Terence Tao's Raw Notes After His Princeton Comprehensive Exams (1999) - <AUTHOR> https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence <comment><USER2> I guess it has been reposted because of his latest blog post. The source that sparked it is really interesting :

[https://www.ams.org/about- us/LivingProof.pdf#%5B%7B%22num%22...](https://www.ams.org/about- us/LivingProof.pdf#%5B%7B%22num%22%3A351%2C%22gen%22%3A0%7D%2C%7B%22name%22%3A%22FitH%22%7D%2C648%5D)

<comment><USER3> To boost this, I do recommend checking out Living Proof, the book linked above, if you're interested in the mathematical life. Today's mathematicians discuss their challenges, successes, life, art, attitudes, etc. Especially if you're a student, check this out! You'll find some story that resonates with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This caught my attention:

"""

Then they asked how Dirichlet got an explicit formula for this when \chi was a real character. I was going to write a messy (but finite) expression involving sines and logs, but then I realized that they were talking about the class number formula. (I said carelessly though that "this was a disgusting way to do it", since I was still thinking about the sine-log formulas. Then they made a comment that "This would put thousands of people out of work", or something like that.)

"""

Can someone explain the comment made by the examiners?

> "This would put thousands of people out of work".

Thanks!

<comment><USER5> I read this as a joking reference to the fact that class field theory is an important area of contemporary mathematics, which presumably employs many people (though perhaps not literally thousands).

I'd be curious to know if anyone reads it differently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My Mum attended one maths course at university (as a mature age student) with Tao, and I distinctly remember her coming home and complaining about some 'smart-arse kid who wouldn't stop challenging the lecturer'. I guess it can be tough being very smart and capable and also young at the same time.

<comment><USER7> Whats the relation of someone complaining and tough in this context ?

<comment><USER8> It's tough to be smart, young, and capable. Because people will call you smart arse and not like you.

<comment><USER7> If you are smart then you are smart enough to ignore that.

<comment><USER9> If this were true, many many smart people would have much less anxiety and self-doubt.

<comment><USER10> A lesson which many highly intelligent persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are incorrigibly very different from themselves in thought, action, and desire. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve. The highly intelligent child must learn to suffer fools gladly--not sneeringly, not angrily, not despairingly, not weepingly--but _gladly_ , if personal development is to proceed successfully in the world as it is. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others less gifted leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy, which are the ruin of potential leaders.

As a form of failure to suffer fools gladly, negativism may develop. The foolish teacher who hates to be corrected by a child is unsuited to these children. Too many children of IQ 170 are being taught by teachers of IQ 120. Into this important matter of the _selection of the teacher_ we cannot enter, except to illustrate the difficulty from recent conversation with a ten-year- old boy of IQ 165. This boy was referred to us as a school problem: "Not interested in the school work. Very impudent. A liar." The following is a fragment of conversation with this boy:

       What seems to be your *main* problem in school?

       Several of them.

       Name *one*.

       Well, I will name the teachers. Oh, boy! It is bad enough when
       the *pupils* make mistakes, but when the *teachers* make
       mistakes, oh, boy!

       Mention a few mistakes the teachers made.

       For instance I was sitting in 5A and the teacher was teaching
       5B. She was telling those children that the Germans discovered
       printing, that Gutenberg was the first discoverer of it, mind
       you. After a few minutes I couldn't stand it. I am not supposed
       to recite in that class, you see, but I got up. I said, "No; the
       Chinese *invented*, not discovered, printing, before the time
       of Gutenberg--while the Germans were still barbarians."

       Then the teacher said, "Sit down. You are entirely too fresh."
       Later on she gave me a raking-over before the whole class. Oh,
       boy! What teaching!

It seemed to me that one should begin at once in this case the lesson about suffering fools gladly. So I said, "Ned, that teacher is foolish, but one of the very first things to learn in the world is to suffer fools _gladly_. The child was so filled with resentment that he heard only the word "suffer."

"Yes, that's it. That's what _I_ say! Make 'em suffer. Roll a rock on 'em."

I quote this to suggest how negativistic rebels may seize on the wrong idea. Before we finished the conversation Ned was straightened out on the subject of who was to do the suffering. He agreed to do it himself.

I will cite another conversation, this time with a nine-year-old, of IQ 183.

       What seems to be the *main* trouble with you at school?

       The teacher can't pronounce.

       Can't pronounce *what*?

       Oh, lots of things. The teacher said "Magdalen College"--at
       Oxford, you know. I said, "In England they call it Môdlin
       College." The teacher wrote a note home to say I am rude and
       disorderly. She does not like me.

\-- Leta Hollingworth, "Children Above 180 IQ Stanford-Binet"

<comment><USER11> This serves as a pretty good example of why "smart" kids (or adults) can be annoying. Useless pedantry is not an enjoyable thing for most people. Yes, the Chinese had printing, but it was done by hand. Movable type (which, yes the Chinese also had) plus the mechanical press (which they did not) is what allowed printed material to flourish and change the course of history.

It's like saying "James Watt invented the steam engine" and the kid in the back chiming in with "Well actually, the Romans had an Aeolipile". Sure, they did, and no one cares.

<comment><USER12> The real problem is that the teachers ought to know what you just said, but they don't. So instead of teaching the smart kid -- and the rest of the class -- about the advantages of the mechanical press, they call him a smart-ass.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The most impressive thing about really smart people, to me, is how much they actually write down! I feel like writing is an underappreciated thinking tool. I should start doing it more.

<comment><USER14> "Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man", said Mr. Knowledge is Power, "And, therefore, if a man writes little, he had needed have a great memory; if he confers little, he had need of a ready wit; and if he read little, he had need of much cunning to seem to know that he knoweth not"

<comment><USER13> Is this a quote from something?

<comment><USER15> Francis Bacon: [http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/best/BaconJohnson.pdf](http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/best/BaconJohnson.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is part of the Princeton math department Graduate Students' Guide to Generals: [https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/](https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/)

There you can see similar notes made by other students; the standard is really high. E.g. here are notes by Manjul Bhargava: [https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/bhargava_manjul](https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/bhargava_manjul)

<comment><USER17> I can only comment on the first two subjects in the second link, but they look like standard graduate level coursework questions. The standard here and the standard of special topics questions Terrance Tao was asked seem quite different.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks like the year is not correct.

The text has clearly been written right after Terence Tao sat the exam, and given that he received his Ph.D. in 1996, most likely the notes are from 1993 or 1994.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I found it in a comment that said "20 years ago", but wasn't sure if that was an estimate or exact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> A thread from 2011: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031)

<comment><USER20> In that thread someone says that Tao created his own lecture notes for a linear algebra course he was doing[1]. But that page is marked as coming from "2002", which would make him 27. But surely Tao didn't first take linear algebra at 27?? Can anyone make sense of this for me?

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2772019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2772019)

<comment><USER21> He was probably teaching the linear algebra course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't know much pure math. If I pretend I had never heard of Tao, then I would have completely believed these notes if they had ended with "And that's how I failed my comprehensive exam," instead of, "After this, they decided to pass me."

It's funny to me that just going by the tone (without having any domain knowledge), it's hard to tell how well he was doing.

<comment><USER23> For what it's worth, I'm nowhere near as bright as Terence (which puts me in copious company, of course) but notes of my comprehensive exams would have looked kind of similar in tone if not content.

Having given oral exams as well - often you are trying to find the boundary where certainty breaks down to "on the fly" thinking for the candidate. You can get a pretty accurate view of how well someone knows the material quite quickly this way, but you certainly have to account for "nerves" also. I remember being asked a question and just having no idea how to answer it - another examiner jumped in with a `different' question which I answered, then the 1st came back with "can you show how that is equivalent to what I asked" and it took me two seconds to realize they were basically the same question. That stuff can really throw you off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> A friend from my Caltech undergrad did his PhD with Terence Tao. In harmonic analysis :-)

<comment><USER25> Any stories?

<comment><USER24> Not a great one, but perhaps one useful to aspiring mathematicians! My friend, who is now an assistant prof at a major research university, said he could only do ~4 hrs of hard mathematical thinking per day. His colleagues and undergrad advisors all experienced the "four hour threshold." However, he said that Terence Tao was able to stay switched on for most of his waking hours, and that he'd structured his life - with nannies and a house close to UCLA - to take advantage of that. I guess the moral of the story is that normal mathematicians can be productive and quite happy with just a few hours of work per day, but that generation defining mathematicians have to put in longer hours :-)

<comment><USER25> I think it's a great one. Thank you for sharing! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> When you have a genius-prodigy guy like this being 'examined' \-- the professors ask him questions, some (many?) he doesn't know the answer to, or perhaps an incomplete answer to, while they (presumably) do know. Is this because they're equally genius as him? or are 'merely' much-better read than him, although maybe not as gifted in whatever other magical ways he is?

<comment><USER27> Reminds me of George Dantzig, who solved two unsolved problems in statistics because he mistook them for homework.

[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math- proble...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-unsolvable-math-problem/)

I wonder how many other breakthroughs have occurred in a 'hard' problem that was thought to be 'easy'.

<comment><USER28> There's an urban legend in the Princeton physics department of professors including questions in exams that they don't know the answer to in hopes that some student might crack it.

Probably happens from time to time.

I never saw it myself since I quickly realized I wouldn't cut it as a physics major there.

<comment><USER29> When I was a math major at U. Chicago, there was at least one professor who did this.

<comment><USER30> The math pirate!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Talk about primes in arithmetic progressions.

Tao would later go in to prove that there are arbitrarily long arithmetic progressions of primes in his most famous work to date, The Green-Tao Theorem.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%E2%80%93Tao_theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green%E2%80%93Tao_theorem)

</comment><comment><USER32> Funny because it recalls an exam that he essentially aced as if it was a great failure.

<comment><USER33> He was also only 16-17 years old at the time, completing an exam for university graduates.

EDIT: This was his second year, so he was 17-18 years old.

Also note this qoute: All in all, I probably only did about two weeks' worth of preparation for the generals, while my fellow classmates had devoted months. Nevertheless, I felt quite confident going into the exam.

<comment><USER34> I remember doing something like this for my comps. I had left one school with a masters, looking for computational physics stuff I was interested in. Found another and an advisor who was interested in this work.

I applied, got in, and started, while working full time. Graduate advisor called me up 2.5 weeks before starting and said "we want you to take the comprehensive exam in 2 weeks."

After much swearing and cursing under my breath, I said "sure".

I was told I had one of the highest scores in the written part. The oral part was just like this ... people asking me questions with vague definitions of various things. The example that sticks out to me was this one.

"Is the atomic radius of an neutral atom a strong function of Z".

Prof got annoyed when I asked them what "strong function" meant in this context; monotonically increasing/decreasing? Something else?

I do remember being asked a few questions I had no idea how to answer, so I basically started from first principles and hashed out approximations/calculations very quickly.

That was 29 years ago for me.

<comment><USER32> lol, what is a "strong function"? It is not the first time I hear physicist use this expression and I have no idea what it means.

<comment><USER35> It's asking whether Z dominates in terms of contribution to the result. AKA "Does knowing Z allow you to estimate the radius to first-order?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Anyone know of a decent documentary on Terence Tao? Not finding much on Youtube.

<comment><USER37> He's a middle aged man. Doing a docu on him today isn't likely a good idea, he's still got a lot of life left to live. Numberphile on YouTube has some good stuff on him though.

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=numberphile+tao](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=numberphile+tao)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Tao is the reason I recently started taking math classes again. I wanted to be able to at least understand some of what he talks about. :-).

</comment><comment><USER39> Is this a type-up of handwritten notes, or did he type them originally?

<comment><USER3> This is part of the Princeton notes on the general exams, just an effort by grad students to support each other by sharing knowledge. It's not just helpful for them -- when I did my exams, I looked up every question they posed in algebraic geometry & my minor topic area and used it as a question bank, despite not going to Princeton :)

[https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/](https://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This teenager's document is a great counter point to Tao's naive claim that he is not a native genius and that anyone can do what he does if they merely study as much as he did growing up.

<comment><USER40> Where does Tao claim that "anyone can do what he does if they merely study as much as he did growing up" ? I find that hard to believe.

Unless you have an actual citation, it's much more plausible to me that he said hard work is important _in addition to_ raw talent.

<comment><USER41> [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one- have-t...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a- genius-to-do-maths/)

Not exactly "anyone can do this," but the first paragraph in the above link:

"The answer is an emphatic NO. In order to make good and useful contributions to mathematics, one does need to work hard, learn one's field well, learn other fields and tools, ask questions, talk to other mathematicians, and think about the "big picture". And yes, a reasonable amount of intelligence, patience, and maturity is also required. But one does not need some sort of magic "genius gene" that spontaneously generates ex nihilo deep insights, unexpected solutions to problems, or other supernatural abilities."

<comment><USER42> Nowhere in there does he claim he is not a native genius. Nor does he say that anyone can do what he does if they merely study as much as he did.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Official White House Response to the Petition "Pardon Edward Snowden" - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/pardon-edward-snowden

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961527](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9961527).</comment>


How to a Geeky Girl's Heart - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2010/02/10-ways-to-a-geeky-girls-heart/

<comment><USER2> This title no verb.

Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110170>

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW (from a geeky girl):

When my ex-husband and I were dating -- and throughout our marriage -- we routinely bought each other bookmarks. They come with all kinds of sayings/patterns, we could spend as little as $1 back then, and we could write stuff on the back of the less expensive (cardboard) ones. For a special occasion, a pricier (metal) one could be picked up. He won my heart in part by writing really, really bad poetry to me when we were teens. I didn't care that he couldn't write poetry. I cared that it came from the heart. Heck, it was probably endearing in part because he kept trying, in spite of how really bad it so consistently was.

He also used to buy me books and often did the tacky/funny thing of reading them before them giving them to me. He bought me an entire set of a book series that my jerk older brother had borrowed and never returned a couple of years earlier. That was one of his finest moments.

(Of course, due to my allergies and life-threatening respiratory problems, I no longer own any books. So this will not be repeated in my future.)</comment>


Show HN: I just made 4sqvision at SuperHappyDevHouse - <AUTHOR> http://4sqvision.jazzychad.com/

<comment><USER2> Interesting concept, but it would be more useful if I could limit it to my city. Without a local context, it is mostly noise and no signal.

An ideal visualisation would be to show the activity as blips on a Google Map.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, working on adding a map now

EDIT: Added map. Not every tweet has coords, but a good portion of them do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What's the vibe right now? SHDH goes til midnight... Should I consider heading down from SF, or will it be petering out by that time?

<comment><USER4> Come down now! Easy parking nearby, or if you're taking transit I can get you a ride home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you summarize the tech you're using to build the site?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure!

Server/Client stuff:

        - One 256MB instance on Rackspace Cloud (spare one I had laying around)
        - Apache webserver
        - PHP to render webpage (largely unnecessary, I don't think there's anything but straight HTML markup anyway)
        - Orbited [1] for browser TCP socket emulation (runs using Python on top of Twisted). This piece handles the communication between browsers and the message broadcast server in the backend.
        - Node.js to create the aforementioned message broadcast server. Each browser subscribes to "channels" and for each new message being sent to that channel the server broadcasts it to each subscriber (browser). I wrote this code for a previous project and just used it as a drop-in piece unmodified.
        - Javascript in the client (browser) to interpret incoming messages from the backend server and render them on the screen and add markers on the map. I left the code unminified, so feel free to explore it.

APIs:

        - Twitter Streaming API [2] using the "filter" stream searching for "4sq" (each tweet contains a link to 4sq.com). I have two PHP processes running to handle this stream. One consumes the stream (using the Phirehose library [3]) and puts each tweet on a SysV message queue to be picked up by the second PHP script. The second script polls on the message queue and then parses and processes each tweet. After preparing the tweet data for the browser, it sends it over a local TCP socket to the Node.js message broadcast server on a "control" socket separate from the listener sockets.
        - Foursquare Image "API" to serve the different badge and mayor images. I basically just reverse engineered the badge-to-image mapping.
        - Google Maps API. I just copied and pasted some code from the v2 API that I had written a few years ago. It still works even though the current version is v3.

[1] <http://orbited.org/>

[2] <http://apiwiki.twitter.com/Streaming-API-Documentation>

[3] <http://code.google.com/p/phirehose/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny watching the stream. Somebody just checked into a Walmart in CO.

</comment><comment><USER6> Keep up the good work! Your apps per unit time rate still astounds me.

</comment><comment><USER7> I like this: <http://fourwhere.com/></comment>


Apple to post its first quarterly revenue decline since 2003 - <AUTHOR> http://recode.net/2016/04/26/apple-earnings-preview-growth-phone/ <comment><USER2> From my perspective as an Apple fan and consumer, when I look at the current iPhone 6S offering and the current Macbook product lines, I feel as though Apple's value proposition is eroding.

It wasn't long ago when I would have considered it silly to purchase last-gen Apple products. Today it doesn't seem silly at all. Although, I am a little sore about the current state of the Macbook product line and I hope that Apple really knocks it out of the park this summer or fall with an updated suite of products, particularly in the realm of a lightweight 13" retina offering.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple is expected to report that March quarter sales declined 10 percent year over year to around $52 billion

</comment><comment><USER4> What's the reason for the iPhone sales shrinking? Cheaper competition has been around for many years.

<comment><USER5> No new markets, coupled with lack of upgrades.

If you have a 5, there's no compelling need to buy a 6x because from a user pov it's just more of the same.

Under Cook, Apple has iterated on faster/thinner/bigger/smaller/blingier, and there's been no significant original thinking.

The execution is great, in a slightly wobbly way, but what's being executed has become formulaic, mundane, and unexciting.

<comment><USER6> > "Under Cook, Apple has iterated on faster/thinner/bigger/smaller/blingier, > and there's been no significant original thinking."

This is lazy thinking, based on Jobs being an 'innovator' and Cook being focused on refinement. What exactly makes the iPad more innovative than, let's say, the Apple Watch?

<comment><USER4> Turns out nothing, but somehow Jobs was able to convince you that by not owning an iPad you were missing out on something big.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do we know the impact of the new iPhone pricing models where people pay Apple a monthly installment? Is it just a wash? At first glance, it seemed like this was increasing Apple's take.

<comment><USER8> It doesn't change the amount of money Apple gets. The carriers still were buying the phones from them at wholesale or full price, and just subsidizing the upfront cost of the phone by selling it at $199 to the customer but baking in the rest of the phone into their monthly voice/text/data plans.

<comment><USER9> I don't think OP is referring to getting the phone from your carrier, they're referring to the 'iPhone Upgrade Program' where you pay Apple a monthly installment and get a new phone every year: [http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade- program](http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program)

<comment><USER10> It's financed through Citizen Bank, so odds are Apple is being paid in full (or at least most of it) up front.

<comment><USER7> Whichever it is, wondering if it's improved (or not) economics to Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They'll likely put a lot of emphasis on their services number(s), which is growing substantially.

</comment><comment><USER12> if you think the 5% drop market cap in Google and MS last week was big you ain't seen nothing yet. Everyone's getting a haircut.

<comment><USER12> Stock down 7% in after hours trading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> what goes up must come down at some point..

<comment><USER14> Maybe Elon Musk can establish civilization on Mars before Apple can sell an iPhone to every man woman and child on Earth.

The annoying thing is all the pundits predicting Apple doom for the last 9* years will all be saying "I told you so!".

* Make that 19# years

# Actually, make that 32 years

<comment><USER4> So about as long as people have predicted an Apple television ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: friend is being sexually harassed over SMS. How to identify the sender? - <AUTHOR> This morning the inappropriate messages started arriving from a 619 area code phone number.
The number isn't callable. The harasser types in fluent English. They know her first name. They used it. There hasn't been anything to indicate they know her last name.
I'd like to understand what's technically possible with respect to phone number metadata. <comment> BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn The po-po should be able to trace it for you. Keep the phone and the texts as evidence.</comment>


Politicians and Pundits Make Some Noise About Patent Reform - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202509677556

<comment><USER2> _"Right now, Congress can send me a bill that would make it easier for entrepreneurs to patent a new product or idea—because we can't give innovators in other countries a big leg up when it comes to opening new businesses and creating new jobs."_

 _Sigh_. He's going in _completely_ the wrong direction. If anything patents (at least software ones) should be _harder_ to get, not easier. Obama seems clueless about this, but I don't really blame him for not realizing this. He's probably just bending his ear to the wrong people/lobbyists.

And what's with that nonsense about innovators in other countries. What does that have to do with the US patent system? Is he saying people are not building start-ups right now because they can't get patents? If anything they can't hire enough people because they have to spend them on "patent infringement lawsuits", and some of them are even leaving the country to start their businesses there, because of these lawsuits. Making it easier and faster for patent trolls to get patents will only make this worse. Obama actually sounds like he's reciting someone else's line here.

<comment><USER3> I think the patent system should be sped up a lot -- but only for the process of _denying_ patents. We certainly don't need to ease and accelerate the process of _granting_ them. These idiots who think that speeding up patent grants will create jobs are completely out of touch. If anything, making it faster and easier to get patents will eliminate jobs by increasing the hostility of many industries (especially software) to actual innovators by putting more power in the hands of the largest, most stagnant firms in the business.

> "Obama seems clueless about this, but I don't really blame him for not > realizing this. . . . Obama actually sounds like he's reciting someone > else's line here."

That sounds like a _great_ reason to blame Obama.

<comment><USER4> Examination in general should be sped up, and that goes for allowing as well as rejecting. It doesn't do anybody any good for a real technological innovation to languish on an examiner's desk for four years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The bottom line is, you're not going to get legal reform out of a bunch of lawyers (i.e. Congress, and in this case, the President).</comment>


"Significantly Hotter" - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2013/11/13/significantly-hotter <comment><USER2> I'm "not a Mac guy" but I bought both the new iPad Air and the new 15" MBP (upgrading from an iPad2 and a 2011 MBP). I haven't really had a single complaint thus far about either - the iPad is what I hoped it would be, and the MBP runs large Final Cut Pro projects flawlessly and super fast. I can open a large project in under 10 seconds now, where it would take 1-4 minutes on my 2011 MBP.</comment>


DIY 360 degree realtime outdoor LIDAR - <AUTHOR> http://grauonline.de/wordpress/?page_id=1233 <comment><USER2> I have NO idea what your videos are trying to tel me. You have a serious need for someone who knows how to communicate.</comment>


Josh Harris: "Pseudo was a fake company." - <AUTHOR> http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/26/josh-harris-pseudo-w.html

<comment><USER2> Man, that's a strange article. In the process of burning through 25M, Pseudo managed to work hard to produce a lot of content-- it seems pretty disingenuous to 8-years later to call it a "fake company" and a "work of performance art." What appears more like performance art is the letter, which somehow tries to pin this all on Jayson Blair and his corporate masters. Weird.

Does anybody with more background on this care to elucidate?

</comment><comment><USER3> I was there, part of the Pseudo team, and I can say that it was just one idea from being wildly successful - user generated content. We had done some amazing things with early streaming as one of the first realaudio sites. As with most ideas, the idea of user generated content was there but broadband lines were not what they are today - so the user content focus was chat - which we now know is not enough. I think Pseudo was doing some genuine innovating in streaming, high traffic sites, crawlers and intense live video (some shows were 7 hours long!). But in the end we only hear about the successes and the silent evidence of the failures usually goes unnoticed. I think Pseudo was what MTV would have been had it been 5 years too early in trying to go on the air.</comment>


Is lock-free logging safe? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jstorimer.com/blogs/workingwithcode/7982047-is-lock-free-logging-safe

<comment><USER2> hi jesse, Functional programming provides another way. This is rough POC code thrown together and can be made a bit more intuitive.

<https://github.com/dustingetz/monadic-logging-play></comment>


Pandas 0.4 (Python data analysis library) released - <AUTHOR> http://pandas.sourceforge.net

<comment><USER2> This looks really well done.

I wonder what the motivation is to do this when R is so mature (especially in the availability of specialized packages), and available through RPy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's an article I wrote about some of my motivations on the Python side of things: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2790762>

The bigger picture reason "why not R" is that R is not very suitable for building production systems. I started building this library while working for AQR, a quant hedge fund, and needed to have statistical computing building blocks integrated with a much larger system. R is a mediocre programming language and has very weak general purpose libraries. But amazingly good data visualization and mature statistics libraries indeed. Using R as a black box (e.g. via RPy, Rcpp, or RJava) is a good idea in theory, but recovering from and dealing with errors/exceptions with real world data is a very thorny problem. Plus maintaining a big pile of R code is kind of a nightmare (believe me, been there, done that!).

<comment><USER3> On a related note, I've said _exactly_ the same thing about Matlab to people before. It (Matlab) is good for getting the algorithms and calculations correct, but as a programming language, it's pretty terrible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Claiming "DataFrame" to be two-dimensional almost caused me to discount the entire project. On the contrary, it seems like they are actually multi- dimensional (since they are essentially OLAP relations) and you should advertise them as such. That they can be viewed as two-dimensional tables is incidental.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thinking of DataFrame as a 2D structure just aids mental visualization. With hierarchical indexing they can be arbitrarily highly-dimensional so maybe I should sell it a bit more like that. In an OLAP setting the "sparse" format may often be better than the "dense" (truly N-D) format.

It would be an interesting avenue to pursue building a "big data" on-disk OLAP engine with pandas-like semantics (e.g. expressing groupby operations with the same syntax but operating on big data on disk or across a cluster of computation nodes).

<comment><USER4> No, they are multidimensional even without hierarchical indexing. e.g.:

x y z value 0 0 0 32 0 0 1 64 0 1 0 23 0 1 1 3.14 1 0 0 4.3 etc.

This is essentially a 3D cube of data, no hierarchical indexing involved. The benefit of hierarchical indexing is that you can wrap your spatial dimensions into a single real dimension for e.g. code abstraction.

I have actually been developing a similar library for OCaml (even with hierarchical indexing). It is good to see our libraries share many of the same ideas! I wonder though, have you considered GPU acceleration? AFAIK neither Matlab nor R do this natively yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can also catch wesm talk about the pandas package at AOL HQ in New York this Wednesday. I'll be there, ready to find an alternative to R.

[http://www.meetup.com/nyhackr/events/28880161/?hidePromoBar=...](http://www.meetup.com/nyhackr/events/28880161/?hidePromoBar=true)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks for your work on this, it looks great. I'd love to use python end-to- end. Any plans to support some parallelism?</comment>


Create Google Deep Dream-style images in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://dreamscopeapp.com

<comment><USER2> It's good to make such things easily accessible, but would be nice if you linked/credited Google with the implementation behind this project.

You should also make it clear that processed images are publicly visible (if, indeed, they are).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure the owners of the site know I posted it here. I'm not an owner. You should let them know directly if you feel strongly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For those wanting to create Deep Dream images without the setup hassle, I had a good experience using the Docker image from [https://github.com/ryankennedyio/deep-dream- generator](https://github.com/ryankennedyio/deep-dream-generator)

Gives you the IPython notebook so you can install different training sets, try different parameters, etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> I want to use a different training set. That is the hard part.

<comment><USER5> Right -- I've had enough dogs and eyeballs.

<comment><USER6> This is the list. [http://image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/2014/browse- synsets](http://image-net.org/challenges/LSVRC/2014/browse-synsets)

You can see it had a load of dog specific image sets added to it (Synsets new in ILSVRC2012). What I don't know is whether it's possible to remove all the dog images and remain with the more varied image sets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It is so amazingly disturbing

[https://dreamscopeapp.com/i/ZTBsNTKfTv](https://dreamscopeapp.com/i/ZTBsNTKfTv)

</comment><comment><USER8> Ha, self transforming machine elves filter! DMT fascinates me, and that is indeed the vibe I get from these images.

</comment><comment><USER9> Another easy way to play with this is the DeepDreamer mac app ([http://realmacsoftware.com/deepdreamer/](http://realmacsoftware.com/deepdreamer/)), although it has some size limitations unless you purchase it ($15).

</comment><comment><USER10> Here are 4 other such services - the first one is particularly nice.

[http://dreamingwith.us/](http://dreamingwith.us/) [http://dreamdeeply.com/](http://dreamdeeply.com/) [http://psychic-vr- lab.com/deepdream/](http://psychic-vr-lab.com/deepdream/) [http://deepdream.pictures/](http://deepdream.pictures/)</comment>


What do we need to get on Ruby 1.9? - <AUTHOR> http://yehudakatz.com/2009/07/17/what-do-we-need-to-get-on-ruby-1-9/ <comment><USER2> I wont even start trying to upgrade without ruby-debug. AFAIK, the only way to debug is by using print statements. I used to do that back in 1995 and its just too painful for me to consider. In my book a language isn't prime-time unless I can set a breakpoint and see what's going on.

I'm thinking about using JRuby instead though. It has comparable speed (considering its a 1.8) to 1.9 but has debugging capabilities.

</comment><comment><USER3> It will take a long slow slog while early-adopters get the gem ecosystem to the point cost/benefit equation hits a tipping point. The tipping point will involve hosting provider support and having more things in the ecosystem working than not.

<comment><USER4> I call Markov bot on this contributor. That is six metaphors pureed together in one sentence, which may be a new HN record.

<comment><USER3> If you can point to more than one metaphor in my previous comment, I'll be a monkey's uncle.

I stand by what I said. Calling my comment the product of a markov bot is cute in a reddit sort of way, but I wish that people would comment on the content, rather than the delivery.

I acknowledge that, regardless of whether they are the most succinct way to an express an idea, I may fail the occasional Turing test if I use too many buzzwords in one place.

<comment><USER5> "Long slow slog" and "hits a tipping point", to name two.

<comment><USER3> Slog means to "work hard and steadily." That phrase uses alliteration, not metaphor.

<http://mw1.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/slog>

<comment><USER6> "the moan of doves in immemorial elms and murmuring of innumerable bees" "the fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free" That's alliteration. 'long slow slog' is "misremembered the cliche 'long hard slog'".

<comment><USER3> This user joined HN and signed in to post their one and only comment ever on a thread that was already 10 days old? Shill much?

<comment><USER6> Constantly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ruby 1.9 is great, we need to get support from existing gems to make the Rails people switch. A lot of stuff doesn't work with 1.9.

</comment><comment><USER8> I simply don't trust ruby-core to produce software with decent operational characteristics. I'd rather use JRuby.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1.8 is good enough, nothing compelling to switch

</comment><comment><USER10> Add 0.1 already to make it 2.0

People like big increments, new versions, cool stuff to play with. It is all about marketing.

Like HTML 5, it's new and fun. It wouldn't be the same if it was HTML 4.1.5

Firefox should have been 4.0 instead of 3.5, it has more punch. Next version would be 5.0 and so on. But they missed it. Now we have Safari 4, Opera 10, Chrome 2.

Small increments are always associated with bug fixes.

Stop coding and start marketing.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention, when I got into Ruby, 1.9 was seen as a developer only release, then suddenly it got upgraded to "stable" and was meant for everyone.

<comment><USER12> The upgrade wasn't sudden, and happened over 2 years ago. It's about time that this...I don't know if I should call it a rumor or what...stop being repeated. Like many, many software projects, Matz realized that his ambitions for Ruby 2.0 were just a little too grandiose, and so he set 1.9 as the "now" upgrade and 2.0 as the future.

Essentially what it breaks down to is that there was a lot of work on making the VM faster (i.e. switching to YARV) and at the same time there was work on some pretty severely back-compat-breaking changes. It became clear that the performance improvements were needed sooner rather than later, and this needed to happen in a way that didn't break backwards compatibility (1.9 really is not _that_ different from 1.8 in the grand scheme of things).

Another thing to keep in mind is that, when this decision (that 1.9 should be a "sooner rather than later" performance release) was made, the alternative implementations were not as viable as they are today. I suspect that if JRuby from today was transported back in time to 2 years ago, Matz might have said "Use JRuby while I work on 2.0"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > What do we need to get on Ruby 1.9?

Significant whitespace.</comment>


NTLM Hash Leaks: Ancient Microsoft Design Flaw - <AUTHOR> https://dylankatz.com/NTLM-Hashes-Microsoft%27s-Ancient-Design-Flaw/ <comment><USER2> NTLM was deprecated in 1999, when Windows 2000 came out. You have been supposed to use krb5 since then, and disabled the NTLM. Why is anything about NTLM still news? You have to specifically enable it on newest Windows platforms, because afaik it has been disabled by default for some 5+ years now.

<comment><USER3> > You have to specifically enable it on newest Windows platforms, because > afaik it has been disabled by default for some 5+ years now.

No you don't have to specifically enable it, it's still enabled (by default).

Completely disabling NTLM on a network would be a large project and not even Microsoft recommend that because the security gains are relatively small.

(See microsoft.com/pth for their comprehensive credential security guidance)

<comment><USER4> By default, Kerberos will fail back to NTLM when:

* Authenticating against a pre-NT 4.0 server * Accessing a domain resource via IP * Accessing a resource on a non-domain member * Accessing a resource on a computer that does not support Kerberos (Windows 3.11, Windows 95, etc.)

It's trivial to force this downgrade on most domains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I get the feeling that the author doesn't actually have much experience with production enterprise networks (where this issue occurs and is relevant).

It really isn't as simple as just flipping a switch and disabling NTLM:

> Microsoft made it very clear that they strongly recommended against > disabling NTLM due to incompatibility issues. Instead, they created a system > called NTLM Blocking, which requires users to edit their Windows security > policies, track event logs, and whitelist applications that need access. > This system, while effective if used correctly, is very complicated for > normal users to configure and difficult to understand.

It _is_ a complicated affair to fully get your network into 100% Kerberos mode. It will require prior auditing and fixing unless you want to suddenly break things in production (because this configuration is binary).

As a sysadmin myself, I can confidently say that most IT people (I really would say the majority) do not fully understand the authentication mechanisms on an AD network and how authentication happens in the background because Microsoft has actually succeeded in making it very transparent (except when things really break).

Many times Kerberos is not configured correctly in which case thanks to the NTLM fallback things still work and people will be none the wiser (which can be a bad thing precisely because people don't realize it). If you were to suddenly just disable that NTLM altogether, many things will suddenly just stop working.

Kerberos requires manual configuration in many cases (Service Principal Names) and its reliance on working DNS is absolute.

Some examples:

1) Need to connect to a system via IP address for whatever reason? Too bad, without NTLM it's impossible.

2) re: above, what if someone configured a connection string (database connection etc.) somewhere with an IP address? It won't be using Kerberos. Disable NTLM and the connection will just stop working.

3) Want to connect to a laptop that moves around often? Your dynamic DNS entries better be up to date. If the DNS name leads to a different device, you will get an authentication failure regardless of access because you're trying to authenticate with a Kerberos ticket for the wrong machine. See 1.

4) Set up a DNS CNAME (or anything that's not the server's actual hostname where configuration is mostly automatic)? Did you remember to add a Kerberos Service Principal Name for that name in AD? If not, you won't be using Kerberos with those names.

5) Set up a server service (SQL, IIS, etc.)? Is it running under the computer identity or a domain user account? That identity will need the proper Service Principal Name. Did you add one? If not, it won't be using Kerberos. Disable NTLM and the service will simply stop working.

6) Need to connect to a machine not on the domain? Need to connect to a machine on another domain with which you don't have an AD trust in place? You won't be using Kerberos.

To summarize, simply disabling NTLM willy-nilly on an enterprise network is going to be an RGE (resumé generating event).

</comment><comment><USER5> >However, even when this attack is blocked over the internet, it is very rarely blocked over LAN, meaning it could be used as a method of pivoting within networks.

That's frightening, and I wonder if there are any exploits in the wild which do just that?

<comment><USER6> Most exploits don't actually need to be all that crafty. They just ask someone to click a link and run some javascript. Could someone use this to pivot in a network? Yes. Almost every large enterprise has bigger problems than this. People need to be looking at the new model that they came up with for Windows 10 and Azure AD join if they want to stay on Windows clients. The traditional domain model makes the potential impact of breach far too widespread. Windows Server AD should be used as a server management technology with resources being in resource domains that are just big enough to manage things that are related as a unit. Everybody and everything in the same domain is an antipattern now a days because of credential theft techniques. Most places don't have the expertise to maintain AD. It's too complicated and the loss of a single domain admin cred means that you have to rebuild it if you want to get back to a trustworthy state.

Ehh. It's Friday and I want some cake.

<comment><USER7> Resource forests, if you want actual security boundaries. Domains aren't security boundaries.

Having said that, some good old fashioned network segmentation would be a "win", too. Default deny ACLs should be the norm, and hosts sshould only be able to communicate with hosts they actually need to, full stop. (The reactions I get from developers, however, are typically less than pleasant when they learn that environments I administer have such policies, however.)

<comment><USER6> True dat. I've gotten where I use forest and domain interchangeably even thought what you say is true. I only advise people build single forest single domains these days. Complex forest topologies are also a bad thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> ntlm is still used every day in WiFi authentication. PEAP authentication is MS-CHAP over TLS over EAP. And the only way for non-MS products to authenticate to Active Directory is via Samba and ntlm.

Things would arguably be _more secure_ if MS allowed for AD to export the password hashes to other systems. Querying for an NT hash via LDAP over TLS has essentially zero security problems. (Other than the NT hash itself)

<comment><USER9> Not sure what you mean about non-MS things using AD. sssd-ad is a fine client and uses kerberos, not NTLM.

<comment><USER8> You can take a clear-text password and authenticate it to AD via kerberos.

If you have MS-CHAP data, you can't convert it to something which will be accepted by kerberos. You MUST send it to AD as MS-CHAP data (i.e. ntlm), and then AD returns "pass / fail"</comment></comment></comment>


Remarks to Software Forum Dinner Meeting (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://www.klhess.com/sef_spch.html <comment><USER2> I'm genuinely surprised at when this was written. Without the year in the title, I would have easy guessed 2010 or later:

> 1.2X improvement doesn't even get your customer to raise his head from what > he's doing. A 2-3X improvement may get them to look you in the eye. 10X > improvements cause people to reach for their wallet.

> What can a startup do better than a larger organization? Create and build > products. A startup can do this with more elegance and originality and with > greater speed. The act of creation is what generates value.

These seem to be the advice-du-jour in the valley today, but seeing them given 20 years ago lends it a lot more credence.

<comment><USER3> The AutoDesk Files are even older, and more extensive regarding building a company in Silicon Valley: [https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html](https://www.fourmilab.ch/autofile/www/autofile.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > If you aren't the world expert, you're just kidding yourself about your > chances for success.

Do you all agree with this one?

<comment><USER5> You might be kidding yourself even if you _are_ the world expert. If you're doing something that's never been done before, even the most knowledgeable people can miss things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The modesty in here is refreshing.</comment>


What the boss looks like determines how he performs - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10559771

<comment><USER2> Very cool study.

One more thing to fuel the AI-assisted investing strategies for all of us. Mechanical Turk, here I come.

You all do have AI-assisted investing strategies, right?

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's the other way around...

The performance of the boss determines what he looks like.</comment>


A couple of python scripts to help you move your photos from Facebook to Google+ - <AUTHOR>

Warning: really really really this is for programmers only. If you don't know what you're doing, this probably won't work for you at all.
This stuff is mostly provided as a reference, and honestly is provided as an encouragement to google to enable CSV imports on picasa.
GOOGLE! Please please please enable CSV imports on picasa. That, or enable authsub uploads. That would be lovely, thank you.
So there are two scripts here. The first is here:
http://thingist.com/photo_libre/export-photos.cgi
(Source: http://thingist.com/export-photos.txt )
If you use the source, there are some basic instructions in the file. Comment here if you need help, it's pretty straightforward (you'll need a webserver, though).
The second file is here:
http://thingist.com/upload_to_picasa.txt
this one is a bit...wonkier. Use at your own risk. I've used it. It works, but it's very much a hack. Instructions contained within.
How to use this stuff:
1) Export your facebook photos to CSV using the first script.
2) Place the resultant file in the same directory as the second script.
3) Edit the second script to reflect your g+ credentials.
4) Run the second script, watch the output for errors.
4.1) If the second script fails for some reason, you'll want to delete the albums it created before you try it again (or else you'll end up with duplicate photos). You can do that from http://picasaweb.google.com
5) Please please please google!! LISTEN!!! Allow CSV imports into picasa! That would make this much much easier!
I think that's it... <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links:

Script to export to CSV: <http://thingist.com/photo_libre/export-photos.cgi>

(Source of that script: <http://thingist.com/export-photos.txt> )

Script to upload to picasa: <http://thingist.com/upload_to_picasa.txt></comment>


Paul Graham's near-death experience - <AUTHOR> http://valleywag.com/tech/acquisitions/paul-grahams-near+death-experience-295574.php

<comment><USER2> The fact that Viaweb happened to be at the mercy of its investors at that moment hardly meant it was worthless. In fact it generated lots of revenue for Yahoo. I believe roughly the same amount as Broadcast.com, which cost 100x as much.

<comment><USER3> This comment made me think "wouldn't it be weird if PG owned a basketball team?"

<comment><USER2> If I had that much money, I'd never buy a sports team. I'd found a town. That's the luxury I dream about. Probably just as well I can't have it though; it would be a huge time sink.

<comment><USER3> It's also funny to think that everyone has a dream about "what if I had some plateau of wealth higher than the one I occupy now"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like how they have to add "a rich sum for the time." It's like "You kids out there getting $50M Series C's, understand that $50M was a lot of money back then!"

</comment><comment><USER5> _"We suspect Paul Graham will not be very popular in Sunnyvale today."_

What's that even mean? Who is "we"? This post is sensationalist to the max.

<comment><AUTHOR> They mean Yahoo!.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, that's a post with zero substance. I can't possibly vote this up.

Out of all the great stuff in Paul's last essay to comment on, this is the best they could do?

</comment><comment><USER7> I think they're posting from Burning Man, so I would blame this nonsensical post on the drugs.

<comment><USER8> Right, when the giant man was burned early it was found that it was really put together with marijuana plants. Hence the entire population at the event were confused why they had the munchies so bad and wrote only 'quicky' articles between snacks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the dumbest posts I've ever seen on valleywag.

<comment><USER10> Considering the competition, that's quite a statement.</comment></comment>


Project Chess: How U.S. Snoops On Your Skype - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/06/20/project-chess-how-u-s-snoops-on-your-skype/

<comment><USER2> Am I the only one seeing the background check of urls on IMs a good thing ? Those fake https fishing sites spread by a skype worm could really harm people. Granted that they could do it like in chrome safe browsing feature without sending the actual url but a hash of it.

<comment><USER3> It's a positive thing from an anti-phishing and anti-spam perspective.

It's a negative thing from a surveillance perspective. Any government with at least some jurisdiction over Microsoft can request this information under their legal processes.

As you point out, there are ways to get the positive aspects while diminishing the negative. Hopefully MS will evolve the implementation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I must have missed the "how" part.

And how is the HTTPS link crawling even related?

<comment><USER5> The how is replacing ... volunteered ^_^ 3rd party supernodes with company provided ones. There were indeed good business reasons to do this as the Skype item Forbes linked to says, but it also obviously gives Skype complete control.

<comment><USER6> The supernodes are an orthogonal issue. If Skype is end-to-end secure then the location of the supernodes doesn't matter. And if Skype is not end-to-end secure (e.g. imagine if their CA issues MITM certs) then having supernodes in US university dorm rooms doesn't help you either.

BTW, if anybody wants a refresher, here's what Skype _says_ their architecture is: [http://www.skype.com/en/security/#encryption](http://www.skype.com/en/security/#encryption) [http://download.skype.com/share/security/2005-031%20security...](http://download.skype.com/share/security/2005-031%20security%20evaluation.pdf) It could have changed since 2005, although I've heard that really old versions of Skype can still connect to the network.

<comment><USER7> You're confusing "provable security" with "effective privacy", and they aren't the same thing.

Having uncontrolled supernodes certainly does "help you", as it means Skype can't see the traffic without some other exploit to get it. Verbal communication is normally "insecure" and subject to eavesdropping, but if I have the conversation on a boat in the ocean I can be relatively certain that no one else is going to hear it.

<comment><USER8> I considered verbal communication as the most secure! I'm curious what would be considered more secure. The only method more secure that I can think of is sign language, but that doesn't translate electronically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Use XMPP/Jingle with ZRTP. Why would anyone trust Skype to begin with?

<comment><USER10> Or Jitsi:

[https://jitsi.org](https://jitsi.org)

I figure P2P encrypted WebRTC calls should work soon, too.

<comment><USER9> Jitsi does use Jingle with ZRTP :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It was a sad day when Skype was bought by eBay. Prior to that, the CEO was asked what he was going to do about the new U.S. law requiring provision for wiretapping. He said "we're not a U.S. company, why would I care?"

</comment><comment><USER12> Skype under Microsoft really infused itself with MS spirit.

\- you cannot turn off Skype updates. Please try. For longer than 2 week, Skype will update itself anyways and will keep telling you "would you like to update". Totally deceiving. Turning Skype updates don't help. They are done through Windows 7 updates. Turning those does not help either LOL.

\- on the top of those forces updates, each time (at least on Windows 7), you have to re-do the following: - delete "echo / test account", re-do your notifications, re-do sound settings, re-do all confirmations (delete contact, close skype, accept file, etc).

\- I beg someone to give me a genuine, smoothly working alternative with ios app. Honestly at this point, security comes second as long as I can avoid Microsoft.

<comment><USER13> [http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/skype_portable](http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/skype_portable)

There you go, no need to mess around with auto updates :)

<comment><USER14> Do they have an archive of previous versions? Due to annoying incompatibilities between recent versions (6.0+) of Skype and skype4pidgin[1], I've been considering switching back to 5.0.

[1] [http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/](http://code.google.com/p/skype4pidgin/)

<comment><USER13> I think with portable it still connects to the Skype site to download the required files at initial setup.

You could install from: [http://www.oldversion.com/windows/skype/](http://www.oldversion.com/windows/skype/)

<comment><USER14> Ah, alright. I'm familiar with OldVersion and that was how I was originally anticipating installing it, so I guess that's what I'll do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Suddenly FaceTime voice seems like a killer product.

<comment><USER16> Apple are signed up for PRISM.

<comment><USER15> But they have stated that FaceTime uses end-to-end encryption and they can't decrypt the content. PRISM can only access data that the companies actually have.

This is why Google and Facebook are so dangerous - they are deliberately creating detailed profiles of each person's behavior.

<comment><USER17> The truth: Nobody knows [1] [2] [3].

[1] - [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/apples_imessa...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/apples_imessage.html)

[2] - [https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130405/01485922590/dea-a...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130405/01485922590/dea- accused-leaking-misleading-info-falsely-implying-that-it-cant-read-apple- imessages.shtml)

[3] - [http://www.zdnet.com/u-s-government-cant-intercept- imessage-...](http://www.zdnet.com/u-s-government-cant-intercept-imessage-but- it-can-still-serve-apple-a-search-warrant-7000013533/)

<comment><USER15> The truth is, Apple has made a clear statement that they _can 't_ intercept the contents.

That's more than anyone else has said about their products. Saying 'nobody knows' is pure FUD. It's equivalent to saying nobody knows whether Google pipes all their data direct to the NSA even though they've denied it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nintendo's WiiU: Touchscreen, coming 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/06/touch-screen-controller-wiiu-unveiled-coming-in-2012.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29

<comment><USER2> While we've never had a full-color screen in our hands with a console, we have had _displays_ in our hands before, with the Dreamcast. I would consider it a bit of a warning that the Dreamcast's promises of how the display would be useful almost entirely failed to pan out. I think the core problem is that on average, you're not going to split your attention between two screens, if for no other reason than physically acquiring a screen with your eyes is a significant fraction of a second. The fraction of a second spent changing screens better have a really good payoff.

For every use case given for the auxiliary screen, I'd ask, could it have been done on the Dreamcast (even if not quite as well), and if so, why didn't it work there and why will it work on the WiiU? Merely saying "now it's in color" really isn't good enough, I think.

I can generate hypothetical uses as much as the next guy ("call plays in sports games!" "multiplayer shooters!" "rear-view windows!"), but once I tone down the excitement (easy after years of practice) and really think about the pragmatic issues of trying to use this auxiliary screen, I'm not actually coming up with many situations in which the auxiliary screen is the _best solution_ , which is the real criterion to measure uses of it by, as opposed to _a_ solution. Play calling works, but that's an awfully elaborate screen for such a use case. Rear-view displays don't work at all. Locally multiplayer shooters are OK, but what will the main screen be doing?

An example in the current generation: Light gun games are best with motion controllers (haven't tried Move but assume it will be at least as good as the Wii), because that game style really uses the controls, a two-dimensional high-speed directional input system that can harness muscle memory; with only a little practice I can flick reliably from one side of the screen to another and it isn't long before there is no longer any barrier between where I am thinking the reticle should be, and where my muscles are putting it. I have never had such fun with this genre as I have on the Wii. Motion controls are not merely _a_ solution, but are the _best_ solution, beating out even "badly- calibrated arcade gun without on-screen reticle". Whereas "wiggle the stick to attack" is not an argument in favor of motion controls, because while it is _a_ solution, it is not the _best_ solution, and the Wii's reputation has suffered from the number of games that have tacked this on so they can claim "motion control". Motion control as a whole has had a big problem with being a solution instead of the best solution. Given the price of the screen here, both in dollars and in controller comfort, I don't see it being the best solution to enough problems to make it worth it.

(Opinion calibration: I was actually up on the Wii, precisely because motion control really did open a lot of things up, and I consider it still underused. Unfortunately, sophisticated uses rapidly become very complicated AI problems to try to figure out what it is you actually meant. I'm also at least modestly up on the 3DS' long term potential, but it's going to take probably 2 full game generations before the developers themselves get over seeing it as a gimmick and start "truly" developing for it. I don't consider myself a reflexive naysayer. I really do think this isn't very likely to turn out to be useful for games, though. But I could be wrong; this could be the iPad of the space. Who knows.)

<comment><USER3> It works fine in the DS. Status and maps generally go on the other screen, which prevents the "pause, go to menu, look for something, resume what you were doing" flow. You just glance up.

The Zelda mock-up seems like a clear win to me: the controller has the full item menu, and you could just tap the items you want to equip. Yeah, there would be a context switch to look at and manipulate the screen on the controller, but the same is true for using a pause-based menu. The difference here is that the main screen remains unchanged. I think that incurs less of a cognitive context switch.

<comment><USER4> The DS screens are roughly the same distance from your eyes, though, so switching between them doesn't require refocusing, which is both tiring and slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's an extension of the Nintendo DS formula. Except the top screen is the TV and the bottom screen is embedded in the controller. The controller's cost will be a huge factor. It could be as much as $100 ... or more.

Nintendo just needs to make a phone. A Nintendo DS with a cellular antenna that's free after carrier rebates. How could that not work? Every kid would get it. A lot of adults, too. If you really wanted an iPhone or Android, you could just buy a normal Nintendo DS. There's so much opportunity there, it's baffling. Even if all it did was play Mario and have the same features as a flip phone it would sell.

<comment><USER6> If the Wii U supported more than 1 new controller at a time the cost would be a huge factor. I don't think it does. If it did I believe they would've mentioned it at the conference. Instead they showed a picture of a controller/screen and 4 wiimotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Nintendo didn't disdain indie developers so much, this would be a much more exciting announcement. This kind of innovative thinking is wasted on the mega corporations who hardly take advantage of it.

<comment><USER8> If Apple puts out an SDK for the Apple TV in September, things could get exciting pretty fast.

<comment><USER9> Isn't WWDC where most SDKs get announced?

<comment><USER10> Usually. Apple hasn't talked about iOS 5's impact on the AppleTV, other than a mention that the iCloud photostream would be accessible from there as well.

The previous gen AppleTV is still running the equivalent of MacOS X 10.4, so hopefully the new one won't get the same neglect.

I'm thinking that at most they'd work with other large content providers (Hulu, etc. in addition to Netflix), or will push Airplay + other devices as solutions on the AppleTV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As a non-console gamer is really amazes me how complex it has gotten. There's gotta be at least 4 different controllers that will work on the WiiU? How do you decide which one to use? Are some games unplayable without the right controller? The Xbox and Playstation seem to be even more complicated with add-ons like the Kinect and a controller with tons of buttons/combos to memorize. It's really daunting to me at this point. I don't think I could pickup a console/game and have any fun at all. I would have to figure out which accessories to buy first and probably sit down and read the manual (do games still come with manuals) before I could even attempt to play. The complexity doesn't seem to be hurting the industry yet but it makes me wonder how far they can push it before it just becomes completely inaccessible to normal people.

</comment><comment><USER12> It's crazy. They found a problem, and solved it in a novel way. This makes having a console possible in my single tv house.

Too bad this won't be out for Christmas or I'd be getting one this year.

</comment><comment><USER13> I kept thinking about the iPad as I watched the video. Nintendo sees opportunity in freeing users from the TV, Apple sees opportunity in freeing users from desktops.

Nintendo, being a game company, keeps the console as the focus, and has the controller as the accessory.

Apple, a device company, has the smarts in the controller, and AppleTV is the accessory.

</comment><comment><USER14> WiiU announcement video from E3 2011: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniBUtc4Uws>

<comment><USER15> FWIW Quite a lot of the game footage was from XBox 360 + PS3 games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm interested in how much they will charge for the WiiU controller. The Wii had controller-itis with the wiimote + nunchuck + motion plus. At least the WiiU will re-use the Wii's controllers.

Also, how does the 3DS fit in the equation? If the WiiU controller works for standalone gaming, it could compete against the 3DS.

<comment><USER17> From the article (referring to the controller):

"Please understand that it was not designed to be a portable video game machine," Nintendo President Saturo Iwata explained.

Looks like it won't compete against the 3DS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Can't say i'm impressed by Nintendo's offering. It's like they've spent the last 5 years resting on their laurels, then in the last few months before E3 they slap something together with every possible feature you can have in a single controller, and upgraded the hardware to handle HD graphics.

The console itself is fairly decent for it's size, it would be interesting to see whether long-term hardware issues will arise out of shrinking down such high-performance components. All of the tech demos seem very smoke-and-mirrors at this stage; when the Wii was revealed there were real demos with playable games that people could pick up and enjoy. Overall the hardware feels current- gen, and with MS and Sony already planning their next consoles, it won't be long until Nintendo is again at the back of the hardware rankings. No media playback seems like a bit of an oversight; it uses a proprietary disk format, and there is no mention of media playback, except Youtube integration. Seems it will follow the same path as the Wii did with DVD/media playback.

The controller seems strange; you can use it in several different ways, but it seems to be optimized to a tablet-type usage scenario. The placement of the shoulder buttons seems very awkward with the size and shape of the controller. As i said, it just looks like they've tried to incorporate everything including the kitchen sink at the last minute, with no _real_ use-cases or target applications.

In the end the biggest disappointment for me is that Nintendo hasn't addressed the areas it admitted it failed with the Wii. Not so long ago they said they knew they had failed to engage developers on the same level as MS and Sony, and they had failed to create a healthy online ecosystem. Their announcements at E3 haven't addressed either of these failures, so I can only assume that they are still working on a solution, or they are going to continue with the same strategies that they have used in the past.

<comment><USER19> Whilst I agree with you, can you really blame Nintendo for continue to do what they're doing?

By just releasing low cost hardware and iterating the same franchises, they are making a killing without having to barely anything. As long as people are willing to open up their wallets, there's no reason to change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks like the most uncomfortable thing in the world to hold. It looks expensive, gimmicky, and prone to breaking.

By the time they launch this, Microsoft will be announcing new firmware for Kinect with even more extreme fidelity than they have now, and Sony will start hyping their next console.

Add to that the lackluster sales of the (gimmicky, low battery life) 3DS, and I'd say Nintendo just jumped on the fail whale.

<comment><USER21> "This looks like the most uncomfortable thing in the world to hold"

Most of Nintendo's previous controllers have been quite comfortable and ergonomic compared to their competitors.

That said, the WiiU does look kinda awkward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've owned several Nintendo platforms (N64, Wii, DS) now, and every one has been starved for compelling titles. Indeed, the best titles (imo) have been the same damn things with minor variations over and over. This seems to work for Nintendo, but it's hard to get excited about a new gimmicky hardware platform which will have the same titles slightly changed.

It is funny to see Nintendo appearing to go back to conventional controls having lured Microsoft and Sony into the gimmick gesture control tarpit.

</comment><comment><USER23> All that hardware and I worry about the weight. The ipad is tiring to hold up in your hands long term, if that thing has any sort of battery life, it would be fairly tiring to hold up too.

<comment><USER24> I thought that, but then this will presumably be all plastic, like current Wii/DS hardware. If so it'd be significantly lighter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> ok so someone explain this to me. this device negates the need for a Wii? or is an extension for the wii? so are they updating the graphics on the wii? Sorry I'm slightly confused by this (and i've been gaming for 20 years+)

How does this connect to a tv?

<comment><USER26> You are taking the wireless controller for the console, the console looks like that [http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=21727778#p21727...](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?p=21727778#p21727778) and connects to the tv with a cable.

<comment><USER25> ah thank you! no one was showing the console in the pics. thus confusing me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The Iwata Asks interview for Wii U has been posted. Some interesting insights into the thought process that went into it.

<http://e3.nintendo.com/iwataasks/>

</comment><comment><USER28> Any idea if it's backward-compatible with the Wii?

<comment><USER29> Yes, it's fully backwards compatible

<comment><USER10> No word on gamecube backwards compatibility like the Wii had.

<comment><USER30> Wii's hardware is nearly literally the GameCube's hardware with extra video memory, so odds are high that backwards compatibility would continue.

<comment><USER4> They've only mentioned 12cm discs so far, and no word on GC controller ports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> When is the next Zelda coming out btw?

</comment><comment><USER32> I watched it live. Once the controller was confirmed I immediately thought about a feature Microsoft did in Vista called SideShow.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_SideShow></comment>


IOS developer responds to Android Chief about Google OS being open - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/#!/joehewitt/status/27876055599 <comment><USER2> That's one of the things that I don't like about twitter: Anything that otherwise might turn into a reasonable debate gets cut down to size, until it's basically a much less funny version of Monkey Island quip duels.

(I remember when "proper journalists" used to say that about blog posts. Now I wonder whether there'll be a time when we look back upon twitter as witty discourse…)

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually, Joe Hewitt is rather publically no longer an iOS developer: [http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of- fac...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks- massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/)

</comment><comment><USER4> It just doesn't fit Joe Hewitt's definition of open. Regardless I think it would be beneficial to google to at least work with Joe to get him to contribute to Android.</comment>


Australia's record-breaking winter beats average highs by 2C - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/sep/19/australias-record-breaking-winter-beats-average-highs-by-2c-climate-council-says <comment><USER2> It really has been a frightenly strange winter here in Australia. I remember the first two months of winter here on the east coast feeling like spring, with almost no rain.

Pretty unnerving to be honest!</comment>


Wolfram Alpha Easter Eggs - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/wolfram-easter-eggs/

<comment><USER2> kind of sad really that they have hard coded all these kind of silly 'questions' - I showed it to a friend today, he asked it about the photographer Robert Frank and it did a name frequency comparison. n-grams are your friend Mr Wolfram.

</comment><comment><USER3> 10 more: <http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/better-wolfram-easter-eggs/>

"Are you self-aware?" is a pretty good one.

</comment><comment><USER4> Q: how much wood could a woodchuck chuck?

(WA) A: a woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www63.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=SHA1+collision> only comes up with the SHA1 digest of "1 collision", except that I can't re-produce the digest it gives: 260b ad88 a9bf 718b e7ac 56ab 10db 8368 2e04 3f5e

<comment><USER6> I could. Is your filesize 11? Maybe your editor added a newline character.

        C:\>ls -l blah2.txt
        -rwx</comment></comment><comment>+ 1 shrughes ???????? 11 May 18 06:39 blah2.txt
        C:\>cat blah2.txt
        1 collision
        C:\>openssl dgst -sha1 blah2.txt
        SHA1(../blah2.txt)= 260bad88a9bf718be7ac56ab10db83682e043f5e

<comment><USER5> Thanks. That's odd. Maybe I kept glancing back at the decimal one they give first. I even ended up doing stuff like

        for n in '' -n; do for a in '' ' '; do for b in '' ' '; do echo $n "${a}ABC$b" | sha1sum; done; done; done

to try and get the output they give for <http://www63.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=SHA+ABC> and thought I hadn't managed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For some reason, though, 'who was Ozymandias?' goes unanswered.

<comment><USER8> From my experience trying to get various Asian fonts working under it, I believe he invented Latex.</comment></comment>


Polyglot on the JVM with Graal - <AUTHOR> https://www.infoq.com/presentations/polyglot-jvm-graal <comment><AUTHOR> Between roughly 43:40 and 46:20: Q: When will it be available? A: Soon, very soon. Very close to have something usable. Not another five years more like months.

<comment><USER2> The preview download, [http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oracle-labs/program- langua...](http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oracle-labs/program- languages/downloads/index.html)</comment></comment>


Oscilloscope - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tlb.org/oscilloscope <comment><USER2> This trend is really depressing me. Most of the time it's cheaper to buy new stuff than to actually repair it.

This weekend I was trying to repair some bike's wheel, some spokes (4) were broken and needed to be changed, I called the bike shop and the guy told me he doesn't keep a stock of spare parts anymore. That he would have to order them by a box of 100 for me. If I let him repair the wheel (having only minor damages) it would cost me more than to buy a new one.

<comment><USER3> That's just not normal, a lot of shops would actually prefer to repair the wheel if they have a larger profit margin on labor than parts. Check some more bike shops, I'm sure you'll find one that'll do it for a reasonable price.

Alternatively, you could learn to do it yourself, though you do need a truing stand. If you live in a large metro area, there are places like LA's Bike Kitchen, where expensive tools like truing stands are available free for use (donations highly encouraged), and volunteers will tell you how to fix it yourself.

<comment><USER4> > Alternatively, you could learn to do it yourself, though you do need a > truing stand.

It is a useful skill to learn, and instructions are available online. You don't even need a truing stand, just leave the wheel in the frame and use the brake blocks as a guide. It's not ideal, but it's workable, and the price is right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've noticed that after being zapped like this, a lot of electronics manufactured in the last decade often just need to sit unplugged and self- discharge for a while. Real frustrating when you uncable it, fill out the paperwork, throw it on the cart, and take it down to maintenance, only to find that in a week when they get around to dealing with it shit starts working on its own.

Real common with power supplies that just don't work after an abrupt building power outage, but I've had it happen with protection circuits on ethernet and firewire ports too (though it took a lot longer).

<comment><USER6> In case of sensitive HF inputs (eg. oscilloscope inputs) there is not much you can do about protecting them from overvoltage without significantly harming sensitivity or bandwith. In most cases such things are designed such that something relatively cheap blows up and can be easily replaced. But that something is usually input amplifier itself (overvoltage protection diodes that are fast enought tend to be more expensive and will also burn out so they are not used). It is worth to note that input amplifier transistors are cheap compared to whole scope, not compared to anything you would call cheap.

But miniaturization (and also precision requirements) tend to make replacing such things extremely labor intensive, so it might be more cost effective to simply throw the whole thing away.

<comment><USER7> This seems like the type of thing you would have some sort of replacable card for. Assuming it's a fairly common problem.

<comment><USER6> Many components of oscilloscope have to be physically close (because of delays, signal loss and interference) to input (ie. on same card) and in case of small 2-channel scope it can easily be third of whole scope (and more than third of price). Larger scopes tend to have replaceable cards for inputs, but such scopes are too large (and of course expensive) for most applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I didn't just get my arduinoscope working (<http://code.google.com/p/arduinoscope/>), I'd probably ask where your trash dumpster is located and I'd be there on 3/23 :-)

<comment><USER9> Neat. I'm pretty happy with my ultra-cheap Owon (<http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSSA002.htm>). For some more money you could have a Rigol, which I hear are very good (they make the low-end Agilent scopes).

Having a digital storage scope is a huge advantage in certain situations and I'm happy to have a cheap DSS rather than a higher quality used analog scope. Also, I wrote some software to do spectrum analysis on the PC, something that you couldn't do with an old analog scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I still have my childhood oscilloscope. Its only 25Mhz but its all analog and dual trace (Phillips PM3214). When I run into something particularly vexing, I still get it out even though I have a 100Mhz DSS now.

Call it a sentimental "security blanket" thing, but it seems like I can _feel_ circuits on that little analog screen.

I've also definitely felt the pain of weird high frequency transients blowing motor controller components. They tend to be high voltage as well. Fortunately I haven't lost any expensive gear yet! Good luck TLB, your bots are awesome.

</comment><comment><USER11> tlb, your site is blocked by the Chinese firewall. What did you do to deserve that?

<comment><USER12> I think I'm happy about that. Block away, dear leaders.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Comic Sans in an image.

Bold, I like it.

<comment><USER14> It _is_ a comic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One who throws away a $2000 item without even bothering to pull the back cover off and look for something obvious like an inline fuse with a Schottky-diode clamp has already wasted far more than that on their EE education.

Must be nice to have more money than brains. Most of us don't have enough of either.

<comment><USER16> Generosity, consideration and pragmatism, meet holier than thou, jealousy and chip-on-shoulder judgement. Welcome to the Internet.

<comment><USER15> (Shrug) No, welcome to "Hacker News." Supposedly, people here are hackers.

The fellow throwing away the scope is generous, certainly, but other than that, he appears to be the antithesis of a hacker.

<comment><USER17> This is Trevor Blackwell we're talking about. Perhaps you should be careful before casting aspersions. <http://tlb.org/> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Blackwell>

Ad-hominem attacks are not the kind of thing Hacker News is about. Please keep that in mind.

<comment><USER15> I really don't care what he built by duct-taping motors to PC-104 boards from the back of Nuts-n-Volts. If he throws away scopes and iPhones he's not someone who impresses me as a Hardware Guy.

Edit: keep in mind that his cartoon is mostly a bunch of whining about how he _can't_ do this and _can't_ do that because of how modern electronic equipment is made. Meanwhile, a friend in Portugal just used his homebrew wire-bonding machine to repair an 18 GHz YIG-tuned oscillator for me. (He failed this time, which is damned rare for him, but he sure didn't balk at trying.)

I do respect his generosity, though -- hopefully, some talented kid's going to get a nice present out of it. I try to help out in the same spirit when I can, because I benefited from similar generosity as a newbie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> doc-film silly question, but why cant someone who knows how to use a scope simply repair it? Off topic i had a bit of fun the other day fixing a HP pavilion laptop which has a design fault (look on ebay) and all it cost me was some copper pipe and heat sink compound.

<comment><USER18> You need a scope to repair the scope...</comment></comment>


Open-source AI tool quickly isolates the vocals in any song - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/5/20949338/vocal-isolation-ai-machine-learning-deezer-spleeter-automated-open-source-tensorflow <comment><USER2> I'd thought about this kind of process:

Take a stereo image, and subtract left from right to make a mask. It'll essentially be the sound from anything that wasn't centered (usually main vocals and a few other things that are centered). Then use that resulting file as a mask for both the right and left again, which will isolate the middle, leaving just the vocals and some artifacts from other centered audio.

One of these (the left or the right channel) is likely to be cleaner than the other, depending on how/where the stereo stuff was mixed. Listen or analyze them to determine if one is better than the other, and then continue working on that one.

With the better of the two resulting "center" tracks, use this AI tool to clean up any remaining artifacts that don't belong there.

In a way, it's a hybrid analog/digital method of vocal extraction, but it would probably produce a lot cleaner of a vocal track.

And of course if you wanted a good stereo backing track to sing Karaoke over, you can use that clean vocal extraction as a mask for both the original right and left channels, which in theory would produce a better karaoke file than the original centered-audio elimination.

I think this would in essence be a modified/improved version of Dolby 3-Stereo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Discussion of the project, 175 comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21431071)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> original deezer PR post (didn't get much attention here): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21456673](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21456673)

spleeter project: [https://github.com/deezer/spleeter](https://github.com/deezer/spleeter)</comment>


A hash table re-hash - <AUTHOR> https://hpjansson.org/blag/2018/07/24/a-hash-table-re-hash/ <comment><USER2> Cached version : [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://hpjansson.org/blag/2018/07/24/a-hash- table-re-hash/)

*updated link

<comment><USER3> Does that work for you? I get a 404, and the same if I click through to cached from search results.

<comment><USER2> I've updated the link.

<comment><USER3> Still 404 for me, but so is Google's cached link - really weird. If anyone else has the same, it's on archive.org too: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180730114747/https://hpjansson...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180730114747/https://hpjansson.org/blag/2018/07/24/a-hash- table-re-hash/)

<comment><USER4> Just in case: My web server kind of went out in a blaze of glory earlier today when the link popped up here. It's a small linode, but I made some adjustments (mysqld, how does it work?), so it should be less bad now. Sorry about that!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Evolutionary entrepreneur drug proposed - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3448105/Evolutionary-entrepreneur-drug-proposed.htmlf

<comment><USER2> Try the url without an 'f' at the end: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3448105/Evol...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/3448105/Evolutionary- entrepreneur-drug-proposed.html)</comment>


Healthcare.gov rollout worse than thought - only 100 enroll in first 2 days - <AUTHOR> http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/06/documents-show-first-days-of-obamacare-rollout-worse-than-initially-realized/

<comment><USER2> Based on this report from the insurance company side [http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2013/11/the- obamac...](http://healthpolicyandmarket.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-obamacare- rolloutweek-five.html) I'd guess that to date, 35 days in, the total is only a few thousand. Which is fortunate, because the insurers still have to confirm each enrollment, the report says some progress has been made in improving the quality of the 834 EDI transactions sent to insurers but they're still some distance from being trustworthy, " _[...] the progress so far is incremental and nowhere near enough to be able to go to high volume processing._ " (Fixing this is the #1 priority according to the new fix-it czar.)</comment>


Larry Hench left the World a better place than he found it - <AUTHOR> http://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/larry-hench-inventor-of-bioglass-and-childrens-author-dies-at-age-77 <comment><AUTHOR> For all you wanna be world changing entrepreneurs, if you are not doing it him, you are doing it wrong.</comment>