Forget PowerPoint: 13 Online Presentation Apps - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2008/02/16/forget-powerpoint-online-presentations/

<comment><USER2> The problems with all online presentation apps is reliability.

When I go somewhere to do a presentation I have it on my laptop, on a USB stick and uploaded on the net somewhere. All professionals take similar care knowing that something will always not work right.

With online apps you rely on an Internet connection, and have no back-up plan.

It is simply too risky for professional use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Prezentit.com (our webapp) let you download your presentation as an HTML file so you just need a browser to present it.

<comment><USER2> I just checked out your app, and think it's pretty cool. You have some great features (text and images can be moved around, opacity, etc.) and the interface for creating new presentations is pretty slick.

I know that I'm being pedantic, but it is still not good enough. Having done quite a few presentations I know how important looks are. And even though your app lets me view my presentation in full screen it still doesn't fill out the entire screen real estate. This is a showstopper for me. And most likely will be for anyone using presentation software professionally.

Maybe you should consider a small app that will show HTML in fullscreen that users can download and use when presenting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback mixmax, I know our app is not perfect, and we're thinking what to do to improve it.

Thanks again.

Germán

<comment><USER2> No worries, but as I said I'm probably a really demanding customer, and I think that overall your app looks really great. Besides nothing is ever perfect.

Just get it out there and go for it :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What Ruined Hanna-Barbera? [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWgcizAgxOs <comment><USER2> tl;dw but I'm gonna guess it comes down to "they sure did shit out a lot of cheap, terrible cartoons for a decade". I mean seriously Joe and Bill won an Oscar or two for their lovingly-animated Tom & Jerry shorts at MGM but once the theatrical shorts market dried up they started making stuff with the fewest drawings humanly possible, that rested largely on voice work. "Illustrated radio" is a term that animation nerds throw around for the vast majority of their output.

Then Turner bought them I think, then WB bought Turner, and IIRC just kinda merged them into Cartoon Network because having two studios in the same city is kind of a waste or resources. Also the whole rise of sending work overseas to Asia where your dollar buys an order of more magnitude more pencil mileage; animation was at the forefront of hollowing out the American industry by substituting cheaper labor across the globe.

Or at least that's what I recall from growing up in the seventies and being in the animation industry in the nineties/00s.

People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill during the time they dominated Saturday Morning have fond memories of their characters but that stuff really does not age well. It maybe ages slightly better than most Filmation work. Slightly.

<comment><USER3> > People who were kids with no taste and a lot of time to fill

Very true. I grew up in Germany, but we got most of the cartoons that were popular in the US (plus some Japanese stuff) as well, dubbed.

One particular situation from the late 80s or early 90s that I remember was when the channel that showed the Smurfs, which I liked, was somehow repeating the same episode over and over again. Maybe there was an error at the station (I wouldn't be too surprised if nobody paid that close attention to the children's programming), or maybe I just happened to catch all the reruns in strange coincidence. It's hard to remember the specifics.

But what I do remember well is that I watched that episode, one that I actually did not like to begin with, over and over again, disliking it more and more each time. When the episode started playing and I realized that it was _that_ episode _again_ within the first few seconds, I got so disheartened and disappointed. And then I continued watching it.

Nowadays, that's a pretty funny, if not somewhat bizarre, memory. As an adult, there is no way I would force myself through any show's episode that I don't like anyway repeatedly, why did I "have to" as a child? Similarly, I remember a few entire cartoons that I was not particularly fond off, or sometimes actively disliked, and I still watched those, too, "because that's what was on TV right now".

Apparently, realizing that I had agency over how I spend my own entertainment time was something I had to learn better growing up.

<comment><USER4> For me I dunno if it's more agency or just more difficult to stay entertained. I used to play world of Warcraft for ten hours marathons on summer break. Same for counter strike, half life deathmatch... Hell even single player games like ocarina of Time would take me months to get through because chopping down all the signs in the beginner area, leaving, coming back, and doing it all over again would be enough "game" for me.

Now I barely touch games... Can do about an hour and a half of tv or movie max (barring good 2h+ films). Multiplayer games I can do maybe an hour or two a couple days a week, more if we're in the same room.

I mean I watched Alladin every day for a good few months once. I'm typing this out because I got distracted from Netflix just now. Something's different about me, I wonder if it's true for others?

<comment><USER5> Maybe you're just more demanding nowadays.

<comment><USER3> That's definitely the case for me. After a long break in playing games where I thought games are just not for me anymore, I rediscovered that I actually still like spending lots of time with them. It just has to be the right games, and those differ from the games I enjoyed when I was young (the sets are dissimilar, but not entirely disjunct).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would anybody be able to provide a summary? I find the narrator's intonation unbearably forced and unnatural, such that I don't feel like listening to it non-stop for 21 minutes. Scorn me, berate me, and downvote me if you will; but to my mind, poor narration in long-form video essays is no different to printing academic journals entirely in Zapfino.

<comment><USER7> The video doesn't actually live to its title, as there's an important link missing, but here's what I got:

They did very well for a long time, but then the 80s arrived. Suddenly there were better shows (Transformers, GI Joe) during the entire week rather than just weekends, and they lost a lot of market. They later went to Cartoon Network and created some new classics (Powerpuff Girls and co), but for some reason (not explained) that wasn't enough.

<comment><USER8> Mostly they no longer were the near monopoly and CN was not aired as widely. It is harder to sell a whole station then a few shows. WB tended to sell separately their own only. (E.g. Bugs, Daffy, Looney Tunes)

HB ones were exclusives.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> When the coffin containing the remains of the studio was being taken to its grave, it was carried by the same rocks and trees, over and over and over.

<comment><USER10> You could tell which grave they were planning to use because it was the one that was drawn, not part of the painted background.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The what, as far as I understand the video was 80s toy tie-in cartoons such as Heman, GI Joe and transformers that ushered in a new style of animation and a new way of financing them, ultimately leading to HB dropping in value and getting purchased.

What the video doesn't touch on is:

Who are these studios animating them? According to the video, the entire tv animation market was more or less HB. How could these studio rise out of seemingly nowhere and produce high(er) quality animation?

Why wasn't HB part of these tie-ins? According to the video, they owned the market. Aren't they the obvious choice to ask to produce, when you want a cartoon about your new toy?

Why didn't HB pivot towards more action animation in the 80s, when going up against TMNT and Dino riders?

<comment><USER12> "high(er) quality animation"

Are you talking about the merchandise tie ins? They weren't higher quality, certainly not on the 80s. Most of them seem to be Japanese and have that Anime thing of getting away with animating as little as humanly possible.

<comment><USER11> Yes, I am talking about the merchandise tie-ins and I am claiming they are of higher animation quality than yogi bear, judging mostly from the clips used in the documentary, as I try not to use my warped childhood memory as a reference.

<comment><USER12> Thundercats or He Man made extensive use of slow pans, and still inner monologues and still face offs etc. And transformers was even worse.

The only thing that sticks out in HB cartoons is every character does the moonwalk everywhere. But they actually added to detail so you had a frame of reference to tell they were doing that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A someone who was heavily consuming cartoons over the relevant period, I find it remarkable that there was no mention of either WB/Looney Toons or the growth of Japanese animation. Makes me suspicious of his conclusions.

<comment><USER6> I'm generally suspicious of anybody making long-form video essays on YouTube about such subjects. Unless they were in the industry, I tend to believe I'm merely having a Wikipedia article and perhaps a few interviews, taken from blogs or perhaps online magazines, regurgitated to me.

That's what Did You Know Gaming seems to be, for instance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> tl;dw: they got lazy at the end of the 70s and started copying their own hits over and over, putting out the same type of shows. Toy companies got involved and created their own toons, with a superior quality, and they were done after that. Cable also hit, and they couldn't keep up with the demand, so also lost additional market share.

</comment><comment><USER15> Also to see: plenty of reasons why 'Saturday Morning Cartoons' was killed.

Hanna-Barbera were my favorite animators, hands down. I could watch their toons any day and I would not get bored.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wasn't Hanna-Barbera the guys who made the _Brady Bunch Kids_ and other sit- com spin-offs? =[

As a kid I never noticed how commercial it all really was.

After reading some of the history you can see they've all been doing the exact same tried and true things since forever.

Merchandising, spin-offs, episodes written around new album releases, copy- cats of successful shows (e.g. _Bewitched_ and _I Dream of Jeannie_ ), etc.

So you end up with minimal janky animation, Disney child actors, and 1/2 hour toy commercials.

<comment><USER17> Sturgeon's Law isn't a new thing. The key has always been to find the best stuff. I think that's easier than ever.

I have to agree that virtually nothing Hanna Barbara has done has stood the test of time. Despite being so politically incorrect a lot of it has been buried, I can think of a few Looney Tunes that are still pretty good (Bugs Bunny conducting the orchestra is quite popular, I'm also a fan of a particular Bugs Bunny cartoon in which he stays overnight in Dracula's castle), and Disney's stuff is still generally watchable and enjoyable, but I'm sitting here racking my brains and despite having seen some of those shows as a kid, I literally can not relate to you a single episode of any of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I watched this video yesterday evening and this morning this post is at the top of my feed. It is not the first time a specific topic ends up on both pages.

Is YouTube information being sent to Hackernews or is it just coincidence that my YouTube suggestions are in sync with Hackernews posts?

<comment><USER19> When something interesting is trending on [insert popular platform] that this audience finds interesting, of course people are going to submit it here. This site is 100% submissions based.

<comment><USER18> I did not realize or expect a Hanna Barbera video to be tending globally, I had assumed it was a algorithm driven recommendation That lead me to watching it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Their first mistake was making a live-action remake of the Flinstones

<comment><USER21> 100% agreed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > What RUINED Hanna-Barbera?

Not really answered.

They mention other cartoons came in based on merchandise, but don't say why Hanna-Barbera couldn't/didn't compete.

<comment><USER23> It's really just a clickbait title. If you look at his channel, he has an entire series called "What's RUINING/RUINED," all of which is basically him reading Wikipedia while playing cartoon footage.

<comment><USER24> This is a very popular YouTube format and I hate it

<comment><USER25> I finally noticed that "Not Interested" is an option in the YouTube recommendations' qebab menus (vertical ellipsis ⋮) to immediately hide the suggestion, and since discovering that have been very happy to use that on all clickbait titles, including just about every usage of the word RUINED. It might mean that I'm slowly getting better recommendations, but it mostly means that at least for the periods of time that the recommendations are on screen I'm not staring at a bunch of dumb negative words and things that don't interest me.

I'm still close to using a browser extension to disable the recommendations system entirely as useless garbage to me, but at least this one tool helps some.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Novel coronavirus test for Miami man leads to $3,275 bill - <AUTHOR> https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health-care/article240476806.html <comment><USER2> Original shows permission errors currently. Internet Archive:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200225052130/https://www.miami...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200225052130/https://www.miamiherald.com/news/health- care/article240476806.html)

</comment><comment><USER2> Healthcare is not a private concern of individuals. It is a public concern, of the community, and the common weal, at large.

(This is an ... interesting ... reprisal of a statement I'd made long ago before a private healthcare exec. I was inexplicably hired regardless.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I really hope covid-19 does not breakout in the US. Or we'll all get to see the dark side of US healthcare..

<comment><USER4> If a large portion of the population got hit simultaneously with riddiculous bills like this it might set the stage for mass civil disobedience and actual reform. Part of why the status quo has held is because of the isolation and shame of financial hardship from medical bills. Its fundamentally a divide- and-conquer dynamic, where people have almost no collective leverage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Welcome to murica</comment>


HIV flushed out by cancer drug - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/health-33720325

<comment><USER2> It is worth to remember that there is a way to completely cure HIV, but it is very dangerous, requires a very specific bone marrow match, and does not erradicate all subtypes of the virus. Still, it is interesting:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematopoietic_stem_cell_transp...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hematopoietic_stem_cell_transplantation#HIV)

<comment><USER3> > It is worth to remember that there is a way to completely cure HIV

N size on that kind of experiment is VERY limited, so I would be very careful in making such claims.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but the underlying mechanism - the deletion in the CCR5 receptor coding fragment - is a known source of HIV immunity in humans.

The bigger problem here is that bone marrow transplant is by itself more dangerous than an antiretroviral-controlled HIV infection. Not to mention that CCR5 deletions are quite rare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It probably still does not activate 100% of the virus. Some still remains and reactivates later.

<comment><USER5> This is not the problem since you can chase out any remaining virus just by extending the treatment time. The real problem is viral reservoirs that the treatment does not reach (eg behind the blood brain barrier).

Having said this if I was infected with HIV this is exactly what I would be doing (ie treating with drugs that suppressed viral replication while chasing the latent virus out of hiding).

<comment><USER6> I wonder how the blood brain barrier is affected by the recent discovery of the linkage of the lymphatic system and the brain?

<comment><USER5> The lymphatic system is a return (drainage) system. What is more interesting is that it has been recently found that ultrasounds can make the blood brain barrier leaky allowing you to get drugs into the brain that normally are blocked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> bmir-alum-007 It would be interesting if a similar approach might be applied to flush out latent Chickenpox virus (VZV) from people whom experienced active disease because of the massive risk of Shingles' long-lasting, debilitating symptoms later in life.

Interestingly, a similar approach has been tried to flush out the related HSV-1 [http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/02/us-herpes- treatmen...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2008/07/02/us-herpes-treatment- idUSN0229815620080702)

</comment><comment><USER7> I like this "kick and kill" plan. This is the sort of technique that I'm sure I will use to solve a problem in a totally unrelated area some day.

</comment><comment><USER8> Here we go. Curing HIV again.

</comment><comment><USER9> "The team at the UC Davis School of Medicine investigated PEP005 - one of the ingredients in a treatment to prevent cancer in sun-damaged skin."

PEP005 upside down is "SOOd3d".</comment>


Ask HN: Where/how can I find a personal Programming Coach? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a professional designer, but I want the ability to build my own ideas.  I've stopped out of learning Ruby (and Rails) three times now due to frustration, lack of discipline and just not getting beyond parroting the tutorial examples from the books and videos.  I can follow along, but I'm just not grokking it.
I'm making this (learning how to code) a top priority in my life for the next year.  I'm setting aside an hour a night to learn, but I need a coach (and I'm willing to pay market hourly rates for an experienced developer's time).  I'm looking for someone who can spend an hour with me every week night helping me learn how to code, either in person (Pasadena, CA) or over Skype with a screensharing app.
Where/how can I find this person?  firstname.lastname@example.com or 805-404-7732.  Thanks for your help! <comment><USER2> Lack of discipline sounds like you have focus issues. I suggest looking up threads in HN on procrastination. You could also try <http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=startups> Most likely will find some procrastinators ;)

Codecademy does sound like a good idea. If you need to ask questions with such material, you can make a post to forum, mailing lists or even stack overflow depending on where most of the Ruby support is at. Especially if you only commit an hour as responses may take some time.

Personally, I've learnt very well to know what keywords to ask in Google and it returns relevant results so I rarely post for support help.

Keep doing your best.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this also helps, I found it quite useful: [http://495west.com/post/9885249988/the-wrong-question-i- want...](http://495west.com/post/9885249988/the-wrong-question-i-want-to- learn-to-code-what?73331330)

</comment><comment><USER4> Try codecademy.com; they've taken the pain out of learning introductory programming.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I have given that a spin. I follow along, but still struggle with understanding the "why" and really grasping the concepts. I need someone to answer my questions as I'm doing the exercises.

<comment><USER5> Yes. What gets me is that, in my opinion, most people think that learning to code starts with coding.

Really, I think the most difficult aspect of programming is taking the real world process, as you see it in your head, and turning it into an automated process using a programming language and all of the "best known practices" that have come about over some 30 to 40 years.

I suggest you look into Behavior Driven Development (BDD). BDD forces you to look at the why and even forces you to run through the "does it even make sense to make this".

You have the chance to describe the Behavior of your program in something that looks almost like English (you should also use mockups of how you want your program to run using pen/paper or something like balsamiq mockups).

Then, you start writing the minimal amount of code to make the program do what you described using BDD (Gherkin).

This will allow you to focus on learning a few aspects of programming you need to make that one behavior work.

I also wrote a book on programming that focuses on the "why" (I was able to keep the number of lines of code down to like 10 if I recall). If we can exchange emails in some way, I'll let you have a copy. (edit: doh, I just saw you email above so I'll send you a link).

<comment><USER6> Hi Eric, may I please have a copy of your book as well? Like the OP, I too am not a learner that learns just by the act of doing; I need to understand they "why" behind it as well. Would really love it if you could help me out! My email is njstartups (at) gmail (dot) com

Thanks

<comment><USER5> Should be done. Let me know if it helps. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

<comment><USER6> Received it. Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Half Life 2 Episode 2 play statistics - <AUTHOR> http://www.steampowered.com/status/ep2/ep2_stats.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Valve is collecting detailed information about how people play the game, for example where players die on the maps. On this page you can see some statistics.</comment>


Over a third of millennials say they'll pay for Disney's streaming service - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/22/over-a-third-of-millennials-say-theyll-pay-for-disneys-streaming-service-survey-finds/?ncid=rss <comment><USER2> Title is a little misleading - Over a third of the survey participants between 19-29 years old said they'd be willing to pay.</comment>


How to Save Lives in a Covid-19 Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/how-save-lives-covid-19-pandemic <comment><USER2> I've been following MEDCram¹ on YouTube recently. It's a medical channel for students by doctors I believe, but currently it's all about COVID-19 obviously². It often speaks to other medical practitionners.

The quality of information on such a channel (prob. not the only one, just my own serendipity) is outstanding compared to any 'mainstream' media out there — with good reason, it's not sexy to downplay mass hysteria or talk about actual RNA mechanisms with schematics.

Here's my point, using an image: when the boat is leaking, I stick with the guy who built the boat (and help him if that's the right thing to do); while the poets and dramaturges aboard make noise for the sheep, eventually the fish if we only listened to them.

Reality ≠ fiction.

Global information ≠ mainstream news (sad but true, whether medical or financial or else).

[1]: channel: [https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos](https://www.youtube.com/user/MEDCRAMvideos)

[2]: COVID-19 updates: [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ_IRFkDInv- NvRRUN0aq...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQ_IRFkDInv- NvRRUN0aqe51sMs188k8z)

</comment><comment><USER3> What scares me the most about this coronavirus are infected people testing negative multiple days in a row only to test positive later. There are two explanations:

1\. The diagnostic accuracy of the current tests is too low or

2\. Some people do not clear the virus, their symptoms simply resolve, but this leaves open the potential for a flare-up later in life.

Either scenario is bad, and we simply don't have enough information about the virus yet.

Given how little is currently known about the virus, I think drastic steps including quarantining US cities are warranted. So far, only China appears to have implemented a successful quarantine. Hell, the Diamond Princess was a disaster, showing how hard it is to contain the virus. I think as a society we need to accept drastic measures to stop the spread of the virus. This will slow the spread of the virus, buying us time to develop countermeasures like vaccines.

<comment> t-writescode > I think drastic steps including quarantining US cities are warranted

Do you expect whole cities, such as Seattle and San Francisco to be able to survive when people are not allowed to go to work? People such as grocery store workers, restaurant employees, Uber drivers, and so on?

Who will pay their rent?

The United States, at present, is not prepared, at all, for handling a month- long quarantine of any major city. The poor people in that city will suffer, hard, and the fall out will be worse than the 2% death rate in those cities.

<comment><USER4> I think the 2% death rate is only when your healthcare system isn't completely overwhelmed and you have enough mechanical ventilators for the ~20% of cases that need them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reports have just come out that Spain has had its first death from this virus. The really significant news is that this death occurred on February 13th - before any cases were reported in Spain at all. This is very concerning.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-spain- dea...](https://www.reuters.com/article/health-coronavirus-spain-death/spain- confirms-countrys-first-death-from-coronavirus-health-official-idUSL8N2AV2HP)

<comment><USER6> Isn't that the opposite of concerning? It shows that the virus has been in Spain for some time now without noticeable impact.

<comment><USER7> Or there hasn't been enough to notice yet, but they're about to explode with cases and deaths like we keep seeing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is there any sane information on this Covid-19 except alarmism?

<comment><USER9> When does raising an alarm stop being "alarmist"? 5,000 dead? 10,000?

<comment><USER10> 5,000 people die in New York City every month. Well over 10,000 people die from the normal seasonal flu each year in the US alone. Also in car crashes.

<comment><USER9> You didn't answer the question.

<comment><USER10> Then I will repeat myself more bluntly. Any alarm that would trigger on the annual seasonal flu or on merely the standard background death rate is a meaningless alarm and is therefore alarmist, so no, 5,000 to 10,000 deaths does not clear the threshold.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Domain name pa.ge (page) - <AUTHOR>

Hello HNers,
The following information might be interested for startups from the business side of perspective. HN is a best place to spread such information...
The project behind pa.ge domain failed and we decided to sell it.
We really think that domain is rare. It's short, meaningful and could be used wisely in a tech-world.
Any person who'll refer a buyer to us will receive 15-20% commission, depended on a sale price.
We'd love to get feedback from interested persons at the following email to discuss details: contact[at]pa.ge
Thanks for the compromised time. <comment><USER2> Great domain for URL shorteners or similar services. Some startups like Bit.ly might be interested... very cute!</comment>


A Complete Replication of FiveThirtyEight's Bechdel Test Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/brianckeegan/Bechdel/blob/master/Bechdel_test.ipynb

<comment><USER2> I am not going to pretend to have already read all of this, but from skimming/reading down in "The Hook" and on to "Start your kernels" I can see that you have really uncovered a stunning leap of illogic in the article reviewed, and you have certainly done your homework and then some when it comes to writing up what the numbers do or don't actually show.

Bonus points for making an effort to see that we can actually replicate your experimental results!</comment>


Twin: a Textmode WINdow environment - <AUTHOR> http://sourceforge.net/projects/twin/

<comment><USER2> Ah, the nostalgia! :)</comment>


British 15-year-old accessed intel operations by pretending to be head of CIA - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/01/19/british-15-year-old-gained-access-intelligence-operations-afghanistan/ <comment> FLUX-YOU I can't wait for the jokes regarding this at all of the security conferences.</comment>


How I Made My GitHub Pages 100% Faster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@martingalovic/how-i-made-my-github-pages-100-faster-b7241a7795dd <comment><AUTHOR> 100% is just for the catchiness, but it's f-ing faster now ;)</comment>


Blue Origin has hot fired its BE-4 rocket engine for the first time - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/10/blue-origin-has-successfully-tested-its-powerful-be-4-rocket-engine/ <comment><USER2> I'm curious which one will launch first, BFR or New Glenn. My money is on the BFR, so far with 1200 s Raptor engine fire and full size cryo tank they seem to be making progress. It's good to have Blue Origin breathing down SpaceX's neck though, hopefully it will provide them with sustained motivation.

<comment><USER3> Just imagine what things would look like if SpaceX has a serious failure again. It could drop them back six months, and Blue Origin would get that much closer.

Must be a really good motivator for SpaceX.

<comment><USER4> Why would a Falcon 9 failure set the BFR back six months? The teams working the BFR parts are probably not strongly involved and could just continue working.

It would set them back somewhat, but I don't see why it would be that long.

<comment><USER5> They could lose their launch pad again

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Biggest thing to me is the use of fuel here. Liquified natural gas has a lot of benefits. Simpler pressurization system, less soot etc

The future is exciting.

<comment><USER4> One of the price advantages that Blue has over SpaceX is that they will fly with LNG rather then pure methane.

Edit: Will New Glenn also not use a third gas for pressurisation? Like BFR?

<comment><USER7> Wait, I'm confused... LNG is pure methane. Are there rockets that use methane that aren't storing it as a liquid? I would have to guess that any rocket using methane would pressurize it enough to be in liquid form for storage, anyway. Surely they wouldn't use methane in a gas state... It would take up far too much space to be practical.

<comment><USER8> LNG is 85-95% methane, typically, with ethane making up most of the rest. It contains small amounts of propane and butane.

I hadn't known that SpaceX was using a special grade of ~100% liquefied CH4 as nickik says above.

EDIT: shale gas is richer in ethane and higher hydrocarbons than traditional sources of natural gas. Maybe SpaceX is sticking to 100% methane just so they don't have to ponder variability of composition depending on how gas is being extracted.

<comment><USER9> Methane can be synthesized from CO2 and hydrogen. More complex hydrocarbons are way more difficult to produce. So pure methane based engine is a better method for using on other planets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Anyone know the price to low-earth orbit using New Glenn? (perhaps can be inferred from Eutelsat or OneWeb's financial disclosures to regulators?)

With Jeff Bezos selling $1 billion worth of Amazon shares a year to fund Blue Origin, will he choose to sell below cost for significant periods of time to stay competitive with the Falcon 9 and Heavy?

<comment><USER11> It would be interesting to see how the market share affects the profits and how these two companies plan to compete in long term.

If Blue Origin and SpaceX compete in the same segment and divide the market, development and manufacturing costs per launch will increase for both. Assuming each will price the launch price so low that they get roughly 50 percent of the market they would get without the other, both lose half of the volume to the competition.

SpaceX aims for moderate 3% ($55 million) operating profit margin. Bezos has deeper pockets, so if he perceives financial weakness in Musk/SpaceX, he can decide to absorb the losses for a decade and steal launches and drain profits from SpaceX driving it to the ground.

[https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/how-profitable- is-...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/02/05/how-profitable-is-spacex- really.aspx)

<comment><USER12> A 3% profit margin isn't modest, it's catastrophic. With a their heavy capital requirements and massive technology lead they should be banking 30%. 3% says please shut us down first time we have a bad year.

<comment><USER13> However spacex could easily survive off 3% profit for now, as long as they still keep collecting all their used rockets. I only remember them launching one used rocket so far which was successful, and presumably they'll work out any remaining glitches and start using the others.

<comment><USER14> SpaceX has launched 3 boosters a second time. However, they don't expect to start launching them many times until another revision in the hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few frames of the video caught my eye: [https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica...](https://screenshots.firefox.com/eOm06NUSg0CSkb1a/arstechnica.com)

It looks like there's some sort of harmonic wave in the blast. Does anyone have any insights on why the design would result in that?

<comment><USER16> I believe those are Mach/Shock diamonds, which are common in rocket engine exhaust. It wouldn't surprise me if the propellant and the time of the test made them more visible.

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

<comment><USER17> As also seen on page 2 of "Ignition" with page 3 showing some other interesting rocket effects. [http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone know how the specific impulse compares to other engines? I guess the fuel is similar to spacex--better than anything other then hydrogen.

</comment><comment><USER18> How are they planning to reuse the engine? Will they land the first stage like SpaceX? It took SpaceX a lot of attempts to get that right ...

<comment><USER19> That depends on who you mean by "they". BO is planning on landing the whole first stage, like SpaceX. BO has some experience doing stuff in that arena with their New Glenn rocket (there are a number of factors that make the New Glenn landings a lot easier than the Falcon 9 landings, but it's still very useful experience).

The BE-4 will also be used by ULA, on their Vulcan rocket. ULA has talked about detaching the engines from the first stage of the rocket and having them fall under parachutes (to be caught be a helicopter). It remains to be seen if they ever implement that (it kinda feels like a token nod to reuse to get people to stop asking question).

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody knows what's special about this engine besides it being able produces more thrust than SpaceX's Raptor engine?

<comment><USER21> It's a new commercially viable rocket engine (not a pork-barrel jobs program) of a size suitable for serious heavy-lift applications, designed and built in America.

Obviously SpaceX is doing similar things, but Merlin, Raptor, and the BE-4 are all part of a pretty exclusive club. I don't know why SpaceX chose to go with a greater number of smaller engines for their planned heavy lifter; I imagine it might be something to do with the difficulty of building bigger engines scaling non-linearly, and the fact that modern analysis and engineering ought to give us some advantages relative to the last time someone tried to make a really big rocket with a lot of little engines (Soviet N1).

<comment><USER22> That, and it's a lot easier to shut off 90% of your engines and land at 50% thrust than it is to design an engine that will run at 5% thrust.

Oh, and if your engine is small enough, you can also use the same design on your upper stages - otherwise you need to design two engines.

Also, it may be worth pointing out that the current planned thrust for the Raptor is ~1,700kN at sea level, while the BE-4 is ~2,450 kN. They aren't actually that different - it's just BFR is massive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In a few years, amazon may also be dominating the defense industry.

<comment><USER24> If this is claimed only because of the engine then I doubt it -- the defense industry uses solid-fuel rocket engines in almost all cases except large missiles like IBCMs. Although, anyone who manages to mass-produce cheap, reliable, high-performance solid-fuel engines may indeed gain a huge defense market.

<comment><USER25> The US uses solid fuel rockets in ICBMs. Russia uses storable liquids which are highly toxic. We switched after some nasty accidents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Off-Topic: But it's not exactly brain surgery, is it? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THNPmhBl-8I)

<comment><USER27> HN is for very serious discussion, there is no room for humor or irreverence here. And to those seeking enlightening discourse on highly complex technical topics, I say to you . . . it's not exactly brain surgery, is it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I get

        ReferenceError: dc is not defined[Learn More] 23b3059e-eac6-432f-b59a-9202ea32f7cb:33:11

When I click on "Encrypt"</comment>


Responsive Design - <AUTHOR>

Pretty neat showing of responsive design here on rang.com ... Maybe one of the coolest i've seen ever. Log in, then drag your browser window to make it as skinny as possibly. The entire layout transforms into an iPhone-esk responsive design. Pretty neat. rang.com <comment><USER2> You can do the same in 5 minutes with Twitter Bootstrap or Foundation.</comment>


Ask HN: Is 'database' a well-known word for ordinary computer users? - <AUTHOR> In my country I can say that the word 'database' is acceptable for an average computer user to see on the user interface of a software, what's the case in the English world?
This use case is this: I use a sqlite database file for storing a bunch of  files/documents related to a project that a user is working on, currently I use the wording 'project file' to describe that database file, but now I wonder a clearer wording is available - 'project database'. Do you think calling it 'project database' is a better idea?
This is mostly a question for native English speakers. Thanks. <comment><USER2> I think the name doesn't matter as much as you'd think... It making sense isn't nearly as important as your potential users understanding what it does and how useful it is to them.

After all, it's not like "google" screamed "search engine" when they started...</comment>


Why Americans Call Soccer 'Soccer' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/why-we-call-soccer-soccer/372771/

<comment><USER2> It should be noted that Australia is currently transitioning lexicon from _Soccer_ to _Football._ The local governing body, FFA (Football Federation Australia) has stopped using the word, though it still exists in part with our national team, the _Socceroos._</comment>


Foreboding Skies over the SF Bay Area - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Bay-Area-awakes-to-foreboding-smoke-choked-15553731.php#photo-19929829 <comment><USER2> It seems clear that the Western US is going to burn until the fuel is gone in enough places that megafires can't develop easily. It's like ecological herd immunity.

Most affected states are still in the reactive firefighting mode rather than thinking how to get ahead of the curve by removing a century of fuel accumulated from determined fire suppression. There's no question rising temperatures make things worse, but really the bill is just coming due sooner.

CA gov Gavin Newsome's news conference is a good sample of what's currently wrong with our approach. It's what he doesn't say that's interesting.

[1] [https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/08/...](https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2020/09/08/newsom- no-patience-for-climate-deniers-amid-historic-heat-fires-1316014)

<comment><USER3> ideologues are able to turn any event into evidence for their perspective. I'm not a climate change denier, I just agree with you that the real issue is humankind's fire suppression.

There are a bunch of things that could be done, but no one is happy to support it. Selective logging, brush clearing, not putting multi-million dollar homes in the forest. etc.

<comment><USER4> was the same in California 20 years ago. Didn't have fires like this. What's changed?

<comment><USER5> It was 20 years less of neglect. Not sure when we have stop doing controlled burns in the name of keeping air quality good. It was more than 20 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The photos in the article are not enhanced for dramatic effect. This is really how it looks like in person.

Hopefully this will finally hit some people hard and we'll reverse the decades of urban sprawl and environmental mismanagement. In all likelihood, it will be forgotten as soon as the blue sky returns.

<comment><USER7> My phone camera can't really even capture the effect. The color correction algorithm doesn't think the sky can be this color.

<comment><USER8> I've been capturing pictures through the window that are half indoors, half outdoors. This makes the color correction algorithm stop trying to get rid of the orange.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, I managed to finally get a good one by including some artificial white lights in the frame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's the view from my apartment's window. No edit or HDR, just Halide without white calibration.

It actually looks pretty beautiful, Blade Runner style. Unfortunate that it's because of fires though...

[https://twitter.com/victor_kabdebon/status/13037150297792307...](https://twitter.com/victor_kabdebon/status/1303715029779230720?s=21)

<comment><USER10> I also had to use Halide to get a real pic of the skies. The iPhone was too "smart" and would get rid of the color sepia color in the sky.

</comment></comment><comment> enahs-sf Strong blade runner vibes going on today. It's so odd to see people going about their day as if normal when there is nothing normal about today. Was outside near Lake Merritt and there are people jogging and having coffee. Pure dystopia.

<comment><USER11> Redmond, WA didn't have orange skies (hazy and smokey, but not orange), but with air quality in the "unhealthy whether you're 'sensitive' or not" range and a thin layer of ash on the car, I decided to skip the morning run yesterday. According to TFA, it didn't smell smokey in SF, so perhaps that's why folks were out?

<comment><USER12> Based on NOAA satellites, the smoke and fires seem to end in Oregon, but I don't doubt that this may extend up to BC in no time. [https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G17&sector=psw&band=GEOCOLOR&length=24)

<comment><USER11> _Based on NOAA satellites, the smoke and fires seem to end in Oregon_

No, your _view window_ ends in Oregon. I don't know how one is supposed to determine anything about what's going on in Washington state from that link. Here's a more useful link for the doubtful:

[https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Redmond&state=WA&country=USA](https://www.airnow.gov/?city=Redmond&state=WA&country=USA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> NOAA satellite 2-hour west coast timelapse animation really gives a sense of the scale of the smoke: [https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G1...](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/GOES/sector_band.php?sat=G17&sector=psw&band=GEOCOLOR&length=24)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Orange skies.

2\. Extremely expensive housing.

3\. Can't go outside.

Mars? Nope, San Francisco.

<comment><USER15> You forgot the fourth point, Teslas everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I woke up this morning, my first thoughts: "Oh, I woke up early... hmm, nope. Huh, I wonder if WW3 started last night."

It makes me long for the fresh air and clear skies of Beijing.

</comment><comment><USER17> Saw something similar to this in the Inland Empire during the camp fires up at Big Bear. I remember attending a Civil War reenactment at the time and it was raining ash and the smoke was so thick you couldn't see the sun. It was so surreal.

<comment><USER18> we had a milder version of this kind of pollution in LA for the past few days, although today seems almost back to normal. over the weekend, the orange haziness of the sky was pretty noticeable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My first thought upon awakening at 7:30 am was "Has the Sun turned off?".

Three hours later it's even darker.

</comment><comment><USER20> Now at 11am in downtown SF it is much darker than it was early this morning when these pictures were taken. It's disturbing, to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER21> Sun is blocked, and thus the temperature on Peninsula which was predicted to be in 90ies (naturally given no NW wind) yesterday and today is 65F currently at the noon. Basically a nuclear winter preview - the amount of wood burned in the last month near Bay Area (say 20 ton x 800K acres) is like several large nukes. Daily - 20 ton x 10K+ acres - is like a smaller one.

<comment><USER22> It was like 80 degrees in Phoenix, AZ today... in the middle of summer. That's basically unheard of.

I guess you could say that even giant smoke clouds sometimes have silver linings...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Basically nullifying every air pollution effort for years. Reducing CA wildfire should be environmentalist number 1 priority.

<comment><USER24> Sacramento and Newsome won't be doing anything at all to reduce wildfires, just like Brown before him. No controlled burns. No dead tree removal. No fire breaks. Nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yeah, wore my gas mask for my commute today... Regular masks don't cut it

<comment><USER26> Despite it looking apocalyptic, the air quality is still in a relatively safe range

<comment><USER25> My lungs were pretty irritated today though

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Corvallis, OR, is one of the worst places right now. Orange skies and ash everywhere. It's working its way indoors and I can see black deposits collecting in my sink.

</comment><comment><USER28> My tomatoes are unhappy about this development.

</comment><comment><USER29> Over two million acres are burning. If you live in the UK, that's all of Dorset and Devon combined, on fire.

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it fair to say that the weather patterns are becoming (more) chaotic? In the exponential-sensitivity sense.</comment>


Ask HN: suggested sweet laptops for running Ubuntu? - <AUTHOR>

I run Ubuntu on an MacBook Pro and on an old Toshiba. I don't want to give Apple anymore of my money so I am looking for something like a MacBook Air, SSD drive, etc. Suggestions based on your own experience? <comment><USER3> I'm jumping ship from an Air to a Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon: [http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x...](http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/laptop/thinkpad/x-series/x1-carbon/)

It's a standard Intel kit, so it should run Linux just fine. Unfortunately, roughly the entire stock bound for the US has been held up in manufacturing and isn't expected to be properly released for another two weeks.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using two Dell laptops over the past 5 or so years with Ubuntu. Usually they work fine, but every release breaks some little thing that used to work before. Sometimes it gets fixed with an update, but more often than not you're stuck with an annoyance for the next 6 months, until it gets fixed and a new annoyance pops in.

For example, in upgrading Karmic my previously-working Intel graphics card was blacklisted for some reason; in the Pulseaudio release (Jaunty? Lucid?) I had to have "killall pulseaudio" bound to a hotkey because it shat itself so often; in Oneiric my previously-working AMD graphics card failed to update window titles, making the system unusuable; in Precise Compiz crashes every few hours and window previews don't work any more.

Basically, if you can configure your laptop to use as much Intel hardware as possible, you should be OK. Whatever you do don't get AMD graphics (I've been dealing with it for two years now and it's my biggest regret in my laptop) and make sure to get Intel wifi. Do a quick Google search for every piece of hardware just to double check, and you'll be OK.

<comment> dale-cooper AMD graphics supported by the open source driver should work pretty well (unless you need 3d performance). The proprietary driver is complete shit though.

<comment><USER4> The open source driver does work OK _except_ that the power management is messed up, so when I use it my laptop's fan goes at full power 24/7. That gets pretty annoying after a while, which is why I end up using fglrx (which of course has its own terrible problems).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Historically Thinkpads have been the best option for a Linux laptop. I have a Sandy Bridge X220 that is mostly ok, but there have been issues like this xorg-video-intel bug that was recently fixed:

<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48525>

and I still get occasional compiz window manager crashes but they are few and far between these days. If you want something along the lines of an Air have a look at the Thinkpad X1 Carbon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to everyone for the suggestions!

re: Thinkpad X1 Carbon: looks like a great option! Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of System76's laptops: <https://www.system76.com/> \-- they're well priced for the power they pack, and I've never had a hardware problem. Plus they come pre-configured with the appropriate drivers for their webcams, fingerprint readers, and the like. Smoothest-running Linux laptop I've ever had (although I defintely heavily customized their shipped config).

<comment><USER7> Is the hardware good? It looks clunky in the photos.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I quite like my 15" Samsung 9, though there's room for improvement - <USER2> vertical angle on the screen is limited (horizontal is good), and the keyboard, while I'm used to it, could be a little quieter. I'm using Ubuntu 12.04 and have come to love the bomb, err, Unity. Only recently have I found settings that disable the touchpad while typing. I was planning to self upgrade it to a 256G SSD and 16G memory, but Samsung's recent showing of a new Series 9 with a 2560x1440 resolution matte 13" screen makes me think they'll probably have a 15" with improvements soon enough.

</comment><comment><USER9> I asked people on Reddit, and they answered in this thread: [http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/yue0s/what_laptop_sho...](http://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/yue0s/what_laptop_should_i_get_if_i_want_to_run_linux/)

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I second/third/47th the recommendations for Thinkpads. Everything people say here regarding graphics drivers is true, unfortunately.

You will have problems with pulseaudio hosing video playback timing and a host of other stuff if you run Ubuntu. My solution is to just remove pulseaudio entirely, which forces me to use an alsa-based volume widget, but that's pretty trivial and the hard volume keys work out of the box.

If you get thermal issues, pull the machine apart and make sure the heatsink is applied correctly - on my T400 there was a serial # sticker over one edge of the CPU die that was holding the heatsink away from the die. Also, the cooling air intakes have filters that get dirty easily and make a massive difference to cooling efficiency (the fan isn't just pulling air from inside the case as things appear).

As for keyboards, the keyboard on my T400 is my favorite on any computing device I have right now. The layout on the W520 my employer provided is the same as the T400, which is basically the same as it's been forever, but the keyfeel is a lot more rubber-dome-y than the T400 which feels highly mechanical.

The other thing I'll say for Thinkpads is that after a few years of maintaining my wife's laptops, I was pleasantly surprised on opening up my T400 to clean out it's heatsink that Lenovo's engineers actually didn't hate me and want me to die as is the case with other, fruitier manufacturers. There's still a good bit of "remove WXYZ to get at A", but these are much more maintainable machines than typical.

</comment><comment><USER11> I use an old Toshiba NB255 with a SSD.

With the SSD I moved to btrfs, a mistake (look into dpkg, fsync and btrfs before going there.)

Everything brand/netbook specific resolved in the 11.X versions. But a screen with bellow ~768 vertical resolution isn't well supported (odd since I think Unity started in the netbook distribution?)

Samsung has some nice high resolution small screens.. But I'll be waiting for SATA3 and USB3 to permeate the low end before my next upgrade.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lots of endorsers of Linux+Thinkpad. See my comment link below for my not-so- great experience running Ubuntu on an X220. I'll admit that I'm someone who just wants things to work (a mindset I probably owe to Apple).

tl;dr Fan spun constantly, machine ran hot, trackpad was basically non- functional. May just be X220-specific. Not sure.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428967>

<comment><USER5> I have an X220 with an i7 and have no issues with the touchpad although I use the trackpoint most of the time and it doesn't run particularly hot. I have verified that cpu throttling and fan control both work perfectly so you may have a configuration issue. I didn't do anything to explicitly make it work for me. The notes at <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/X220> do mention that the touchpad is a bit shaky, so maybe that it what you seeing. Honestly I wish they made a Thinkpad without a touchpad at all. I much prefer the trackpoint which allows me to keep my fingers on the keyboard where they belong.

<comment><USER12> For a while I tried to use the Trackpoint exclusively. I love the position of it and I love the idea of having a very keyboard-centric setup. Ultimately, I stopped using it because I could never control the slight drift that happens when I'm trying to stop over something. I always seem to go past my destination and then have to navigate back. Maybe I'll give it another try.

As mentioned in linked comment, Ubuntu running in Virtualbox presented no problems at all and I'm happy with current setup.

<comment><USER13> I've noticed the same drift. To combat this I've developed a twitch, when drift starts my left thumb swipes the trackpad. This zeros the trackpoint and stops the drift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm running Linux Mint on an Asus Zenbook (basically a cheap copy of a MBA). The only real issues I'm having is that I haven't worked out how to get the laptop to sleep, and there's a weird order of steps I have to take to get an external monitor working. Oh, and the keyboard isn't great.

After a few months I've got used to the problems, but I do miss OS X. (I'm more than happy to give Apple my money to make things Just Work.)

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't say Asus was 'cheap', they are lower cost. I like Asus laptops now, although at home I have a Thinkpad R61, but for work I have Asus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've got the Lenovo ThinkPad T430s (The i7 edition that includes a thunderbolt port).

"stock" Ubuntu 12.04 runs great, bar an issue with suspend/resume.. But - Grabbing the official test packages[1] for the 3.5.0 kernel have sorted everything..

I don't have any Thunderbolt devices to test with, but DisplayPort monitor's certainly work on the Thunderbolt port..

EDIT: I should add.. avoid ANY laptops from ANY brand that include "dual" graphics eg NVidia "Optimus" etc. I've got the Intel HD 4000 card, it runs Unity perfectly..

[1]: [http://packages.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/223/build...](http://packages.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/milestones/223/builds)

</comment><comment><USER17> Thinkpads are excellent for Linux. I've had many, currently the T520.

All the bells and whistles are supported, like the Trackpoint, web camera, special keyboard keys, LED light, etc. The only gotchas I've run into are with NVIDIA graphics drivers.

</comment><comment><USER18> Best choice: <http://system76.com> \- Preinstalled Ubuntu, great tech support, guaranteed to be free of compatibility issues.

Second Best Choice: Ubuntu Certified Hardware. <http://www.ubuntu.com/certification/desktop/> Tested and validated against current Ubuntu images.

Third Best Choice: Ubuntu Friendly (choose 4 stars or higher). Community tested. <https://friendly.ubuntu.com/>

</comment><comment><USER19> I am loving my Thinkpad T530, got a 1920 by 1080 screen, great battery, up to 16 gb ram and the discrete nvidia gpu Optimus runs perfectly with Bumblebee if you aren't satisfied with the built in GPU. Everything else pretty much just works.

But yes, use intel hardware.

About the only issue I have had is a weird speedup of flash videos with the built in chrome flash driver.

Oh, and I'm running Mint, not Ubuntu, which I highly recommend.

If the t530 isn't powerful enough, there's always the W530 for a more powerful processor and 32 gigs of ram.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'd definitely recommend a thinkpad. However if you buy a high-end model with optimus graphics, you'll need to use some workarounds like these:

[http://sagark.org/optimal-ubuntu-graphics-setup-for- thinkpad...](http://sagark.org/optimal-ubuntu-graphics-setup-for-thinkpads/)

<http://sagark.org/thinkdisp-about-installation/>

*Disclaimer, I wrote this guide / app

</comment><comment><USER21> The ASUS zenbook primes with 13" 1920x1080 screens sure look nice, but I've seen mixed reviews of Linux compatibility. Does anybody have any experience here?

They seem like serious MacBook Air killers with similar hardware and much, much better screens. But they'd have to run Linux, of course, because they can't be taken seriously if they're crippled with Windows.

<comment><USER22> I haven't (yet) tested Linux on mine, but I have to agree with you that it's leagues better than the Air. I actually like Windows (I'm running the 8 RTM from MSDN), though I use Linux as well. I seem to be pretty alone in that position.

<comment><USER22> Running latest Ubuntu (12.04.1, 64-bit) off of a 3.75gb flash drive in the side of my ASUS Zenbook UX31A DB571. It is _amazing_. Fast, responsive, works almost out of the box. With USB 3.0, there's very little noticeable IO slowdown, even when compared to the SSD I use for Windows. I highly recommend the combination.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Checkout the Dell Sputnik project. (<http://content.dell.com/us/en/enterprise/d/campaigns/sputnik>) It looks like they are going to start selling a small SSD laptop with Ubuntu. Right now you can get the laptop with Windows and then download their Ubuntu image.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a Toshiba Portege Z835 (13", thins, SSD) and am very happy with it. Everything works under Ubuntu, including suspend/resume, changing screen brightness and volume with function keys and that stuff. The build quality is not the toughest, but it's pretty cheap, too.

</comment><comment><USER25> I put Ubuntu 12.04 on a Lenovo T410. It's not thin and it's not that speedy, particularly when it comes to 3D graphics performance, but everything worked out of the box with absolutely no configuration or fuss, and on that basis I would recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER26> Sony VAIO VPCF1 and Dell Vostro 3700. Both have been running Ubuntu 11.10 and are now running 12.04 with kernel 3.5.2. The only thing with VAIO is it freezes completely whenever I unplug the power, but I sort of learned to live with it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I would like to get a Dell XPS as my next laptop, so that I can try out their Sputnik project, which I think has some interesting ideas ( config management built into a desktop for switching between different development profiles ).

</comment><comment><USER28> I too am going to recommend Lenovo. my x201t has everything working out of the box. Very good quality in general too.

only problem is that laptop has some issues ever since the roof leaked on it.

</comment><comment><USER29> My current one is based on a Mecer <http://www.mecer.co.za/notebooks> \- No problem at all (except a little bit too noisy when fan is on).

</comment><comment><USER30> I recommend samsung np900x3c-a01. It has actually better screen than MB Air. Though you'll need to return preinstalled windows within 2 weeks from purchase.

<comment><USER31> Where do these guys pull these weird model numbers from. Can't they choose some thing simpler to remember.

<comment><USER30> and beware: if you mistake in a couple of symbols you'll get a crappy TN screen with absolutely awful viewing angles (like in mb air)

<comment><USER7> I typed this post on an MBA while looking down at my screen at approximately 30 degrees from vertical.

What is wrong with the MBA viewing angle? I just notice the colors are a bit off when I sit in this ridiculous position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> [laclinux](<http://laclinux.com/gnu/Laptop>) is where I got my Lenovo Thinkpad. Recommended.

</comment><comment><USER33> I originally wrote more but HN gave the 'unknown or expired link' error when I hit post.

Gist of it: I <3 my ~4 year old netbook.

</comment><comment><USER34> I dual boot 12.04 on a Lenovo X230, very pleasurable experience. Great laptop overall. I've also used a W510 without any problems.

</comment><comment><USER35> don't buy ASUS if you're a programmer because of their newer keyboard layout (right_shift, up button, Fn button are aligned)

my right pinky, instead of punching right_shift, always accidently press up button (in vim it's mutable, but in console it throws me out of flow every time)

Older ASUS are fine, they have big, wide right_shift button

<comment><USER36> I'd generalize this all the way out to say: most modern hardware runs Linux just fine with a little effort; most modern keyboards, however, are far from ideal for extended use.

I have no idea why things have gone so steadily downhill for so many brands, but especially the ASUS/Acer types are just painful. Track down in person any model you are considering and give it a whirl before you place your order. As others have said, start with Lenovo, since they do an above-average job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Dell Inspiron N4050 here, running Ubuntu 12.04 64-bit. Everything works as expected, great performance for the price.

</comment><comment><USER38> I've had a great experience with the Thinkpads (Lenovo). Can't praise them enough. They are ugly, though.

</comment><comment><USER39> System76 - <http://www.system76.com>

</comment><comment><USER40> check out <https://www.system76.com/laptops/model/lemu4> they make laptops which natively runs ubuntu.

</comment><comment><USER41> Thinkpad T/R/X series with intel graphics/wifi.

</comment><comment><USER42> +2 for ThinkPad X1 Carbon +1 for DELL XPS 13

</comment><comment><USER43> DELL VOSTRO V3360 RED :)

</comment><comment><USER44> system 76

</comment><comment><USER45> thinkpad's work well.

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm currently running Crunchbang on Acer 14inch laptop with an i7 processor and 4gb ram, I removed the stickers so I don't know the model number but this machine runs like a beast when using Crunchbang. The distro is based on Debian but I'm sure ubuntu or any other GNU/Linux distro will work fine with it too. I'd recommend it, its pretty fun to use and portable too (14inch screen is just the right size for programming whilst also maintaining true portablity, you don't want to be running around with a 17inch laptop do you?). Also its pretty affordable too, I got it around 10 months ago for £550 which was a great deal

<comment><USER47> I'm curious why you do not run debian and install openbox? What does crunchbang add to the miox?

 _not trolling, genuinely curious_

<comment><USER48> CrunchBang is the best-looking distro I've come across. It also comes with scripts that will install common proprietary software like Chrome or Dropbox.

Obviously you could accomplish all of that by installing Debian and spending hours configuring it yourself, but that seems unnecessary when others have already done it for you.

<comment><USER47> Spending hours to install Chrome?

        apt-get install chromium

Or just go to the chrome download page and download the official chrome debian package?

I'm also not sure that chrome ios "proprietary software."

<comment><USER48> To be clear, the part that takes hours to accomplish is "best-looking distro I've come across".

Of course it's not difficult to install Google Chrome (or _Chromium_ for that matter). It just saves time to have it installed automatically.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Memcmp is the most efficient way to compare large chunks of data - <AUTHOR> http://mymicrocontroller.com/2018/04/04/memcmp-is-the-most-efficient-way-to-compare-large-chucks-of-data/ <comment><USER2> The author's proposed for-loop version is:

      int *p = (int *)0x80000000;
      int *q = (int *)0x90000000;
      while(p < q){
    	if(*p++ != *q++){
    		flag = 1;
    	}
      }

There must have been a transcription error as that while loop doesn't look like it will exit until q reaches the end of memory and wraps back to 0.

On my machine, the following takes about 161 ms (that's the best of 5 timings on a non-quiet machine):

      result = memcmp(p, q, SIZE);

The author's for-loop is optimistic, and doesn't short-circuit exit on mismatch, so I'll replace it with a non-branching equivalent:

      result = 0;
      for (int i=0; i<SIZE/sizeof(long); i++) {
          result = result || (p[i] != q[i]);
      }

That takes 310 ms (compiled with Apple LLVM version 8.0.0, using -O3). About 1/2 the performance of built-in.

Replace the int with a long and it's 200ms. Manually unroll by 4 and it's 175ms. My final code is:

      result = 0;
      for (int i=0; i<SIZE/sizeof(long); i+=4) {
         result = result
           || (p[i] != q[i])
           || (p[i+1] != q[i+1])
           || (p[i+2] != q[i+2])
           || (p[i+3] != q[i+3]);
      }

That's only somewhat slower than the memcmp, not the 10x that the author reports.

Of course, memcmp does short-circuit evaluation, and I know the size is a multiple of sizeof(long), so this test case is biased in favor of my code.

I would, of course, always favor the tested, often optimized library code over rolling my own unless there are good reasons otherwise.

<comment><USER3> Op implemented a poor version of timingsafe_memcmp, which is of course slow. His other HN post today is also full of such errors.

I even don't agree with the major premise that the libc version should be always preferred. In fact memcmp and memcpy can be made much faster.

At [http://blogs.perl.org/users/rurban/2014/08/perfect-hashes- an...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/rurban/2014/08/perfect-hashes-and-faster- than-memcmp.html) I wrote a jit like memcmp with switching on wordsized chunks which is 200x faster than memcmp.

And I benchmarked my safelibc implementation of memcpy_s with a good compiler, clang >4, beating the handoptimized and unsafe glibc assembler version by ~5%. gcc stinks there. [https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/tests/perf_me...](https://github.com/rurban/safeclib/blob/master/tests/perf_memcpy_s.c) Let the compiler optimize it.

But I saw much faster memcpy than this.

<comment><USER2> Sure, they can be made faster.

I'm not going to spend my life on those sorts of optimizations unless there are good reasons.

<comment><USER3> You don't see the point. The point is to write proper loops in C which the compiler can optimize. This the fastest way and benefits all platforms. Special cases which are actually slower should be removed. Compilers which are not able to optimize proper loop patterns should be fixed and documented as such. Haven't checked gcc-8 yet, but older versions should not be used for such core functions. libc should be compiled with clang.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bitkong.me – what an obvious killer app for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> https://bitkong.me/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused by the "killer app" comment in the title. There have been many other bitcoin betting sites with some amount of effort to make them provably fair.

This one is different in that it is monkey/jungle themed?

</comment><comment><USER3> Basically gambling is one of Bitcoin killer apps, instant deposits, instant withdrawals and anonymity fits best for the players and operators.</comment>


Patent: Distributed system for large volume deep web data extraction [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/3d/5d/9d/7b3a438f4431a7/US20170193110A1.pdf <comment><USER2> Why is this even patented ? Isn't it pretty standard ?</comment>


Failure of Self-Driving Truck Co Tells You All You Need About Self-Driving Vehs - <AUTHOR> https://jalopnik.com/the-failure-of-this-self-driving-truck-company-tells-yo-1842417033 <comment><USER2> I bet a lot of investors were backing out because they don't see any money to be made in this space. With the economy turning south, none of the major automakers are going to be dumping billions in to acquiring self-driving startups for at least another decade, at best. Worst case, Starsky Robotics won't able to even keep up with what the major automakers or suppliers are doing. I used to work for a major supplier in the automotive space and these companies do have some world-class software engineering talent.

I'm a daily reader of Jalopnik, but we have to be honest: they are the tabloid news of auto journalism. A lot of their articles are poorly researched and they pander heavily to their readership (unfortunately, IMHO, the author of this piece is the site's worst offender in this respect). Most of their good writers left a long while ago, so the only informative articles I see on there anymore are about motorsports.

I would recommend skipping right past the sensationalized Jalopnik regurgitation and reading the actual blog post from Starsky [0].

[0] [https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of- starsky-...](https://medium.com/starsky-robotics-blog/the-end-of-starsky- robotics-acb8a6a8a5f5)

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems short-sighted to have focused all efforts on safety engineering, which is inherently boring to investors regardless of whether it's the correct approach (I believe there's a strong argument that it is).

Unfortunately it seems like they found this out the hard way. Would be genuinely interested to understand why they didn't do some split, say 60/40, safety/flashy new AI features. If the goal was to extend runway, this may have just done the trick. Or perhaps the headwinds are just too strong and they would've crumbled around 2021/2022 anyway like they predict most others will.

Wish them the best, not easy to go down when you've given it your all, especially in this environment.

</comment><comment><USER4> VCs are fad-driven - they're sheep.

It was amusing to see at least one major VC, Kleiner Perkins, implode funding clean tech in the last hype cycle, and now we have self-driving vehicles.

[https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_solyndra/](https://www.wired.com/2012/01/ff_solyndra/)

What both categories have in common was that investors thought they could make money from something they couldn't even explain.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's the investment money has to do with SDC anyways? It pays rents, buys food, keeps GPU hot but I still can't imagine the capital accelerating time- to-market all that much.

People talk expensive gears made cheap, as if they make AI smarter or as if that "enables". The reality is there's no such AI that can steer or clear path to _develop_ something that could, no?

<comment><USER6> As far as i can tell, investment helps with getting bigger, better research and engineering teams together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://archive.md/pqTsy](http://archive.md/pqTsy)</comment>


Gaming the search for autism treatments - <AUTHOR> https://www.spectrumnews.org/features/deep-dive/how-to-game-the-search-for-autism-treatments/ <comment><USER2> I have autism and dyslexia and I wouldn't change it for the world. That said, I understand autism varies a lot person to person so I can only offer my experience.

For me my problems in life have never been a result of my autism or dyslexia, but a result of how people expect or want me to be.

I won't go into details, but I know I'm pretty smart and I've achieved more than most people I know largely because of my autistic obsession with anything I'm passionate about. However I've also found my professional life to be extremely hard now I'm at a more senior level in my career. I can't communicate well. I hate social interaction. People often think I'm rude because I don't ask how their weekend was or make eye contact. And on occasion I can come across mean and cold without meaning to do so because find it difficult to empathise.

I lost a job a few years back because of my autism and over the course of my career I've been rejected from countless positions because of my poor communication skills or being "a bad culture fit".

I'm not bad at all communication though, I'm fine explaining things with text, diagrams and examples. Plus, I'm a really good developer. But non of that ever seems to matter. Sometimes I wonder if it is even me with the problem, or if it's really that people have a problem with me and how I work.

Who cares if I'm not overly social? I've never minded it. I quite like being non-verbal and obsessive honestly. But I guess I can understand where neurotypicals are coming from to some extent. Sometimes I wish more people were like me too. Sometimes I wish I could treat people who think talking about their weekend or celebrating the birthday of a colleague they dislike is more important than doing something productive. But you know, I also appreciate not everyone is like me, or needs to be just like me to be worth a damn.

Perhaps I'm just venting. I understand some autistic children are completely not functional and need some help. It just upsets me when people think autism needs treating because it's probably the thing I genuinely love the most about myself.

<comment><USER3> You sound like a fairly self aware person. I'm curious - have you considered practicing social skills like making occasional eye contact, etc? Speaking as someone with enough "issues" (ability to concentrate deeply, socialization issues, awkwardness around eye contact) that I could apply the autism label to myself if I chose to.

The reason I choose not to label myself this way is that I've learned to overcome many of my old hangups like avoiding eye contact. It's true what you say about it holding back your career. When I decided to set out as an entrepreneur I was pretty much forced to up my game in this area. So I did. I can still relate to anyone who struggles with these skills, but I also know it's possible to overcome them.

Somewhere way deep down I'm still a shy awkward dev, but I've gotten good at enough at being charming that I can close angel and VC deals. At this point I'm not even sure if the "real me" is the awkward one. Maybe my true nature is gregarious and unafraid, and I only learned how to retreat into my shell as a defense mechanism against chronic childhood abuse, which I'm finally coming to terms with after a solid 20 years of confusion.

Anyway, I wish you'd best of luck and I encourage you to challenge yourself (safely) - I really wish more knowledgeable devs would feel empowered to learn these skills and take on higher level business roles. If you don't do it, all the leadership positions end up being taken by people who are good at being charming but not much else.

<comment><USER2> I think I came across as a bit of a "victim" in my comment, but the attitude you've described here is very much how I approach life.

You can definitely learn social skills, and almost anyone who wants a good career needs to have at least some ability to hold a conversation and be approachable. That said, if you're sufficiently on the spectrum you're probably never going to pass as "normal" but you can be good enough.

I guess what upsets me is that I feel like to be successful I have to be less myself. I think you might feel this too based on what you said:

> At this point I'm not even sure if the "real me" is the awkward one.

So yeah, I do try my best to improve. I have to if I want what's best for the people I love. But I often wish I didn't have to and society would work around my communication preferences instead for a change. There are certainly days I get tired of being someone else and think screw it for better or worse, but I think I'm getting a little better at it every day.

<comment><USER3> > I guess what upsets me is that I feel like to be successful I have to be > less myself. I think you might feel this too based on what you said

Actually, my point was the exact opposite. The "awkward me" isn't the real me. It's the version of myself that I constructed in order to survive my seriously dysfunctional childhood raised by a mother with a PhD from Harvard in child psychology who was deliberately trying to interfere with my socialization. For example, making me skip a grade, I was a small kid, so I ended up in junior high a foot shorter than all of my peers. Another great example is making me take a job closing down a pool from 9-10pm every night during high school, with the express purpose (unknown to me) of ensuring that I wouldn't be able to hang out with friends at night.

My point is, my entire sense of self had been constructed for me, but it was a false one. After many years, a deeper version of myself has emerged, one that's more true in some sense. From the perspective of my old self, this new self is "fake", and vice versa. Based on the available data, I've concluded that the real me is actually just fine, and all I needed to do was a few decades of therapy/yoga/psychedelics/meditation/breakdowns in order to come out of my shell.

In your case, I would be careful about wishing that society would work around your communication preferences. If by preferences you mean "I want to be able to violate social norms around eye contact and politeness and get away with it", then I'd say it would be more constructive for you to change, rather than society. I'd also note that if you're in a position of power, like someone's boss, or even the prized developer, this puts you in a privileged position to break social norms because there's a risk to whoever dares to call you out. Don't be one of those bosses, or one of those developers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Luminosity and the like very well could have failed or had limited effect because brain plasticity is reduced in adulthood. While there are no medical treatments or cures for ASD, the one known effective treatment to improve quality of life outcomes is early behavioral intervention near the age of diagnosis (i.e. 2-4 years of age).

<comment><USER5> I am a higher functioning case admittedly but I find that it seems to auto- correct some in the slow way via learning and workaround development. I suspect that having higher functioning adult autistic tutors could be useful.

On another note I have found that ironically my empathy is better than many neurotypical individuals falling way short in both compassion and comprehension of how others would react. Like wondering why their child is acting out when they are literally acting like an antagonist in a young adult dystopian novel (of the overly controlling as opposed to made to fight to the death for fun and profit variant).

Hell look at sesame credits - that looks tailored to create a rebellion and lead to a bloody purge of the high credit elites down the road. There was even an apocryphal old story about the Roman Senate considering requiring slaves to wear collars in public at all times until they did the math and realized it would let them know they vastly outnumbered them.</comment></comment>


Groupon CEO: We Placed Too Much Trust in Agency for Super Bowl Ads - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article/news/groupon-ceo-relied-agency-bowl-ads/149498/

<comment><USER2> Nonsense--- you placed to much trust on the idiot who okay-ed the damn commercials in the first place. Dodge all you want, but the ad company didn't make the decision, you did...

<comment><USER3> Um, that's why Mason was apologizing here - it was his call. He was the idiot. He knows that, and he's coming clean.

Keep in mind that an agency relationship is like any other where you're after the (supposedly) superior understating and judgement possessed by whoever you're hiring (e.g. doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc.)

When these relationships work well, it's often because the client puts a lot of trust in their partner. Kudos to Mason for swiftly realizing that his trust was misplaced, that responsibility for that was his, and for responding promptly. Also note his announcement that they'll be a lot more involved in their brand management from here on.

In other words, it looks like this really was a hard, nasty shock that they're taking seriously, and are responding to accordingly. That's very different from simply canning one agency, and replacing them with another who will continue to function in the same way as the first, which is far more common.

<comment><USER4> "We learned that you can't rely on anyone else to control and maintain your own brand."

doesn't sound quite like coming clean.

<comment><USER3> Consider that quote not from the perspective of a (briefly) outraged public, but as a post mortem delivered to investors, who seriously want to know if something similar is likely to happen again.

If these guys guys deflected all blame from themselves and tried to focus it all on their partner, that would be a bad sign. But if they also blame themselves for having selected a dicey partner, and have figured out what errors led to that error, then I really think they're handling themselves - and the situation - quite well.

<comment><USER4> certainly true, but they did pay a firm that was known to be edgy and envelope pushers. when you ride that line, someone has to police it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I tend to suspect these "edgy" ads are really just ads for the ad agency, not so much for the client.

</comment><comment><USER6> The whole Tibet commercial was totally fucked from the start, on one side by Groupon's attempt to expand into China, and on the other by the feelings of the rest of the world. Trying to play the middle ground like they did? Crazy, imo.

I'm surprised "Tibet" isn't a taboo word to Groupon like it is to the rest of the international business community.

</comment><comment><USER7> The TVC in question for those who have not seen it:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFT2yjk0A>

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought Andrew Mason had said essentially the same thing in gentler terms within days of the Super Bowl, when he apologized for the ad and said that even though it was created by a professional agency, he shouldn't have approved it.

The famous miscalculation in the ad was that it was too easy to misinterpret as making light of Tibet rather than of Groupon, but another thing that felt wrong was that the humor didn't quite match Groupon's voice. It was an outsider trying to speak in it, and that rarely works out well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ad agencies overemphasize creativity because their jobs depend on them believing that it is important. If Groupon had a direct marketing background it would have been clear that this ad needs to be tested before unleashing it. I wonder how many signups they got from the ads?

</comment><comment><USER10> I enjoyed the ads and thought they were rather clever.

<comment><USER11> "I enjoyed the ads and thought they were rather clever."

Would you still have enjoyed them if they riffed off (say) the 9/11 attacks [1] in an attempt to be "edgy"?

Imagine ...

"The Twin Towers were destroyed, five planes blown up or crashed with all on board, 3000 Americans died ... but New Yorkers still make the best burgers..."

Would that be equally "clever and enjoyable" ? Or would you be outraged?

[1] I assume you are American. Feel free to replace with any atrocity you have a resonance with. And fwiw I believe "edginess" is a poor excuse no matter which specific incident of innocents being killed is used as background for the "edge"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Gilt Groupe did a nice reprise of the whole spectacle: <http://ben.kudria.net/post/3554995120/daily-coupon-deals>

</comment><comment><USER13> Groupon CEO: You shouldn't trust my contractors or my instincts, because I don't.</comment>


DIY DNA: One Father's Attempt to Hack His Daughter's Genetic Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/medtech/genetics/magazine/17-02/ff_diygenetics?currentPage=all <comment><USER2> I have to commend the father for such a valiant effort.

However, shouldn't he have been able to automate part of the process, if he was manually comparing printouts to the Ensembl reference genome?

 _The job was daunting: The printouts contained data for approximately 20,000 base pairs, and there was no feasible way to automate the hunt for variants. After putting in a full day of consulting and then getting the kids to bed, Rienhoff would retire to his attic and spend hours checking Beatrice's adenines (A), thymines (T), guanines (G), and cytosines (C) against the Ensembl reference genome._

<comment> a-priori Who knows the real story. This could be a case of the author taking journalistic liberties, or simply misunderstanding the process.

My understanding is that a simple _diff_ would take care of 90% of the work by eliminating all common base pairs. Then, from the results, his job would be to cross-reference each of the mutations against the gene database. Any unknown mutation could be the one he's looking for.

Perhaps this is actually what he did, and the "no feasible way to automate the hunt" refers to the cross-referencing step, not the differencing step.

Still though, reading that part almost made me email him saying, "I'll find you a way to automate it!".

<comment><USER3> Here's his own telling of the story: [http://mydaughtersdna.org/Members/hyrjr/the-reasoning- behind...](http://mydaughtersdna.org/Members/hyrjr/the-reasoning-behind-the- dna-analysis)

An example of the zigzag pattern he probably received from the sequencing lab (his would have been much larger): [http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Transcript/Summary?db=co...](http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Transcript/Summary?db=core;g=ENSG00000135503;r=12:50631753-50677124;t=ENST00000257963)

The reference sequence for the gene (this is what he was looking at): [http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Transcript/Exons?db=core...](http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Transcript/Exons?db=core;g=ENSG00000135503;r=12:50631753-50677124;t=ENST00000257963)

and his manual diff (at his site): <http://mydaughtersdna.org/Members/hyrjr/acvr1b>

The usual way to do a gene diff is by aligning two sequences with a program like ClustalW (free, and packaged with Debian now). That shows the differences and positions in a format other programs can read. But I don't know how much annotation the lab gave him, and annotating a pile of introns and exons does take a long time, even with the right tools -- the diffs aren't necessarily helpful until the rest of that information is in place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish this guy a lot of luck. Whether he has a chance or not, I respect him immensely for not "standing on the sidelines".

The story really hits close to him for me because I have one of the disorders they narrowed out for the poor girl. Like it said, 90% of the battle for surviving some of these is just knowing what you have. It's an overwhelming feeling of frustration and helplessness to have your life 100% at the mercy of a dysfunctional healthcare system. At the risk of using a gratuitous nerd metaphor, this guy's writing his own OS instead of using Windows.

</comment><comment><USER5> One question is if it is as simple as that. The human genome is immensely complex; much like raw object code (and compacted and self-modifying at that). The number of active genes are far too small for the amount of variation, so maybe she just got a bad run of genes. Unfortunately, that would make Reinhoff's search useless, because he would never find that one misplaced gene, and missing the four or ten that acted in concert to bring this about.

<comment><USER6> It probably isn't as simple as that, but in this case the downside of failure was nothing more than wasted time while the upside was a possible insight into a disease that had eluded diagnosis.

What is more troubling to me is the part of the article stating that he used this to justify canceling the MRI that had been advised by a doctor. I don't have much of a problem with people looking to unconventional medicine when areas that have been well researched have failed. This is especially true when the unconventional methods might have some basis for working and just haven't been studied enough. The problems often start, however, when people turn away from established medicine in favor of the untested methods. I know that he had reservations about that MRI beforehand, but using the gene sequencing to justify canceling the MRI seems to be a step in the wrong direction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> fascinating, more from a social than technical perspective.

<comment><USER8> I find it rather depressing. Comparing the harm something like this could do (cheek swab and blood sample) and the potential benefit against some of the work scientists are performing on their own, healthy, children (there was a post on here about this a few days ago but it seems my searching abilities haven't returned from their lunch break yet) I really don't understand why he hasn't received more support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how useful the algorithms used in those online 20 questions games such as 20q.net or akinator.com would be for diagnosing these sorts of rare diseases. The 20 questions games seem to be able to guess even extremely obscure objects or characters, so it seems as though it might be a useful tool for doctors in cases where the diagnosis is difficult. Obviously, a tool such as this would not be able to actually make a diagnosis itself, but it seems like it might be an extremely useful aid to doctors who are facing rare and obscure conditions.

<comment> a-priori <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expert_system>

<comment><USER6> The wikipedia article seemed to indicate that these sorts of systems don't see much use outside of limited fields in medicine. Do you know why that is? It seems to me that the problem should be very similar to that faced by those 20 questions games, yet they seem to do fairly well on a wide variety of topics.

<comment><USER9> The larger the domain, the weaker they get.

Also, to differentiate diagnoses will frequently take tests and things that normal people don't have access to. A _lot_ of things cause headaches, a _lot_ of things cause nausea (damn near everything does, it seems like), etc. From an information theoretic point of view, it's hard to get enough bits of information from a normal person to diagnose anything. From a Bayesian point of view, it's hard to get enough evidence to diagnose a rare disease starting with low priors, but a system that only diagnoses common diseases is of limited value.

In a limited domain it can do well, or even outperform a doctor (who is also limited by having a large domain, that problem is actually fundamental to the problem space not just the intelligence applied), in general it can't.

I've half-self-diagnosed myself with Celiac disease (wikipedia article is the best on it I've found), which is in the running for one of the most under- diagnosed diseases currently known, precisely because the symptoms are relatively vague and quite variable ("Symptoms include chronic diarrhoea, failure to thrive (in children), and fatigue, but these may be absent and symptoms in all other organ systems have been described." - can it get any more vague? yes, but only barely.). This is an extreme, but there's enough medical conditions like this to make the general case very difficult to deal with.

<comment> a-priori Self-diagnosis is a whole other ball game, and it's a dangerous game to play. While a good expert system could help doctors significantly, in the hands of the general public it could also cause great harm.

Self-diagnosis delays consultation with an actual expert. In addition, many symptoms (especially neurological ones) can only be seen or elicited by a trained third-party.

PS: I have a friend with Coeliac disease, so I know something about it. It is hard-to-diagnose conclusively, but that's often not necessary. A key feature of the disease is that treatment, elimination of dietary wheat gluten, is harmless and usually causes drastic improvement. In my friends' case, it didn't, but that's an exception. I strongly recommend talking to a doctor and dietician about it.

<comment><USER9> I mean no disrespect, but that "half-self-diagnosed" isn't "self-diagnosed" for a reason. I don't need your approval of my decisions. I was simply using that as an example of something hard to diagnose. As you say, it's even hard to diagnose _with_ medical resources, so it's not as if there's a choice. The whole "don't self-diagnose" speech is misplaced when diagnosis is not reliably available!

<comment> a-priori I apologize for coming across harshly. I also didn't mean any disrespect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Beatrice's underlying problem, if genetic, will probably either be a new mutation, or will be caused by having two recessive alleles inherited from each of her parents. If the former, then comparing her genome with her parents' genomes would (I would guess; IANA geneticist) isolate it pretty quickly.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of Lorenzo's Oil <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104756/></comment>


U.S. Universities Failing in Cybersecurity Education - <AUTHOR> https://www.cloudpassage.com/company/press-releases/cloudpassage-study-finds-u-s-universities-failing-cybersecurity-education/ <comment><AUTHOR> I've always been impressed by CS folks that come from RIT. I'm not surprised that they're at the top of the list of schools that have cybersecurity electives.</comment>


The High Price of Not Completing College in Four Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-high-price-of-not-completing-college-in-four-years-1496929350?sid=ebs2d253815d8032d1496963072010sbe <comment><USER2> What you do during your degree matters more than how quickly you finish it and enter the rat-race.</comment>


Snipt Pro - <AUTHOR> https://snipt.net/pro/

<comment><USER2> Why should someone use Snipt instead on a gist? Besides the nice interface I mean. Honestly asking here.

<comment><AUTHOR> (founder / dev of Snipt, here) -- I need more organization that what Gist allows me. I have a whole bunch of tags that help me group my snipts: <https://snipt.net/nick/>

Searching is also useful. I'm always forgetting psql/mysql DB commands, and the search I've got working now is pretty solid.

Nothing against Gist, really. I created Snipt almost 4 years ago, before Gist was around. Gist is great if you want revision control. For me, I use Snipt for bits and pieces of code that I don't want to forget, but probably don't need to work on very often.</comment></comment>


Supreme Court Rejects Privacy Claim in Data Broker Case - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2016/05/16/supreme-court-spokeo-decision/ <comment><USER2> This is a bit of a mischaracterization. They ruled that the lower court decision didn't address the appropriate issue, not that the underlying claim was improper.

It would be unsurprising for the 9th (the court the case was bounced back to) to conclude that yes, the harm was "concrete".

(At which point you get another appeal. Whee!)

</comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely stunned that they are saying that incorrect information couldn't prove harm. I wonder if this sets a precedent for more invasive and potentially harming inaccurate data collection?

<comment><USER4> I don't think they're saying incorrect data couldn't prove harm, they are saying that it _hasn 't yet_ produced concrete harm, which is really another way of say strong evidence of harm.

Obviously I disagree, especially when living in an age where teenagers aren't afraid to try and get a swat team to kick down your door because they don't like your YouTube channel. Privacy is very important.</comment></comment>