [https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558](https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/3558)

We finally have H264 hardware decoding on Mac. That's the single largest missing feature that prevented me from completely switching to VLC. I used to open H264 videos with QuickTime.

Good job guys!

</comment><comment><USER9> I am running VLC 2.0.8 on windows, and when I check for updates, it says I am up to date. Am I on a different release channel? Anyway, I switched to VLC 2.1.0.

<comment><AUTHOR> As with every major release, we usually wait for a week before activating it for normal people :)

<comment><USER9> Oh, okay. While you're here, I had one other question that I might as well ask: why can't I install VLC on my Nexus 4 using Google Play? I've installed a nighty APK, and it seems to work fine on the device.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because you are in the USA. This will change in the next month.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the help!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember when I first moved to Linux, six or seven some odd years ago for the first time, and I researched a good media player. I went, unlike others with mplayer, with VLC. It was one of the first projects that made me think "how are proprietary software companies not embarrassed to compete with this, it is SO much better!"

Thank you guys. You are true FOSS heroes.

<comment><USER11> I have almost the exact same story as you. VLC is simply a fantastic piece of work and had been for years. Incidentally that is also my thought on for instance Gnome-Shell vs. Metro, OSS has so much unique potential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Apparently shuffle is still not working as intended... Man this issue must be around for ages now.

This problem makes VLC useless as my default music player :'(

<comment><USER13> Why use VLC as a music player when it is suited for a movie player? I use (and contribute to) clementine (qt based, foss, same class of cross platform-ness as vlc) because I like watching videos in one program and music in another, where both are tailored for the task rather than the kind of muddy middle ground like windows media player has.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for contributing to Clementine, I use it all the time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The streaming and transcoding capabilities of VLC appear awesome but are hard to get to the bottom of. I tried to use VLC to convert a h264 stream coming out of an IP camera (Foscam) into either a live FLV stream or an iPhone compatible HTTP stream; it seems like it is POSSIBLE but actually knowing which sequence of magic whispers to utter is the challenge :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> We are working on it for 2.2

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congrats to the VLC team!

While VLC is excellent and we would like and want to use VLC as a plugin in our corporate environment, we sadly cannot, because there's currently no way to configure VLC plugin to use a proxy. In order to get to the internet, everything must go through the proxy. It would be very welcome if You could implement this little functionality. VLC plugin should just get the proxy settings from the browser and it would be done. Ofcourse, bonus points for SPNEGO.

I have just made my HN accounts only to post this request.

Keep up the excellent work!

Edit: minor typos.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please mail me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> When is the VP9 support coming?

<comment><AUTHOR> We are waiting for Google to officially release a libvpx version for VP9 decoding...

It seems to take a long time: [http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags](http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=webm/libvpx.git;a=tags)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You can now see the total playlist time and the startup time seems to have been almost eliminated.

It's great to see significant improvements to the software you use everyday.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad you like it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone like the Mac OS X interface? I've been tempted to hack on it to make it nicer.

<comment><USER20> Switching to the dark theme has made it more pleasant for me, but there is still room for improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Been using VLC for as long as I can remember, but recently I have had loads of audio/video sync problems with VLC. Really annoying since I don't want to use any other media player, and I've had to. Will this release do better?

<comment><USER22> There are keyboard shortcuts to manually sync audio/video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I loved VLC, but since I've started using Daum PotPlayer I just can't go back :\

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, using software violating open source licenses is a great idea...

<comment><USER23> I wasn't aware of any violations. Regardless, PotPlayer just seems much better than VLC. And this is coming from someone who used VLC exclusively for many years.

In any case, this bit can be found in the Copyrights Tab of the About section:

"\- This program contains the video decoder FFmpeg ([http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu](http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu)) was used, FFmpeg subject to the LGPL license. LGPL license, refer to the installation directory LGPL.TXT. The modified FFmpeg sources can be downloaded from the [http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip."](http://potplayer.daum.net/devel/ffmpeg.zip.")

I don't know if that resolves the situation though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I have always tempted, and wanted to use VLC. But i have always been sticking to MPC and its derivative. Currently I am using MPC-BE.

The reason is rather simple. VLC on Windows is just plain ugly. You could tell this is a Linux software ported to Windows. It doesn't even need to complex and fancy. Take a look at MPC-BE, plain simple and stylish.

And it isn't all just about the looks. The settings, menu placement, icons, etc.

I really wish something could be done about it.

</comment><comment><USER25> Would it be possible to add key frame previews when mousing over the time bar? Similar to youtube where you mouse over a time and see the closest key frame so that you can have some idea of what part of the video you are about to skip to beyond the time. Thanks for the awesome software and keep up the great work!

</comment><comment><USER26> It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles. If you're on Windows (and a ton of people are - the lion's share of VLC users included), CCCP is an equally simple one installer solution that can be pushed even further with things like madVR and XySubFilter.

For example, VLC's dithering of 10-bit content still seems to be worse than CCCP out of the box, leading to banding where there shouldn't be any, and it seems to be doing something weird to the colors in all the things I tested it with. I'm not exactly sure what it is, though, as it's not a color matrix or luma level issue - I'd post some screenshots but I'm at work now. Also, Nvidia users still seem to have luma level issues out of the box that requires a trip to GPU settings to fix.

Congrats on the release anyway, VLC has come a long way from the 0.8.6 days as far as high-end media playback is concerned.

<comment><AUTHOR> > It's a bit funny and sad how VLC has touted new stuff "for anime fans" for a > few releases, yet every time they've done it they still haven't managed to > catch up to the "standard" solutions in those circles.

Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak.

For the 10bits dithering, use the OpenGL output, and it is done.

<comment><USER26> >Our goal is not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak.

Installing CCCP is as easy as installing VLC and gives you better quality out of the box. Installing and configuring madVR is an extra five-ten minutes of effort. Hardly a "crazy setup" that would require "hours of tweaking". There's also KCP which comes with madVR preconfigured, though CCCP offers better compatibility with a wider range of setups (which is why I personally recommend CCCP with madVR as a separate optional component on top of it).

Also, at least in the previous version, 10-bit dithering was still lacking even with OpenGL output, as demonstrated here: [http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677](http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/32677)

I haven't been able to test if the situation has improved in the new version yet, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> We will have to agree to disagree. CCCP and madVR configuration is not a five- ten minutes of effort. Especially for most people. Not to mention the non-free licences...

Last version, the matrix colors were wrong, as clearly explained on the release page, so it's soooo great to compare with it.

And maybe, if you were not an asshole to us, we might be interested in listening to what you have to say. Until then, not so much.

<comment><USER26> >We will have to agree to disagree. CCCP and madVR configuration is not a five-ten minutes of effort. Especially for most people.

CCCP requires _no_ configuration. It just works. And I said that I recommend madVR as an _optional_ component, since CCCP already provides high quality playback out of the box. I've been saying this for a good while now but you keep talking like I said madVR would be a must and use that as a basis to claim that VLC is "just simpler".

Installation and basic configuration (the average user really doesn't need any more than that) madVR on top of that with a guide (and there are plenty) is five-ten minutes of effort, but as I said, it's not a necessity by any means.

>Not to mention the non-free licences...

All the playback components in CCCP are FOSS with the exception of Haali Media Splitter, which is more of a fallback at this point. I'm not really sure about the non-component parts (the installer and settings panel), though. madVR is proprietary, yes, but it also happens to be the most advanced video renderer in existence. Unless you subscribe to RMS' worldviews about proprietary software (in which case you wouldn't be using Windows to begin with), I don't see a reason not to use it if you have enough interest in high quality playback.

>Last version, the matrix colors were wrong, as clearly explained on the release page, so it's soooo great to compare with it.

We were talking about dithering though (which that comparison also demonstrates), so unless the matrix issue was directly linked to the dithering issues it's not really relevant (and I didn't mention it either). And as I already said, I haven't had the chance to compare the latest version properly yet.

Also, chill down a bit, will you? While VLC likes to advertise itself to anime watchers, it's an audience that on average cares a lot more about high quality playback than many others. And if your "goal" is "not to match the crazy setup people do and spend hours to tweak", then why would you get upset when I point out that these "crazy" setups (that at their very basic level are as easy to install and use as VLC is) give better results?

<comment><AUTHOR> > CCCP requires no configuration. But does not update...

> FOSS with the exception of No comment...

> We were talking about dithering though (which that comparison also > demonstrates), so unless the matrix issue was directly linked to the > dithering issues

How do you do the dithering if it is not during the YUV->RGB conversions, aka the matrix? If it is not done there, it is done in swscale like all the other players...

> Also, chill down a bit, will you?

I am usually quite calm, as you can see on this thread or the reddit one. But I'm not to people like you, who are at the limits of insults (and not on this thread, I know). Once you plan to speak correctly, maybe we can talk in a calm down way.

<comment><USER26> >How do you do the dithering if it is not during the YUV->RGB conversions, aka the matrix?

I thought you were referring solely to the fact that in the comparison I posted, the video was incorrectly converted with BT.601 instead of BT.709 on VLC's end.

Anyway, I'm home now, which means I can properly compare stuff (at last). Dithering certainly seems to have improved since the last version and BT.709 is used as well. There's something weird going on, however - the colors in VLC appear slightly off for some reason (and it's clearly not the usual suspects of TV/PC levels or BT.601/BT.709): [http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/42453](http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/42453)

Still, a notable improvement for sure.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is very very far from the "haha, morons, 4K; morons, 10bits" comment you did...

Sorry, but the color difference is very very slight (if even noticeable), and are you sure the issue is on the VLC side? Did you try mplayer2 and mpv?

<comment><USER26> >This is very very far from the "haha, morons, 4K; morons, 10bits" comment you did...

Uhh, what? I have not written something like that about the new version anywhere on the internet.

But for the record, I do think marketing VLC as "4K-ready" is silly - <USER2> really shouldn't be anything special to 4K besides the bigger resolution, meaning that if you have the resources to decode it, you should be able to play it, and it has been very much possible with other playback solution (and likely even with older versions of VLC? I haven't checked). In a way, it's similar to this[1] - what it's advertising is actually nothing new but because 4K is the hot new marketing term of the day they're going to plaster it all over the damn thing.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/NMN9b8p.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/NMN9b8p.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There seems to be a regression in the hardware-accelerated decoding. Worked fine in 2.0, now it looks like this: [http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/IzSfo0v.jpg)

(Win64 VLC build on Nvidia hardware)

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you try the win32 one?

<comment><USER27> Sure. The Win32 build does the same. I also noticed reliable crashes at startup with some videos. In a blind guess I updated the video driver (from v314.07 to v327.23) with no effect. With disabled hardware-accelerated decoding everything works like a charm.

Give me a note if you would like me to do more testing.

BTW: After the crashes... what kind of information sends the bug report function to you? Anything privacy related (file name, ip address, etc.)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Thanks for making this software. I have been trying to add a RSS-ticker and stream my video for a month...using ffmpeg. Even after posting on ffmpeg user gropus, I got no useful responses.

It took me 5 min to do the same using VLC.

<comment><USER29> Care to share your results and/or notes? I recently started messing with VLC's stream output capabilities and would love to see some interesting examples of what is possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I had problem with AirPlay in Mac OS X 10.8.5. When using internal speakers the sound is normal. But when I switch to AirPlay speakers the program hangs and looses sound. Now I'm going back to 2.0.8

</comment><comment><USER31> Thanks jb, awesome work by the vlc team - as always.

Could you maybe share some news on the status of the web plugin for the Mac?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a new one finished. Do you want to try it? Mail me.

<comment><USER31> done

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Clicked hoping for airplay or chromecast support. Maybe next time :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, those are difficult because of Apple and Google who do not really want 3rd party solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> * New port to iOS, from iOS 5 to 7, on all iPads and iPhones after 3GS.

Is there any way to actually get VLC on iOS anymore?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, use the AppStore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've recently switched to Media Player Classic for watchign movies. I tried not to, because VLC works on Linux, but MPC's video quality is simply superior, when you put the two side-by-side you can see a difference...

[http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/oLHiQgR.jpg)

so when I'm watching a movie, I will switch to Windows and play it on MPC. For everything else VLC is fine. Annoying, I've tried filters and other fixes, but nothing worked.

<comment><USER35> This post is actually devoid of factual content as it stands. Please don't take it as an insult, read on:

Media Player Classic uses codec decoders you have installed on your PC, VLC ships with everything it needs to play your videos. In other words, you should not be comparing VLC to MPC, but rather VLC's underlying codec library (from ffmpeg, I believe) to the active codec decoder being used on your Windows machine.

For example, I too use MPC on Windows to get better video - but that's because I have CoreAVC installed and MPC uses it to play h264 content. CoreAVC blows everything else out of the water in terms of performance and quality.

What codec are you using on Windows w/ MPC?

<comment><USER36> Media Player Classic does have it's own video renderers, however, which are responsible for scaling and colour conversion. It also has FFmpeg built in to decode some more popular formats without relying on system codecs.

The washed out colour in that screenshot can probably be fixed by changing the video output method (to OpenGL/Direct2D/Direct3D) or changing the default luma range in the graphics card settings from 16-235 to 0-255.

<comment><USER37> It's probably the luma range. I remember having this "washed out" color in KMPlayer and wondered why VLC's picture was darker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> ACTUAL NEWS ON HACKER NEWS?!

</comment><comment><USER39> >For Anime Fans

>New 6.1 downmixer to 5.1 and Stereo from MKV/Flac 6.1.

>Correct YUV->RGB color matrix in the OpenGL shaders.

I like how they put a separate entry for pirates.</comment>


Facebook Group "Swapit HK" Surpassed 100k Members – Here Is How It Works - <AUTHOR> https://blog.swapit.la/2017/07/27/swapits-facebook-group-swapit-hk-surpassed-100000-members/ <comment><USER2> We wish we had that many Facebook group members.

<comment><AUTHOR> Engaging with them in a meaningful way is more important. That keeps them using your product or at least being interested in it.</comment></comment>


On App Store Price Anchors - <AUTHOR> http://196sigma.wordpress.com/2011/12/26/on-app-store-price-anchors/

<comment><USER2> > Remember the diamond app when the iPhone first came out? It cost $999 and > put a picture of a diamond on your phone…I doubt those guys made a ton of > money, but I'm SURE they broke even

I'm sure they didn't, because when a customer requests a refund from Apple, Apple deduces the full price of the application from the developer's account.

They sold one, got their 70% cut (~$700), the buyer asked for a refund, $999 was deduced from their account, and they were ~$300 in the red. About that time, they removed the app from the store.</comment>


Predicting the Oscars with Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> http://blog.megafaunasoft.com/2013/01/predicting-oscars-with-machine-learning.html

<comment><USER2> I used Megafauna Software parsed data to quickly create a model using BigML: <http://bml.io/W6lKqe> It uses information gain mix to create a decision tree. It also concluded that winning the 'best director' is the most important field. However, 'make up' didn't top the most important fields. See the results below.

        Data distribution:
        n: 16.94% (82 instances)
        y: 83.06% (402 instances)

        Predicted distribution:
        n: 16.74% (81 instances)
        y: 83.26% (403 instances)

        Field importance:
        1. Directing_1: 84.47%
        2. Music (Scoring)_0: 3.59%
        3. Music (Scoring)_1: 2.68%
        4. Art Direction_0: 2.39%
        5. Sound_0: 1.75%
        6. Film Editing_0: 1.55%
        7. Costume Design_1: 1.40%
        8. Film Editing_1: 0.82%
        9. Costume Design_0: 0.54%
        10. Cinematography_1: 0.52%
        11. Art Direction_1: 0.29%
        12. Special Achievement Award_0: 0.00%
        13. Scientific and Technical (Bonner Medal)_1: 0.00%
        14. Foreign Language Film_0: 0.00%
        15. Sound Editing_1: 0.00%
        16. Scientific and Technical (Bonner Medal)_0: 0.00%
        17. Sound Editing_0: 0.00%
        18. Scientific and Technical (Academy Award of Merit)_1: 0.00%
        19. Sound_1: 0.00%
        20. Animated Feature Film_1: 0.00%
        21. Scientific and Technical (Academy Award of Merit)_0: 0.00%
        22. Documentary (other)_1: 0.00%
        23. Animated Feature Film_0: 0.00%
        24. Music (Song)_1: 0.00%
        25. Documentary (other)_0: 0.00%
        26. Actress -- Supporting Role_1: 0.00%
        27. Short Film (Live Action)_1: 0.00%
        28. Music (Song)_0: 0.00%
        29. Documentary (Short Subject)_1: 0.00%
        30. Actress -- Supporting Role_0: 0.00%
        31. Short Film (Live Action)_0: 0.00%
        32. Documentary (Short Subject)_0: 0.00%
        33. Actress -- Leading Role_1: 0.00%
        34. Short Film (Animated)_1: 0.00%
        35. Documentary (Feature)_1: 0.00%
        36. Short Film (Animated)_0: 0.00%
        37. Makeup_1: 0.00%
        38. Scientific and Technical (Technical Achievement Award)_1: 0.00%
        39. Actress -- Leading Role_0: 0.00%
        40. Documentary (Feature)_0: 0.00%
        41. Actor -- Supporting Role_1: 0.00%
        42. Makeup_0: 0.00%
        43. Actor -- Supporting Role_0: 0.00%
        44. Scientific and Technical (Technical Achievement Award)_0: 0.00%
        45. Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award_1: 0.00%
        46. Directing_0: 0.00%
        47. Actor -- Leading Role_1: 0.00%
        48. Scientific and Technical (Special Awards)_1: 0.00%
        49. Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award_0: 0.00%
        50. Actor -- Leading Role_0: 0.00%
        51. Writing_1: 0.00%
        52. Scientific and Technical (Special Awards)_0: 0.00%
        53. Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award_1: 0.00%
        54. Acting (other)_1: 0.00%
        55. Writing_0: 0.00%
        56. Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award)_1: 0.00%
        57. Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award_0: 0.00%
        58. Acting (other)_0: 0.00%
        59. Visual Effects_1: 0.00%
        60. Scientific and Technical (Scientific and Engineering Award)_0: 0.00%
        61. Honorary Award_1: 0.00%
        62. Cinematography_0: 0.00%
        63. Visual Effects_0: 0.00%
        64. Scientific and Technical (Gordon E. Sawyer Award)_1: 0.00%
        65. Honorary Award_0: 0.00%
        66. Category_1: 0.00%
        67. Special Achievement Award_1: 0.00%
        68. Scientific and Technical (Gordon E. Sawyer Award)_0: 0.00%
        69. Foreign Language Film_1: 0.00%
        70. Category_0: 0.00%

<comment><USER3> Very cool -- I'm glad someone else could use the data!

BigML seems useful. The BigML decision tree looks quite a lot like the J48 tree result. I wonder if the performance (ROC) is closer to J48 than logistic regression. I couldn't see an option to cross-validate on BigML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be interesting to use some other data to predict the Oscars -- data that comes out before the Oscars begins, e.g., Golden Globe and other film festival awards, date the movie was released, box office revenue, availability on DVD, history of actors/directors/writers (e.g., have they won or been nominated for Oscars in the past).

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps this illustrates how much of an effect a film's director can have on it's perception.

As Stanley Kubrick once said, "The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle."</comment>


The Tesla Nightmare Shows Why All-Electric Cars Are (Basically) Dead On Arrival - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-problem-electric-cars-2013-2

<comment><USER2> Oh, that's just silly. Five years from now there will be so many people driving electric cars that anyone looking back on this headline will just laugh.

Of course we are early in the EV era, so road trips are more difficult than they would be with a gas car, but this is a temporary condition. The electrical grid already goes everywhere, so it's just a matter of building the charging stations, and charging stations are cheap.

I personally know three people who have bought electric cars - a Tesla roadster, a Tesla Model S, and a Mitsubishi Mi-EV - and all three are happy with them and use them for regular city driving. The guy with the MiEV has taken his car on a couple of long road trips - once from Seattle down to California and back, and another time on a long loop east around the Cascades. The guy with the Model S says he actually thinks about his car's range _less_ then he does with his gas-powered car, because he never has to take it to a station: he just plugs it in when he gets home every night, and it's always ready to go in the morning.

What's more, even if it is more difficult to take an electric car on a long road trip, the vast majority of driving happens within 25 miles of home. People wealthy enough to buy a Tesla generally have two cars anyway, so even if there's no Supercharger network between you and the next city, who cares? That's what your gas car is for. It's a hybrid fleet instead of a hybrid car.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Note: I'm the OP and I'm posting this here for discussion, not because I agree with what is said in the article (I basically think it's a bunch of strawmen).

<comment><USER3> Don't feed the trolls.</comment></comment>


Google Earnings Fall Short of Estimates; Shares Drop  - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a8A7qZYued0k&refer=home <comment><USER2> Analysts expectations were way to high given the current market climate. Google couldn't maintain maintain the price for their stock even with the deal they cut with yahoo. The article made a key point of advertisers allocating their shrinking ad budgets elsewhere and I think this is one of the many factors that influenced the dip in stock price.

</comment><comment><USER3> HN should ban this kind of FUD.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think it will drop bit more when Microsoft buys Yahoo's Search, So don't expect next quarter to be good either and here after.</comment>


Ask HN: I need a G+ invite - <AUTHOR>

Can someone please send me an invite! My username at gmail.com. <comment><USER2> I guess as long as everyone's asking...

email@example.com

Thanks if anyone's got more left.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be very happy if somebody can send me one too. :) david dot levlista at gmail dot com

<comment><USER4> Invite sent :)

<comment><USER3> Im so happy now :) Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If someone would be generous enough to send one my way ;-)

My firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER6> Check your email.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it possible to get one to? If so send one to xycoster at gmail dot com :)

<comment><USER4> Thank you! HN is the best :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oh, would love one too :) username at gmail dot com. Thanks!

<comment><USER6> Done. You owe me a riddle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Me too, please!

My firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER4> invite sent :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can someone send me one too? Thanks.

<comment><USER10> To which address? I couldn't find one in your profile.

<comment><USER9> Strange, my email is there: jpcxcf at gmail com

<comment><USER10> Sent, Enjoy.

The "Email" field of the profiles here is private. If you want your address listed publicly you'll need to put it in the "about" section. That tripped me up for a while too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd quite like one too, thanks.

<comment><USER4> sent a invite :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Me too! Email in my profile.

<comment><USER12> Wow, that was quick! HN rocks! Thanks KM!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> can someone send me one please? email@example.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone!

</comment><comment><USER14> balbaugh@gmail

Please and thank you.

</comment><comment><USER15> Done and done

</comment><comment><USER16> got u

</comment><comment><USER17> one over here please... lgrenon at gmail

<comment><USER6> Done! You own me a joke.</comment></comment>


Where is the innovation in software? - <AUTHOR> http://www.adambossy.com/blog/2009/03/20/where-is-the-innovation-in-software/

<comment><USER2> Computing is a field where integration matters a lot and bottlenecks (many of them in the human-machine interface) are often not even recognised as such, but seen as "the way things are". I mean there are a lot of good ideas that nobody has found the way to implement with enough usability so people wants to use them. Was YouTube a new idea when it "exploded"? I don't know, but I believe that it represents an innovation, maybe not in the idea, but in the right way to implement it. I guess there are a lot of innovative ideas in the "implementation pending" state.

<comment><USER3> Just on the YouTube example, it was more an that its time had come, and YouTube just happened to be the one who got popular.

The factors included: multimedia-capable PCs, broadband and cell-phone cameras. All driven by Moore's Law.

A great deal of compsci seems to be like this (even including new ways of multiplying numbers) - not surprising, since Moore's Law dwarfs all other forces. No other industry has anything anywhere near comparable.

This can be used predictively: what obviously great but ridiculously infeasible idea will Moore's Law soon make feasible?

Examples: spherical TV (you sit inside); golf-swing analysis by brute-force matching with 3D recordings of every possible swing (to arbitrary resolution); literal recording and playback of 3D cerebral cortex activity (to arbitrary precision).

<comment><USER2> Displays are tricky. A 1280x960 is _four times_ the 640x480 that was typical some years ago. We need more memory, more buses bandwidth, bigger and faster everything in different levels (without talking about colour depth), so I'd say that the power needed would be 20x or 30x. My gut feeling is that displays only have consumed Moore's gift for the last ten years.

<comment><USER3> You mean for spherical TV? Taking your 20x estimate, it's due mid-2015:

log 20 / log 2 * 1.5 + 2009 = 2 015.48289

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We must bridge the gap between the techies and the rest of the population.

This is sooooo important. Blogs existed before blogging platforms; it just was too hard for non-techies to do. Look how long email was around before AOL made it easy and fun. Wikipedia was possible before the wiki had been invented, but the wiki made it more accessible for everyone.

Sure, people are gaining competence in computing, but we need to make things easier to use or consume as well! There's already a lot of great CS/technology out there that has so much potential if we can get more people to embrace it. It's half on people to adopt the new technology, but half on use to make the technology easily adoptable.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is dead:

[http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch....](http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch.html)

[http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-w...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/whats-wrong-with-cs-research.html)

<comment><USER6> That second link is pretty good as a rant, but I don't find it very good as an argument.

The whole argument about macros as a replacement for "static higher order programming," which is supposedly better than "dynamic higher order programming," which evidently nobody needs, was lost on me. He also seems to be saying, though, that "dynamic higher order programming" does not include closures, so I really don't know what it is. If a closure is anything, it is certainly a function created at runtime.

He also seems to say a function composition operator is obviously bad, without any justification. I guess if justification were required, it wouldn't be obvious. I don't see the clear advantage of carrying around a data structure with multiple functions and a third function that composes them, versus just using a compose operator. I suppose it's a little more opaque, but that is often a good thing (a kind of encapsulation).

"Of course, it may be slightly easier to optimize the result of dynamic code generation"

But maybe it's a lot easier? Can we get a huge speedup, or just a little one? I have no idea, because he doesn't say, and it's not even clear if he knows.

"Whatever problem we are solving by constructing h(x), it is probably better solved by a macro, which would perform the same composition statically."

I highly doubt any serious Lisp programmer agrees with this statement. Dynamically constructing functions at runtime is an extremely common lisp (pun unintended, but fortuitous) technique.

I have not programmed in Haskell, but reading this gives me no legitimate reasons to think it is a bad language, let alone an indictment on CS research.

<comment><USER7> Without having read his other posts it wouldn't be quite as obvious, but the author of the second link (at least in his blog persona of 'Mencius Moldbug') is legitimately insane.

His writings are crafted to shock the hell out of any socialized person, no matter their world-view. He actively despises representative democracy, functional bureaucracies, and anyone advocating policy (the state department, the NYT, NGOs, etc.). You could denounce him as a fascist libertarian, but neither of those groups would have any idea what to do with him either.

Unfortunately you'll have to read several hundred thousand words of blog- essays to even begin to understand him (and you thought Yegge was a bloviator!).

<comment><USER8> He's not insane. He's an anarchist.(Or seem to be one)

You would do well to understand an anarcho-capitalist's position regarding the incentive of government insitutions versus market based insitutions. Than it become less shocking to read his work because well, you understood where he's coming from.

As for me, I am an anarcho-capitalist myself so I am not shocked. Figures.

<comment><USER9> Have you read his posts? He's an authoritarian. He actually made up the word "archist" and called himself that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, I had similar thoughts inspired by the same comment: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=524212>

</comment><comment><USER11> To answer the question asked by the title, three ambitiously innovative projects going on now:

vpri.org

newspeaklanguage.org

fluidinfo.com

</comment><comment><USER12> Napster was really innovative stuff. We all know what happened to it.</comment>


SEO and HTTPS: Does HTTPS Help Your Rankings? - <AUTHOR> http://www.orbitmedia.com/blog/does-https-help-your-rankings/

<comment><USER2> > If you have an ecommerce site or a site with a login feature, you already > have a secure site.

wut

</comment><comment><USER3> Should Read:

SEO and HTTPS: Does Lame Quality Link Bait Help Your Rankings?

</comment><comment><USER4> this spam adds nothing to Google's original statement that https will have a small effect.</comment>


Open source's big German win: 300,000 users shift to Nextcloud for file sharing - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/open-sources-big-german-win-300000-users-shift-to-nextcloud-for-file-sharing/ <comment><USER2> I honestly think radicale and seafiles would have given a much better end result together. Not looking forward to seeing a headline like "thousands of private official files leaked by bug in open-source software nextcloud".

<comment><USER3> Nextcloud always seems to be the default goto for a company going open source for this. I do sometimes wonder why. Is it the sales team? The relative maturity of Nextcloud/ownCloud as a product?

I lean in favor of Sandstorm.io myself, and have watched Cloudron's approach appreciatively from a distance. Both use containerization to isolate security risks in a way a monolithic PHP based app is probably missing.

But at the end of the day, I'm happy to see support for any of these. Organizations considering open source a viable alternative helps all of the above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use Syncthing to syncronize folders across all my devices. How is NextCloud different?

<comment><USER5> Syncthing is just a synchronization system, whereas Nextcloud is a whole platform that just happens to include sync. It is more like Google Drive as it has a web interface for accessing files and a bunch of other apps (similar to Google Docs) to interact with them. It is also centralized, whereas Syncthing is peer-to-peer</comment></comment>


"NWA shoutout to Paul Graham" from Rap Genius - <AUTHOR> http://rapgenius.com/Nwa-express-yourself-lyrics#note-318551

<comment><AUTHOR> In response to AH's recent 15M investment in Rap Genius, I'd like to share a hilarious annotation I found on the site.</comment>


The Corruption of Real Science (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk/

<comment><USER2> This article is trash. From the summary --

"Hence the vast structures of personnel and resources that constitute modern 'science' are not real science but instead merely a professional research bureaucracy, thus fake or pseudo-science; regulated by peer review (that is, committee opinion) rather than the search-for and service-to reality."

Although I'm not a scientist, I spend my working days with scientists (astronomy, climate science, solar physics; not in backwaters, but prominent in their disciplines), and I can say that this is completely without merit.

The article is basically bitter personal reminiscences and anecdotes trying (at length) to be convincing. But there is no data. It's all personal reflections of the author.

<comment><USER3> It's not _entirely_ rubbish.

I'm working with a doctor/scientist whose inspiration led to a revolutionary medical device that would save many patients from the perils (and trauma) of surgery. Although clinically proven over 9 years, most of the professionals in his field remain ignorant of this solution.

Worst of all, the leading scientific journals have rejected his papers, for a variety of flimsy reasons.

Until recently, I always had an idealistic view of Science, but I can see now that as with any other human endeavor, it's riddled with corruption, much of it due to commercial interests hovering in the background.</comment></comment>


Keyword Search Video of James Comey Testimony Before Senate Intell Committee - <AUTHOR> http://www.infodocket.com/2017/06/08/keyword-search-video-and-view-online-testimony-of-former-fbi-director-james-comey-before-senate-intelligence-committee/ <comment><USER2> This is the link to the actual text-searchable video: [https://www.c-span.org/video/?429381-1](https://www.c-span.org/video/?429381-1)</comment>


Show HN: Written in Elm: Notes Extension for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcapodici/capodicis-notes/ <comment><AUTHOR> If you want to install the latest version visit [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/capodicis- notes/bp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/capodicis- notes/bpdecocmkliobhlkoobndgljopopnijc?authuser=1)</comment>


Masscan: scan the entire Internet in under 6 minutes, 10 million packets/second - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robertdavidgraham/masscan <comment><USER2> What's impressive about this or zmap? they do not magically invent bandwidth. Zmap requires a 1 Gbps connection or more, this will require 10X the bandwidth. Those projects are basically dumb packet generators, what I find really impressive is the Internet routing infrastructure that can accept those outputs.

<comment><USER3> Having bandwidth is one thing, utilizing it to its fullest potential is anther thing. Only the problem of randomizig target ip and port in real time and not hurting the throughput of the scan in the process is one tough nugget. I suggest that you read the readme before making judgment about the complexity of this project.

<comment><USER2> >Having bandwidth is one thing, utilizing it to its fullest potential is anther thing.

It's the same thing if you stop coding in javascript

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Readme file is very detailed and well laid out. While reading it, it felt like I was having a conversation with the author. I whish more repos could have that.

</comment><comment><USER5> > To get beyond 2 million packets/second, you need an Intel 10-gbps Ethernet > adapter and a special driver known as "PF_RING DNA" from > [http://www.netop.org](http://www.netop.org).

<comment><USER6> Robert Graham (masscan author) gave a talk on scaling to 10 millions packets at Shmoocon 2013 - C10M Defending The Internet At Scale [1, 2]. You basically bypass the kernels network stack and its robust features, and use a special purpose built drive (i.e. _" PF_RING DNA"_), which you heavily customize. You also need to write your application in a way that can assign CPU and memory for your tasks. This is not just a, run X and get 10 millions packets second, it is a very planned out exercise.

[1] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XNtI0w7jA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XNtI0w7jA)

[2] [http://c10m.robertgraham.com/](http://c10m.robertgraham.com/)

<comment><USER7> So are you telling me this does not have a wonderful GUI where there is a big massive button that says "SCAN INTERNET" ?

<comment><USER8> I'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic. See if I can track all the IP addresses.

<comment><USER9> Then you can zoom, rotate (in 3D), and enhance the results!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Similar to: [https://zmap.io/](https://zmap.io/)

And the recent HN discussion on ZMap: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6226105)

</comment><comment> X-Istence I doubt you can scan the entirety of IPv6 address space in under 6 minutes ...

<comment><USER11> I'd really like to know what the answer would be, so I thought I'd do the math. So, anybody please correct me, but my math comes up to something like 3.4x10^21 times the age of the universe given the rate above.

<comment><USER12> 2^128 ip-addresses / 10 million packets a second = 7.8 * 10^13 times the age of the universe [1]

To actually scan the entirety of ipv6 address space in under 6 minutes you would need to send 1 billion billion billion billion packets a second [2], or 100 octillion times faster than 10 million packets a second. [3]

[1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F10%5E7+second...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F10%5E7+seconds)

[2] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360)

[3] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E36%2F10%5E7](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=10%5E36%2F10%5E7)

<comment><USER13> Assuming ideal conditions, a 10GbE adapter uses about 20W to send at most about 15 million packets per second. Assuming no improvements in efficiency (unlikely), the network adapter that could do this would use 3500 times the power of the sun for that six minutes[1], which would be an amount of energy comparable to the kinetic energy of the Earth orbiting the sun (1/6th) [2]. That amount of energy would be enough to more than boil the oceans[3], it would practically liquefy the Earth. It would be enough energy to ionize a ball of water the size of the earth into plasma, according to some sources, but I'm skeptical that 10000 Kelvin water at that volume would remain a plasma for long.

tl;dr: We won't be scanning the IPv6 address space any time soon. And hopefully not on Earth.

[1] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+w...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+watts+%2F+15000000%29)

[2] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+w...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+watts+%2F+15000000%29+*+6+minutes)

[3] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282%5E128%2F360+*+%282...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+watts+%2F+15000000%29+*+6+minutes+*+%281+degree+Celsius+*+milliliter+%2F+4.190+J%29%29+%2F+%281.332%C3%9710%5E18+m%5E3%29)

[4] [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282%5E128%2F360+*+%282...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%282%5E128%2F360+*+%2820+watts+%2F+15000000%29+*+6+minutes+*+%281+degree+Celsius+*+milliliter+%2F+4.190+J%29%29+%2F+%281.083%C3%9710%5E21+m%5E3%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Dupe: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6388222)

<comment><USER15> Plus the original story addressing the abuse complaints caused by scanning the entire internet which also included the link to masscan on github: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383562](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6383562)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I haven't checked what exactly massscan is doing to randomize the IP and port sequences, but if reduction modulo some runtime constant is that much of a problem (according to the Readme at least) perhaps you should consider replacing the modulo and division operations by multiplications?

The canonical reference is Granlund and Montgomery [1]. Luckily, there are ready-made libraries for this, like libdivide [2], which would probably lower the reported 90 cycles into something more palatable (and pipelineable).

[1] [http://gmplib.org/~tege/divcnst- pldi94.pdf](http://gmplib.org/~tege/divcnst-pldi94.pdf)

[2] [https://github.com/ridiculousfish/libdivide](https://github.com/ridiculousfish/libdivide)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is impressive, but is there any reason someone would _want_ to scan the entire Internet?

In other words, is that a feature, or is it just a performance metric?

<comment><USER18> There are plenty of reasons to want to perform that kind of scan on the internet. Sometimes, if all you're looking for is a a sample of how many people are running version X of a product versus version Y, you really don't need to map the whole internet. You can just sweep for your port of interest across a few million random IPs and call it a day.

Sometimes, though, if you are building a directory, or if you just want a really fantastically beautiful map, you scan the whole shebang.

Doing it all in a few minutes is a little unncessary, though, even if it is neat how much better scanners have been getting lately. A scan that merely takes a few days is plenty fast.

<comment><USER19> The shorter time scale means that it is now getting easy enough for everybody to do it. With that in mind I feel like the responsible thing is to only release the source as an educational resource and also maintain a public data store of any results gathered by this tool so that people can perform analysis without having to fire so many packets at every machine on the Internet. Not providing a Datastore in Tarball format to mitigate the actual use is a tab irresponsible.

<comment><USER20> It's really not that easy for someone to do it. The problem is getting someone to give you a connection that can actually put that many packets onto the Internet. Even the author has issues with this points. See [http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/09/masscan-entire-internet- in...](http://blog.erratasec.com/2013/09/masscan-entire-internet- in-3-minutes.html)

> The problem is that I don't have a 10-gbps network to test on. My ISP let's > me go out to 100,000 packets/second as long as I deal with the abuse > complaints, but that's around 44-mbps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well written, well documented code. Kudos.

</comment><comment><USER22> This could be handy for joining a fledgling peer-to-peer network, where there are connected peers forming a network, but for one reason or another new nodes cannot find them - just do a masscan of the default listen port to find IPs to attempt connections to.

</comment><comment><USER23> Impressive engineering; I'm learning a lot going through the source -- thanks!

</comment><comment><USER24> Wasn't there a similar project on HN earlier this month?

<comment><USER25> zmap!</comment></comment>


Star Wars opening crawl from 1977 in HTML/CSS/JS - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/TimPietrusky/pen/eHGfj <comment><USER3> Ah my eyes, the aliasing.

If anybody's interested why there's aliasing it's important to know how CSS transforms work. If you transform, the browser lifts the transformed rectangle into its own layer and renders its content to a texture. Then, later, it is composited with the page by blitting that texture with whatever transformation was applied.

So CSS transforms are an application of texturing. And in texturing what you do to avoid aliasing is mipmapping (you might also throw anisotropic filtering on top). However as the texture holding the rect the browser rendered isn't square power of two, some devices do not support mipmapping it. It is also quite slow to generate the mipmap for a texture every frame.

So with CSS transforms not being able to utilize mipmapping --> aliasing.

Now, in particular mipmapping text (that's supposed to be sharp) isn't even the best idea. It just gets blurry and looks unappealing (although that's better with anisotropic filtering, but then, anisotropic filtering is also expensive and not every device/GPU supports it).

<comment><AUTHOR> So what do you suggest I should change?

Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER3> Well in CSS you can't do anything about it, that's just how the browser works.

If you'd be doing WebGL you can do some things like using square power of two textures and enabling mipmapping and if available anisotropic filtering.

You can also do things like using signed distance field fonts or draw fonts by rasterizing (in the fragment shader) the bezier curves, which can be made to nicely anti-alias (using standard derivatives).

<comment><USER4> Is this to say that CSS 3D transformations on text are bound to be aliased [in similar circumstances]? Is there a suggestion to the spec such as a "mipmap hint" that could (one day) be added to reduce this flaw without the need for other technologies?

<comment><USER3> It's not just 3D transforms, a simple scale down will exhibit aliasing as well.

There's no flag to control aliasing migitating strategies for CSS in the spec, nor is there any discussion about it as far as I know.

<comment><USER5> We call this a leaky abstraction :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gotta preload that audio. Even 100ms of lag between the logo showing up and the music starting is noticeable. Jarring even for (presumably) most of us, who have seen that opening crawl dozens, hundreds, or possibly for children of the 70s who went on to own laserdisc players in the 80s, thousands of times.

In any other context, you could safely pull off not preloading. But this example is just too ingrained into people's minds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I know and it's freaking me out. I already use the attribute preload="auto" of the <audio>-element, but it's not enough.

Do you know any better ways to preload it?

<comment><USER7> I'm assuming there's an event for when the audio is loaded... maybe hook up the animation to that?

<comment><USER8> canplaythrough

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wish I could see it - seems busted on Chrome 29.0.1547.65 - <USER2> Waldorf x64

Logo appears and fades out then nothing but music and blackness.

<comment><AUTHOR> This sounds like 3D is turned off in your Chrome. Can you please check your settings chrome://flags. Maybe "GPU compositing on all pages" is turned off -> turn it on.

<comment><USER10> I have the same issue with no text after the logo. My "GPU compositing on all pages" was set to the default, but after changing it to "enabled" I still see no text. Version 31.0.1626.5 dev-m Aura SyzyASan

<comment><USER11> After enabing and relaunching chrome the text now works for me. (31.0.1612.0), what does chrome://gpu/ tell you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Back in 1994, my 486 had no issue rendering the Star Wars opening crawl in a sweet game, Star Wars: TIE Fighter. Fast forward 20 years, and thanks to the wonders of web, my computer can't even render it correctly. I get a blank screen after the star wars logo. So much for progress.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYks9ZfupZ0](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYks9ZfupZ0)

<comment><USER13> To a tech naive eye, this CSS looks and sounds much better than the 486 version. If I had to show my granny my first pc (a ~20 kilos 486) playing the game intro and a retina ipad rendering this css effect, she'd probably be amazed by tech progress in these last 20 years. Further, I can't see how the next 20 years may produce a greater improvement in this render than the past 20s. It's probably just that we can't fully appreciate progress from within..

<comment><USER14> Actually, on my retina iPad this demo doesn't work at all. You hear the music, but no visuals appear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If I remember correctly, the crawl converged in a point at about 1/3 rd from the top in the original while in this one it scrolls off the top of the screen (at least in the default view). That's a pretty big oversight.

<comment><USER16> Increase the height of that space at the bottom it looks fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love the fact that the scrolling text is 'contenteditable="true"'. Fun to keep typing during the animation. Very cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's missing the Episode IV: A New Hope part...what gives?

<comment><USER19> No, not the remastered version! Nooooooo!

<comment><USER20> The subtitle was added to second run theatre prints. Long before the remastering.

<comment><USER19> True, but more people are likely to think of the subtitle as being canonical due to repeated watchings on VHS or DVD than theatre reruns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You can even edit the text as it scrolls, which is a pretty interesting effect.

<comment><USER22> I assume this is what caused the somewhat strange result of "starship" being underlined as a misspelled word?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> There is also this one which I posted a few months ago: [http://scotch.io/demos/star-wars-attack-of-the- dom](http://scotch.io/demos/star-wars-attack-of-the-dom)

<comment><USER24> Ha. This is something I made. It never generated as much traction as my Pure CSS3 Lightsaber Checkboxes [1], but if you wait until the end of the crawl, you can take lightsabers and swing them around and hit HTML elements. Pretty neat demo, but, overall, completely useless.

The code's also on GitHub [2]. It uses HTML5, CSS3, and Box2dJS.

[1] [https://github.com/scotch-io/Pure-CSS3-Star-Wars- Lightsaber-...](https://github.com/scotch-io/Pure-CSS3-Star-Wars-Lightsaber- Checkboxes)

[2] [https://github.com/scotch-io/Star-Wars-Attack-of-the- DOM](https://github.com/scotch-io/Star-Wars-Attack-of-the-DOM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You're doing it wrong.

[http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2012/08/bts1...](http://static03.mediaite.com/themarysue/uploads/2012/08/bts1.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yes, sorry :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> A very creative mixture of nostalgia and modern web dev.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER27> Is it really worth #1 on HN?

PS: telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

</comment><comment><USER28> Tim, you amaze me every time. Nice job! :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Stefan :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> The logo maybe would be better with SVG, but I think that will not help anyways for the antialiasing.

<comment><USER30> Is _is_ SVG. It's just your browser (I'm guessing Chrome) that chooses to render it at a fixed size and then scale it up. It's perfectly crisp in IE and Firefox, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Most of the code is actually to recreate the music. The scrolling of the text is the easy part.

<comment><AUTHOR> The tricky part was to sync the CSS animation with the HTML <audio>-element sound (1:34 minutes long) with the help of JavaScript.

The scrolling itself is just a CSS "transform: perspective(300px) rotateX(25deg)".

You can also edit the scrolled text because I added the contenteditable="true" attribute to the titles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice work! :)

</comment><comment><USER33> Cool, but sadly to me this is almost a parody of how modern web dev innovation HTML5/JS/CSS are so far behind the technology that actually exists in the world today (this was originally created in 1977). Web standards are good, but much faster and be far more "open" and expandable.

One suggestion. Don't just create a standard for (monopoly) ECMA Script, instead - create a standard for a VM that other languages can compile bytecode to. Create an API in this VM for graphics, video, audio, ETC. This may be self defeating for these clowns, because JavaScript/CSS/HTML may be decimated in a decade if they actually did this, but hey... One can hope.

Once Google firmly owns the browser (like Microsoft in the 2000s) one of two things will happen. One they say to hell with the standards board and push real innovation and opportunity for developers to innovate. Two, they will sit and let it stagnate. Either way, the cycle is coming around again. Android will own the market in a big way soon. Big opportunity is on the horizon and I am getting my hopes up that there is a big shake up with "browser standards". End the monopoly of lame markup, styling, and scripting (HTML/CSS/JS) in the OS of the internet.

<comment><USER34> > Don't just create a standard for (monopoly) ECMA Script, instead - create a > standard for a VM that other languages can compile bytecode to. Create an > API in this VM for graphics, video, audio, ETC.

Please no. That's the opposite of where we should be going. _Less_ executable code on the client, more powerful markup.

JavaScript was a huge mistake that we will likely have to live with for decades, let's not compound it.

<comment><USER35> Markup and JavaScript are orthogonal concepts.

<comment><USER34> Lots of concepts that are now part of HTML5 could only be done with Javascript in earlier incarnations.

<comment><USER35> Although you're right, they're still orthogonal concepts. Powerful markup does not replace JavaScript for all use cases.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>