The First Look at the New Oculus VR Prototype - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2014/01/oculus-rift <comment><USER2> The Oculus dev kit is absolutely incredible on fast hardware with the right game ([http://owlchemylabs.com/aaaaaculus/](http://owlchemylabs.com/aaaaaculus/) for example, is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had, without much nausea). I expected to be somewhat lukewarm about it, but it almost immediately became the most exciting bit of consumer tech in my eyes, whereas the Glass had the opposite trajectory for me.

Most of the issues I've come across have been from low frame rates with low- powered hardware (most laptops), and games with jarring transitions (loading screens where everything freezes are terrible). The dev kit also has very visible pixels, which gives it a substantial screen door effect, and there's some blur when turning your head. The biggest issue, though, is that there's no way that I know of to match what's going on in your inner ear with what's going on screen in something with a lot of quick acceleration/deceleration like a driving game.

However, I think that with translation tracking, less motion blur, better resolution, and games that are well suited to it (maybe not driving), it's going to be completely transformative. And I think it will open up new fields outside of games.

If you have a bit of cash you wouldn't mind spending, I would highly recommend ordering one of the dev kits from their site ($300), even if you don't immediately plan on developing for it. It will most likely spur a lot of ideas for you, game related and otherwise.

<comment><USER3> For driving games, there's one solution for simulating turns, and acceleration/deceleration. That's rotating your seat. When you accelerate, the chair rotates backwards, and gravity does the work of pushing you back in your seat. The faster you accelerate, the more the chair leans back. When you brake quickly, the seat leans forward, and you feel your seat belt pushing into your chest as it holds you in place. Turn right, chair rotates left, etc.

You're limited to 1G though. This is enough to give the experience of driving and turning in a fast car, but you're not going to be pulling Formula 1 level Gs, although I don't think the average person wants to experience that anyway.

Here's a similar simulator. You'd just be using the rift instead of a TV mounted display.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFCRh- anfRg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFCRh-anfRg)

Edit: Just noticed the system in the video also does up and down. I imagine that's an awesome effect when you go down a hill fast, and get that sense of weightlessness for a brief second.

<comment><USER4> Fun article I just read on G forces because I was curious just how many G's an F1 car put someone through:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motorsport/7681665/Formu...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/motorsport/7681665/Formula- One-drivers-feel-the-G-force.html)

<comment><USER5> More impressively, see just how crazy strong F1 driver necks are.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBtKSGvVxw8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBtKSGvVxw8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The first day I hooked the Rift Dev kit up to the Razer Hydra I nearly broke my monitor trying to juggle virtual balls. It was awesome.

One of the most incredible experiences has been playing as the Team Fortress 2 pyro. Perceiving the 3d-volume of the flame flowing out from the gun was a serious "wow" moment.

There's a lot to be excited about here. It sounds like the resolution is going up and the latency is coming down significantly in the next revision. Carmack's devlog tweets[0] are just fascinating. The team is filled with incredible devs. I'm cautiously optimistic that believable VR is possible and, if so, I'm pretty sure Oculus will make the thing that fools your brain first.

[0]: [https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack](https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack)

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's an interesting competitor to Oculus Rift called CastAR that uses a very different solution. It uses a head mounted mini projectors and a retro reflecting surface. It's different from Oculus in the sense that it doesn't block the external world like a head mounted display does. This is an advantage in gaming because you can actually see the gaming controllers. It also allows interesting AR solutions.

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/casta...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar- the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system)

This project was originally Jeri Ellsworth's research project at Valve but the funding was pulled and these guys are trying to kickstart a new business.

When playing a flight simulator with the Oculus Rift, I had this problem that I could not see the physical controls. I was using a full HOTAS (hands on throttle and stick) controller so regular flying wasn't a problem but when I had to lower the landing gear, I had to peer down my nose under the Rift's head mounted display to see where the button for the landing gear was.

I'm not going to pick any favorites because I've only tried one and not the other but I want both of these projects to succeed! This way we can have competing alternative technologies and whoever prevails will be made better by the competition.

</comment><comment><USER8> I got a chance to play with an Oculus dev kit for 15-20 minutes over the holidays, and almost everyone who tried it walked away with some pretty gnarly nausea (experienced gamers and newcomers alike). I'm excited to see so many of the updates in the new prototype focused around alleviating this discomfort.

It's probably telling that they're couching the updates in language that addresses this, rather than just touting the technical accomplishments.

<comment><USER9> The good news about VR sickness is that most people get over it with practice. Not only that, but there are many reports from Oculus users that warming up to VR cured their motion sickness outside of VR! As in "I can read in the car for the first time!"

The bad news is that while better tech and better design can significantly reduce motion sickness, I doubt we will ever completely eliminate it.

The really bad news is that nausea is funny. It's great for catchy headlines and quippy comments. I'm really afraid that the Rift will get a reputation as a "vomit helmet" and that will lead the masses to dismiss it. That would be a tragedy.

It's really important PR for VR to get the word out: If you feel sick, stop. Don't try to push through, you'll make it really bad. Try again much later. With practice, it will get better and better. When you get over VR sickness, all kinds of awesomeness awaits!

<comment><USER7> > The good news about VR sickness is that most people get over it with > practice. Not only that, but there are many reports from Oculus users that > warming up to VR cured their motion sickness outside of VR! As in "I can > read in the car for the first time!"

I think this is might be correct, I remember getting motion sickness from playing Doom on a big monitor the first time. And several years later I was playing a lot of FPS games with no ill effects at all.

But it takes a person with strong willpower to practice! I got pretty bad motion sickness from the Rift, and it left me completely incapacitated for hours afterwards. Not only did I feel like puking but I couldn't do any work because my eyes couldn't focus on "2d" text on a monitor (we have a Rift devkit at the office, I made the mistake of using it in the middle of the day).

And I'm not a person with particularly bad motion sickness problems. There are sensitive people who will definitely not touch any VR helmet after the first time they've tried it and become sick for the rest of the day.

There will have to be improvements to the Rift hardware itself, the driver and peripheral software and the games that support it. And more games will have to be concerned about the physical correctness of movement, because it seems to be a factor in VR sickness.

Here's an interesting "competitor" to Oculus Rift with an alternative approach: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/casta...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/technicalillusions/castar- the-most-versatile-ar-and-vr-system)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No front-facing camera yet? That would give you some of the advantages of augmented reality, cost next to nothing, and allow gamers who are physically sitting together to interact more.

<comment><USER11> Camera latency + processing latency + display latency = vomit machine.

Not saying it's impossible just that it's a bit harder than slapping a camera on the Rift.

<comment><USER12> Your vision has some latency. I think it's a good bet that variable amounts of latency can be accommodated by your perception of reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I got my dev kit last fall and had high expectations. I was somewhat disappointed in it. No doubt it's awesome tech, but it is true dev hardware; the screen is very pixelated and the software is buggy. I got sick almost immediately, and the nausea and disorientation lasted for almost 24 hours. I expected to play Oculus games for all weekend when I got it, and ended up using it very sparsely. All in all I've probably not spent any more than 2 hours in the Rift.

It's a cool, mind-expanding demo that shows how VR is the future, and of course sufficient if you're developing a game that depends on it, but it's not quite the experience many developers will expect. I'm glad they're iterating.

</comment><comment><USER14> I understand that simulation/motion sickness is a biological response to discrepancy between what you see and your sense of balance.

I've always wondered how much of the simulation sickness is psychological. What if someone made a game where you play a paraplegic in a wheel chair. You are allowed to move your head and look around via the oculus rift, but you move with a joystick on the wheel chair via the controller. So will psychologically disabling natural movement make a person less sick?

<comment><USER15> I have a Rift SDK.

Motion sickness is very present (for me) in games like Minecraft; however, in a demo like Titans of Space, where your character is stationery in a spaceship (and only the spaceship moves, but you can look around of course) I don't get motion sickness at all.

I hear that positional tracking could improve the motion sickness situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Any word on whether they've managed to remove the cable between the headset and the base, or if that's possible/planned? Would wireless make the latency issue too problematic? Looks like it's still there in the picture and it can be a bit annoying in practice.

(I have a Rift dev kit lying idle in South Australia if anyone is keen to try it out or buy it cheap. It's very interesting but I'm not a game developer so not in a position to do more than muck around with demos!)

<comment><USER17> You can use an Asus WAVI to eliminate the wires between your PC and the Rift. It does both HDMI (1080p) and USB with very low latency.

<comment><USER16> If it's possible, then hopefully they can somehow include it in a future release of the device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if the already amazing 110 degree FOV could be bumped up even more with curved, wider eye-displays that wrap around to the wearer's temples?

Such a setup might benefit not only peripheral vision but also 3D perspective. Are there downsides I am not considering? (assuming that curved display tech is/becomes performant enough for Oculus' purposes)

<comment><USER19> > Are there downsides I am not considering?

Since total resolution is (for all intents and purposes) capped, there's a 1:1 tradeoff between FOV and PPI. Some people already think Oculus has gone too far, and would be better with a narrower FOV and higher PPI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If people are truly interested in wearables and externals like this, we need some feedback on our next hackathon: [http://www.techendo.co/posts/hackendo- san-francisco-wearable...](http://www.techendo.co/posts/hackendo-san- francisco-wearables-externals-expo-and-hackathon)

<comment><USER21> Cool, there is also a wearables hackathon happening in Phoenix next week by #hackphx: [http://hackphx.com/](http://hackphx.com/)

They've done some really awesome hackathons in the last year or so.

(Full disclosure: this happens at a hackerspace I'm very active in [heatsync labs], and I have volunteered at the last couple of events)

<comment><USER20> Awesome. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The dirty little secret here is that Nausea isn't just caused by hardware alone, but also by software. There are a significant number of things software can do wrong which makes the improvements on the Rift redundant. For example, jumping from large heights, moving too quickly, stopping too suddenly, poor clipping artifacts, inconsistent lighting, and much much more.

OVR can talk all day about how they've 'fixed' nausea, but until they fix the games people want to play (which aren't going to be optimized for a pretty small subset of hard core gamers that have one of these), they're going to have a hard time selling the HMDs.

That all being said, I have one and love it dearly and try to get everyone I know to buy one. Realistically though, it's going to take awhile to fully launch this device.

</comment><comment><USER23> This Rift deeply excites me. But I wonder what time-scale we need to consider for this to be an intermediate step?

That is, we're putting an interface on an interface here. Picture on eyeball. How long until we can mainline this stuff?

</comment><comment><USER24> It's going to be pretty disappointing if the production Rift's resolution is 1080p or only a little higher, especially because it will make the Rift much less useful as a general-purpose computing display for non-gaming tasks. Hopefully they're just being coy so as not to give display manufacturers too much leverage over them. I've been worried that they'll badly mugged on price by the panel makers.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wrote up a blog post today about the Oculus and its potential to grab a big bite out of Hollywood at [https://medium.com/best-of- tech/1a3151f2bc55](https://medium.com/best-of-tech/1a3151f2bc55)

Don't mistake it with the Digital 3D experience that came to home televisions and is absent this year at CES - it is a totally new ballgame.

</comment><comment><USER26> I received DevKit V1 a few weeks ago and had the privilege to demo it to a few friends and family over the holidays.

Everyone from ages 4 to 80 absolutely loved it. Most of these people are not even gamers, and they could see the incredible potential of this device.

It is truly a novel experience. Now I'm just trying to save up some cash so that I can invest in this company when it goes public!

</comment><comment><USER27> I can imagine the nausea induced by a game like mirrors edge would be off the charts. I'm looking forward to this though!

<comment><USER28> The unofficial Mirror's Edge Oculus port (on the Kickstartered dev hardware) caused virtually no nausea for me. (Well, except for the parts where camera control is taken away from you, natch.) I cannot say the same about the official TF2 Oculus software. I'm not sure what the difference is between the two, but it was most definitely there for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm worried that the motion sickness was a side effect of the experience being so realistic and that the removal of it will make it less real. Please tell me I'm wrong!

<comment><USER29> Not sure how I should interpret the downvote. I WANT to be proven wrong since I'm getting one so please tell me if I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone in Seattle looking to sell a Rift? I'd like to give it a shot but don't intend to spend $300.

</comment><comment><USER31> A classic case of "Shut up and take my money!"

</comment><comment><USER32> I can't wait for this.</comment>


EU Commission Deletes Article 13 Post Because 'Mob' Understood It Incorrectly - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/eu-commission-deletes-article-13-post-because-mob-understood-it-incorrectly-190218/ <comment><USER2> I can't really find a way to contact the people responsible for this article. There is no real way to answer except on social media. I found a link on the EC site, but no real email adress, only a page where inqueries had to be limited to 2000 characters. I did find an emailable press contact. Which was probably not the right contact for me, but neither was anything else, so I mailed them anyway.

FWIW this was their response:

      I refer you to the fact that this Medium article has been removed. The official position of the Commission has been expressed in its press release
      http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-528_en.htm
      Please note that the Spokesperson service is a press service.</comment>


What Sets Successful CEOs Apart - happy-go-lucky https://hbr.org/2017/05/what-sets-successful-ceos-apart <comment><USER2> Um... Don't they need a control group of randomly selected persons?

'Decisive' Ok, but are they more decisive than a baseball coach?

'Engaging for Impact' More or less than a car salesperson?

'Adapting Proactively' Homeless persons adapt, and can be surprisingly resourceful, too.

'Delivering Reliably' Most manufacturing managers have this trait, too. If they don't, they aren't manufacturing managers for long.

From the results of the study, one would infer that if they adopt these 4 traits, they will become CEOs. But that's laughable. These 4 traits are supplemental and supportive to getting there, but not causal. In my opinion, a CEO needs to be driven. They need to be going somewhere that they can convince a lot of other different types of people to follow them to. They have to have a sense of agency that leads them to want to be in charge. Only then do those 4 behaviors make a difference.

This article is like taking a bunch of measurements from professional athletes to determine what made them athletes, ignoring that all the physical abilities and training could not get them there without the drive to achieve. That has to come first.

<comment><USER3> I love your response. I hate vague sentimentalities like this.

<comment><USER4> This is most business writing. Most of it is cargo cultism built from post rationalization of survivorship bias. There are so many factors that go into success or failure that it's very hard to ascribe causality, so superstition and folk wisdom prevails.

You find this in lots of other areas with similar characteristics. All "theories of history," etc.

<comment><USER5> I generally agree. OTOH, it's not as if this stuff cannot be measured at all.

The problem is that what are really just "somewhat interesting observations" tend to be sold (or interpreted) as much more "actionable" than they really are. That is, the implication is that if you go out and do these four things, you'll be successful too.

Seems like 99% of business and self-help advice boils down to this formula.

<comment><USER4> The lack of science in business blows me away given the money involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Typical HBR article.

Sure. Decisiveness, adaptability, reliability, etc. are great.

But the biggest problem is when the CEO is decisive, the CEO is engaging the team, the CEO is adopting to environment and the CEO is reliable - but the CEO is doing it all wrong. I.e., the CEO just doesn't have a clue.

As Napoleon said (and many others): whoever is industrious and stupid should be shot on the spot.

The best CEOs are the one who are lazy and very smart. Lazy? Because they will delegate their vision to other people. Smart? The CEO will have the right vision and delegate to the right people.

<comment><USER7> Disagree about lazy CEO. I worked in a startup with lazy CEO, and it was a disaster. I also worked in a startup with hard-working CEO, who knew every single knob of our product, and it was much better.

> Because they will delegate their vision to other people.

Other people means you, even if it's totally outside your area of competence, but rather CEO's.

<comment><USER6> With "lazy CEO" I'm referring to other myth which is talking how successful CEOs are waking up at 4:30am, then they go run, mediate for 90 minutes, don't drink coffee, don't eat meat, and then work will 10:30pm. Every day.

<comment><USER8> Yeah this is not sustainable or real. It's a myth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the more concrete remarks there is that successful CEOs spent about 50% of their time on long-term issues. Less successful CEOs spent much less. One of the traps of management is being driven by incoming problems. That's part of management, but it's not the biggest part, especially as you move up.

There's also the fact that if you spend most of your time dealing with problems, you spend too much time talking to the screwups in your organization. Spending time with the people who aren't having problems is important. They're the ones that can move things forward.

</comment><comment> mck- > Only 7% of the high-performing CEOs we studied had an undergraduate Ivy > League education, and 8% of them didn't graduate from college at all.

If you confuse correlation with causation, you could say that it's better to be a drop out than graduate from Ivy League

<comment><USER10> Ivy League school graduates make up much less than 8% of the working age population, so it over represents.

<comment><USER11> In this case the relevant number is what percentage of all CEO's that are Ivy League graduates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find the skepticism in this discussion interesting.

While it may seem obvious that a decisive leader is a better leader, it's not necessarily a trait that floats to the top of the list. The same goes for all of these traits.

I have had the opportunity to work under leadership that exhibits all of these traits and I can tell you with absolute certainty that the combination is rare and it is very effective.

<comment><USER13> I agree, I suspect most of the people on HN have never worked with a good CEO, or perhaps in or around a senior management role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> 1\. vision (Elon musk , Walt Disney, Steve Jobs)

2\. Calculated risk taking (Meg Whitman buying paypal in 2002, Zuckerberg buying Instagram in 2013 when everyone said it was too expensive ) In both instances, although there were risks, they were still relatively small compared to the parent company.

3\. the business itself being a success. A good CEO can only do so much if the business is not viable or is struggling due to various macro factors outside of the CEO's control.

4\. All-around good execution (Jeff Bezos comes to mind here)

</comment><comment><USER15> A succesful business. That's about it. In most cases.

Sure there are anomalies, but in most cases being a CEO for a growing business in a growing industry rather than some unique talent.

</comment><comment><USER16> One of these days, I'm going to read an article like this, and it is going to say something like, "the people that work for them" or "the organization".

</comment><comment><USER17> Confirmation bias, mostly.

<comment><USER18> Don't forget selection bias. HBR is infamous for these types of articles and studies. They select a bunch of successful CEOs or business persons, they figure out what they have in common and then they release a list of traits or practices that make them successful.

<comment><USER19> Sounds like survivor bias. It was the same thing that made the book "Good to great" complete nonsense!

<comment><USER17> Yeah, good point. Survivor bias is closer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What sets successful CEOs apart? : Luck

<comment><USER5> Some truth to that. Then again, you see some who are serially successful.

That brings up another factor that is probably more important than luck: other people's belief that the CEO will be successful.

<comment><USER21> I wonder how often this is a result of (or at least heavily influenced by) the luck of being born to a certain set of parents / social circles.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The ideal skill set for a CEO varies dramatically at different stages of company growth.

There are likely some universals, but those are the least useful areas to consider and the most hand wavy.

</comment><comment><USER23> I love the comments here. This is typical business bullshit....where's the control group....nm the significant amount of data and analysis, it's _actually_ all about luck...typical HBR...

Do you dimwits understand the general concept of research at all?

</comment><comment><USER24> Slightly OT: Would love know how many of those who commented here are or were CEOs.

</comment><comment><USER25> And if they don't have innate leadership qualities:

Example Integrity Respect

You have just created a narcissist asshole who blames everyone else for their failure before they move on to their next 'I am a successful CEO venture'.

</comment><comment><USER26> Wow, finally an honest article, why hold on to mediocre employees , no need to buy donuts or pretend this is a 'people focus' company. What matters is your bottom line

<comment><USER27> Buying donuts makes people happy at work. Not buying them means that anybody who wants one will have to go out of his way to get one.

I teched for an HR firm years ago. Company lunch every day. People spent half the time on lunch vs going out and talked with their co-workers usually about work or took care of the water cooler talk then. It was just one of the checkboxes on the list of reasons not to leave. It was definitely a profit for the company in the end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How about the one trait that is always underrated - <AUTHOR>

</comment><comment><USER29> Before asking this question we need to to ask what counts as successful. There can be multiple definitions depending on who you ask.

</comment><comment><USER30> Government subsidies

</comment><comment><USER31> Mostly luck

</comment><comment><USER32> HBR is full of shit

\- me, MBA

</comment><comment><USER33> What sets successful CEOs apart is that everyone quickly forgets about unsuccessful ones.

</comment><comment><USER34> tldr "In the end, our research shows, leadership success is not a function of unalterable traits or unattainable pedigree. Nor is there anything exotic about the key ingredients: decisiveness, the ability to engage stakeholders, adaptability, reliability.

While there is certainly no "one size fits all" approach, focusing on these essential behaviors will improve both a board's likelihood of choosing the right CEO—and an individual leader's chances of succeeding in the role."

Somewhat self serving for the authors research/advisory company IMO and surprisingly non specific based on the confidence of the headline

<comment><USER35> What I'm most surprised by is their straw-man alternative: "unalterable traits or unattainable pedigree," _in 2017_.

"I say, Langley, HBR is pure bosh. They've no respect at all for proper breeding, and their attitude towards Mr. Spencer's impeccable theories is shocking, really."

You'd think they'd disparage education, money, and connections, instead of inborn character and aristocratic bloodline... (Unless, of course, you _do_ need education, money, and connections, and they want some safer strawman to knock down.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Earn money, reduce risks. Ballmer and not steve jobs did that.

So i guess the answer- besides CEO-people manipulation skills is too think ahead of societys development, anticipate future demands, and invest there, while ignoring the crowd yelling insanity.

</comment><comment><USER37> They forgot the question mark at the end of that title...

And the answer is: they don't read hbr.org</comment>


Nintendo 3DS - A Broken Business Model? - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2010/07/28/nintendo-3ds-a-broken-business-model/

<comment><USER2> What a load of horse pucky. The only notable thing is the decline of sales of DS software, which could be attributed to the DS nearing it's end of life. In a market where physically distributed games continue to make money hand over fist, this kind of article is pure hyperbole. That digital distribution is the future seems self evident, but that doesn't mean that the current market is under immediate threat.

The article also fails to mention that Nintendo already have their own digital distribution. Admittedly under developed, but they obviously aware of the shift in the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was my reaction too, apparently the author thinks that iPhone games == DS games.

It's also like saying that since DSi can play music stored in SD cards, Nintendo is a threat to iTunes.</comment></comment>


Reddit does away with salary negotiations - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-doesnt-negotiate-salaries-ellen-pao-2015-6

<comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330734](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9330734)

</comment><comment><USER3> Even if you remove gender from th equation, this is a good idea because it saves time and, in some cases, could actually leave employees with a higher salary then they would have negotiated for somewhere else.

<comment><USER4> > leave employees with a higher salary then they would have negotiated for > somewhere else

Only the below average ones. Above average employees would have been able to negotiate a higher salary/extras. Thus, higher quality employees will go work someplace else and not at Reddit.

A quick list of what hiring B players leads to: lower team productivity (lowest common denominator), higher HR costs, poor culture fit, shitty workplace politics creeping into everything. Oh, and the A players you do have leave because FTS and stress.</comment></comment>


A new model – "The Big Splat" – explains the strange asymmetry of the moon - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/13/symmetry/when-the-earth-had-two-moons

<comment><USER2> While trying to find more information on this new model/theory, I found another one:

[http://news.psu.edu/story/317841/2014/06/09/research/55-year...](http://news.psu.edu/story/317841/2014/06/09/research/55-year- old-dark-side-moon-mystery-solved)

Which purports that the difference was created due to tidal locking and a temperature gradient in the early formative years of the Earth and Moon.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Because the moon's rotation is perfectly synchronized with its revolution..."

i'm not sure how i feel about this definition of "rotation". i would say that "rotation" in the celestial body context would always refer to rotation about an axis passing through the object. while "revolution" is rotation about an axis external to the object.

<comment><USER4> I think that's exactly what it means in this case also - the period of rotation on its own axis is exactly matching the period of revolution of its center of mass around the Earth. So that's why the same it is always presenting the same face towards Earth. Did you understand this differently?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> That is the type of theory that when you hear it sounds so plausible that it must be true.

<comment><USER6> >> That is the type of theory that when you hear it sounds so plausible that it must be true.

But when 2 bodies of that size come together, and one of them splats onto the other, there is going to be a major change in rotation rate. There is no reason given for the resulting rotation rate to match the orbital period. I find that bothersome.

<comment><USER7> There is a potential reason:

There is "drag" resulting from tides whenever a body is rotating faster or slower than the orbital period. (First approximation: actually there are weird things like orbital resonances. Mercury for example.)

This drag becomes much more prevalent when the body is asymmetrical - say, when a large body just hit it. (Again: first approximation.)

As such, one could conceivably say that the moon was rotating faster than it is now, and the impact slowed it down enough that the drag in the meantime was enough to tidally lock it to Earth sometime between the impact and now. (Or slower, and sped up. Same thing.)

Although I don't know nearly enough to know how large the "window" would be of rotation rates that would tidally lock in the amount of time between the impact and now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The thing that is a little hard to account for is the synchronized rotation: how could the splat happen in exactly such a way that the rugged far side remains out of Earth's view. Say that before the splat, the original Moon is already synchronized so that it faces the Earth with one side at all times.

The popular hypothesis that the Moon fragmented away from the Earth does contain an explanation for both phenomena: the synchronous rotation, as well as the different characteristics of the far side.

Since the Moon is small and has no plate tectonic activity, it would tend to "record" a permanent geological snapshot of the "gash" on the side where it was separated from the larger object. The larger object with plate tectonic activity would "heal" over many eons, since that activity basically re- surfaces it.

The Wikipedia article [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis)] does not say, under Difficulties, anything about the difference in characteristics between near and far side being specifically a problem. There are difficulties stemming from the composition of the Moon as such.</comment>


Indian government threatens action against Facebook and Twitter  - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8937943/Indian-government-threatens-action-against-Facebook-and-Twitter.htmlhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8937943/Indian-government-threatens-action-against-Facebook-and-Twitter.html

<comment><USER2> Correct Link - [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8937943/Indian- go...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8937943/Indian-government- threatens-action-against-Facebook-and-Twitter.html)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reposted Here.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3323672>

Sorry Guys!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Really sorry, I don't see edit or delete links. Shall I repost this?

</comment><comment><USER3> Please fix the link.</comment>


New trial marks a milestone in synthetic biology - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/04/health/synthetic-biology-pku.html <comment><USER2> One of the linked papers [1] is a surprisingly approachable review of probiotic E. coli, with an interesting comment about antibiotics, probiotics, and phage therapy (and also suggests the treatment covered in the article would need to be constantly ingested):

> Over the past few decades, probiotic applications of E. coli have gained > scientific credibility, though a lot of research has been conducted with in > vitro or animal models only, while relatively few human studies support the > claimed or predicted effects. Of the three products discussed here, most is > known about EcN, which is a surprisingly poor long-term colonizer of the > human gut. This strain was originally isolated based on its antagonistic > capacity in order to combat infections, but this treatment application > became out of fashion as antibiotics entered the field. Now that these > threaten to backfire, with pathogenic bacteria sooner or later developing > resistance against the antimicrobials they are exposed to, interest has > increased in alternative methods that have been applied in the past, > including phage therapy and probiotics. This could introduce a revival of > the original concept introduced exactly a century ago by Alfred Nissle.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5063008/pdf/euj...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5063008/pdf/eujmi-06-147.pdf)</comment>


Writing an OS in Rust: Handling Exceptions - <AUTHOR> https://os.phil-opp.com/handling-exceptions.html <comment><USER2> I wish I had more spare time to help work on something like this. I've been reading all of these posts since the beginning, and they are all so excellent. I knew a lot of these things abstractly, but this explains it all in such solid detail, it's awesome. Thank you!

Now a question for people in the know about micro-kernel architectures. One thing often claimed is that the message passing is too expensive, causing essentially double the work per system call.

After reading this, I started wondering, and now want to read more about it: is it possible to use page faults and a handler to effectively build a message passing setup in the microkernel? Essentially using the pagefault as the mechanism to switch stacks from one kernel-service to another? Is this novel, stupid, or even faster than existing mechanisms?

Obviously I need to go read how L4 and others do this. What's great about posts like this is that it makes me want to go learn about it...

<comment><AUTHOR> > Obviously I need to go read how L4 and others do this.

The L4 guy wrote a paper on it. [https://www.cs.nyu.edu/~mwalfish/classes/15fa/ref/liedtke93i...](https://www.cs.nyu.edu/~mwalfish/classes/15fa/ref/liedtke93improving.pdf)

I think I've been intrigued by the same idea, I believe that Rust enables you to build a reactive OS which would simplify a lot of programming. Given that interrupts are basically events, it's a match made in heaven.

If someone wants to talk about this (by "this" I guess I mean the new OS architectures that are now possible due to Rust) more, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).

<comment><USER3> You may be interested in these projects:

[https://github.com/ryanra/RustOS](https://github.com/ryanra/RustOS)

RustOS is hobby OS project that's pretty bare bones, but has similar ideas to what you've mentioned. It's essentially a port of the Rust standard library to bare metal, relying on the safety of the language rather than hardware features. It's sort-of a unikernel in implementation if not intention.

[https://github.com/helena-project/tock](https://github.com/helena- project/tock)

Tock is an interesting academic project to create an embedded OS. It still uses more traditional hardware protection for user processes, since these can be written in any language. The kernel, however, is composed of cooperatively- scheduled components called capsules, which rely on the language for isolation and don't have the overhead associated with real processes. See this doc for more details: [https://www.tockos.org/documentation/design/](https://www.tockos.org/documentation/design/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Both of those look really dope. How did you learn about them?

<comment><USER4> reddit.com/r/rust is a useful resource for keeping abreast of Rust-related happenings.

For other OS stuff in Rust, see Redox (a microkernel) and Robigalia (Rust on seL4).

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that the thing I'm most interested in is what new architectures does Rust allow for.

Redox is cool but Unix has outlived it's usefulness at this point. Also. the Unix philosophy is the very anti-thesis of what I think is the Rust philosophy. I can imagine that a Rust port of QNX could be a big deal tho (QNX is/was only like 500KLOC of C, which could be like 100KLOC of Rust).

But I think that we need mode advanced systems, e.g. don't need as much virtual memory protection because that's handled by the language. There's actually quite a few things in the current OSs that seem to be pure anachronisms.

<comment><USER2> > don't need as much virtual memory protection because that's handled by the > language.

This is true at compile time. But what does it do for you at runtime when bad actors will be trying to break any and all assumptions? The guarantees in the kernel need to be vigilant against attackers, so while the kernel itself might be simpler, the boundary with processes still needs a lot of constraints at runtime.

<comment><USER5> I think the assumption here is that OS would only allow binaries built from safe rust code.

<comment><USER2> Sure, but I don't know how you'd still guard against runtime issues. I'm not even sure you could require user space only safe code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" x86-interrupt calling convention is such a calling convention"_

Language support for interrupts. That's convenient. Usually it takes assembly language glue code to save and restore CPU state.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing that stands out over almost every other similar article is that there are alternative calling conventions available. That is - awesome. Not sure if this is something easily defined in a crate, or if it is intrinsic, but it is very liberating to know that you don't need to craft exception entry / exit code unless you really want to. That makes OS-level tinkering much much more approachable.

</comment><comment> phil-opp Why is this marked as dupe? Yes, there were already posts about exception handling ( "Catching Exceptions" [1]), "Better Exception Messages" [2], and "Returning from Exceptions" [3]). These posts used naked functions and a lot of inline assembly for exception handling.

This is a new post that I published today. It uses the new `x86-interrupt` calling convention [4] instead of naked functions, which is much easier.

[1]: [https://os.phil-opp.com/catching-exceptions.html](https://os.phil- opp.com/catching-exceptions.html)

[2]: [https://os.phil-opp.com/better-exception-messages.html](https://os.phil- opp.com/better-exception-messages.html)

[3]: [https://os.phil-opp.com/returning-from-exceptions.html](https://os.phil- opp.com/returning-from-exceptions.html)

[4]: [https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/pull/39832](https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/pull/39832)

<comment><USER8> Sorry, my mistake.

<comment> phil-opp No worries! Thanks for correcting it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Previously: [https://hn.algolia.com/?q=phil- opp.com](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=phil-opp.com)

Just about every page of this tutorial has frontpaged on HN. I guess people really, really, _really_ want more kernels written in Rust!

<comment><USER10> No surprise that you get responses from the Rust Defence League.

They downvote any criticisms of Rust here and on reddit, and upvote anything that mentions it in a positive light. They rush to its defence everywhere.

I seriously reckon that steveklabnik and pcwalton must have a bot watching HN and reddit for mentions of Rust so they can immediately rush to its defence every time it comes up.

It's a pity because _I actually think the language has potential_ , but it's not going to be successful if they're incapable of taking any critique on board. And it's _not_ ready, it's _not_ mature. They have to accept that.

<comment><USER11> > And it's not ready, it's not mature. They have to accept that.

Do you have anything specific in mind that makes it "not ready"? And when you say it's not ready, what isn't it ready for?</comment></comment></comment>


On Becoming a Quant - <AUTHOR> http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf

<comment><USER2> Non-broken link: <http://www.markjoshi.com/downloads/advice.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops. I totally meant to put "(PDF)" in the title rather than the URL. Thanks.

<comment><USER3> This suggests a possible improvement to HN: do a WGET on the URL and make sure you get a status code of 200 before allowing the link to be posted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is another route to become a Quant, similar to become a start-up founder in software/internet industry. You can just learn to trade by yourself with some simple trading strategy. One popular strategy is "High Frequency" automatic or semi-automatic trading. A friend of mine has achieved such a good result which allows him quit his day job. I'm not saying this route is for everyone or easier than learning at hedge funds or investment banks though.

<comment><USER5> The high frequency trading is a term used to denote automated trading in intervals of tenths to hundredths of second, in volumes of even hundreds to millions $ in one transaction, so that is not something an individual would do. Automated trading by itself is of course feasible for almost anyone determined enough.

<comment><USER6> _Automated trading by itself is of course feasible for almost anyone determined enough._

...as well as a healthy bankroll to start with. If you can't maintain at least $25,000 in your trading account, you can't day-trade anything but currencies, so you can't really bootstrap from nothing. And if you don't have a _lot_ more money than that to play with, you're never going to make enough to replace a salary. Even if you're actually able to beat the market.

Which brings me to: don't underestimate the market. That doesn't mean it's efficient, but it's very difficult to beat it by a large margin or without considerable risk. A 51/49 edge can be very good if you can get enough trades that offer those odds (forgive my putting it in those terms, I know it's not completely accurate), but that's still going to mean that you can have huge swings either way, even over a large number of trades.

And please, please, PLEASE don't assume that because something worked on historical data it will necessarily work in the live market. There are so many ways to arrive at faulty conclusions here, not the least of which is bad data or analysis (no, your vanilla backprop network is not predicting daily S&P 500 returns, even if it looks like it when you compare it to the training data...), so even if you've got a rock solid strategy that you're sure will continue to work, make sure you could actually make the trades before you get too excited. Don't assume highs, lows, or opens mean anything, pretty much ever, because weird trades that you couldn't have made sometimes show up in those. If you can, deal with bid/ask data (tick by tick, ideally) instead, and make sure the things you want to trade are actually there long enough to get them given your latency.

Needless to say, use a decent broker that charges low fees and lets you have programmatic access to their trading platform. Most fail on both counts, so beware.

<comment><USER7> _Most fail on both counts, so beware._

Potential startup? I have no idea if it's feasible, genuinely curious though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dated May 20, 2008.

"Investment Banks, e.g. Goldman Sachs, _Lehman Brothers_."

</comment><comment><USER9> It's pretty accurate, although it doesn't mention that many quant jobs can actually cover several of the quant roles he mentions.

(I'm not a quant, but I work with quants and friends in the field)

</comment><comment><USER10> As a market geek (did I make that up?) this would be my dream job (if i have to be employed by someone else) but I wonder how many quant jobs are outside of NY? Live in Boston at the moment.

<comment><USER4> Chicago is another place for quantitative trading.</comment></comment>


Getting Web Application Security right from the start with OWASP ASVS - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ibuildings.com/2013/03/21/verifying-software-with-owasp-asvs/

<comment><USER2> _> It is said, conveniently enough mostly by software engineers, that building software is perhaps the most complex activity humans have ever undertaken._

Who says this? Because while I agree that some pieces of software are hugely complicated (writing a compiler, kernels, etc), I think it's massively overstating things to describe web development as the pinnacle of complexity. In fact I'd say it's a little insulting to doctors, physicists, engineers of equipment that get deployed into space, and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've read that phrase (or derivations of it) multiple times, like the "Programming is hard" phrase, but can't find a reference for you. I've updated the article to say "one of" to at least weaken the statement. I agree that, while massive (multi MLOC) webapps can be very complicated, it's certainly no theoretical physics for instance.

Thank you for your time and feedback, have any more feedback?

<comment><USER2> It's a nice overview. I could see myself referring to a document like this as a convenient checklist when beta testing projects just prior to go-live.

If I was to find fault, it would be that the TL;DR section is a little redundant as in it's effort to be succinct (which the main body of the article achieves anyway), you end up dumbing the content down to a point where it's not actually expressing anything useful at all. But that's just my opinion and I may well have missed the point of the TL;DR. :)

Good work though.</comment></comment></comment>


How many companies are 100% distributed? - <AUTHOR> http://scottberkun.com/2013/how-many-companies-are-100-distributed/

<comment><AUTHOR> My former company was about 50% distributed - sales, finance, professional services were all in different areas except for development & testing. We were stuck working in the office. Then again we were only a 10 person company so I'm not sure how well that applies. Besides Automattic I haven't heard of any other companies doing this.</comment>


"We're building a domestic army" -Marine Corps Colonel speaks out - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Y4zsgymRxE

<comment><USER2> An ugly omen of dark times ahead. Weird how this isn't making front page.

EDIT: the moderators are idiots.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there something I could have done to improve the submission?</comment></comment>


ssh-keygen-pro: Generate SSH keys via prompts, Ed25519, and name conventions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sixarm/ssh-keygen-pro <comment><AUTHOR> `ssh-keygen-pro` is a command line shell script that helps users generate good SSH keys, using a mix of prompts, secure algos and args, and extended naming conventions.

Constructive criticism welcome. Pull requests welcome.</comment>


Neil deGrasse Tyson: If I Were President... - <AUTHOR> http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2011/08/21/if-i-were-president <comment><USER2> I find it amusing that almost every OP in this thread has cited the same quote as proof of NDT's arrogance, and then every response debates whether NDT is arrogant or voters stupid. All of this misses the actual ignorance of NDT's letter. The last half of that sentence is key:

 _As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place._

NDT falls into the same trap as nearly everyone since the framers of the constitution. You're never going to elect the _right leaders_. They don't exist. The reason our government was set up the way it was, and not the way it exists now, was precisely because the greatest group of political scientists to ever congregate in one place and time realized that people are inherently flawed, weak, and susceptible to the intoxicating effects of power. _Because_ you'll never have the "right leaders", you must structure the system to prevent abuse by the inevitable "wrong leaders" that will be elected.

NDT, like so many others, misses this point completely, even though nearly the entire letter pays lip service to the idea that the leaders are not the problem to focus on. While he's right, the solution won't appear even if he "enlightened the electorate" to Tysonian heights.

<comment><USER3> I think you're reading a false dichotomy in NDT's comment that wasn't actually intended.

<comment><USER4> Exactly.

He's saying a smarter public trends towards a better government system in place - by the majority of people using logic, reason and rationality to vote in someone worth their salt for each position.

<comment><USER5> There have been many intellectual tyrants. I disagree that we'll get better leaders simply by educating the people about science.

<comment><USER4> I still think it's a bit more abstract than that. Would you agree that overall knowledge is good? Or at least holds more objective, intrinsic good than not?

I'm positing that a society that knows more is better than a society that knows less. A society that knows more is better able to wield that knowledge to make decisions than a society that doesn't have that knowledge. I fail to see how there is any negative to educating more of the general public. Sure, it's gonna' be damn near impossible to measure anything on a political leader vs. general knowledge scale, but intuitively I think education is good.

<comment><USER5> I agree that a society that knows more is better than a society that knows less. Knowledge is good in its own right. But knowledge doesn't change human nature. The rising tide of knowledge will lift all moral boats. Smarter good people, smarter bad people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "One objective reality is that our government doesn't work, not because we have dysfunctional politicians, but because we have dysfunctional voters."

We have a dysfunctional political system that provides voters with leaders who are compromised. Who then pander, rabble-rouse, and pick narrow issues to speak loudly about to raise money. Who then lose our trust and respect, corrupting the institution. Voters are not too "dysfunctional" or ill-informed to make reasonable decisions. Approval of the US Congress was at %10 in August, the lowest in 38 years. The electorate isn't smiling through the failures of government.

The People are not the problem. I think Tyson would have answered different after a few hours with Lessig. Blaming governement's failures on a ill- informed electorate is second-rate at best.

<comment><USER7> > Voters are not too "dysfunctional" or ill-informed to make reasonable > decisions. Approval of the US Congress was at %10 in August, the lowest in > 38 years. The electorate isn't smiling through the failures of government.

The 10% approval with Congress is only half the story. Those same people will tell you that they're 80-90% satisfied with their own congressional representatives. The reason the electorate is so dissatisfied with Congress as a whole is because they think either things aren't getting done, or they aren't going their way. Both are true.

And yes, voters are ill-informed and unlikely to make reasonable decisions. One needs look no further than Glenn Beck and the conspiracy material he peddled for several years to see how far the news has gotten from reporting actual news. I remember the "cash 4 gold" advertisements being prominent during his show; do you think that informed people were the ones making that business viable enough to advertise like they did?

A media that relies more on data, that provides context and scope; this is what we need to have to get informed voters, but a lot of people aren't smart enough to place value on that when they can get a daily dose of things to rage about and blame for their issues with the world. (I would further argue that people of lower socioeconomic status simply don't have the time or energy to deal with complex information when they're mostly focused on making ends meet, but that's a separate argument).

<comment><USER8> >>"The 10% approval with Congress is only half the story. Those same people will tell you that they're 80-90% satisfied with their own congressional representatives. The reason the electorate is so dissatisfied with Congress as a whole is because they think either things aren't getting done, or they aren't going their way. Both are true."

Very good point, reminds me of the Demotivational poster, "Meetings - none of us are as dumb as all of us."

<http://www.despair.com/meetings.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and > lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they > might choose the right leaders in the first place.

This reeks of extreme arrogance. A type very common in academia. The presumption that the masses are ignorant, while you, anointed and blessed, are simply brilliant.

No.

If you get off your high-horse and actually talk to them, you'll find that they are just as brilliant as you, in their own ways.

Our problems don't stem from the majority wallowing in ignorance. They are not ignorant. Our problems stem from divergent interests. What is in the interest of one, is not in the interest of his neighbor. The path to a healthier nation is in finding creative ways in resolving those conflicts of interest.

<comment><USER10> At the risk of being labelled as negative, I'm going to disagree. The majority of people just don't care. They don't care about politics, about science, about reason or about anything outside of their day to day lives and relationships. That's how it's supposed to be.

As it turns out, the average person isn't brilliant, anointed or blessed (this is due to the meaning of the word "average"). Saying that everyone is "brilliant in their own way" is a cop out, a platitude that's no better than saying nothing at all. Intellectual curiousity, love of learning and scientific rigor are real things, and a large number of the humans on this planet don't possess them. If you object to the idea that Neil DeGrasse Tyson is more brilliant than most, then you're in danger of losing touch with reality.

If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature. You can teach people how to think, but you can't make them like it.

A laughably small number of americans vote in presidential, much less local elections. And many of those voters have only the shallowest understanding of the issues being decided upon. deGrasse Tyson has a point...education may be democracy's only hope.

ASIDE: I'm noticing rampant selection bias on hn. It's important to remember that most of the people on this planet are nothing like us. Working at tech companies and hanging out at tech events it's easy to believe that everyone is as intelligent, reasonable and hard working as our family and coworkers. Most people just don't have the same love of learning and/or hacking that we do. While we value knowledge and intelligence above all, most humans don't and there's nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER11> _If NDT is showing any arrogance, it's in thinking that he has the ability to raise the level of public discourse. He's really smart, but apparently not smart enough to realize that no amount of education can change the basics of human nature._

If this were true, then Jews as a demographic wouldn't have a reputation for being well-educated and literate. What you're talking about is as much cultural as it is inherent, if not moreso. And if it's cultural, then education can change it.

<comment><USER12> I think you're right. You are probably always going to have a normal distribution, or close to it, but how tight that distribution is and where it is centred is I think something that can be changed with some effort.

Certainly it is possible to make the population as a whole dumber (just stop public education for instance), so it makes sense that, unless we happen to be doing everything brilliantly right now, we can do better as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> * As a scientist and educator, my goal, then, is not to become President and lead a dysfunctional electorate, but to enlighten the electorate so they might choose the right leaders in the first place.*

I think it is easy to do this at the local and state level. These populations are small enough that variations in general political leaning are small (e.g. Californians are a more unified electorate than the US as a whole). It is also easier because some polarizing issues are out of states' hands (e.g. defense spending, immigration, abortion). It is harder to get a whole country to agree on one leader

<comment><USER14> The Long Now Foundation hosted a talk by Benjamin Barber called "If Mayors Ruled the World". Barber discusses the major influence that mayors and city governments have to make positive change to global problems, sidestepping political gridlock at the national or international level.

Notes and audio (and non-free video) are available here:

[http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/jun/05/if-mayors-ruled- wor...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02012/jun/05/if-mayors-ruled-world/)

<comment> shawn-butler It's been my experience that activist mayors that do so (flaunt regulations & selectively adhere to the law) really are more interested in seeking higher office. Best mayors are ones that realize their job is to keep the streets safe, the garbage hauled, and the sewer working.

I do agree that county and state legislatures are much more effective places for real change if only our federal judiciary would quit hamstring their efforts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've had a strange idea cooking in my mind for a few years now, although I've never really fleshed it out.

What if we had an AI-like system instead of representatives? Imagine this: "Pennsylvania-One" is an AI. Every day, from their smartphones or another device, PA citizens vote on issues, ranging from small to big. Using this data, "Pennsylvania-One" creates a model of what its constituents want, and then, using its vast knowledge of political theory, history, economics, etc., makes a decision. This decision can be double-checked by constituents or by some other "watchmen"-like individuals.

Of course, this would never happen (people trust people much more than machines), and it's more of a sci-fi idea, but it's an interesting thought nonetheless.

<comment><USER16> There's at least one story by Issac Asimov about that. There was at least one computer coordinating the world. I think it was "All the Troubles of the World".

<comment><USER17> Similarly, in Neon Genesis Evangelion, there were three supercomputers who independently processed all policy issues and would vote on them. "It's a form of democracy, I suppose"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Our bicameral legislature is dysfunctional in the US. The Senate and it's 60 votes to pass a bill filibuster rule make change too difficult.

The Senate does not represent the country well. California has two senators, so does Wyoming.

The next two years will be gridlock. It's unlikely Democrats retake the House and get sixty seats in the Senate, so divided government is what we have to look forward to.

The Senate is a strong architectural advantage for Conservative politics in the US.

This situation is unlikely to change. It would take a constitutional amendment to abolish the Senate and that is nigh impossible in the US.

Because of this big change only happens once a generation or so.

<comment> shawn-butler Isn't this a good thing since it is actually representative of the divided electorate? Most polling data seems to indicate a genuinely divided nation on key legislative issues.

Filibuster reform is not a constitutional crisis. If Senate Democrats refuse to tackle it when they hold the Upper chamber it's on them. Senator Jeff Merkley's gang of nine [0] seem enthusiastic about getting it done.

My hope is that states will begin to take proactive roles to fill the vacuum and it is one of my greatest aggravations the extent to which the federal judiciary has expanded the power and meaning of the commerce clause to cover basically everything in order to prevent states from taking action.

[0] <http://bitly.com/U71kL4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think Neil is wrong, unfortunately. It does matter who is in power, but not for the reasons that the media and political campaigns focus on. Other than the ability to veto, presidents don't legislate, they don't have that much control over the economy- although if they are ignorant enough (Bush) or obsessed with progressive agenda (Obama) that doesn't help things but we can't reasonably blame them _and_ even the effects from legislation are often not felt for years, etc. The main thing that a good U.S. president does is to lead and have respect. If that respect is gone, because of a hostage crisis, Iran- contra hearings, Monica Lewinsky affair, because you can't pronounce "nuclear" correctly, etc. then that is a problem. But that is also why we hire politicians instead of great leaders- great leaders make mistakes, but the people and the media don't like mistakes. Great leaders don't want their career ruined by the media, so instead we get politicians that parade around as if they are great leaders.

If you really want to change the system, the president should be chosen at random from the people of the United States, same for the House of Representatives and State Houses. If any of us could become president that is over 40, we'd pay a lot more attention.

<comment><USER20>
        obsessed with progressive agenda (Obama)

What elements of the progressive agenda is Obama obsessed about?

<comment><USER19> I consider something to be an obsession when X wants to do Y, then it is obvious that the primary issue is Z but he continues to do Y.

X = Obama, Y = health reform, Z = economy

Think I'm wrong? If you agree the economy and jobs are the biggest problem in the U.S. and in the world right now as far as the majority of the U.S. is concerned, then look at: <http://www.barackobama.com/plans/> and <http://www.mittromney.com/jobs>

Despite going off-the-rails during the primaries trying to sound uberconservative and building fences, and strong talk of military strength during the debates which would indicate the typical Republican massive $$$$$ sunk into the military, Romney's page appears to be more economy focused. Do I believe it will really be like that? Probably not. They both have their problems and so does everyone else.

Back to the OP, the answer is not that our voters are uneducated. Uneducated voters vote for both parties. People make fun of Palin and tea partiers, but I heard an Obama supporter answer "1" to how many senators there are in the U.S. government this morning and didn't know the VP's name, so let's call it even. The problem is that there is no incentive for real leaders to lead; there is only incentive for politicians to schmooze. That incentive doesn't change if the voters become educated. They can't vote for the right person when the right person won't run. You may disagree and think that we have strong leaders, but I've not had that much respect for a president in recent years.

<comment><USER21> I think you're wrong; it is by no means "obvious that the primary issue is economy". Do you mean that improving the economy would solve healthcare problems? Capitalism depends on a certain level of unemployment, and no amount of economic growth will provide healthcare for the unemployed without healthcare reform (although conversely, the number of people waiting until they're eligible for medicare to start businesses suggests healthcare reform ought to improve the economy).

Or are you simply claiming that it's more important? Economies go up and down, and on the whole the president seems to have very little influence on them. Introducing a proper healthcare system will, we know from other countries, be a major long-term improvement.

So I'm not seeing obsession in Obama's focus on healthcare. I'm seeing sense.

<comment><USER19> "Capitalism depends on a certain level of unemployment"

What is the basis of this statement?

<comment><USER21> I was under the impression it was generally accepted; from a brief look e.g. Friedman's NAIRU concept. Are you arguing that it's practical to have full employment under capitalism?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Yes, it's an arrogant post.

As The Dad says: "Anyone who thinks they know what's best for 300 million people is a titanic asshole. So we're just voting for king of the assholes."

</comment><comment><USER23> I'd vote for him, if only to increase basic research stock and funding. I'm not sure his social and foreign policies would be apt, however, given his academic veneer he takes to the written-about issue.

<comment><USER24> I'd vote for him too. I am sure his social and foreign policies would turn out fine. I don't think it is even hard to come up with a decent social and foreign policy: observe that there is a wide range of such policies among "successful countries". USA is laissez-faire, Denmark is half-socialist, Switzerland is neutral etc. As long as you are not deliberately trying to be a tool, you'll probably do okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Tyson is correct in that it is not politicians that are the problem.

But I don't know that there is something inherently wrong with the voters either.

I think it is the electoral process that does not represent voter's interests. I can't select who will represent my interests. I have to pick between two false choices.

And then ALL of the power is handed to whoever wins the popularity contest. And then my concerns are ignored for four years.

Proportional representation would solve that problem. You can even use it in the executive branch (Switzerland does).

THEN Tyson could say the mistakes are our fault.

</comment><comment><USER26> Oh good lord --

The question was, "If I were president..." If he'd answered the question straight instead of the way he did, I doubt we'd see his answer as arrogant. The context matters quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER27> The following quote comes to mind:

"In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve." -Joseph de Maistre

</comment><comment><USER28> Is there some obstacle that stops him from running?

<comment> shawn-butler His ego.

<comment><USER29> Why would an inflated ego be an obstacle to becoming president? Isn't it actually necessary? After all, you have to believe you're more qualified than a hundred million other people.

<comment> shawn-butler I think you actually have to only believe you're more qualified than one other person whom you generally demonify and caricature and maybe 2 or 3 other candidates you can safely ignore and refuse to engage. You can rely on your party to "convince" you about the other millions.

It is my understanding from reading presidential biographies that ambition has not usually been a key factor in making The Big Decision(tm) to run in recent elections at least since Nixon. But who knows, not like you can really trust the sources either. Saying it's better to be King is not much of a way to create an historical legacy :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I know who I'm writing in tomorrow!</comment>


Best Anagram: Moore's law beats a better algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://blog.plover.com/lang/anagram-scoring-2.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow-up to a post from yesterday, which had some discussion on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13696196)</comment>


Justice Department Announces Court-Authorized Efforts to Map and Disrupt Botnet - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-court-authorized-efforts-map-and-disrupt-botnet-used-north <comment><AUTHOR> This is under the authority of the Rule 41 revision (2016) - [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/rule-41-would- ma...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/04/rule-41-would-make-it- easier-for-the-government-to-carry-out-hacks/)</comment>


Scaling up Superoptimization [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~mangpo/www/papers/lens-asplos16.pdf <comment><USER2> Has anyone in the superoptimization space given thought on how it could be used to provide useful feedback to CPU architects? I'm thinking of something like identifying an instruction sequence performing some state transformation that might appear esoteric to a human but turns out to be a common pattern in superoptimized programs.

<comment><USER3> Fred Chow built a compiler which did whole-program compilation, and basically picked out the instruction set for a soft processor based on what would make the program more efficient. I believe this was at Cognigine.

I've seen some other examples where a CPU has a bit of FPGA on it, available for building weird instructions. The problem there is often that the ideal weird instructions read too many registers.

Today's very OOO processors are a more difficult target for superoptimization than past in-order cpus.

<comment><USER4> No Instruction Set Computing and Tensilica's Xtensa are interesting work along those lines. Basically customize the CPU go the fast path. I'd love to see it combined with whole program optimization.

<comment><USER3> Thanks, yes, I was thinking of Tensilica. They use Fred's compiler (SGI -> Open64 compiler). Which has always done whole-program optimization.

<comment><USER4> Appreciate the reference. Is that OSS? I cant recall...

<comment><USER3> It is GPL v2. One of the most active developed-as-open-source branches is Path64.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Company that has never made a phone before creates a gadget that could actually dethrone the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://advice.cio.com/al_sacco/garmin_touch_screen_nuvifone_smartphone_gps_navigator

<comment><USER3> Worth noting that the iPhone was also made by a company that had never made a phone before.

Kinda says something about the companies that do make phones.

<comment><USER4> "Kinda says something about the companies that do make phones.: \--Yes. Motorola is failing. That's what happens when you have been in a business for too long and get complaicent. The new entrant will eat your lunch. Moto, deserves to fail. They need to make a huge revamp of their software. Same problem with Palm. They are toast.

At least it seems that RIM (Blackberry maker) is getting a little bit smarter, and it is finally going to update their software stack. Until a year ago, they thought that just having good email support would be enough. Well... no. Users also like multimedia, good support, navigation, pretty UI... etc. etc.

While the koreans, just like they do in with they cars, just copy what they see successful (I am talking about LG and Samsung). They society just doesn't reward new thinking.

<comment><USER5> If you were to draw that conclusion about Korean society from their cars, then you could draw the same conclusion about Americans if you looked at our video games and social network apps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think that this completely misses the point of why the iphone is great.

When the iphone came out it was something that we had never seen before - <USER2> was sleek, had a great userinterface, large touchscreen and so on. That is why it was a success. It created its own niche that had not been filled before.

Now all sorts of companies come up with "iphone killers" and think that they can do better than apple. But the game is already over - the market has moved on. The iphone was cool because it was a genuine innovation. Whatever rip-off some company dreams up now will only be compared to the iphone, effectively establishing Apples brand as the innovative leader.

What you really need to do if you want to create an iphone killer is to think creatively and make your own innovative product. A copy-cat iphone will always be just that: a copy.

<comment><USER7> Incremental improvement is still improvement. iPod wasn't the first mp3 player, and it had no "killer feature". But it was better, and therefore it got popular. I think these iPhone knockoffs aren't doing so well simply because they are not better.

<comment><USER6> I'm talking about mindshare, of which technical merits are only a small part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why can't a phone company just make a device that does it all? Here is what I need, and it doesn't seem too complicated:

1\. Phone (duh)

2\. Camera

3\. MP3 player

4\. Lots of storage (at least 30 GB would be nice, but more is better)

5\. Wifi, GSM, 3G, bluetooth, etc.

6\. Mechanism for allowing 3rd party apps

7\. Unrestricted USB/flash interface

Is that really so much to ask? I want one device that does all of that, and I would gladly pay for it. Is it out there and I just don't know about it?

Basically, I don't even have a digital camera or an MP3 player right now, and I have about the most rudimentary cell phone you can get. I would love to get a smartphone to fill all of my needs, but until I see one that does everything I want, it's just not worth it to me.

<comment><USER9> I hate to continue to market my Nokia N95-8gb on here but I love it so much that I feel like people like you are missing out. Based on your list, the N95 has:

1\. Check

2\. Check - 5-megapixel w/ CZ lens. I tossed out my camera after getting this phone, the pics are just plain amazing. Oh yeah, did I mention 30fps video at 640x480? That and Nokia includes a VGA cable for video AND audio out.

3\. Check - Supports MP3/AAC/AAC+/eAAC+/WMA with a standard 3.5mm headphones jack. A2DP support is also there if you want quality wireless headphones.

4\. (1/2) check. 8gb is more than I've used so far, it's not a complete music- collection device.

5\. Check, Check, Check, Check, oh and it has GPS and FM radio too, you forgot those.

6\. Check - Series60 phones have no shortage of 3rd party apps. Installing Google maps took me no more than a minute.

7\. Check - I plug in the phone and it simply asks me what mode I want it in - Raw Flash drive, PC Sync, and one other.

Specs are here: <http://www.gsmarena.com/nokia_n95_8gb-2088.php>

Oh yeah, and I get 3-days battery life minimum. With minimal usage I charge once a week.

<comment><USER8> Awesome, thanks. I'll check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Proprietary operating system? As if there weren't already enough for developers to support. More diversification is bad at this point, I'll pass thank you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Finally, something I actually want in my cellphone: decent navigation! I could care less about music and web browsing. I want my phone to tell me how to meet up with my friends and lets me find Mexican restaurants at 3am.

<comment><USER9> That's really the only fault in my N95-8gb... it has Assisted-GPS and usually takes 90+ seconds to lock on with a satellite. It already crushes the iPhone in functionality and I've had plenty of "omg cool phone" comments on the actual design.

When you do get a lock-on, the navigation features are wonderful, hopefully this Garmin phone has a faster way to do so.

Overall this Garmin phone looks damn functional, I just wish it wasn't boring- PDA grey.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> That's actually a really good point, though Apple had made a handheld before, the Newton.

<comment><USER12> And don't forget the other handheld device - iPod. It has all the characteristics of a PDA, but the software is limited to media.</comment></comment>


Surface Pro 4: Will you go the F**K to SLEEP? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/22/surface_pro_4_review/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft has fixed a number of Surface Pro 4 bugs in Win10 but the 'not sleeping' one still persists. And it is, as the author writes, a battery killer. It reminds me of a similar bug in iOS with its "smart cover" where the cover would move around in your bag and the iPad would wake up.</comment>


'Hide It Hillary' mobile game banned by Apple, title like 'Punch Trump' approved - <AUTHOR> http://washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/2/hillary-clinton-hide-it-mobile-app-game-banned-by-/ <comment><USER2> I'm quite curious about this article, less about the words, more about how it's being received.

It has 43 upvotes in 41 minutes. For a rather bland subject, that's not half bad (point wise), potentially motivated by the political conflict involved, but that happens.

However, in the time I've queued it in my "morning reading", I've refreshed it quite a few times and watched it flag, unflag, flag, unflag at least 5-6 rotations as I've tried to post this comment. I'm legitimately curious as to why there's so much distaste for this with so little discussion. There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article, and that could be called out as HN has an excellent (I mean this honestly, comments are very quick to say "this article has no substance, here is why" and I see that as a plus) history of, but the overall question of the potential for political censorship through the increasingly few gatekeepers of walled garden web content does raise some meta questions I've seen HN discuss on many other occasions with far less prompting.

I guess I'm asking two things. 1. Although there is not much empiricism in the article, is there not a meaningful discussion to be had about the above; and 2. I'm curious as to what would incite people to want to flag so hard rather than let a thread get some immediate momentum and then die off from lack of content as it is like to. (It's not even as with the snowden releases where the entire front page was snowden for a good few weeks :) )

<comment><USER3> > There is certainly very little evidence to the claim of the article

Little evidence? The claim is that this app was rejected and Trump satire apps are allowed - what evidence are you expecting other than the existence of the Punch Trump style apps on the App Store? Do you want a letter signed by Tim Cook saying that the App Store policies are intentionally biased?

<comment><USER2> You're providing evidence that the outcome exists in the real world. This is true. You are not providing evidence (neither did they) for the motive they described.

A letter would be nice (to the QA testers who vet these games) but because I (having been a QA at one point who could have had the ability to make similar decisions about what gets into games with almost no oversight, training, or checks+balances, albeit for a much more no-name group) really doubt that's the situation, I would also be more swayed by demonstrating a track record for single-party support historically, and potentially contrasting with other app stores over that time period, since I could absolutely see this occuring due to what I mention. (Improper checks and balances, lack of clear guidelines, less formal/consistent vetting process)

My "there is no evidence" should be taken as "the article seemed more conviction by 'THIS IS WRONG' than conviction by 'we find these systemic issues, here is the support for them'. In fact, it loops back to my original comment, in that both the articles and the flaggers were making a statement while providing very little other than the statement itself to support it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Never attribute to malice that which can equally be explained by carelessness.

My experience with completely nonpolitical apps strongly suggests the app approval process is very arbitrary and inconsistent across the board.

<comment><USER5> If it were just a matter of creating two political apps, one anti-red and one anti-blue, and observing that the anti-blue one is banned, I'd agree. The article cites 3 different games focussed on simulating violence against Trump, though, which to me is enough to suggest a trend.

<comment><USER6> Apple could have been rejecting one hundred apps which mock Trump without us knowing. You're a suggesting a trend based on a single data point.

<comment><USER5> That's absolutely right. I suggest a simple experiment here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12420407)

It should be possible to come up with ~10 'clone' games (slap trump/hillary with a fish, hit trump/hillary in the face with a pie, etc) by swapping a few assets. Phonegap could be used to deploy the same simple javascript/html5 app on android and iOS. Submit each app to Google/Apple and see what the acceptance rates look like. I would think that would be enough to confirm or disprove the existence of any bias.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They are a private enterprise and can do what they want, but the optics aren't great. For the sake of PR they should try and maintain at least the appearance of being unbiased. Perhaps develop a single policy for politically oriented apps, and stick to it in all cases.

PS - Also noticed this was flagged & removed, then restored. Very glad to see it was restored as this is a very relevant thing to be talking about in the current political climate.

<comment><USER8> Honestly don't think they should allow apps like hide Hillary or punch trump. They're low value and only promote hate towards the person.

<comment><USER9> How does "Hide it Hillary" promote hate? It's satirizing something she actually did in real life. "Punch Trump", on the other hand, _has_ violence in it, but even that is not sufficient to claim that it _promotes_ violence.

<comment><USER10> As pointless as they may seem, the web has a long history of games allowing users to pretend to punch various celebrities, and the "punch famous person X" genre probably predates that. There have also been TV shows like Celebrity Deathmatch, and IIRC one popular show for teens/tweens had its main character use her computer to put the face of another character into a boxing simulation.

I think the cat is out of the bag on the punch X genre for now, but society's tastes can still change over time.

<comment><USER10> Very curious why some disagree with a factual description of the history of a particular genre of game..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those flagging this, why not try an experiment? Put together two pallette- swapped games, perhaps 'Slap Hillary with a fish' and 'Slap Trump with a fish'. Submit these games to Apple and Google for app store approval.

If you're correct in your assumption that no bias exists, either both or none will be approved. If n=2 isn't enough, this should be easy to run with greater sample size.

</comment><comment><USER11> The problem (if you could call it that) is that there are multiple people reviewing apps. While there are rules, each person has a different interpretation of them, which results in issues like this.

</comment><comment><USER12> Go to the iTunes Store. Search for "Hillary".Enough anti-Clinton iPhone and iPad apps show up to indicate that this is an anomaly, not a systemic bias. The fact that a right-wing site got the WaPo to bite on it shows their gullibility rather than Apple's bias.

</comment><comment><USER13> "In 2002, at an event held to celebrate the Times's 20th anniversary, Moon said: 'The Washington Times is responsible to let the American people know about God' and 'The Washington Times will become the instrument in spreading the truth about God to the world.'" [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Times)]

<comment><USER14> The Washington Times is indeed not at all a trustworthy news outlet. It is incredibly politically biased, to the point of overt absurdity. Due to the name, however, some continue to confuse it with the Washington Post and assume it has legitimate content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Because every blue chip company has already pre purchase some new hillary act/law

</comment><comment><USER16> Do they issue 'political guidelines' to their employees doing the screening or do things like these simply get escalated to the top where someone like the CEO makes the decision.

</comment><comment><USER17> I remember Stallman and many others, I believe even on HN, so not long ago, talking out against walled gardens.

Now it's the norm.

</comment><comment><USER18> strange. This post was flagged and even showed up dead just a few mins ago. Did the mods restore this ?

<comment><USER19> Probably the "vouch" feature working. Countdown on it being flagged down again: 1, 2, 3...

<comment><USER20> Where does the vouch link show up? I don't recall ever seeing one.

<comment><USER21> You have to click on the comment's timestamp to go to its page. Then (assuming the comment is [dead]) you'll see a 'vouch' link at the top. That's the same place where the 'flag' links for comments appear. If the comment isn't [dead], there's no 'vouch' link, because the reason to vouch for comments is to resurrect them from [dead].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's funny to see how holier than thou people get about these topics. Punch Trump "promotes violence" against Trump?? It's a game where you box with Trump (and he boxes back). What is this, the 1950's???

</comment><comment><USER23> If you follow enough links you'll get to the source of the story [https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/50pfl4/appl...](https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/50pfl4/apple_censored_our_game_because_we_poked_fun_at/)

Which does sound like it actually happened. However at current time it shows up in the app store.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm not sure how I feel about corporate censorship. On one hand we have property rights, which I believe in firmly and on the other hand we have freedom of speech/expression.

If we are going. To live in a world where public discourse takes place through private avenues we need to decide as a country which takes precedent, property rights or speech/expression.

</comment><comment><USER25> I believe Software Engineers should be conservatives. Because when anything is doing wrong, the first we can think of is rollback.

</comment><comment><USER26> Politically I don't care as I am not a US citizen. But just a quick search shows titles like "Never Hillary", "Avoid Hillary", "Hillary Clinton Cross the Road".

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone that knows anything about the Apple App Store knows this piece is a little uninformed.

1\. The two apps were probably reviewed by different people, and approvals from Apple have always been all over the place depending on the reviewer.

 _" The independent developers said getting approved with Google took less than one hour, while Apple's denial came after an eight-hour wait."_

2\. 8 hour wait? Wow. I remember when the App Store had an 8 _day_ review time. Let's keep in mind that Google rarely has a human review it's App submissions, Apple has a human review _all_ of theirs, including updates.

In any case, the second half of this article is a Clinton hit piece, dropping all mention of apps and app stores and recounting again the Clinton emails story and focusing on negative reactions to it.

This was flagged and dead and should be again.

<comment><USER28> >This was flagged and dead and should be again.

Strange. It almost sounds like you're afraid of this article for some reason?

And I'm saying that as someone who abhors Trump and is trying to get everyone I know to vote for Hillary. I just hate double standards is all.

<comment><USER29> Not 'themartona, but, I'm afraid of this article.

I'm afraid that we're not able to discuss interesting _technical_ issues without the overtone of this presidential election's good-vs.-evil campaign (and both sides see themselves as good and the other as evil). We couldn't even have a rational discussion about a secretary of state not being able to use a mobile device with official email. It quickly became a discussion about the _evil, corrupt_ secretary of state _killing innocent ambassadors_ by using a private email server. Every interesting technical issue - and, in fact, every interesting political issue, about how the most powerful government in the world can't provide useful email services to its secretary of state, and how we got there - was drowned out by the good-vs.-evil talk.

I'm afraid that comments about the candidates instead of the technical issues will dominate. I can't even come up with a more silly example than the present one: something happened to Trump but not Clinton, or Clinton but not Trump, and with no evidence that this is about the candidates, it must be that one of them is evil and silencing dissent or paying off Apple or something.

I'm afraid that the tenor of us-vs.-them, good-vs.-evil arguments from the rest of the internet is infecting HN.

I'm afraid that _well-reasoned_ criticism of the political candidates is getting ignored just because so much of it is ill-reasoned. If we expect every single article to have paragraphs of "BTW Hillary sux" or "BTW Donald sux", how do we expect to have actual, serious discussions of where the candidates are good or bad.

I'm afraid that articles like this are becoming normal.

Yes, I'm afraid of this article.</comment></comment></comment>


Print Thyself: How 3-D Printing Is Changing Medicine - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/11/24/print-thyself

<comment><USER2> The most interesting technique I hadn't heard of before (there were a couple!) was using a material that, when cooled, turns into a liquid. It is named Pluronic ink, but they refer to it as 'fugitive ink'.

This enables them to print a structure that incorporates this material, cool the whole thing down, and suck out the liquid.

They use this technique to lay down 3d channels in printed bio-materials, which they then infuse with endothelial cells to create blood vessels. Amazing!

 _The other ink dispensers would take their turn, laying down a lattice of collagen and fibroblasts that would solidify around the network of fugitive ink, encasing it in tan-colored living tissue. To drain the fugitive ink, Kolesky would place the tissue on a chilled stone cube; this would cause the ink to change from a gel to a liquid, after which he could then extract it with a small suction device. The end result would be a block of living tissue suffused with intricate vessels capable of carrying nutrients to the cells within._

 _The last step was to me the most remarkable. Once the vessels were empty, Kolesky would take a suspension of endothelial cells—the cells that line the insides of blood vessels—and inject it into the vessel network. The cells would settle in and multiply to line the insides of the channels, effectively turning the channels into blood vessels. And then the cells would spread—they would begin to branch off the existing vessels and form new ones. In effect, Lewis and her team have created an environment that the cells consider home—it is far more natural to them than a petri dish or the inorganic scaffolds that had previously played host to cultured tissues._

<comment><USER3> Support material is frequently used by the hobbyist 3D printing community.

There are a number of different plastics, PVA is one example, that dissolve in warm water (others dissolve in an alkaline solution) but will adhere to ABS or PLA plastic when warm.

The printer will have two different extruders, one for the main material and one for the support. Entire closed gear boxes, with all the gears pre- installed can be printed in a single print using this method. Its pretty amazing stuff:

[http://www.3ders.org/articles/20120128-dissolvable- support-m...](http://www.3ders.org/articles/20120128-dissolvable-support- material-used-for-3d-printing-gearbox-and-hilbert-cube.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find this technology extremely cool and I have little doubt that its adoption should be widespread.

However, while reading this I started wondering if the drop in infant mortality is going to reduce our genetic fitness over time and require ever more complex and invasive surgery. Oddly enough I think directly altering DNA is probably the best long term solution to avoiding such dependence which I find kind of uplifting. It's sort of the antithesis of the 'bleak' picture painted by most sci-fi dealing with genetic modifications.

</comment><comment><USER5> I work at the Harvard lab mentioned in this article, and I wrote the software that was used to generate the header image.

3D printers are controlled in a language called GCode (also used for CNC mills). I wrote a GUI that allows the end user to draw any path with a tablet (or mouse) and then have that converted to GCode. This enabled the researchers to print more complex objects, as they previously had to write their GCode by hand.

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems that at least from an electrical and software standpoint that this type of printing should be fairly simple. Where is the cost justification for these devices?</comment>