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Microsoft says encryption laws make companies wary of storing data in Australia - technion
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-28/microsoft-says-companies-are-no-longer-comfortable-storing-data/10946494
======
mastazi
I have migrated to Australia many years ago and I have recently become
eligible to become a citizen. However I’ve heard stories of tech companies
refusing to hire Australians because of the AA Bill, so I’m holding it off for
now. The problem seems to be the provision that a tech worker can be coerced
by the Australian Government into creating a backdoor, and they are not
authorised to disclose it to their employer. I don’t want to hurt my future
employability. On the one hand, if I had my citizenship then I could vote at
the next elections, but on the other hand the AA Bill has been supported by
all major Australian parties so I feel powerless.
~~~
KorematsuFred
Is this true ? There is no way I am hiring an Australian citizen then.
~~~
mastazi
"For example, Australia’s law enforcement could compel Apple to provide access
to a customer’s iPhone and all communications made on it without the user’s
awareness or consent. An engineer involved would, in theory, be unable to tell
their boss about this, or risk a jail sentence."
Source: Sydney Morning Herald [https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-
affairs/dangerous-o...](https://www.smh.com.au/business/consumer-
affairs/dangerous-overreach-on-encryption-leaves-backdoor-open-for-
criminals-20181214-p50mak.html)
That would be a 5-year jail sentence apparently:
"The Australian government could demand web developers to deliver spyware and
software developers to push malicious updates, all under the cloak of
“national security.” The penalty for speaking about these government
orders—which are called technical assistance requests (TAR), technical
assistance notices (TAN), and technical capability notices (TCN)—is five years
in prison."
Source: EFF [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian-
government-...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/australian-government-
ignores-experts-advancing-its-anti-encryption-bill)
~~~
philliphaydon
So developer discusses with his boss. Developer A adds back door. Developer B
then patches back door. Boss fires developer A. Developer A then uses this TAR
crap to sue government for forcing him to do something and lose his job.
I can’t see the government being able to defend itself. We elect the
government to serve the people and the decisions of the government are
negatively impacting the people no matter which way you spin it.
My 2cents.
~~~
ENGNR
'developer discusses with his boss' => that's 5 years prison right there, not
joking
It's 5 for not doing it and 5 for telling anyone, 10 for both
~~~
maldeh
Assuming it could be proven, surely?
And there have to be limitations as to how far an individual could go as to
subterfuge, so if your company enforces a 2-person code review and there
aren't other authorized Australian nationals at hand, you could point at
process preventing you from doing so without others' knowledge (how naive this
defense is, I have no idea)
~~~
int_19h
You opt into participating that process by accepting the job, though. So from
Australia's perspective, the way to comply with their law is to not take such
jobs, and to leave if the process changes prevent you from complying.
~~~
viraptor
I think you're inventing scenarios here that are too unlikely even for a
pretty corrupt country. There probably exist laws in a number of countries
which would technically jail you for taking some not-explicitly-illegal job.
But this is absurd. Unless you're an actual lawyer giving opinion here?
~~~
Nasrudith
I think if you trust people to not be corrupt you will wind up with
corruption. A bad law is one that requires the empowered to not abuse it. A
good law can't be abused. Harsh and cynical but true - reducto ad absurdum
giving someone the legal power to murder anyone and relying on it to "not be
abused" is a law literally bad enough to be causus beli for a civil war.
------
jjcm
That's one of the biggest things that lawmakers here couldn't seem to
understand - tech companies have high mobility across borders. Even if a law
has no teeth, why would Microsoft store data in Australia when the next
country over can still serve data for the region? It just creates too much
risk, from a privacy and PR standpoint. Startups will be more adverse to
founding in Australia as well. It just creates a black mark on their record
from the start. These data laws were very poorly planned by the Australian
Government.
~~~
yingw787
I think that "high mobility across borders" is an assumption based on existing
trade regulations. From recent developments it's clear countries can and do
force companies to do things they don't want, and companies will do it because
they can't or won't lose access to consumers in those markets.
For example, Apple has begun storing Russian user data in Russia in compliance
with Russian data storage laws ([https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/01/apple-
will-reportedly-sto...](https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/01/apple-will-
reportedly-store-russian-user-data-locally-possibly-decrypt-on-request/)), and
Google is still working on its censored search engine in China.
Of course, if nobody else does this, this means you may have older software on
your systems or less priority in development roadmaps or whatever as your
country is an edge case, and you can probably say goodbye to market leadership
and have to coast on your existing advantages. However, if _everybody_ begins
to cartelize the Internet, you may not lose as much in comparison to everybody
else, since you will no longer be the edge case but the common case, and it
will be a bad time to start a company or store data anywhere you go at any
time. Companies will simply have to live with the geopolitical reality. In
this sense, the Internet devolves into a suboptimal Nash equilibrium, where
everybody has data localization laws and nobody will want to loosen up because
storing your citizen's information on servers in another country will leave
your citizens vulnerable. If this happens, the large homogeneous markets with
a single language, government, and economy (U.S/China) may have an advantage.
This is sad, and I hope they reverse this law. An open Internet is good for
economic and societal dynamism (and as a civilization is tautological to
organized chaos, slowing that down weakens said civilization), and I wouldn't
know how to work backwards to where the Internet should be. In the meantime,
maybe this will lift some open source, decentralized communications means past
some threshold of viability.
~~~
lsiebert
The Trump Administration also passed a law that affects companies that store
data overseas so that they can get that data, after big companies fought such
subpoenas.
~~~
coolspot
The case[0] started on Obama watch though.
What happens now is that after many appeals it goes to the supreme court.
[0] - [https://mashable.com/2014/06/12/microsoft-u-s-government-
dat...](https://mashable.com/2014/06/12/microsoft-u-s-government-data-foreign-
servers/#qYJesfHDogqd)
------
throw0101a
Ironically OpenSSL started in AU because the crypto (export) laws of the US
were too stringent:
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSLeay](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSLeay)
Now it's the opposite?
~~~
ehnto
Encryption isn't illegal due to the bill. In fact encryption law itself hasn't
changed. The bill gives the government the ability to compel someone to
circumvent encryption (backdoors, spyware etc.) if technically feasible while
acting to service a warrant.
It is much worse than banning encryption as it is silent subterfuge and
forcing the hand of citizens who would otherwise just be going about their
day.
Laws should be able to stop people from doing certain things but forcing
people to do something they had no business doing in the first place is
insane.
------
oedmarap
The three areas of contention in the bill:
> A technical assistance request (TAR): Police ask a company to "voluntarily"
> help, such as give technical details about the development of a new online
> service.
> A technical assistance notice (TAN): A company is required to give
> assistance. For example, if they can decrypt a specific communication, they
> must or face fines.
> A technical capability notice (TCN): The company must build a new function
> to help police get at a suspect's data, or face fines.
This approach is ripe for abuse. Even if a company is served with a TAN and
"can't technically decrypt" then a TCN can force them to downgrade/backdoor
the platform security to comply. The TAR seems token at best.
~~~
mikro2nd
Thought experiment: Company gets served with a TCN. They task Jolene (Snr
Programmer) to implement the backdoor. She does so in a way that spews
information far and wide in a highly visible manner. What are the consequences
for Jolene and/or the company, especially when the spooks cry foul and
Jolene's lawyer/Company replies with something along the lines of "I guess
she's just incompetent and did a bad job. Sorry. But we did comply with your
TCN."
Does this law actually address such a scenario?
~~~
brokenmachine
Jolene and some people from the company go to jail for exposing the Gestapo
overreach.
The govt talks about being tough on baddies, coal keeps being sold, there's no
pedophiles in my house and wow, it's Sunday so lets all watch the footy!!
------
dalbasal
It's incredible to watch the degree to which intelligence wants and needs are
dictating the coming regulatory environment of internet & tech generally.
Losing access to an information stream due to routing or encryption. Matching
allies' and rivals' levels of information access (a la prism). Denying them
access... From the perspective of the spooks (asio, in this case) these are
equivalents to exposing a microphone in Bin Laden's proverbial cave.
Meanwhile, FB & Google's revenue streams are, at this point so big and so
tightly coupled with creepy ad-tech/spyware that the economy depends on
privacy intiatives failing. Narrowing down a list of FB users who are >n%
likely to sign up to a new candy subscription is a lot like producing a list
of >n% likely to march in charlottesville or support some specific jihad.
Colaboration is inevitable.
Lets not underestimate where these roads are leading.
------
grizzles
Aussie entrepreneurs aren't too happy about this law or some of the other
ones, eg. the immigration laws.
One friend (health related ml/ai) is moving from Australia to Thailand next
week. He is PISSED the Aussie government wouldn't let him hire one guy who was
already in the country but not a citizen. That cost 6 other domestics their
job. They were sent packing last week.
He's not the first and he certainly won't be the last to move his company
overseas because of the govts anti biz policies.
------
dgzl
From what I understand, Australia (and other nations) don't give their
citizens explicit rights, such as to personal and property privacy.
~~~
jaza
Australians have very few constitutionally guaranteed rights (compared to
countries such as the US). The Constitution only gives us the right to vote,
the right to a trial by jury, and freedom of religion (and a few others). But
many more rights, including extensive privacy rights, exist in statute law and
elsewhere.
The main argument against adding more rights to the Constitution, is: "we
don't want to end up with obsolete rights that do more harm than good, and
that are virtually impossible to get rid of, like the US with its right to
bear arms".
~~~
tracker1
The U.S. actually goes a step further... the only rights the constitution
actually spells out are the rights of government. Most encroachments have been
under the guise of "interstate commerce" or "taxation" in general...
> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor
> prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or
> to the people.
As to the bill of rights, so long as the police are armed and can act with
impunity... imho, the populace should be able to be armed. I don't personally
own a firearm... I also don't spew racist rhetoric. I am a strong believer in
all civil rights.
~~~
Sabinus
Maybe if the police in America wasn't armed to the teeth and scared of being
blown away by armed populace they wouldn't act like they do. For a country who
keeps guns to hold governments accountable, your government is just a
unaccountable as everyone else; if not more so.
~~~
12298765
We've also been around for longer than anyone else with a modern democracy,
and our goal is longevity of a sustainable relationship between the people and
their government.
We have some issues in our country right now, but I have a good feeling we'll
get them worked out in the next few years.
Many of our laws and rights are in place not for short term feelings about
safety between people and police, but for long term safety of the people from
a tyrannical government. And that tyrannical government might take hundreds of
years to begin to form in a democracy... But the bill of rights and ability of
the people to feel secure without their government's support, keeps the
government from getting too power-hungry or separating too far from the will
of the people.
~~~
dragonwriter
> We've also been around for longer than anyone else with a modern democracy
No, we haven't. In fact, we copied it largely from the UK. (We didn't like the
fact that as a colony we didn't get representation in the national legislature
or the full range of rights citizens in the UK itself had, but, hey, the US
does the same thing. Initially, and still partially, even to it's _capital
district_.
We've got the oldest surviving written Constitution, sure, but that's a
different issue.
~~~
why_only_15
The US has a very different system in a lot of ways. The UK doesn't have a
formal constitution, its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it
isn't in the US, one house, etc. The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the
US is a republic. Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in
1776. The History Of Parliament Online is a very useful resource
([https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constitue...](https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/research/constituencies/constituencies-1754-1790)).
Out of some 6 million people in 1776 that lived in Britain, approximately
100,000 had the right to vote, most of which were in a small segment (i.e. the
ability to vote was highly geographically concentrated).
~~~
dragonwriter
> The UK doesn't have a formal constitution
The UK doesn't have a single written document that lays out the Constitution,
but I wouldn't necessarily call the Constitution _informal_.
> its executive is subject to the legislature in a way it isn't
True.
> one house,
The UK still has a bicameral, not unicameral, legislature, though it now has
priority in the lower house (unlike the US, which retains greater power in the
undemocratic upper house, a feature it copied from the UK which has since shed
it.)
> The UK is a parliamentary democracy and the US is a republic.
The UK is a representative democracy with a ceremonial monarch and the US is a
representative democracy without a ceremonial monarch; the absence of a
monarch is the sum total of the difference indicated by “republic”.
> Also, the UK wasn't a democracy in any meaningful sense in 1776.
Neither, though, was the US in 1776, or 1789, for much the same reason: the
colonies had imported and retained (in some cases added to) the kinds of
restrictions on the franchise found in the UK, and kept them past the
revolution and Constitution, which left decision of who could vote to the
States (and, while not in the federal government, also often had even more
stringent property, etc., requirements for office _holders_.)
------
dreamcompiler
I was about ready to move all my email over to Fastmail before this happened.
But not now.
~~~
doorbellguy
There was a thread I made about ProtonMail v FastMail and this one point came
up at the top. However ProtonMail’s inability to support standard clients
without an awkward bridge app seems to take edge off it.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19372882)
~~~
C14L
> ProtonMail’s inability to support standard clients without an awkward bridge
> app
Isn't that one of the pros of Protonmail? All the data is encrypted and
decrypted on the client. There is no way to have mail apps access the data
without a piece of software that handles the encryption.
~~~
ams6110
Unless you only send email to yourself, the hole in that idea is that all the
recipients have a copy of your email.
~~~
jeremyjh
So I should store all my bank statements in clear text because my bank has a
copy of them too?
------
kdtsh
Who could have guessed that laws which turn encryption into a legal quagmire
in Auatralia would make companies that do encryption things less interested in
working in Australia ...
------
pgkyc
Here are my thoughts on jurisdictional sovereignty, in terms of your data, and
how an American company calling out Australia is the pot calling the kettle
black.
[https://www.krisconstable.com/its-time-to-think-about-
jurisd...](https://www.krisconstable.com/its-time-to-think-about-
jurisdictional-data-sovereignty/)
------
vmware513
Hey Microsoft, please move your Data Centers to New Zealand. ;)
------
carmate383
The Australian government is increasingly becoming an abuser of human rights.
I could not have left fast enough.
------
coldcode
My employer (S&P 100 sized) is rapidly deciding to move away from all
Atlassian products including Jira. If enough people stop doing business with
Australian tech companies, this law will likely be punted. Money talks,
politicians run.
~~~
brokenmachine
Is your employer a mining company?
If not, the Australian government doesn't care.
Sell all the things!
------
lugg
It's ok, a lot of us Australians work for the major USA tech companies anyway.
What should be more concerning is that your govt uses our govt to spy on you.
You didn't really think it was Australia that wants your secrets did you?
------
chirau
i'm just sitting here looking from Africa smiling... eventually you'll come to
us.
------
Dravidian
Beware that Indian companies can hand over your data to Indian agencies
anytime without any court order[0].
[0]:[https://m.slashdot.org/story/350062](https://m.slashdot.org/story/350062)
------
alfiedotwtf
In case anyone has any questions regarding the AABill (now TOLA), please see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19508937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19508937)
------
otabdeveloper1
"Nice user network you have there. Be a shame if something happened to it,
eh?"
\- Always yours, Microsoft.
------
mbrodersen
Yeah as if the NSA/FBI doesn't have the same powers in practice in the US.
------
xiaodai
It's quite sad that Australia has such a stupid law.
~~~
chirau
are you sad about any of the "stupid" (relative and subjective term) laws in
the US? Would be curious to know which, if any.
~~~
why_only_15
What? Of course everybody has some laws they dislike that are stupid. To get a
sampler, check out @crimeaday on Twitter
([https://twitter.com/CrimeADay](https://twitter.com/CrimeADay)).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop writing milliseconds and hating JavaScript's setTimeout & setInterval - avk
https://github.com/avk/jQuery-Chrono
======
kragen
Why would I add 1.8K of possibly buggy minified code, compiled from 247 lines
of possibly buggy un-minified code, to my web app, just in order to avoid
having to write
function after(seconds, fn) { return setTimeout(fn, seconds * 1000); }
function every(seconds, fn) { return setInterval(fn, seconds * 1000); }
var MINUTE = 60, HOUR = 3600;
in my program?
I do like the naming and argument order better than the standard functions,
but the cost-to-benefit ratio of this library seems off by two orders of
magnitude, given the ability to get the same benefit in two or three lines of
code instead of 200 or 300.
~~~
avk
Author here. Point taken. Please use whatever works best for you. I mostly
wanted to encourage people to write more readable JS timers. Ideally, after()
and every() would make it into ECMAScript in some optimized form so you
wouldn't need my code :)
By the way, the argument order and flexibility is what contributes to most of
those lines.
~~~
kqueue
milliseconds is pretty readable. What's not readable is "9.7" and 100 because
I am not sure if that's in seconds, milliseconds unless I know the default.
~~~
kragen
You might have a point if we were talking about mass (is that 9.7 grams or 9.7
kilograms?) or length (9.7 feet or 9.7 meters?), but if you're talking about
voltage or current or power or time, and using floating-point numbers, there's
really only one reasonable default unit you could be using in each case. And
the millisecond it is not.
~~~
nitrogen
_And the millisecond it is not._
...unless you're talking about computer programming instead of physics, in
which case one uses counts of milliseconds, microseconds, or nanoseconds. Also
remember that integers are valid floating point numbers, so after(100) is
ambiguous in the context of computer programming (as pointed out by the prior
poster).
~~~
kragen
If you have floating-point numbers, there's no reason to use milliseconds,
microseconds, or nanoseconds instead of seconds, except to deliberately
obfuscate your code, or if you need more than 53 bits of precision.
~~~
nitrogen
Sure, if you're running JavaScript on a CPU with a beefy FPU there's no reason
now, but you're still going against decades of ingrained behavior and
potentially affecting performance on embedded systems.
------
stephenr
I'm sorry but if you can't immediately realize upon reading that 5 * 60 * 1000
is five minutes, you probebly shouldn't be trying to use window.setTimeout and
definitely not window.setInterval.
Not every single thing needs to be wrapped in a jQuery "helper". Doing that
just makes the developer using it more reliant on jQuery and less
experienced/knowledgeable about straight JavaScript.
~~~
johnswamps
Clearly any semi-decent programmer can mentally translate 5 * 60 * 1000 into 5
minutes. So what? This is nonetheless a more intuitive and less error prone
way to write times. This is about making readers of your code spend less
cognitive effort figuring out what your code does, decreasing the chances of
bugs (oops, I missed a 0 or screwed up a conversion factor), and making your
code easier to modify. You seem to think this is a plugin for programmers too
dumb to use milliseconds; it's not. Stop making excuses for bad code.
That said, sure, this isn't exactly a huge issue that's plaguing the
javascript community. I probably won't use this plugin.
~~~
gb
I'm not disagreeing with your general point, but this does seem a little
overkill when you could achieve a similar effect with a few constants:
5 * MINUTE
3.5 * HOUR
etc.
~~~
jrockway
Where are you getting these constants in JavaScript? You can't even trust the
built-in "undefined" to actually contain "undefined".
(My point is: a library may be more appropriate in the JavaScript case,
because of the lack of constants.)
~~~
snissn
is mytimelibrary.MINUTE what you're getting at?
------
benatkin
The 2 * 60 * 1000 idiom for two minutes doesn't bother me.
underscore.js has a nice alternative for setTimeout() and several functions
that probably should be used instead of setInterval() in most cases where
setInterval() is used:
<http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/#delay>
~~~
avk
Thanks for sharing. I haven't worked with underscore yet. What about delay do
you find superior to setTimeout() ?
------
avk
Author here. Very open to feedback & criticism. Thanks!
~~~
nasht
I could see this being really useful if it could message a javascript event
bus. Maybe use it for deciding when to synch browser data with server data or
to modulate the messaging between different users browsers. The statelessness
of http creates many timing related problems.
On a side note: when is one of these big companies going to release a really
advanced "jquery for webkit" that forgets about the browser incompatibilities
and focuses on building a virtual operating system in the browser? Google,
Apple, Netflix? Anyone?
~~~
avk
Thanks for the idea but that's definitely much more complex than what I had in
mind: just encouraging people to use more readable JS timers.
Feel free to build on top of my code though!
------
randall
I use Jquery Timers to accomplish a similar goal.
<http://plugins.jquery.com/project/timers>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Search IRS 990 forms from non-profits - BruceM
http://lukerosiak.info/irs/
======
BruceM
He's working through OCRing over 7 million of these documents. He could use
some help doing so, so contacting him would be great.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Paravirtualization With Xen On CentOS 5.3 (x86_64) - joschi
http://www.howtoforge.com/paravirtualization-with-xen-on-centos-5.3-x86_64
======
spkthed
Does Howtoforge actually have created content? Every time I see one of their
articles I see probably 5 absolutely identical articles on other sites. I'm
not sure which way the ripping-off is happening.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The History of Joy Division’s “Unknown Pleasures” Album Art - bravura
http://adamcap.com/2011/05/19/history-of-joy-division-unknown-pleasures-album-art/
======
NelsonMinar
This whole article reads like it's written by someone who has never been
inside a library. "it would be nice to have an original copy of those 3
aforementioned works in front of me to see if they list any copyright". If
only there were institutions that have copies of obscure works like
"Scientific American" that allowed people to peruse them for free.
Here's an animated, interactive visualization that looks like the Joy Division
album cover, based on d3.js <https://github.com/daliwali/unknown_pleasures>
~~~
waterlesscloud
I happen to own a copy of the Cambridge Encyclopedia Of Astronomy (Doesn't
everyone?).
There's no attribution credit for the image, though many other images in the
book have such credits.
The caption does note, however, that the pulsar has a period of 1.337 seconds.
I believe this makes it quite leet.
~~~
xefer
I too had a copy.
I remember when the album came out I immediately recognized the image, but I
had no idea they had lifted it directly from the book itself. Now I wish I
hadn't cut the picture out and taped it to the wall. :)
------
laumars
That was a long blog which essentially would have been pretty common knowledge
for most Joy Division fans and/or people interested in astrophysics. And
because of that I think the author missed out on raising a bigger and more
interesting discussion: (I'll quote one of the comments on his site as that
phrases is things rather well)
_Interesting, but the article misses the point in all kinds of ways. It was
common knowledge (at least, to those familiar with Joy Division and Saville's
work) that the image itself was appropriated from an original that was in the
public domain. The interesting point here is not copyright, but the way in
which an image can come to represent a concept such that it gains new meaning.
When the intended audience sees this, they think, "Joy Division", not
"pulsar". Hence, when you copy the image by way of Saville, you are
appropriating the association that he has established. So, this isn't about
stealing images, it's about riding on the coat-tails of a talented designer
who managed to create a strong brand._
_A proper understanding of what's going on here makes this sentiment: "If you
ever want to use the image for your own personal benefit, just make sure it’s
clear you have no connection with Joy Division, Peter Saville, etc…" pretty
shiesty._
~~~
bjornsteffanson
Can you define 'shiesty'? Not having a go, just haven't heard that word
before, and searching returns conflicting results.
~~~
michaelwww
The top Google links didn't mention Shakespeare's Shylock, which I always
understood to be the origin. It turns out there is some disagreement between
this origin and a German word.
[http://observer.com/2003/04/national-review-and-shyster-
heav...](http://observer.com/2003/04/national-review-and-shyster-heaven/)
------
craigching
I can't really contribute anything to the discussion about the image and
rights associated with it, but since I have to say I probably never would have
guessed that one of my favorite bands ever would show up on HN, I guess I'm
going to comment anyway. :)
This was probably the first album that made me consider album art as real
works of art. I still love Joy Division's music today and I will _never_
forget this album cover and what I thought when I bought the album (I was a
little late to discover Joy Division while Ian Curtis was alive, having
discovered them through New Order around 1983 or so). Being interested in
Astrophysics (as a lay person) and I believe I read that the band referred to
this as "the death of a star" at the time. Love the imagery associated with
that.
Great album, great cover art, and great band, I really wish Ian Curtis could
have graced us with more from his fantastic mind, I don't think I've ever
experienced so much fantastic imagery from any other lyricist.
EDIT: Oh, I forgot, the original CD insert that had this image on it wasn't
simple paper as I recall, it was a sort of rough paper (don't know how else to
describe it) with the image on it and you could feel the bumps of the lines.
I think it was that, more than even the image by itself, the two together,
which really fascinated me. I wish I would have kept that edition of the CD,
it was an expensive import at the time and quite original, but I went through
a few CD purges back in the 90's and that was a casualty of one of them. :( Oh
well. I really wish I would have gotten the vinyl and kept that, but CD's were
all the rage back then.
~~~
joezydeco
Saville does pretty amazing stuff.
The original sleeve for New Order's Blue Monday was a die-cut sleeve that
looked like a large floppy disc. It's routinely told that the sleeve cost more
to produce than the entire disc was worth. Factory Records lost money on each
copy sold.
Saville also designed Tony Wilson's headstone, which is pretty freaking cool
(even though it took a few years to get done)
<http://kottke.org/10/10/tony-wilsons-headstone>
~~~
theIV
I haven't seen that before so thanks for linking! I've been a huge fan of
Saville's work for years now, and a bit of a collector of his work. I have a
couple of the special boxed Factory Records tapes from the earlier Factory
years, including Unknown Pleasures.
I'm also glad to see the tombstone is using the Factory Records typeface (at
least up top). I wonder if it has a FAC catalog number...
~~~
arethuza
According to the Guardian:
"The headstone doesn't have a Factory catalogue number (that tradition ended
with Wilson's coffin, FAC 501)"
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/26/fitting-
headston...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/oct/26/fitting-headstone-
tony-wilson-grave)
------
adsr
Interesting, I have always thought that image was from a Fairlight waveform
display.
[http://machinesdontcare.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/fairligh...](http://machinesdontcare.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/fairlight_cmi_page_d_01.jpg)
[http://myblogitsfullofstars.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/fl2x...](http://myblogitsfullofstars.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/fl2xdisplay.jpg)
------
kens
Popular Science in 1973 had an interesting article¹ on cutting-edge computer
visualization, including a star-data image similar in style to the Joy
Division image, except in perspective and with different data. The article
describes new technology that allowed "fantastic" visualization with 7 colors.
The Joy Division style 3-D surface plots were a pretty standard computer
graphics thing in the 1970s, often with lines in the Y direction too making a
grid. They had the advantage of being pretty easy to program and not requiring
a lot of memory - just start drawing lines at the front and keep track of the
highest point at each X position. A function such as a damped sinusoid makes a
nice image this way.
I'm impressed by the author's tenacity and research, but a library would have
really helped him out. Also, I'm puzzled why he thinks the lack of a © on the
image itself matters - magazines usually have something like "Entire contents
copyright" in the masthead.
¹
[http://books.google.com/books?id=IWxyanKoRUoC&lpg=PA104&...](http://books.google.com/books?id=IWxyanKoRUoC&lpg=PA104&dq=hidden%20line%20plots&pg=PA102#v=onepage&q=hidden%20line%20plots&f=false)
------
raverbashing
One thing I can't understand from this image
Apparently it was done with some sort of oscillograph.
So how come the peaks hide the drawings behind it?
Ok, thinking about this, if the drawing is done all at the same time, (like a
signal FFT from the 60's) then the lower drawing device hits the upper drawing
device (if the signal is bigger) hence making both trace the same thing.
~~~
Luc
The image dates from 1971. I am going to guess it was simply drawn on a
plotter, using a hidden-line removal algorithm. The same could have been done
on a vector monitor, but it seems the image has the wrong dimensions for that.
To give you an idea of what was possible in 1971, the arcade machine Computer
Space was released that year: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_Space>
~~~
laumars
Actually you're both wrong. The image is from the late 60s and isn't one
single plotted graph but actually multiple different measurements that have
then been stacked to make comparison easier.
This article does actually explain this, but I can forgive you for not getting
that far as it's the very last item on his blog and appears only to have been
mentioned as an after thought.
~~~
raverbashing
And here's the relevant citation
EIGHTY SUCCESSIVE PERIODS of the first pulsar observed,
CP1919 (Cambridge pulsar at 19 hours 19 minutes right
ascension), are stacked on top of one another using the
average period of 1.33730 seconds in this computer-generated
illustration produced at the Arecibo Radio Observatory in
Puerto Rico.
~~~
Someone
A method for making such plots lives on in ImageJ (a Java version of NCSA
Image). For example, see [http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/docs/guide/146-30.html#toc-
Subsecti...](http://rsbweb.nih.gov/ij/docs/guide/146-30.html#toc-
Subsection-30.12).
------
DanBC
So, now the author has a rough idea about the copyright status of the image. I
want to know if the record companies agree.
I'd love to see the t-shirt produced, and the reaction from the record
companies.
~~~
UntitledNo4
The blog post was written on 19th May 2011, so I guess that the T-Shirt was
either produced already, or that the whole project has been shelved. His last
update to his post is from December 2012, and there is no mention about an
actual T-Shirt that was produced. I would have also like to see the design of
the T-Shirt, but I guess I never will.
------
stuartd
I was in MOMA in Glasgow a few years ago - back when it used to have cool
stuff - and there was an installation in the basement, part of which was a
running turntable with the needle stuck in the locked groove at the end. The
record was - of course - Unknown Pleasures, and in a pleasing symmetry I was
wearing my T-Shirt with the pulsar image on it.
------
cylinder714
My favorite animated-GIF version, via maxgif.com:
[http://24.media.tumblr.com/b2d0e6039db4d09a5b543bd121012321/...](http://24.media.tumblr.com/b2d0e6039db4d09a5b543bd121012321/tumblr_mkw5mcek6B1rzthl7o1_500.gif)
------
ivan_ah
Startup idea: make copyright suck less.
It seems that the options for getting artistic content for your products
(websites/books/games/album covers) these days are limited. Either you go get
something off istock photo, or your rip from google images hoping that the
original owner doesn't notice.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a marketplace for art? Or some sort of protocol
for tracking down who created what?
The business model for the company would be that of intermediary -- i find who
the copyright belongs to and skim a keep a percentage of the royalty.
Better art and no fear of copyright infringement for clients + better paid
artists = win win.
------
nhebb
I would have guessed it was a mountain range from an LoTR map, e.g.
[http://www.lord-of-the-
rings.org/collections/maps/map6%5B1%5...](http://www.lord-of-the-
rings.org/collections/maps/map6%5B1%5D.jpg)
------
famousactress
My favorite parody of the album cover so far, and particularly relevant:
<http://four-pins.com/style/ive-seen-it-on-tumblr/>
------
pranavrc
That pulsar has been my desktop background for a few years now. Brutally
honest, cathartic album and one of the first ones where I 'identified with'
the music and the art.
------
glomph
No one on here has access to nature.com? It seems like my university stopped
paying for it, otherwise I would have checked.
~~~
TimSAstro
I checked the nature paper - no plots! (Well, no multi-line plots in the
fashion of the one in question).
~~~
glomph
Thanks for checking.
------
Luyt
I once wrote a program in BASIC (on my C64) which would make such a display
(it's straightforward). I lost that program, but recreated a lookalike in
Python:
-- --
--- ---
------------------ -------------
--------------------------
------------- ------------------ -------------
------- ---- - ------- -
-------- - - -------
----------- - -------- -----
----- - ---------
-------- - - --------
-------- ------- ----------- -------
---------- ------- -----------
--- - -- ------- --------
- -- -- -
- -- - -
---------------- -- - ------------------
--- - -
--------------- - ----------------
- -
----------------- --
-------------------- ------ ------ ------------
------ - -- ------
-------- ----- ---- -----------
------- - -- -------
------ - - - -------
------- -- - -- -----------
-- - -
----------------- -- -------------------
- ----- --
-- -- -- --
----------------------------- -- --------------
----------- - -----------
- -- - ----------
-- --
-- --
--------------------- --------------
_heuh... it looks a bit horrible in ASCII art ;-)_
import random
import math
canvh = 40
canvw = 60
tracecount = 16
canvas = [[' ' for col in xrange(canvw)] for row in xrange(canvh)]
def randomtrace():
sigma = random.uniform(4, 20)
mu = random.gauss(canvw/2, canvw/20)
k = canvw / (sigma * math.sqrt(2*math.pi))
s = -1.0 / (2 * sigma * sigma)
amp = 2.0
tr = [amp * k * math.exp(s * (x - mu)*(x - mu)) for x in xrange(canvw)]
# TODO: Random permutations, or Perlin noise.
return tr
for t in range(tracecount):
if t == 0 or t == tracecount - 1:
continue
y = t * canvh / tracecount
trace = randomtrace()
for x, t in enumerate(trace):
t = int(t)
top = y - t
if top >= 0:
canvas[top][x] = '-'
for i in range(t):
top += 1
if top >= 0:
canvas[top][x] = ' '
for row in canvas:
line = "".join(row)
print " ", line
~~~
mkl
I just spent way too much time making a matplotlib one. Example output:
<http://imgur.com/PtkkESv>
import pylab
import scipy
def gaussian(x, centre, xscale, height):
return height * scipy.exp(-(2.*xscale*(x-centre))**2)
def triangle(x, centre, xscale, height):
y = height * (1. - scipy.absolute(xscale*(x-centre)))
return (y>0) * y
x = scipy.linspace(0., 1., 1501)
shape = triangle#gaussian#
def generate_noise(x, num_bumps, centre_min, centre_max, xscale_min,
xscale_max, height_min, height_max, shape=shape):
y = scipy.zeros_like(x)
for i in xrange(num_bumps):
centre = centre_min + (centre_max-centre_min)*scipy.rand()
xscale = xscale_min + (xscale_max-xscale_min)*scipy.rand()
height = height_min + (height_max-height_min)*scipy.rand()
print centre, xscale, height
y += shape(x, centre, xscale, height)
return y
def generate_line(x):
y = scipy.zeros_like(x)
y += generate_noise(x, 100, 0., 1., 0., 300., 0., .003)
y += generate_noise(x, 10, .25, .75, 20., 30., 0., .03)
y += generate_noise(x, 10, .29, .45, 20., 30., 0., .03)
return y
num_lines = 85
line_gap = .015
for i in xrange(num_lines):
base_line = (num_lines-i)*line_gap
y = base_line + generate_line(x)
poly = pylab.Polygon([(x[0], base_line)]+zip(x, y)+[(x[-1], base_line)],
facecolor='k', edgecolor='none', zorder=i)
pylab.gca().add_patch(poly)
pylab.plot(x, y, 'w', linewidth=2, zorder=i+.5)
pylab.gcf().patch.set_facecolor('black')
pylab.gca().set_axis_bgcolor('k')
pylab.axis('equal')
pylab.gcf().set_size_inches(8., 8.)
pylab.savefig('pulsar.png', facecolor=pylab.gcf().get_facecolor(),
edgecolor='none', dpi=150)
~~~
Luyt
Whoah, that's a nice one. I wonder whether the original Arecibo data-set of
the pulsar is still around somewhere. I tried to find it, but I didn't
succeed.
------
nvr219
Such a good album
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All Your Fountains Are Belong To Us - jheitzeb
http://www.hackthings.com/all-your-fountains-are-belong-to-us/
======
peteforde
My friend Jeff Chapman would have really appreciated this.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountaineer>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninjalicious>
<http://www.yip.org/oases/>
------
hndude
This reminded me of something that I came across years ago, strobe lights
shifting the "timing" of fountains ( <http://cre.ations.net/creation/the-time-
fountain> ), hopefully this summer I can find some time to build one or a
combination of these cool fountains :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Django tests are now fast - forsaken
http://ericholscher.com/blog/2009/jan/15/django-now-has-fast-tests/
======
brandonkm
Best news i've heard about django recently. This will undoubtedly make many
'testing obsessive' developers very happy, not only from a performance view
but from a django feature set view as well.
------
almost
Awesome, maybe now I can practically run my tests against Postgres when I'm
developing instead of against sqlite. Will be nice to avoid the (admittedly
very occasional) works-on-sqlite-but-not-on-postgres problems.
------
StrawberryFrog
Hm, who thought that test cases being database bound in the first place was a
good idea? Haven't they read Feathers on this topic:
<http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=126923>
They should consider a Fake database for the tests that happen to use a
database rather than testing the database. Hopefully that's a majority of
them.
------
shafqat
Awesome news... especially since since NewsCred is about to migrate to 100%
Django! So far it's been a great experience for all our developers.
------
forsaken
Anyone out there with a django test suite, I'd love to hear some other
performance benchmarks in the comments.
------
biohacker42
Is Django itself now fast under load?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jim Mattis: Duty, Democracy and the Threat of Tribalism - inflatableDodo
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-mattis-duty-democracy-and-the-threat-of-tribalism-11566984601?mod=rsswn
======
inflatableDodo
The text is also up on MSN without the paywall [https://www.msn.com/en-
us/news/opinion/jim-mattis-duty-democ...](https://www.msn.com/en-
us/news/opinion/jim-mattis-duty-democracy-and-the-threat-of-tribalism/ar-
AAGrBMW)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: FAQ Pages useful? - kineticac
I just put together a FAQ page for http://browseology.com to help clarify the new technology. We found that people are often times associating real-time collaboration with signups, installs, and such, so that's what they keep looking for on our page, when all they need is to click a link to get the screen sharing ability for the web. Trying to explain how simple something is in a world that's not accustom to it is hard, so we put up a FAQ to see if it would help.<p>Do you guys think a FAQ is useful for a site?<p>Should you actually be solving the problem of why a FAQ even exists?<p>IF you need a FAQ is your product too hard to understand to begin with?<p>Let's hear your thoughts, and please review my FAQ page as well.
======
ErrantX
I _always_ look for a FAQ whenI visit a site that is not instantly obvious.
Your right fixing issues that make a FAQ a necessity are important but you can
never make it obvious for every single person. If you can describe whats going
on in a few simple paragraphs then
Often, too, I benchmark a site by the FAQ - if there are some similar sites I
intend to use and one specifically has a well written FAQ that could tip the
balance. It shows care for your users and that you understand that at some
point something wont make sense to someone :)
I have to be truthful (because you asked): your whole site is missing the
"obvious". I admit when you first linked to it I was a little confused about
what was suppsed to happen (it did come to me quite fast but was still
counter-intuitive).
On the front page you have one sentence to describe what it's about "Real time
collaborative shopping with friends". That's a great tagline but you dont
explain it any more than that. I know there is more below but there isnt a
simple "dumbed down" pararaph saying "you can browse amazon seeing the same
page as your friends, caht and discuss your choices".
Also it occurs to me that your experts thing is the "value" behind the
service: if I had a friend who was ace at cooking and were looking for a cook
book then obviously I would collaborate with him. But chances are I dont and
so your experts are what would sell the idea to me! On the main page you dont
really explain that option.
Same applies to the FAQ place: 2 paragraphs of what you are, what it entails
and stuff about the experts set at the top of the page would be perfect for
anyone a little lost from the start.
Basically: awesome idea, just needs a bit of user interface tweaking :D
Incidentally as a general point the "you can copy this URL to your friends"
message whe you start to browse stays on my screen for about 1-2secs. Not easy
to read what it says: as that is the main method of collaboration (and that is
the only place that explains it) I dunno if you want to make it stay a bit
longer :) EDIT: ignore that, I see on my other rig that it DOES stay longer
the first time. My bad :)
~~~
joepestro
Thanks for the great feedback.
You're right - Browseology isn't obvious at first glance. That's the biggest
area that we're tackling right now, since as kineticac mentioned, it's a new
concept to be browsing together without installation.
Experts are a huge part of the value prop. We're emphasizing that we're able
to connect you to people who are are interested in what you're looking for.
If you come across more - I'd love to talk about it, [email protected]
------
roam
Yes, a FAQ is certainly useful. But in the case of the Browseology FAQ and
homepage, you have to take a step back and try to look at it through the eyes
of a first time visitor.
Above the first input box there's a link with the text "then join". To me that
looks like I have to create an account. Rephrase it.
But the number one problem I see is "your URL" and "the URL". Honestly, what
does "Copy & paste your URL" mean? Do I have to enter amazon.com? Do you want
the URL to my MySpace page? Even in the FAQ it isn't clear what kind of URL
you're referring to.
Or maybe I'm just a bit dense ;)
~~~
kineticac
Yeah the wording is definitely a bit weird from someone who has never seen
this before. You're not dense at all. I don't think we realized that it might
be a bit too simple and not descriptive enough the way it's worded.
"then join" is a really good point too, I feel like it's telling you to signup
as well, I didn't even realize that until now!
Thank you for the feedback.
------
petervandijck
In your case, you don't need a FAQ, you need to improve your homepage and
focus the product.
I did a quick mockup of an improved homepage:
[http://poorbuthappy.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2009/05...](http://poorbuthappy.com/wordpress/wp-
content/uploads/2009/05/browsology.png)
Equally important: you need to decide what the main interaction is, and focus
on that, instead of making the user choose between 3 confusing ways of
interacting on the homepage.
~~~
joepestro
Thanks for taking the time to show what you had in mind. We're very quickly
iterating over new homepage designs and will be sure to highlight the main
interaction.
------
tokenadult
_Do you guys think a FAQ is useful for a site?_
Yes, it is one of the first things I look for on a site introducing a new
technology or new service. It is a clue I use to determine how committed the
company is to user-friendliness.
------
vivekamn
FAQ is not the first thing I look for in a site. To me, in context hints and
help links are more useful. Personally, I would focus more on these. I do
check the faq, if all else fails to explain.
------
lucumo
FAQs are great. I usually read them as one of the first things on a site. They
breakdown the most important points in bite-sized chunks. They're also very
useful because they're problem oriented (questions), which makes it more
likely that you'll find what you're looking for.
------
kineticac
<http://browseology.com>
------
stonemetal
An FAQ is documentation with a specific format. You don't have to wait for any
questions to be asked before starting your FAQ, though it should highlight any
questions you get asked regularly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Surveillance Capitalism as Threat to Democracy - jashkenas
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html
======
AbrahamParangi
There are two points that I strongly disagree with:
1) The characterization of capitalism as a novel acquisitive behavior. This is
ridiculous. People have always controlled things, such as they were able to.
Capitalism is, if anything, the abstraction of ownership away from violence.
2) The notion that the digital industry is characterized by surveillance seems
to me to miss the point. The motivating factors in instrumentation aren’t a
desire to spy so much as a desire to ensure you’re wasting as much of your
attention as possible. Facebook is less like big brother, more like a psychic
parasite. Or drug dealer.
~~~
throwaway5167
2) Or a government actor, given the revolving door between Facebook and the
government, the army of lobbyists, the reliance of each and every political
candidate on Facebook's advertising, and Facebook's influence on our
democratic discourse. But sure, the digital industry is just trying to
optimize time spent on their products, and these other larger concerns are
besides the point. /s
~~~
AbrahamParangi
I propose we make a new razor: Never assume machiavellianism when self-
interest will suffice.
~~~
kanjus
throwaway5167 didn’t imply that such companies are machiavellian rather than
profit-seeking though, but that their profit-seeking nature leads them to be
tolerant, even welcoming, of partnerships with actors who are machiavellian
(ie driven by spying and propaganda) when that allows for more profit to be
made, which is the worrying part
------
fithisux
I do not leave comment because some surveillance process will make inferences
about me.
------
mc32
So is censorship capitalism when it censors beyond what’s illegal
(prostitution, illegal sales, cons, fraud, exploitation, etc).
Here, at least, with this, one would hope the owner has the ability and right
to enable of disable unwanted features.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Post-Brexit Rumblings Spook U.K. Tech Boom - antouank
http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-07-22/post-brexit-rumblings-spook-u-k-tech-boom
======
muzz
Does this article literally start off mentioning the blatant age
discrimination in tech?
"If you are under 35, possess an entrepreneurial spirit, speak Python and
don’t think of a vegetable when you see the word Celery, then it’s likely you
are in high demand"
~~~
drivingmenuts
Why, yes, it does.
If it exists, then it should be mentioned - there's no point in hiding it or
whitewashing it. I certainly didn't take it as supporting age discrimination,
just a mention that it's a real thing that affects market desirability.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Popular Science Writing: A Challenge to Academic Cultures [pdf] - lainon
http://ou.edu/content/expo/brainstorm/jcr%3Acontent/contentpar/download_37/file.res/Erickson-Popular%20Science%20Writing.pdf
======
veddox
Alexander von Humboldt believed that a scientist never interacts with nature
in a purely rational manner, but that there are always emotions involved as
well. And those emotions, he said, ought to be a part of the way he
communicated his findings.
His philosophy shows in his books. His writing style superbly captures the
beauty, awe and grandeur of nature as he experienced it on his South American
expedition. The result was a series of books that became bestsellers, because
almost everybody could read and appreciate them. At the same time, copious
footnotes provided the accuracy and comprehensiveness his fellow scientists
needed.
Of course, he also wrote books that were entirely technical in nature, as is
perhaps inescapable. But I wish more scientists today would take up the
challenge of communicating not just the truth of their findings, but also
their beauty.
------
whatshisface
> _Going against an epistemological vein of science, popular science writers
> make the discoveries of scientists available to non-specialists by empha-
> sizing what academic scientific papers necessar- ily exclude: the human
> stories and emotions of the scientists behind the discoveries._
This is a really weird statement. Professors love telling stories about how
this-or-that is discovered; there's a downright _attraction_ to the human
side. Further, a human story about how an idea came to be can make great
reading whether or not the idea turned out to be true in the end - Freud's
cases are still interesting, but these days mostly as literature. A fun story
might pique your _interest_ in something, but it better not convince you that
a theory is true! (i.e. keep your aesthetics separate from your epistemology
for a long and happy life.)
So, Feynman's storytelling doesn't go against any vein of science, and even
worse for the author's point _aesthetic human stories aren 't strict
epistemological resources in any context._ So in that sense the claim seems to
miss the way the veins flow in science, and the way epistemology works in
general.
~~~
mxwsn
The key phrase here is "academic scientific papers", which certainly strongly
discourage human stories and emotions.
------
erasemus
I remember at my school students were forced to choose between arts (AKA
humanities) and sciences at 16. The science students were on the whole
brighter than the arts students, through no fault of their own. The arts
teachers tried to sweeten the pill by saying things like, "Those scientists
don't understand human beings." The implication was that we were insensitive
and callous individuals. Comments like this left a mark on me, a science
student, and the rest of my life I've been trying to compensate. And I think
it's also one of the reasons science writers do what they do.
~~~
iorrus
Saying things like that is just a sign they were insecure and compensating.
~~~
theoh
Actually, there's a bit of 'fire' here, not just smoke. From the harmless
stereotypical CS professor who doesn't grok humans, to Zuckerberg's dangerous
obliviousness to the humanistic tradition.
The Wikipedia page for the two cultures has an interesting section which maybe
doesn't belong there:
"In his opening address at the Munich Security Conference in January 2014, the
Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that the current problems related
to security and freedom in cyberspace are the culmination of absence of
dialogue between "the two cultures": "Today, bereft of understanding of
fundamental issues and writings in the development of liberal democracy,
computer geeks devise ever better ways to track people... simply because they
can and it's cool. Humanists on the other hand do not understand the
underlying technology and are convinced, for example, that tracking meta-data
means the government reads their emails."[12]"
Of course there are well-rounded, humane people in the hard sciences. But it's
not a job requirement.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
>"Today, bereft of understanding of fundamental issues and writings in the
development of liberal democracy, computer geeks devise ever better ways to
track people... simply because they can and it's cool."
Rubbish. Geeks do it because that's what they can get a job doing.
~~~
theoh
The quotation doesn't reflect my opinions, but I think you are taking an
overly simplistic "people are driven by money" line.
It's not unusual to encounter this kind of view expressed on HN, and it's
disturbing because it is so reductive. I mean, seriously, you think "geeks" in
general have no choice but to build the software that maximizes revenue? Geeks
are, if anything, more likely than other people to pursue activities for
intellectual satisfaction, to attack difficult problems for fun, etc.
The previous time this came up, someone was claiming that every restaurant
owner only cared about their bottom line -- and that absolutely no restaurant
owners were in it for the love of hospitality (as a social good or something
more professional) and self-expression/self-actualization. Honestly.
~~~
eli_gottlieb
I don't think people are driven _only_ by money, but if inventing cool stuff
doesn't make any, you do it in your spare time after you take someone's money
to push ads into eyeballs.
------
dash2
> Academia’s fracture into a limiting cultural dichotomy has been an ongoing
> contemporary meta-discourse since 1959.
Sheesh. You read Feynman and then you write stuff like this.
------
iorrus
[edited:re read and changed my opinion]
~~~
veddox
I think you missed the point of the article. The author isn't talking about
the language scientists use when talking to each other, but about the
communication between scientists and non-scientists.
The way we speak and write in the scientific community is optimized for
precision and succinctness. Within the confines of a talk or paper, we just
don't have the time or the space to go into all the fundamentals of our work.
And neither do we have to, because everybody in our audience has spent years
of their life accumulating the necessary background knowledge to understand
what we're saying.
But when it comes to talking to outsiders, that doesn't work anymore. Whether
we are explaining our research to politicians or our grandmother, we need to
find new ways to express complex topics. The aim is for the explanation to be
readily understandable but not oversimplified. And that is the conflict the
author of the article is aiming at.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Online M.Sc CS UT Austin, $10K - barry-cotter
https://www.edx.org/masters/online-master-science-computer-science-utaustinx
======
barry-cotter
It seems that it is either at par with or inferior to the GA Tech OMSCS in
every way but the minimum time to completion. You can do it in 1.5 years
whereas IIRC the minimum for GA is three years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to impove in CI/CD - chaoz_
CI/CD concepts are crucial parts of each not-so-small software project. Proper automation and consideration of probable issues support team through the whole journey.<p>I've seen companies ignoring it or doing it wrong in their concrete case.<p>I want to improve in this domain because DevOps quality is correlated with a company's success (defines processes in so many ways).<p>What is the best way to acquire practical knowledge in CI, CD and DevOps? The historical perspective could also be super interesting!<p>Thanks
======
Chyzwar
It is all broken. DevOps mean that developers will fix infra issues without
enough access/permissions/skill. CI means that developers will ship broken
code to production because test coverage is in form of reverse piramide. CD
means the PO will organize demo on half-finished features. Whole DevOps
culture encourages using experimental tools that are not production ready.
My advice. As a developer focus on tests. As Ops focus of simple and process.
As manager avoid Cloud Evangelists.
------
dominotw
You know how rat problem in the city cannot be directly solved by going after
rats because rats are emblematic of all other problems in the city. CI/CD is
the equivalent of that.
------
elviejo
I can recommend the following books: Accelerate: The Science Behind DevOps
Book by Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Nicole Forsgren
The Phoenix Project Novel by Gene Kim, George Spafford, and Kevin Behr
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pebble is dead and hardware buttons are going with it - allenleein
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/27/16936922/pebble-smartwatch-hardware-button-physical-controls
======
ElKoji
The author purposely ignores Garmin, who is one of the biggest player in Smart
watches, after Apple and among Samsung and Fitbit. They make a strong case of
buttons over touch screens, mostly because athletes prefer them, buttons are
easy to operate without looking at the screen and the only way when the screen
is wet, something that is meant to happen even if you don’t swim at all. But
he even ignores the fact that Fitbit themselves always use a combination of
touch screen and buttons, including their newest watch The Ionic. I hate when
a headline is fabricated this way.
~~~
tallanvor
I sort of consider real fitness watches, like the Garmin line to be in a
different category from smartwatches. My Fenix 3, especially when paired with
a chest strap feels like an actual tool for me, whereas the smartwatches I've
seen and tried were more like toys.
I don't think I can ever switch back to a touchscreen watch until there's one
that still has the physical buttons, but also lets you disable the touchscreen
functionality during workouts - beyond the difficulty getting the touches to
register, sweat has enough minerals that the screen sill start registering
false touches, which can wreak havoc during a workout when it starts pausing
things!
And, of course, with my Fenix 3, I normally charge it less than once a week
unless I need to use GPS on it. Touchscreen smartwatches simply don't get that
type of battery life.
~~~
scarface74
Capacitive touch screens don't work well if your hands are sweaty. I couldn't
understand for the life of me why Garmin ever introduced a capacitive touch
screen watch.
I thought my old Garmin GPS watch was amazing when I first got it around 2010.
~~~
tallanvor
I certainly can understand why they released a watch with a touchscreen.
They're trying to appeal to people who aren't necessarily as serious about
fitness (or rather, don't feel the need/desire to closely track their
workouts), but do want to start doing more, and want some of the benefits that
they've heard smartwatches are supposed to offer.
I think the smartwatch fad is actually good in some ways, because it is
forcing Garmin to look at what they can realistically add into their core
watches to help make them more appealing, while still not turning them into a
full smartwatch until the technology is there.
And I'm calling smartwatches a fad for now because they really are at the
moment. The potential for them to be more than a fad is there, but the
technology, specifically battery life, isn't there, and the current lineups
don't offer a compelling story about why we should consider them an integral
piece of technology to keep with us all the time.
------
Johnny555
Touchscreens are awful on a device that you might want to use in the rain...
like a watch.
I have a Garmin sport watch with a touch screen (plus two physical buttons).
If you're out in the rain and need to change modes on a run or bike ride, it's
nearly impossible, you need to stop, bend over to shield the watch with your
body, dry your finger on your shirt (assuming you have a dry spot), then
_then_ you can usually use the touchscreen.
Once it's set to the right mode, the 2 physical buttons work well, but
anything that requires the touchscreen is nearly impossible without stopping
what you're doing.
(at least that's the case with whatever touchscreen technology Garmin uses,
maybe there's a better option for use in the rain)
~~~
viperscape
Older resistance style touchscreen s would work well here, this is where the
capacitance screens fail easily.
~~~
Steltek
I believe resistive screens are also better for battery life, which you'd
think would be critical for a watch.
------
djsumdog
I still have a Pebble Steel. I hope the services get open sourced, because if
not, it will never work with another phone after the cut-off in July. It's one
of the huge disadvantages of how we distribute software today; the
bastardization of the Linux software repository into these stupid non-
mirrorable/non-free app stores.
It's also sad no phone has slide-out keyboards any more. I'm sure there are
several people who would take the thickness trade-off. If a major manufacture
produced a physical keyboard phone, there probably would be demand. One of the
earliest HTC android devices, after the Evo 4G, was a version with a slide out
keyboard. Now the only option seems to be BlueBerries.
~~~
RainaRelanah
> One of the earliest HTC android devices, after the Evo 4G, was a version
> with a slide out keyboard.
The first Android phone (let alone the first HTC Android) was the HTC Dream,
with a physical keyboard. Back in those days Android didn't even have a
software keyboard -- you had to use the physical keyboard.
By the time the Evo 4g came out, hardware keyboards were already considered
second class citizens. The Evo Shift 4g had a worse screen, worse camera, and
a worse CPU than the Evo 4g despite being released a year later.
Thankfully a few companies have picked up the UMPC market, with products like
the GPD Win and the Gemini PDA. I don't need a hardware keyboard on my phone,
but I do need a portable device with one for emergency SSH sessions while on
the road.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
I continue to retain the belief that hardware vendors intentionally killed
keyboard sliders by making them worse phones than their non-keyboard
counterparts, then claiming they didn't need to build them because nobody
wanted them. They sat a full year behind in hardware specs in most cases.
~~~
RainaRelanah
I don't believe it is the only reason, but it certainly significantly hurt
them. They're also less attractive/bulkier, have less room for battery, are
more expensive to design/manufacture, have higher failure rates, etc. I would
still pay ridiculous amounts for a phone with flagship specs and flagship
build quality, with a physical keyboard.
------
lettergram
God I miss my Pebble (had a Pebble Time 2)... I took it off when it was bought
and haven't put it back on (pull of the bandaid).
It was pretty much better than any of my friends watches. We used to trade to
try them out. I hate the iWatch because the bettery died all the time and I
hate the touch screen (I love dials too). The android wear was a bit more my
style, but again battery life sucked and I didn't like it wasn't eInk.
Honestly, give me an option to pay double for a pebble and I would. The Pebble
Time 2 was the best watch I've ever owned bar none.
~~~
SyneRyder
Wait, you had a Pebble Time 2? And you didn't wear it?!!
The Time 2 is legendary with Pebble fans, as it was cancelled and never sold
commercially, and Kickstarter backers were given refunds. Only a handful went
out to employees & reviewers:
[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/7/13864804/p...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/12/7/13864804/pebble-
time-2-core-canceled-fitbit-deal)
I still use my Pebble Time Steel and love it, and I'm not sure what I'll move
to next. The Fitbit Ionic is meant to be the successor (and it has hardware
buttons too, despite what the Verge article says). But it doesn't have a
microphone, and I use that a lot on my Pebble. It's useful for dictating SMS
replies when I'm out running, or for setting quick reminder alarms with Snowy
(Pebble's version of Alexa / Siri).
------
scarface74
_I lost the ability to just plug in my headphones and skip between songs on my
iPod while drifting off to sleep on planes._
Where has he been for the last 10 years? You've always been able to use
headphone buttons to skip between songs on iPhones/iPod touches.
My wife just started teaching fitness classss. She uses this to control music
while she is teaching:
[https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Button-iPhone-
Samsu...](https://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Bluetooth-Button-iPhone-
Samsung/dp/B00RM75NL0)
~~~
danieldk
Small footnote: the iPod Touch comes with Earpods without controls.
------
PaulBGD_
I just bought a Pebble 2 SE and it's absolutely phenomenal. I'm hoping over
the next few months an open source OS comes out, otherwise I'll have to look
for a worse alternative.
~~~
Fnoord
There's 2 main alternatives for smartwatch OS:
For Pebble there is Rebble [1] and for touchscreen smartwatches there is
AsteroidOS [2]. You wanna look at the first although most functions of the
stock firmware should remain working. They'll for sure stay running till June
2018.
As for the subject (I skimmed through the article), I think its true. I own a
Pebble 2 as well and I'd love to buy a smartwatch with similar features (7
days battery life, music control, customisable watchface, stepcounter,
calendar, alarms, Google Drive app, workout app, 2FA app, to-do list app, and
4 hardware buttons or some inventive way to be easily usable during sports
(the scrollwheels don't cut it)). I haven't found any (nevermind the price of
the Pebble being very competitive). Mind you, I did find some devices which
were _very_ good at _some_ of these features.
[1] [https://rebble.io](https://rebble.io)
[2] [https://asteroidos.org/about/](https://asteroidos.org/about/)
~~~
asciimo
Battery life keeps me from buying a successor to my pebble. The Samsung Gear
watches are alluring except for daily charging.
~~~
mikestew
This former Pebble owner is quite happy with his Garmin Fenix and it’s week-
long battery life. You’ll pay through the nose for it (US$500), but Garmin
might have less expensive options with good battery life. I paid the money
because I actually use the stuff that makes it cost $500, but something like a
620 might suit you for less dosh.
~~~
Fnoord
Vivoactive 3 also has a week uptime if you do not use GPS [1] Vivoactive HR
can do with 8 days even. Both assumes you don't use the GPS. When you use
that, battery life is far less, but you don't use that 24/7.
I'm quite lost with regards to Garmin as in which devices do what. I feel like
I'm lost in a forest. If anyone has a comparison website, I'd love to read
such. From what I can tell it appears the Fenix has hardware buttons which the
Vivoactive's doesn't.
[1] [https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/p/571520](https://buy.garmin.com/en-
US/US/p/571520)
------
paulryanrogers
Maybe for screen equipped wearables we'll see buttons disappear. Though I
doubt keyboards on laptops and game controller buttons will be replaced any
time soon. Consider the move from tablets to laptops and paper in schools.
------
ignobleParting
Pebble was a terrible device, and riddled with horrble design decisions.
From the word “go” you knew Pebble was trying to lock you in, register and
count you as a user, log demographic information about you, and tether that
information to unique device identifiers.
You could not simply use Pebble as a watch, if so desired. Pebble enforced
specific behaviors onto the user.
For example, you couldn’t just like the looks of the watch, buy it, take it
out of the box, wear it, and use it to tell time. No.
Open the box, and the watch directs you to an internet connection, so it can
phone home to the mothership. Really? _Really?_
To me, that reeks of exploitation, and the goal was never to provide people
with a good watch that does stuff. Open the box, and push people around. Make
them clap their hands and sing along.
Sorry guys. You made serious mistakes. People notice. Good riddance.
~~~
wvenable
It's a smartwatch -- the watch didn't have a full OS installed when you first
turn it on. It's meant to be paired with a phone. If you just want a watch
without smart features then just get a watch. This complaint is ridiculous and
nobody who owned a Pebble would take it seriously.
Pebble failed because they needed better marketing, took VC money so they
needed to grow fast, and focused on unnecessary hardware addons that nobody
wanted (smart straps).
There are still plenty of people buying out the remaining Pebble hardware. It
was a good device and pretty good ecosystem.
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _and focused on unnecessary hardware addons that nobody wanted (smart
> straps)._
Frankly, for me the "nobody wanted" part was the fitness focus - I initially
got my Pebble _precisely_ because they didn't try the sports angle like
everyone else, but instead went for a hacker-friendly device and architecture.
I'm not even sure if they put much resources into smartstraps - they just
added and described a communication protocol. It wouldn't surprise me if this
was just repackaging of a debugging functionality they needed.
It's hard for me to say where things went wrong. Maybe they just tried to grow
too fast.
~~~
wvenable
Actually the part general consumers wanted was the fitness part -- this is
what put them seriously behind other more poorly designed watches like the
Fitbit. They didn't see the fitness angle until it was too late.
Certainly there's no reason why a fitness angle had to interfere with the
hacker-friendly architecture.
~~~
loulouxiv
I remember reading a post mortem interview of th founder around these lines,
but can't find it anymore. They went all-in on the fitness thing when they
found out the big market was there, thinking of it as their last chance for
survival. Ironically I think that was what killed them in the end. Since they
had a very loyal customer base (yes maybe not very big but enough so every
kickstarter they launched was a massive success) they probably could have
lived aside Fitbit, Apple etc. Reducing their burn rate by focussing on their
market segment (productivity watch) and not trying to launch several products
every year would probably have kept them afloat.
~~~
wvenable
Unfortunately since they took VC money they couldn't just sit by and be a
small player with a loyal customer base. That would have been the ideal
position for them and could have kept them going for a long time. But that
doesn't satisfy their investors that wanted to see a high return on their
investment.
They never even really got their fitness side off the ground before they died.
The Pebble 2 was their first fitness focused watch and they were already dead
when it came out.
The Pebble Round with a heart-rate monitor would have sold like hotcakes to
women with the right marketing.
------
WhyNotHugo
If the intention is to skip songs and change volume when listening to music,
can't you just use the buttons on your headphones?
I understand that there may be value for hardware buttons, but the example
given by the author is a pretty much covered by simple headphone buttons.
~~~
jakobegger
Not if you have Airpods...
------
iveqy
Buttons on smartwatches isn't dead. There are just a bit more niche:
[https://www.kronaby.com/](https://www.kronaby.com/)
------
goldenkey
I have touchscreen gloves - never had any problems even for the 5 years I
spent in Buffalo.
I recommend Agloves because they have awesome customer support incase your
gloves have knit issues. They sent me a pair of the thicker ones for free when
I asked for help with a pair that had some stray threads.
Here is an amazon link: [http://amzn.to/2Eg8MUc](http://amzn.to/2Eg8MUc)
------
wvenable
I have a Gear S3 now (used to own a Pebble) and I rarely touch the screen to
do anything (except to treat it as a big button). You can do most navigation
with the buttons and the ring around the outside.
Between that and the always-on-display it's a good replacement for the Pebble.
------
TechLeadVic
Use a Casio G-Shock with bluetooth if you want control your music. 2 year
battery time too.
~~~
gravypod
I've never heard of these. Do you have any links to store pages? Everything I
find seems to be crazy expensive/discontinued.
~~~
shakna
Casio watches tend to be "crazy expensive", or more than everyone else anyway.
So far as I can see G-Shocks range from $200-$1100 [0], which is about normal
for a Casio. The one with bluetooth, the G'MIX, is around $350, [1] which
sounds about right for them (their famous calculator watch is 50+, even though
its fairly basic).
[0]
[https://www.bevilles.com.au/watches/g-shock](https://www.bevilles.com.au/watches/g-shock)
[1] [https://www.bevilles.com.au/casio-g-shock-bluetooth-g-mix-
se...](https://www.bevilles.com.au/casio-g-shock-bluetooth-g-mix-series-model-
gba400-1a9)
~~~
Cyberdog
Are you talking American dollars? Don't know about the others, but Casio's
awesome calculator watches can be had for less than US$16.
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GB1R7S/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B000GB1R7S/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1517176444&sr=8-3&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=casio+calculator+watch&dpPl=1&dpID=41EWHarBxJL&ref=plSrch)
------
wyclif
This article explains part of my rationale why, later this week when I get my
new MacBook Pro, I'm going to opt for the non-Touch Bar version.
------
HumanDrivenDev
Watch hardware buttons come back in a mainstream product in 5-10 years, and be
touted as a revolutionary new feature.
------
stmw
Does on touchscreens help with driving more engagement metrics and/or
advertising screen time?
~~~
RainaRelanah
I doubt it. It's more about consumer perception. Hardware buttons aren't
futuristic, touchscreens are. And smart watches are largely a futuristic niche
product. Pre-purchase consumers want better specs and often neglect the
practicality of those decisions (battery life of OLED panels and touchscreens,
usability of a 1 inch touchscreen interface, etc).
------
dingo_bat
Classic verge bullshit where they assume everything apple does is innovative
and "the future". If you look at the general market you will find things like
note8, which adds a hardware button, pixel2 which adds a hardware squeeze
detector, gear s3 which adds a physical circular wheel.
I promise you verge will soon publish an article indignantly explaining how
every touchscreen needs a notch on the top that looks ugly and obscures
viewing area.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I’m Stopping the Fan-Supported Podcast Experiment - laurex
https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supported-podcast-experiment/
======
ar0
Of course, podcast ads are also the opposite of almost all the other ads on
the Internet: They don't send your personal data and web browsing history to
hundreds of shady companies, they don't slow down your webbrowsing, they
aren't a vector to install malware on your system.
Thus, I have absolutely no problem with podcast ads, and if they allow a great
podcast I like to be produced sustainably, that's awesome! The same way I also
don't have a problem with ads in printed magazines or on billboards (yet; some
of them already do track you, of course).
~~~
shalmanese
I find podcast ads to be far worse than every other type of ad because it's
the only one that forces you to engage in the ad at 1:1 speed. My podcast app
allows me to skip forward 15s but that requires interaction and I'm often in a
situation where my hands are not free enough to skip through ads.
I pay for ad free versions of every podcast I listen to that offers it. If you
calculate the amount of time you spend listening to the ad, multiplied by a
reasonable hourly rate, then paying to make the ad go away generally makes
sense. Podcasts that don't offer an ad free version, I'm much more likely to
leave it lowest on my priority queue of podcasts to listen to.
------
pbhjpbhj
A few tidbits:
18k respondents to his survey offered up $30k per month in donations .. but
ads are better .. for a podcast.
He has 400M downloads from ~300 episodes.
One subscriber paid $1k per month.
Despite respondents to the survey saying they'd pay $5 or $10 he tested $9.95
and $19.95 payment levels as the minimum and 83% paid whatever the lowest was.
So, prior to the subscription 24% said they'd pay $5, and only 4% that they'd
pay $10 but he still managed to only lose 17% (off the subscription page) when
the minimum was $19.95 .. that's kinda crazy.
#iveneverheardofhim #isheahypnotist
Edit: People listen, then go away and hunt down the products, enough that
companies will pay him more than [ 30k/(1M/5) ] ~$6 per subscriber per month??
~~~
elp
I'd never heard of him before today either.
He wrote a book called the 4 hour work week that claims he makes 40k/month by
only working 4 hours a week. The amazon reviews are a mix of creepy 5 star
reviews by pod people and 20% 1 & 2 star reviews mocking it. The comments on
his podcast (on castbox 200k subscribers) are similar with lots of whining
about the length of the adverts and how boring the show is.
After a bit more looking... absolutely fascinating. Obviously he's a complete
con-artist and he works like a dog but his marketing ability is psychopathic
genius.
~~~
reagle
He began his career by pushing a supplement (first for the brain, then pivoted
it to performance)
[https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/razodglh#supplement...](https://hackinglife.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/razodglh#supplements-
and-self-help)
------
kennywinker
Not sure how well it’s working for them, but for 3+ years i’ve been subscribed
to a podcast that has two feeds, one for shorter abridged episodes with ads,
and one for longer ad-free episodes for paid subscribers.
Clearly most people don’t want to pay, but if your content lends itself to
this kind of basic/premium situation, I think it makes a lot of sense.
------
js2
> That’s why I have a closet full of Mizzen & Main shirts and drink Four
> Sigmatic. Not sure I would have known about those without you.
Four Sigmatic?
> Four Sigmatic is a US company specialized in superfoods, functional
> mushrooms and adaptogenic herbs.
Ok. To each their own, I guess.
------
erikbe
Subscription-based media (almost) only works for niche publications. NYT is an
exception but it's only partially funded through subscriptions. The New Yorker
took decades to turn a profit, and has ads as well.
Based on the fact that his user base is so large, it makes sense that
advertising works best. Especially considering how many listeners he would
lose if he only released it to subscribers. The user base may be more valuable
to advertisers, than the podcast is to subscribers.
------
NetOpWibby
A la carte is annoying when everyone starts doing it. Subscription fatigue is
already setting in for music and video streaming services. No reason the
podcast space would be different.
Still, kudos to Tim for trying.
~~~
falcolas
A la carte works remarkably well with Patreon. Personally I support 11
different video, podcast, and writers.
Perhaps that’s the real takeaway: make it easy to do a la carte, and people
will.
~~~
mcbits
It works well _for_ Patreon, but Patreon content creator earnings seem to
follow the same power law that afflicts much of the economy. Almost nobody
makes more than a couple bucks until they have network effects strong enough
to fuel orders of magnitude higher earnings outside of Patreon with
traditional (annoying) merch/advertising.
That's not to shit on Patreon. I think it's the right idea but still far from
effective enough to consider creative funding a "solved problem" yet.
~~~
em-bee
actually it doesn't work as well for patreon as they'd like because these
small transactions still cost to much. banks charge you through the nose for
them, so they take a share of the profit here.
------
mgalgs
I'd hesitate to generalize this across the podcasting space. Tim's podcast is
pretty unique in this regard. He _really_ does have unique and interesting
advertisers, probably because his scale means he can pick basically whoever he
wants.
Sam Harris did this same experiment recently and has stuck with the ad-free
model. I listen to both podcasts with roughly equal frequency and interest and
I immediately subscribed to Sam but not to Tim.
Not sure what the mechanics are going on here but bottom line is that both
models seem to work well in different contexts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Integer Factorization - subhendra
https://www.slideshare.net/SubhendraBasu3/a-method-for-factorizing-arbitrary-length-integers-in-real-time
======
gus_massa
See the discussion in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14345059)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Melbourne researchers uncover privacy lapses in transport dataset - rbanffy
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252468664/Melbourne-researchers-uncover-privacy-lapses-in-transport-dataset
======
tastroder
> Continue Reading This Article Enjoy this article as well as all of our
> content, including E-Guides, news, tips and more. > Enter corporate e-mail
> address.
What an especially annoying piece of reading filter.
[https://outline.com/antxj9](https://outline.com/antxj9)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Seminal Work Or Sloppy Thinking? - ojbyrne
http://editor.blogspot.com/2009/09/seminal-work-or-sloppy-thinking.html
======
pg
Man, these journalists are so nice compared to the Internet trolls I'm used
to. I barely feel goaded into responding. But...
\- Do _Time_ and _The Economist_ actually switch lengths? It's true I only
looked at one week, but I found a clear trend of constant cost per weight of
paper used, not just between those two but also for heavier mags like _Foreign
Policy_.
\- Laura Bush makes more by (and only by) selling more copies, just like a
popular fabric pattern.
\- What I meant about the "printout of yesterday's news" was not that events
they covered happened the day before, but that it was literally a printout of
stories that had appeared the day before on the _Times_ 's web site.
\- His last point seems a repetition of the one about Laura Bush, but with
more uppercase.
~~~
psyklic
I found the original article insightful, but this journalist's rebuttals also
bring up interesting points.
\- "Does content affect price?" It seems the journalist and PG define "price"
differently -- is it the price to the consumer or to the publisher? Either way
affects profit, so both seem valid to me.
Hence, I feel the journalist has a valid point. Laura Bush will command higher
royalties. So, the price to the _publisher_ is increased (via higher
royalties/advances), because Laura Bush provides desirable content. The
journalist also states that while the price to the _consumer_ is not higher,
the publishers' business model is to sell more copies at a lower profit margin
per copy, which seems perfectly valid.
\- "Better journalism is slightly cheaper." In some cases, yes. In others, no.
Arguing over _Time_ vs. _The Economist_ seems to not answer the broader
question.
~~~
whopa
> Hence, I feel the journalist has a valid point. Laura Bush will command
> higher royalties. So, the price to the publisher is increased (via higher
> royalties/advances), because Laura Bush provides desirable content.
Is it really true that different authors can have wildly different royalty
rates? I thought the range only spanned a few percentage points.
Advances don't really count, since they are paid out of future royalties.
~~~
TomOfTTB
Of course it's true that authors make wildly different royalty rates. Does
anyone here really believe Stephen King makes the same royalty rates per book
as someone like Uwem Akpan?
It's simple market economics. Stephen King will sell far more copies which
means publishers will make far more money off his books. So he gets a
significantly higher cut of the per book profit (aka royalties) because
publishers will still end up making more money off his book than they will of
a Uwem Akpan book.
Put it this way, if Mr. King's publisher didn't pay him a higher royalty fee
don't you think another publisher would be willing to based on the large
amount of money at stake? So again we're back to basic economics.
~~~
whopa
Got a source for Stephen King's royalty rates being significantly above the
standard rates for other authors? Everything I've found says royalties range
from 10-15% for hardcover, like
<http://www.writersservices.com/res/ri_adv_royalties.htm>: "hardback royalties
on the published price of trade books usually range from 10% to 12.5%, with
15% for more important authors"
You talk about simple market economics, but the publishing industry seems to
be a cartel, and authors are on the whole largely shafted. The music industry
is the same way...
------
lionhearted
I'm not entirely sold on Graham's original point nor the author's rebuttal,
but the piece has got a couple pretty big hypocrisies. For instance, both from
the piece:
> Calling the NYT "a printout of yesterday's news" is snotty and snarky, to be
> sure, but it's also inaccurate.
> Graham needs some elementary economics and business instruction.
Like, calling out a multimillionaire technological innovator/investor on being
"snotty and snarky", then quipping (snottily and snarkily) that he needs
"elementary economics and business instruction" - okay... pot, meet kettle,
blackness.
~~~
omouse
_okay... pot, meet kettle, blackness._
That's irrelevant. Graham could still need economics and business instruction
even if the writer here was being snarky.
------
leif
I skimmed more and read less of the original article as I went along, but from
what I got, it just seems like he's trying too hard to make a clean, academic
argument regarding the publishing industry. It's been around so long that it's
full of exceptions, caveats, inefficiencies, and idiosyncrasies, not to
mention the countless people wrapped up in it financially and psychologically,
and this, I think, makes it too difficult to reason about as generally as he
tries.
My biggest beef, though, comes when he claims that publishers don't sell
content. Of course they do, and if they didn't, why did he even bring up the
price difference between Time and The Economist (is one printed on shinier
paper? Probably, but that's not why anyone buys The Economist). Some of the
price is obviously determined by the medium, too (just as in music sales), and
of course countless other factors, and there's no reason to try to narrow it
down to just one. When the method of conveyance disappears, everything will
shift around a bit and make everyone uncomfortable (like it's doing now), but
eventually settle down not far from where it started. These systems aren't
static sets of rules being followed blindly by their executives, they'll adapt
to fit their market.
This whole thing seems weird. When did Paul get this faultily academic?
------
philwelch
Howard: Graham's insult is correct only if he thinks only generic facts and
events are "news." That's a small fraction of what the New York Times presents
every day.
Reality: All of the "analysis", opinion, reviews, and other content is also
fairly easily replaced with free alternatives available online.
Howard: Famous, popular authors make LOTS more money than others. Laura Bush
got $1.7; by some reports Sarah Palin got $7 million. Graham's contention is
just plainly wrong.
Reality: Graham's contention was not that all authors make equal amounts of
money, but rather that all books are priced the same, based upon form rather
than content. Go to a bookstore. Similarly bound and printed books cost
similarly regardless of differences in content.
Howard: The decision to price all movies or CDs about the same is a marketing
decision that says absolutely nothing about the relative value of the content.
Reality: The market value of a product is its price.
~~~
timr
_"Reality: All of the "analysis", opinion, reviews, and other content is also
fairly easily replaced with free alternatives available online."_
That's not "reality", that's just your opinion.
I have a subscription to the New York Times, and I can tell you that I read
more -- and more diversely -- when I get it in printed format. So, yes,
there's a "free" alternative to getting it delivered to my doorstep, but I
find enough value in having the paper version that I'm willing pay for it.
And in any case, the author's point was to dispute the notion that a copy of
the New York Times is worthless after a day, not to suggest that you couldn't
obtain the content online.
~~~
philwelch
I was mocking the author's format--your immediate reaction would be better
addressed to him.
------
ggrot
I really appreciate how the article ends by saying that the author agrees with
Paul's main conclusions, but that the author disagrees with the arguments
being made. That's largely how I felt after reading Paul's essay too, but I
couldn't have articulated it as well.
------
madair
1\. Saying "actually cheaper" is not the point of the remark, it's just a
secondary remark about the specific comparison case, the point is that
populist and relatively crappy journalism has a comparable cost to to the
consumer as high quality journalism.
2\. Everyone knows that big book deals are edge cases. Why is he arguing the
outliers.
3\. He's answering the flowery anecdotal part of the essay as if it's a
serious evidential point? I presume he doesn't ever use anecdotes in his
writing? I hope not because all anecdotes by definition can be denied (i.e.
what is truth? i.e. incompleteness theorem)
4\. He valiantly tries to defend his position to a commentator on his blog who
points out that this is about cost to the consumer and eventual failure of a
model that treats the content like print on a fabric. He's pointing out the
very same thing that PG is pointing out, that this is their strategic plan,
and that is doomed. This is the part where the author's retort to PG's piece
really crashes and burns.
------
buro9
They're both right, they're both wrong.
It hurts so much to see a sloppy reprisal too, which is why I must now attempt
to make a sloppy one too.
In my mind this is the bit we need to be conscious of: Content has value, but
the distribution method sets the price.
And that is why both slightly miss the point in my mind.
If we look at music (because it's a simple model with many distribution
methods which helps create clear comparisons) we have this:
* A ring tone: £4.50 (ringtones-direct.com), midi file of 10 seconds.
* A CD album: £16.49 (HMV), average 10 tracks, £1.65 per track, full CD quality.
* A CD single: £1.99 (Tesco, if you can find singles), average 2 tracks, £1 per track, full CD quality.
* iTunes: £0.79 per track (lossy).
* MP3 .torrent: £0.00 per track (lossy).
* FLAC .torrent: £0.00 per track, full CD quality.
The content has value in all formats, but the highest price is associated to
the format in which the distribution is most directly controlled (phones, ring
tones, and the DRM scheme on some phones which force the use of a DRM signed
audio file), amusingly it's also the lowest quality representation of the
content.
As the control over the distribution fades the price plummets until we reach
bittorrents and the people doing the distribution where the price is zero,
although clearly value is still there as it wouldn't be downloaded otherwise.
What neither argument made was the distinction that the price is set by the
format and distribution and not by the content. The content has value, that is
undeniable, but value != price and that is what so many find hard to resolve.
The NYT is widely distributed and tends to have a lower price than the
Economist, which is still widely distributed but less so and has a higher
price. Specialist journals distributed as part of memberships to societys have
a very high price.
When I look at price, it's not the # of words that determines the price, it's
nearly always the format and distribution method. The more control that can be
exerted by the content owners, the higher they are able to set the price.
Disclaimer: I always write these things feeling agog at what I've read... I
have not researched things specifically and have not published any papers to
back up these assertions. Take them with a pinch of meh.
------
TomOfTTB
I'm glad someone said this. I, like I'm sure a lot of people here, have a
tremendous amount of respect for Paul Graham. So I really couldn't bring
myself to write a formal critique of this piece. But it's just a complete mis-
fire and this article (along with the one linked to in the update) go a long
way to showing why.
Anyway, thoughts should be up for critique no matter how respected the person
is who offers them so I'm glad someone jumped to the critique when others
(myself included) didn't.
------
Legion
If the New York Times is a "printout of yesterday's news", does that make The
Economist a "printout of last week's news"?
~~~
glymor
No, at it's best it makes it an analysis of last weeks news.
------
chuck_taylor
Both principals' original and rebutting words are at once smart and sloppy.
This speaks to the complexity of discussing the economics of knowledge and
taste.
For example, neither writer seems to have tackled the role of advertising
revenue and other intangibles in assessing the value of content.
There are comparatively few ads in an edition of The Economist, which might
explain why a subscription is so much greater than that of Time. And that
should be factored into any newsstand-price-per-page analysis.
And some weekly trade publications, delivered by mail at no small cost, are
monetarily free to the readers because subscribers pay with other currency --
information about themselves, their companies, and their spending plans.
I would also point out that the popularity of a fabric pattern or the life
story of Sarah Palin are related more to taste and fad than to the value of
any elusive wisdom, such as that derived from The New York Times or The
Economist.
Mr. Graham is correct in noting a demarcation between conveyance and content,
but as Mr. Weaver points out, it's not all that simple to proceed from there.
In any event, I've really enjoyed reading both sides of this, and I am
impressed by the overall quality of the comments.
------
mr_luc
( The following three paragraphs should be read aloud in the voice of Foghorn
Leghorn).
I'm no fancy big-city journalist, just a simple country kill-floor worker in a
JBS Swift slaughter house. I've developed a tolerance for organic discord.
Yet I'm annoyed by the messy thinking that dribbles helplessly throughout this
supposed rebuttal.
More than that, I'm irritated by the obvious purpose behind a loud 'rebuttal'
of obviously poor quality that finishes by saying _I_ _agree_ _and_ _I_
_thought_ _it_ _first_.
It was written because the author felt compelled to write something that he
and others could point to as a "rebuttal," a _response_. It doesn't matter if
the rebuttal is good or bad, true or untrue (bad and untrue, as it happens);
what matters is, now it's "been rebutted."
Let me grab my skinning knife. Unpronounceable Journalism Wunderkind, let's
you and me sit down and talk:
Graham's contention is that there aren't magazines that routinely cost
significantly more _per_ _page_ than the average for their format. If that is
false, then you've rebutted him. It's not sufficient to note that the length
of those magazines shows some variation.
Empirically, it seems that Graham's premise is sound. Magazines all seem to
have similar price per page. The next place where you can rebut him is by
answering the question: _Why?_ It's either because the content of all
magazines is equally valuable, or because the content is irrelevant to the
price of the magazine. Does the price vary, at least, with the format? Well,
of course. Large, glossy magazines cost more per page. But not more than other
large, glossy magazines.
Not rebutted - and no attempt was made.
Graham says that publishers get rich by selling lots of books, not by charging
more for better or more popular books. You say, "nuh-uh, Sarah Palin made lots
of money."
Uh. I'm not sure your training in journalism has equipped you to realize it,
but that's not a rebuttal. That's not anything.
Not rebutted - no attempt was made.
'The NYT in paper is yesterday's news.' Why, how dare he! Well, I never! It's
'snotty and snarky.' Ah, and it's "inaccurate." Because -- and this, see, is
where you give your reason and perform your debunking and unbunking and
generally get the bunk out -- because you're _pretty_ _sure_ that there's
stuff in there someone hasn't read yet. Never mind that the NYT itself
published those stories online.
Yesterday.
Finally, the question. "Why has the price mostly depended on the format, not
the content? Why didn't better content _cost_ more?" (Italics mine). You say,
loudly, that better content is more _profitable_ \-- because of volume.
Then you have the nerve to conclude by saying that you had all of the ideas
that Graham had, and you just have no respect for _his_ sloppy thinking and
reasoning.
You didn't refute, or even address, a single point made in the essay. The
"sloppy thinking and errors" were entirely your own. But now, you've
"addressed" it. Back-pats all around, face has been saved, as long as we
overlook the fact that your piece is drivel.
( Perhaps I'm wrong here. I often am. Certainly, you have domain knowledge
that could have contributed greatly to this discussion; I'd read any
substantive contributions with pleasure. )
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bringing search to Angular - iam4xzor
https://blog.algolia.com/bringing-search-to-angular
======
brennanbl
I really like how they credit the contributors at the end
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Sendfiles.online – Share, send, or recieve any file up to 2GB for free - lou_alcala
https://sendfiles.online
======
cryo
"Our platform stores the files you want to send as you have uploaded them,
that is, we do not make any kind of understanding so that your files reach
their destination completely and as you uploaded it."
I don't understand that sentence. First I thought it's the translation (saw
the german version first), but I don't understand the english version as well.
Can you please describe what you mean here?
~~~
lou_alcala
Probably my translation too, what I want to say is that the file will not
suffer any type of compression. Your files will be available until your share
link expires. Not sure if I explain correctly.
~~~
cryo
Thanks, so if I understand correctly:
Files won't be modified on the server. For example images won't be scaled down
or compressed and users download the exact copy of what was uploaded.
~~~
lou_alcala
Correct, I will copy your example to my "How to" page if you don't mind
~~~
cryo
Sure :)
------
peter_d_sherman
Seems like a good idea in the SAAS space! Wishing you luck in providing this
service! (Perhaps you would want to monetize for larger files and/or business
customers with large volumes? That would help subsidize your free users...)
~~~
lou_alcala
That's a good idea! Thanks for your wishes!
------
demoonkevin
cool, what is the difference w/ wetransfer?
~~~
lou_alcala
Well, starting for no ads, lower price, and maybe much simpler. Wetransfer its
a good alternative. For Sendfiles.online I checked the options available in
many similar sites and combine them to get something small, fast and easy to
use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A VC's perspective of NYC, entrepreneurs and PSDs (Poor, Smart, and a Desire to get rich) - ilamont
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/04/10/bear-stearns-and-psd-spirit
======
sdurkin
This is an interesting account, as its contrary to most of what I've heard
about Bear. At my school, where the majority of students end up working in
some capacity for the financial industry, Bear has a reputation as a bit of an
old boys club. As this is all hearsay, I'm not sure how much weight to give
it.
------
npk
Interesting, but I have the impression that The Street likes to hire "PSDs."
As an anecdote, check out this posting:
<http://www.schlaikjer.net/reviews/100.htm>
"I would also remark that many of these now very wealthy people were not born
with silver spoons in their mouths (I consider myself spooned right up). The
Harvard donation-dunning people loved pointing out that Lloyd Blankfein
started life on the wrong side of the tracks in a school with double shifts.
So say what you like about the huge income-spreads in today's first-world; it
is still a place where you can go from a modest income to an obscene one with
the right amount of brains, luck and getting yourself a good education."
------
Mistone
very inspiring stuff - I would certainly place myself in this category P
(cehck) S (subjective but check) D (check) - and the pedigree culture
certainly lives on here in the bay area and at leading startups. Its that some
hunger and willingness to get rejected that landed the author a job at Bear
that needs to be applied to founders and the people that want to work at great
startups - without it you got nada
------
ashwinl
If you want to read more about the PSD culture at Bear Stearns, check out
Bear's long-term CEO, book: "Memos form the Chairman"
[http://www.amazon.com/Memos-Chairman-Alan-C-
Greenberg/dp/076...](http://www.amazon.com/Memos-Chairman-Alan-C-
Greenberg/dp/0761103465)
------
daniel-cussen
Realistically, what happens when you try this hard for a job? Is it worth it?
Does something bad happen? Is there a reason most people don't do this kind of
thing?
~~~
Frocer
Investment banking and strategy consulting are two of the most competitive
fields to get into right out of college / biz school. Reasons being the pay is
ludicrous. What the writer described is not uncommon for people who want to
break in the industries and didn't attend a core hiring school.
Is it worth it? Depends on who you are I guess. You are rewarded with high
salary and bonuses, you are working with some of the smartest people, but you
are still restricted in a corporation environment.
Why don't most people do this? Who knows, may be they don't have the drive
like the writer, or they simply don't know about these fields.
~~~
timr
That doesn't make sense to me: if people are climbing the walls for positions,
the salaries shouldn't be astronomical.
Something else must be at play.
~~~
npk
Mean Salary at Goldman Sachs last year was $650K. Obviously, the distribution
is non-gaussian, so the median salary is significantly lower.
Meaning, you start working at GS for $100K/year, because, in a few years (if
you're good) you'll grow to the $1M+ category. On a risk-adjusted basis,
ibanking is the most lucrative profession.
~~~
timr
I'm not disputing that the salaries are high; I'm saying that the high
salaries do not fit with the demand for the job.
There has to be another filter at work. Specifically, I suspect that luck
plays a highly significant role.
~~~
wallflower
Luck and Survival... Jungle smarts. Desire to become BSDs
Liar's Poker is an excellent first-person view of the NSFW work environment at
Salomon Brothers.
But don't read LP - read Fiaz's top-rated (34-point) personal story of
becoming a trader: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=121413>
"After racking up some rather hefty losses, I was determined to quit at one
point during month four, but because I had a habit of waking up at 4:30 am I
simply "forgot" that the night before I told myself I would quit and spare
myself further humiliation...by then I was warned that I was now on the red
list of traders ready to be cut."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Everyone Is Talking About Node - andre3k1
http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/node-js/
======
jasonkester
Does anybody else get a little question mark over their head whenever they
read about the "novelty" of being able to use javascript on the server?
Certainly everybody must remember ASP, which let you write all your server-
side code in Javascript way back in 1998. You can still do it today, even in
ASP.NET MVC.
And just like Node, nobody ever really shared much rendering code between the
client and the server using that technology either.
~~~
sharmajai
Yes, but nobody was talking about Javascript and Performance in the same
breath. And V8 or even its creator, didn't even exist.
------
jarin
"The Ruby community has been criticized for being exclusive and harsh."
I haven't found that to be the case at all, unless you're asking questions
that are easily solvable with a quick Google search (and that mostly stems
from the flood of inane questions from Indian "programmer mill" graduates).
Node's community also benefits from the fact that a lot of people are still
trying to wrap their heads around events and callbacks, so they naturally help
each other through the process.
~~~
JonnieCache
_> I haven't found that to be the case at all_
I was always baffled by this, but I from what I have read recently it seems to
be a confusion between 'end-user' developers and 'ecosystem' developers.
End-user developers who only use ruby/rails/etc to build things, for work or
whatever, operate on another plane from the developers of rails itself and
various associated libraries.
Members of the first group generally do not need to come into contact with the
machinations of the core ruby community for a long time, so we can be left a
little baffled at first by these accusations of 'harshness,' all the other
hackers who answer our questions on stackoverflow and write helpful
instructional blog posts seem really nice!
Then eventually you read various IRC logs, mailing lists and personal blog
posts by various members of project teams and certain notorious hero
developers, and you realise where the accusations stem from. It doesn't seem
as bad now as it was in the Rails 2 vs. Merb days however.
The most important thing for bystanders to realise however is that these
criticisms of the ruby community do not actually have anything to do with the
'end-user' developers who you will be dealing with as peers on a day to day
basis if you are writing a ruby project that isn't a library.
Anyway I've remembered that this thread is actually about node so I'll shut up
and have breakfast.
~~~
sleight42
See, that's just it. Rails is a different "community" than Ruby. And, as
someone who has worked with both the better part of 5 years, I've found Ruby
very open and welcoming while Rails less so.
I take more issue with Jolie's unsubstantiated remark about "the Ruby
community". She casts a whole group of people in a disparaging light and
doesn't been take the time to source it.
------
nickik
Im not sold on node. Why should i ristrict myself? There are async librarys in
lots of languages you can use them if you have a problem that suits the async
modle but you can use other models to if they are better.
The other thing with node is that it is single threaded do do multicore you
have to use process witch are slow in communicating. This could work now
because we often only use quadcores but in the next years we will have many
many more. Is it a solution to start node up for say 16, 80 or 1000 cores?
Im not ranting on node I hear it works fine for some stuff but the benchmarks
that got everybody so exited in the beginning was not really that practical.
If I write a low level it might be fast because it maps to the C stuff good
but if I write a big application with lots of layers of JS will it still be
fast? (I know that V8 is getting better but it there jet for big server
applications?).
Hope somebody can talks about this.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
I don't get the threading criticism of Node, php and ruby are single threaded
too (except for something like IronRuby which few people use).
~~~
nerd_in_rage
The difference is PHP is thread (or, rather, process) per connection. Node is
one process handing multiple connections.
~~~
jawngee
PHP-FPM is a single process and is built into 5.3, though it requires some
configuration.
<http://interfacelab.com/nginx-php-fpm-apc-awesome/>
~~~
nerd_in_rage
Cool! Thanks for that... I'll definitely check it out. Looks like there are
patches for earlier versions.
------
lapusta
It's more like "Everyone is talking less about Rails" - the only new kid in
Rails block is Haml/Sass and Rails is obviously stagnating compared to the
hype it had couple or more years ago. Ruby/RoR is more about evolution now:
Rubinius, JRuby going for stability, SalesForce adopts Heroku as one of it's
development platforms - look, even one of Big 4(DTT) hires RoR-consultants
now.
JavaScript on the other hand is booming both on client (SproutCore, Backbone,
Cappuccino, CoffeeScript, GWT) and on server (Node). JS is just more "hackish"
today - browsers are evolving day-by-day, taking more and more functionality
from server - RoR isn't key to success anymore, it has become just another
alternative for your REST backend.
~~~
gmac
Not sure it's fair to say Rails is stagnating. Rails 3 (particularly with the
improvements in ActiveRecord) is significantly leaner and nicer to use than
Rails 2.
~~~
lapusta
"stagnating __compared to the hype it had couple or more years ago__"
New API for ActiveRecord, modularity, merging with Merb are very important,
but it's not a game-changer. Rubinius and RubyMine on the other side are game-
changers.
~~~
bradleyland
I welcome the stagnation! We started development with Rails when it was at
0.7, and the pain of keeping up with a rapidly developing framework was
something I felt some level of resentment for.
I wouldn't say Rails is stagnating, I'd say it is maturing.
------
tres
Why Everyone Is Talking About Node: The very smart guys at Joyent are
packaging it and pitching it perfectly.
The mobile platform has been gaining steam and so real-time interaction is
becoming more important. Joyent was smart enough to see this & find a way to
put their current infrastructure (lots and lots of invested $$) right into the
middle of this. Node is well packaged as a solution to this. Very smart.
No doubt Node is the right solution for a lot of problems. And the guys
working on it are very smart. But personally, I think that Node and Erlang
compare somewhat like Lisp and C. At least at this point...
~~~
thesz
It seems you suggest that Node is Lisp and Erlang is C.
Would you mind elaborate why?
~~~
tres
Actually, I meant it the other way around; what's popular isn't necessarily
what's better.
I personally like coding in Erlang more than JS. I also personally feel the
smart technology choice is Erlang -- it scales better. For me, Erlang is an
easy choice, but I know that other people have different priorities that make
Node the right choice.
I believe that the biggest thing holding Erlang back in this role is the fact
that it's functional rather than imperative & that the syntax isn't C like.
It's a complexity that many don't find worth the trouble.
[edit] for clarity & less flame
~~~
daleharvey
I think the main thing holding erlang back is its community culture, its
source may have been open, but it was not an "open source" project until very
recently, some might say it still isnt, the good news is that it is changing.
The OTP team moved erlang to github so people can see and contribute to its
development.
The OTP team are moving erlangs infrastructure to open tools (the tests are
switching to common test) which helps outside contribution a lot.
Community contributions are starting to pick up, <http://erlagner.org/> is
finally a package manager that has been picked up by the community,
<http://learnyousomeerlang.com/> is an awesome set of beginner tutorials,
<http://erldocs.com/> (mine) is an easy way to browse the documentation.
Node is a lot younger but is already more mature than erlang in all the areas
above, erlang is playing catch up in these regards, but it has a much more
solid base.
------
steilpass
Love this comment: "I'm still firmly convinced this recent enamour with
node.js and particularly with the javascript programming language is the
single biggest case of Stockholm syndrome ever."
<http://mashable.com/2011/03/10/node-js/#comment-163390713>
~~~
thwarted
Guh, the JavaScript based "show comments" button on the forced-to-use-mobile
site completely breaks linking to comments.
------
jgrahamc
Comparing RoR and node.js seems truly odd. One provides an enormous framework
for business logic and building sites, the other is a low level toolkit.
~~~
edw
It seems to be a manifestation of the press’s—and humanity’s, I suppose—catty
rage to see a conflict wherever there is a difference of opinion. I’ve never
heard anyone compare Node to RoR except in terms of their communities, or the
buzz surrounding them. They're different tools for different jobs, and the
article grudgingly acknowledges that everyone seems to understand this.
------
snissn
This doesn't seem like an article written for a technical audience.
~~~
chopsueyar
Imagine how excited I was to see my grandmother implement her own node.js
based chat app.
------
stianan
"It allocates web server resources on an as-needed basis, not pre-allocating a
large chunk of resources for each user. For example, Apache might assign 8MB
to a user, while Node assigns 8KB"
What? Apache may allocate 8MB of stack space for each thread, but that doesn't
mean it consumes that much memory. This is distorting facts.
------
naz
Where does the author get the idea that JavaScript is easy? As a Ruby and Node
developer, JS is much harder. Fewer libraries, less syntactic sugar (e.g.
3.hours.ago, 3.times) and a prototype object system.
~~~
rue
In interest of precision, those are methods, not syntactic sugar.
~~~
Groxx
and they can be implemented almost identically in Javascript (just use
3.hours().ago() - each one can return a useful value, and have helper methods
just like Ruby.)
~~~
catch23
although 3.times is probably harder since all ruby methods take an implicit
block as last parameter. The prettiest code you could do in node would be
3.times(function(){/ _code_ /})
It would be nice if js could rid of the keyword 'function' -- maybe make it a
bit shorter like in coffeescript.
~~~
mrspeaker
"function" will be gone soon enough - replaced (ok, augmented) in the next
version of JS with "#" - so you'll be able to write: #(x) { x * x } instead of
function(x){ return x * x; }
<http://brendaneich.com/2011/01/harmony-of-my-dreams/> (He indicates that the
function change will land in this ((very good)) podcast:
<http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20110303>)
~~~
burke
Which would make it 3.times(#(i) { /* code */ }). That's not bad at all.
~~~
didip
Gah, line noise. Imagine using that + jQuery:
3.times(#(){ $("#some_id").attr("href").hide(); });
------
gustaf
If you're into Node.js and Redis we (Voxer, interviewed in the article) are
actually hiring engineers. We're building a Walkie Talkie for iPhone and
Android.
In more technical terms Voxer is a low latency messaging system for voice,
images, and text. We have an iOS client in the App Store, and an Android
version is in the works. We've had explosive growth in the last couple of
weeks and are now in top 25 in a bunch of app stores and we are looking for
someone to help us develop the server side components and make the system
scale.
Email me [email protected] if you want to know more and I'll connect you with
the right person.
Our servers are built out of Node.js, CouchDB, and Redis. If you are excited
about node, server-side JavaScript, and new databases, this is an opportunity
to work on this technology full-time.
------
stcredzero
_A misunderstanding of the technology is also a risk. Former Twitter engineer
Alex Payne’s claim that Ruby was slow continues to haunt general conversations
about Ruby to this day_
The more things change, the more they stay the same! Chatter about slow will
hang on even when the facts contradict.
~~~
ZoFreX
I find it hilarious that people STILL criticise scripting languages for being
slow. I mostly build sites in PHP - it's not a great language, it's not a fast
language, but it really doesn't matter - page loads bottleneck on DB or front-
end long before PHP's execution time becomes a problem, even without an opcode
cache!
------
harshaw
What I find fascinating about node.js is that it is one of a long chain of
products that represent the constant repackaging of old ideas - with better
results.
Twisted has been around for a long time and was the best (IMO) platform for
building real time apps. Many of the first great comet apps were built on
twisted. But you really have to work at using twisted - the docs aren't great,
the reactor / deferred patterns take some time getting used to, and finally
and most importantly the community isn't effective in evangelizing their
product (sorry Glyph)
Another issue seems to be timing. Low latency apps have a current buzz and you
see people rediscovering old collaborative ideas like Push to talk (referenced
in the article). I wish them luck - PTT has failed spectacularly in the past
but maybe will have a strong second life in a world full of smartphones.
Node.js seems to riding this wave - and the backers leveraging the buzz to
drive interest in the platform.
I also wonder if location is an issue. The Twisted team had a strong core in
Boston while the Node interest seems to be coming out of the valley - and
leveraging that environment's idea pressure cooker.
It also seems that node.js would benefit from a good implementation of the
generator pattern that would enable you to write asynchronous code in a
(somewhat) iterative style. Unfortunately I don't think that V8 implements any
of the ecmascript extensions pioneered by Mozilla that implement yield, list
comprehensions, and other fun stuff.
------
Loic
Thanks to Mongrel2 you can do real time in Ruby too or with the language you
happen to like the most or for which you have the right "business logic"
libraries.
Having code in production running both NodeJS and Mongrel2, I am happy to see
both of them growing.
~~~
mahmud
_you can do real time in Ruby too_
Please don't overload the meaning of "real-time"; It doesn't mean "real fast".
~~~
mnutt
I think we're past that point:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_web>
~~~
mahmud
I saw the disambiguation page for "Real-time" again last night, and you're
absolutely right.
------
sleight42
FWIW, the author of the article said that she's going to do a little more
investigating and likely change the language she used about the Ruby
community.
<https://twitter.com/elight/status/45924501715828736>
------
dimmuborgir
Why do people cheering for new web technologies like to spread FUD against
Ruby/Rails?
From the article, Ruby developers are assholes, Rails doesn't scale (for an
umpteen time) and Ruby has high barrier of entry compared to Javascript (I
don't know what does this even mean).
~~~
aeden
Perhaps it's because FUD drives involvement by creating division. Humans seem
to love to disagree so building up an article based on random unprovable
opinions usually gets people riled up and responding. It's link bait,
essentially.
I haven't used node.js yet, so I can't speak for or against it. If I find a
use for it I'll probably give it a try. If it doesn't feel right I can always
use EventMachine in Ruby, use Erlang, Python or whatever else makes sense.
------
Nate75Sanders
" and it’s shaping up to be as popular as Ruby on Rails among developers. "
Nope.
Not even close.
------
telemachos
A (very) similiar recent article:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/the_rise_and_rise_of...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/01/the_rise_and_rise_of_node_dot_js/print.html)
------
strooltz
I'm confused by the statement that "only one company came out of rails
rumble". I freelance for a startup that has a profitable SaaS app that was
born at rails rumble 2007.
------
fattire77
You would think a Rackspace sponsored article about Node.js would mention
Nodejitsu, a Node.js hosting company built on top of the Rackspace cloud which
has created Node.js libraries for Rackspace's cloud apis.
[http://blog.nodejitsu.com/nodejs-cloud-server-in-three-
minut...](http://blog.nodejitsu.com/nodejs-cloud-server-in-three-minutes)
<https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-cloudservers>
<https://github.com/nodejitsu/node-cloudfiles>
~~~
nodesocket
Spam much?
~~~
fattire77
This is my first time posting here. The article is sponsored by Rackspace and
I do not know any other companies which are using Rackspace and Node.js. I'm
interested in this area of discussion and would like to know if anyone else is
using the Rackspace cloud and Node.js. I'd also be interested in knowing other
ways Node.js can be setup to work with Rackspace servers. Any additional
information would be much appreciated, thank you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MIT launches new venture for world-changing entrepreneurs - elsherbini
http://news.mit.edu/2016/mit-announces-the-engine-for-entrepreneurs-1026
======
Dangeranger
A) What is the application process expected to be like for The Engine?
B) It appears that the resources are spread out across Cambridge, Boston, and
South Boston. Which of these locations if any is planned to be the central
location for the accepted startups?
C) What existing companies and organizations are planning to be part of The
Engine and what will their roles be?
------
6stringmerc
Oh, it's in Cambridge. Well that's out. Just like I was checking into a pretty
cool MS program focused on Tech and Entrepreneurship...but I'm not moving to
New York unfortunately even on a temporary basis.
Serious question:
Is there any type of "traveling workshop" program that brings high-tier
guidance and supplies to various locations for a weekend? I was thinking that
an up-front Submission Process, then some evaluations / meetings / feedback,
and then a Weekend Workshop using 3D printer(s) and other basic tools that
could fit in a box truck and about 5,000 sq ft of space (?) - would be a great
way to bring brain capital to under served communities. Then follow up through
the same channels used for evaluations / meetings / feedback, and continue
mentorship.
I mean, I'm not knocking location anchored programs, they make sense and they
can help a community.
> _In that time, they will receive financial investments as well as guidance
> in business planning and access to shared services such as legal, technology
> licensing, and administrative assistance. Entrepreneurs will be able to take
> advantage of specialized equipment, services, expertise, and space through
> an online marketplace developed for The Engine._
Doesn't most of that read like something that doesn't need to be totally
anchored in the "Greater Boston" community? Especially for a tech-savvy
institution with plenty of bandwidth?
What I am trying to say is that based on the distribution of population in the
US, if you really want to find undiscovered talent, you're going to have to
meet them half-way.
------
ftrflyr
This sounds similar to The Impact Engine out of Chicago. My company was part
of the first cohort back in 2012. Feel free to AMA about this space - I have
learnings to unload if interested.
~~~
mblode
Could you maybe just unload your learnings? I'd love to hear your findings.
------
seb_lounis
Very exciting news from MIT. Anyone interested in this thread should also
check out Cyclotron Road at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. It's a two-year
fellowship and incubator specifically geared toward hard-tech innovators
working on energy technologies. Applications for the next cohort are open
until Oct. 31 - cyclotronroad.org/apply
------
Texasian
Huh, actually just noticed the sign for their new office space this morning on
my way to work. Seems strange that they're attaching this to the Kendall
Square brand when its basically in an entirely different neighborhood.
------
infocollector
Does anyone know what MIT wants out of the funds it invests? Also, what rights
does its faculty have on their inventions? Same question for entrepreneurs who
work with MIT?
~~~
NickNaraghi
Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to their
host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is the
same way. Universities generally have a technology transfer office (at MIT,
it's called the Technology Licensing Office) that manages all of the
intellectual property created there, with the hope of commercializing some of
it.
From what little I can read, The Engine is a separate entity from MIT, which
gives them freedom to work with entrepreneurs without the restrictions in
faculty contracts.
Some technologies invented at MIT(1) will be licensed by companies(2) that
will leverage The Engine(3) to accelerate their development, with the
expectation that the development will take place over a longer-than-usual time
scale (10-20 years).
Maybe I'm optimistic, but I'm guessing that this is less about the return on
the money for MIT, and more about bringing impactful technologies to market
that previously have not fit well in the existing funding ecosystem (and
inspiring others to do the same).
~~~
hga
_Faculty at most universities sign the rights to their inventions over to
their host institution as part of their employment agreement. I believe MIT is
the same way._
Yes, MIT does this quite explicitly, which while making some professors
unhappy, has helped it avoid some notorious messes seen at other universities
when they got greedy, e.g. the University of Pennsylvania going from #1 in
computers (ENIAC) to _nothing_ , or CalTech losing Steve Wolfram over his
first symbolic math program.
Flip sides include giving professors 1 day a week to work on whatever they
want that's not part of their MIT stuff.
Trivia: after decades of being one of the worst in the nation, averaging about
one license per year (seriously, and we know of three of them, Symbolics, LMI,
and Macsyma to the former), and infamously flubbing both 3D core memory and
synthetic/semi-synthetic penicillin licencing, MIT realized they had a problem
and supposedly fixed it, the official statement was wonderfully understated,
said something about actually licencing the technology instead of focusing on
the process of licensing....
------
onetimepadder
Hmm, how can an arm of the military-industrial complex help in any way, shape
or form anyone really interested in changing the world? How naive one have to
be .. well, ok nevermind, get your fb/g/"startup"(as in, cheap outsourced r&d
labor) coffee and back to work "for the betterment of the world" folks ..
nothing "to think" here
------
100ideas
YC now functionally resembles a world-class university: huge endowment; elite
alumni; pure & applied research departments; staff scientists; education
program; bi-annual semesterish schedule; all in service to the mission of
improving the world by empowering the next generation of innovators.
MIT ignored YC, and now is competing with YC.
Next will be bargaining with YC :)
Then just partnering with YC...
~~~
bzbarsky
> huge endowment
Really? Some endowment sizes for world-class universities:
MIT: $13 billion
Caltech: $2 billion
Harvard: $36 billion
Stanford: $22 billion
Princeton: $21 billion
Yale: $25 billion
Cambridge: GBP ~6 billion
Oxford: GBP ~4 billion
Caltech is the outlier here for US universities, but it's also an outlier in
size; its endowment per student is still about $1 million, which is in the
same ballpark as the other US universities on the list. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_colleges_and_universities_in_the_United_States_by_endowment)
for probably more data than you ever wanted. ;)
I'm having a hard time finding how much money YC has lying around, but I would
be rather surprised if it's in the billions USD.
> pure & applied research departments; staff scientists
On a _tiny_ scale compared to a world-class university.
------
icinnamon
Does anyone know if something similar exists at other universities
(specifically curious about Stanford)?
~~~
gsjbjt
The difference between this and most other incubators (at Stanford, Harvard
iLab, etc as mentioned below) is that it's very specifically geared towards
hard-tech startups that other investors typically shy away from because of the
long time to market.
~~~
icinnamon
Precisely. I'm asking if other hard-tech incubators exist at Stanford (and
others)...
------
neom
Is this filling a void in the current venture space...?
~~~
eob
Beyond serving hard tech with longer time-to-market requirements, there is a
huge opportunity for brain-rich cities like Boston to build out a more robust
startup ecosystem to compete with SF. People in Cambridge joke about the one-
way plane tickets to the Bay Area. If you're anchored in Cambridge, that means
huge spoils for the group that figures out the equation to keep them there.
~~~
neltnerb
The hardest part for me in starting a hard tech company in the Boston area was
just getting reasonably priced access to facilities.
They're working on the absolute lack of space, but I think the "reasonably
priced" part is unlikely to get fixed short of backing like this from someone
who can provide facilities and funding for at least the first few years
without expecting returns.
~~~
linksnapzz
Lowell and Fitchburg aren't that far away, and have plenty of cheap commercial
real estate, unless by "facilities" you mean a fully dressed laboratory/shop;
and by "Boston area" you meant Boston, Cambridge and maybe Somerville...
~~~
neltnerb
Yes, I meant places easily accessible via public transit, so Boston,
Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Alston, etc.
And yes, I mean a place that you can use chemicals without dealing with
permitting for 6+ months. I did actually try to do this, and the Fire Marshall
was fantastic to work with, and I looked at both Somerville near Sullivan
Square and down near BU. It wasn't hard to find industrial space for cheap
enough to manage. I ended up finding a space in Beverly as the closest that
was remotely okay, and that only worked because I owned a car (which isn't
terribly common in the city, at least among the people I know).
But even if you get as far as pursuing permitting it's enormously expensive to
outfit your own lab, and impossible without VC backing. Just having access to
the equipment at MIT for free/cheap would be a lifesaver. A lot of it is
things like "I need a <foo> for a test." but <foo> is a $600k piece of
equipment and you need to use it exactly once.
You can often get user access (for instance at UMass, MIT or Harvard's user
facilities) but those are also not all that quick.
Really, Boston just needs something akin to Cyclotron Road.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Googling stuff can cause us to overestimate our own knowledge - kostandin_k
http://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/10/googling-stuff-can-cause-us-to.html
======
louisswiss
As a web dev (and not a very good one) I spend a lot of time googling coding
problems which normally turn out to either have simple solutions or to be
based on stupid mistakes I have made. Either way, googling quickly gives me
the feeling that I know A LOT less than others do...
Of course reading youtube comments has the opposite effect on me.
~~~
seiji
This is also why interviews are a joke when they expect candidates to have
full recall without Internet assistance, documentation, syntax checking, or
compiler feedback.
~~~
pcunite
I was once given an online assessment test that was supposed to be for
language "X". The recruiter accidently gave me the wrong one. At 3 mintues per
question I was google racing and compiler testing like mad to answer each
question. I passed.
After the mistake she then gave me the "real" test with the correct language.
I did not search google (except for one question) or test with a compiler. I
failed.
------
stevetrewick
The authors of _Google Effects on Memory: Cognitive Consequences of Having
Information at Our Fingertips_ 2011 [0] suggest a mechanism. Basically rather
than retaining knowledge we retain, essentially, the relevant search
parameters. A more compact representation!
The human brain is scary adaptable.
[0][http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dwegner/files/sparrow_et_al...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/dwegner/files/sparrow_et_al._2011.pdf)
~~~
dspillett
Essentially we are cyborgs (humans augmented by technology) if you count
technology not mounted too or in the body itself, because we augment our
knowledge and memory using online access to information particularly through
tools like Google provides.
Some might argue against this and only count technology on or in the person,
because we could also count books and libraries in the same sense - but I
don't think counting the written word generally as a technology we use to
enhance ourselves is invalid. It is as valid as counting the contact lenses
and eyeglasses people wear to improve their vision IMO.
~~~
noir_lord
> Some might argue against this and only count technology on or in the person,
> because we could also count books and libraries in the same sense.
This is somewhat true but if I want to know the height of mount everest or the
most common human blood group I can get that answer in under 3s with google
which I couldn't do in a library, not to mention I carry everything indexable
by google around in a little 5in across piece of glass and plastic.
~~~
dspillett
True. Carrying the device my be enough to constitute being "on the person",
where people argue that is the line to be drawn.
~~~
noir_lord
I just want an in-eye hud overlay with beyond human resolution, it's not a lot
to ask ;)
------
mziel
"When wikipedia has a server down, my apparent IQ drops by about 30 points"
[https://xkcd.com/903/](https://xkcd.com/903/)
------
brudgers
Original Paper _Searching for Explanations: How the Internet Inflates
Estimates of Internal Knowledge_
[https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf](https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-0000070.pdf)
------
pcunite
One of the smartest people I ever worked for, told me I should only learn to
look things up, and not worry with memorizing volumes of books. He was the
head IT guy at a Telco/ISP. On his desk was a nameplate that read "Think".
------
travjones
I agree somewhat with the headline; however, what is the definition of
knowledge? I think knowing how to search for the right things is part of
knowledge. Knowing how to search for what you need to know extends your
knowledge almost infinitely, and I don't think this is a bad thing. When I
introduce others to web development, I prompt them to look things up and help
them learn how to search. I think this is a critical skill, or maybe it's
because I'm constantly googling while devving haha...
------
alricb
Psychology used to study the behaviour and cognition of undergrad students.
Now it studies that of Mechanical Turk workers. Progress!
------
baldfat
I don't rely on people's knowledge for the final authority. I rely on people
being able to get the right information.
People' intelligence on finding the right information is more valuable than
knowledge.
I have a high IQ and a 4.0 college degree (Well 3.956 but that last project
till my degree was sabotaged by the professor :) ) I don't trust my
"knowledge" and always validate it.
------
dang
Url changed from [http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/google-search-
study/?utm_cid=...](http://mashable.com/2015/11/03/google-search-
study/?utm_cid=mash-com-fb-tech-link#i.BKYdahDkqa), which points to this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Great Debate - deathanatos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debate_(astronomy)
======
SomewhatLikely
It's amazing to think this was less than 100 years ago.
------
thunderbong
>> It concerned the nature of so-called spiral nebulae and the size of the
universe; Shapley believed that distant nebulae were relatively small and lay
within the outskirts of Earth's home galaxy, while Curtis held that they were
in fact independent galaxies, implying that they were exceedingly large and
distant.
When I read the title I thought it was about tabs vs spaces!
I have stop my world revolving around programming all the time!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China orders US consulate, Chengdu closed following US demands CN consulate shut - aspenmayer
https://twitter.com/i/events/1286518729052835840
======
aspenmayer
If the US doesn’t close their consulate in Chengdu, things are going to get
_interesting_?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23936665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23936665)
Original title was too long. It was:
China orders closure of US consulate in Chengdu following Washington’s demand
to shut Chinese outpost
~~~
mytailorisrich
Your shortened title is incorrect, though. It's a consulate that was asked to
shut, not the embassy. Crucial difference!
~~~
aspenmayer
Fixed it in time, thanks for the correction. Accuracy is a goal.
My original title misidentified the Chinese site in Houston, Texas as being an
embassy - this is my mistake. They are both consulates of the respective
countries. My bad.
Can you explain how they are different?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Finnish babies sleep in cardboard boxes (2013) - Tomte
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-22751415
======
SJSque
Here in the Netherlands, they tend to kick the mother out of hospital as soon
as feasible after the birth (typically after one night, or even on the same
day), but as soon as you get home, the home nurse (kraamzorg, or "cradle
care") arrives. She (and, as far as I know, it's always a she) will be at your
home for something like eight hours a day for the first week or so after the
birth, and will teach you how to care for the baby (even if it's your second,
third, fourth, ...) and will monitor its health and progress. Remarkably, in
the 'downtime' (e.g., when the baby is sleeping), she'll do household chores
for you (such as clothes washing, vacuuming, washing up, etc.) and maybe even
entertain any older children or go grocery shopping for you. The system works
really well, and I've heard it be credited for the Netherlands' low infant
mortality rate.
My family back in the U.K. can hardly believe it (especially the household-
chores part); there, as I understand it, the mother tends to stay in hospital
a big longer (typically for a few days), but once you're home, you're on your
own...
~~~
flarg
From personal experience in the UK, you're kicked out of hospital after a few
days during which you received amateur advice from nursing assistants and a
final discharge check for the baby if the doctor is available (if not then you
have to go back for the discharge check). Back home there are irregular visits
from a nurse who usually writes random statements in the a red log book but
aside from that you're on your own. If you have time for the internet you
might learn about why a baby doesn't latch and then maybe find a private
lactation nurse who may or may not give you useful advice. Maybe one of them
has heard of tongue tie because the NHS doesn't believe in it (and they're not
allowed to support anything but breast feeding...)
~~~
Spare_account
I would like to add my own anecdata that conflicts with this. We've had four
children and our experience of ante-natal and post-natal care has been nothing
like this for any of them.
The home visits are regular and scheduled, breatfeeding advice was offered in
hospital, a breastfeeding support clinic is run for free in our local hospital
once a week and on other days in local community centres. Two of our children
have been identifed as tongue-tied by midwives _in hospital_. The midwives _in
hospital_ provided formula for the most recent baby when my wife was having
trouble feeding.
Overall, we've felt very supported by the NHS. I suspect the difference is
partly timing, every team contains good staff and bad staff. It probably
differs region to region as well, I'm in Buckinghamshire.
~~~
thom
Ours is a teaching hospitals trust, and a fairly large one I suppose, and we
have had good experiences each time with our three children. I think there can
be a big difference if you end up in a medical-led ward instead of a midwife-
led one for the actual birth, but I expect there's lots of variance beyond
that.
------
andrewaylett
Scottish babies too, as of a couple of years ago! The baby box is great: it's
given to all parents pretty much automatically.
It's got everything a totally unprepared family would need to look after the
baby for the first few days. Even as a not-completely-disorganised family, it
was nice to have. And giving it to everyone is probably cheaper than trying to
work out for which parents that level of support is necessary ahead of time.
Not least because families who need the support are probably the least able to
find it.
I'm very happy that my tax money is spent on preventative efforts, rather than
relying on fixing things up after they've become critical.
~~~
organsnyder
I love the universality of these programs—there's no stigma attached to using
them.
For our firstborn, we (in Michigan, US) used a county-provided program that
included a quick home visit and a small welcome kit (nothing as elaborate as
described in this article). While it was not presented as being only intended
for impoverished/unprepared families, we couldn't help but feeling that we
weren't their target audience, given our income level and family support.
All too often, US social programs are paternalistic "help the needy" regimes,
often with intentional stigma (to supposedly cut costs through reduced
utilization). IMHO, this is harmful for everyone.
~~~
rtkwe
Part of the problem is any universal program gets attacked for helping people
who don't 'need' the help and that being a waste of money. And on a certain
face it's true, cutting some people out of a program will make the top line
number cheaper but will also require administration and get into fights about
just who needs what.
It's one reason so many new social safety net programs are being suggested as
variants of Universal X now, they're much less likely to get cut because
everyone gets it and it's harder to do the whole 'welfare queen' style racial
coding if the program goes to everyone.
~~~
henrikschroder
In Sweden, parents automatically get money from the government for each kid
that they have, regardless of their income.
This has been criticized numerous times, but every time it turns out that it's
just cheaper to pay out the money to everyone, than to have some sort of
needs-based evaluation machinery that you have to staff with people who have
to make judgements, pisses people off, and then the whole system can be gamed
anyway.
~~~
P_I_Staker
Here in the USA we'd prefer to spend a thousand dollars, to prevent someone
from getting a hundred, because "they don't deserve it".
------
moksly
I’m happy to have had my baby in Scandinavia. We read up on all sorts of
literature for preparation, but it’s an ocean of disagreeing information, but
because having a child is hard, you’re assigned a nurse educated in infant
well being by the government for free.
They help you with a range of things, one is to setup a sleeping setting where
there is minimal risk of the baby dying. Not too warm, always sleep on their
backs, have room to move stuff like that.
As usual Finland is just better at Scandinavia’ning than the rest of us. Good
job Finland!
~~~
tyfon
Here in Norway we my wife and I stayed in a family room in the hospital
"hotel" both times, but the last time I left the next day with our older
daughter and my wife joined with the youngest a day later.
We both automatically get two weeks off work as a birth leave and option to
have a "jordmor", what you would call a midwife in English, visit and help if
needed. Then we had ten months of parental leave combined, I had four months
and my wife had six.
One thing foreigners freak out over is that during the day we have the babies
sleep outside in the strollers in winter. They're usually wrapped in wool
materials and are very warm. Is this common elsewhere in Scandinavia? They
sleep very well out in the cold :)
~~~
willyt
Used to be common in Scotland too, not sure about England so much. Me and my
brother were put out in the front garden by my granny!
~~~
falsedan
Can confirm it's still going; our first was an autumn baby and had his daytime
naps by the open tenenment window. Sash and case barely keeps the cold out
anyway when they're closed!
------
JimWestergren
Earlier on HN:
261 comments in 2013
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5817728)
262 comments in 2016
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12547353](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12547353)
Let's see if this time it gets 263 comments.
~~~
wruza
It could be not just an arithmetical progression, like A(260, m). If this one
gets 523, we better not discuss it fourth time ever.
------
vnorilo
I'm a happy recipient of this box 5 years ago. In the fog of the first days of
learning to care for your newborn, it was a godsend. It felt like someone
actually cared, rather than a bureaucratic handout.
~~~
stevekemp
I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried when I unpacked ours:
[https://imgur.com/a/I0NYI](https://imgur.com/a/I0NYI)
Even now I recognize other children wearing the same clothes that we received
- though our child is 2.5 now the items have obviously been passed along to
neighbours and new siblings.
~~~
kellenmurphy
Thanks for the photos. You can tell that they are nice items and -- coming
from the perspective of an American -- don't look "government issued" in the
slightest. Neat.
------
padobson
It's good to see tax money spent on such a comforting program. I think it
lends to a sense of national pride when policies like this lead to good
feelings in the citizenry.
That said, I think articles like this contribute to science illiteracy and
innumeracy.
A layman could easily come to the conclusion that the baby box caused the drop
in infant mortality after reading this article, but infant mortality has been
dropping everywhere over the the same time period, regardless of policy.[0]
While the article does briefly mention the Finnish government's broader
support for new families, like the free health checks early in pregnancy that
is actually incentivized by the box, it doesn't include the overarching
worldwide, postwar technological and economic trends that have been driving
infant mortality down everywhere.
The whole piece reads like a very literal endorsement of the nanny state,
rather than a celebration of human flourishing that it could have been if
written in the proper context of broader trends.
Edit: Almost all the replies (and I suspect the downvotes) to my comment are
making my point. I wasn't disparaging the box or Finnland's broader policies
to combat infant mortality. I'm disparaging the article's failure to paint
Finnland's progress in the context of a wider trend of lowering infant
mortality AND Finnland's broader efforts to do so. That failure leads to
overly simplistic conclusions that contribute to scientific illiteracy and
innumeracy, exactly like the conclusions below.
Does anyone believe Finnland could provide these services without the broader
technological and economic progress?
[0][https://ourworldindata.org/child-
mortality](https://ourworldindata.org/child-mortality)
~~~
lr
Here are some infant mortality numbers from your link:
1947: Finland: 6.5% US: 4.3%
2013 (when the article was written): Finland: 0.3% US: 0.7%
How can the tiny country of Finland be so much better at this than the US?
It's because of what they talk about in the article, i.e., a government
actually caring for its citizens (read, "welfare state").
~~~
pkaye
Not sure about Finland but some countries have different criteria for a viable
baby. Basically if a baby is born too early or too low a weight they are not
counted in the statistics. So you you need to also count for these
differences.
------
jpalomaki
There's also a "hidden agenda" behind this supply box.
In order to receive it, the mother needs to sign up for a health check
(provide by the public health care system) and I believe you are supposed to
do that before the 5th month of pregnancy.
This gives the opportunity to detect potential problems early on, offer
guidance if there's reason to suspect substance abuse and so on.
~~~
yitchelle
It seems like a good direction to heading. Not sure why it is considered as a
hidden agenda.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
Because it's not expressly stated to the people who are subject to it.
~~~
phatfish
Right... I'm not sure how you end up going to a health check at a hospital
"without realising it".
This is a case of a state providing exactly the sort of support to their
citizens we could do with far more of.
------
irjustin
I love this and wish it were a more widespread practice.
Baseline education of infant care is difficult for low income families.
There's just too much to deal with.
A cardboard box will appear crude to many, especially those of higher income,
but the cardboard box removes a lot of the guess work about what's allowed in
while sleeping - which is essentially nothing.
Anyone who's had an infant before - there's too much conflicting information
and it's downright scary because it's difficult to know what's right/wrong. I
love this establishes a clear baseline.
~~~
philliphaydon
When my Daughter was born everything said do not let the baby lay on their
side or tummy. I tried hard but she turned to her side every time you put her
down. If she was on her back she would wake and cry. I spoke to my mum and she
said when I was a baby I slept on my tummy, as did my brother and sister. None
of us slept on our side or back. We just made sure we bought a breathable
mattress so if she ended up face down she could breath. Now she’s almost 1 and
sleeps however she feels. Which is usually cuddled up against me while I feel
stressed all night.
~~~
rhino369
Putting a baby to sleep on their stomach is a SIDS risk factor, but not if
they switch on their own. But nobody really tells you that last part.
I kept flipping my daughter over until I spent some time googling it.
------
tutuca
Here in Argentina we had that program canceled by the current President
Mauricio Macri, and the former was prosecuted for pushing for this program to
be implemented nation-wide. There was also a big media campaign from the local
multimedia monopoly to lay shame of the program [1][2], although it covered
way more items than in Finland.
The boxes (qnitas) were left to rot in a warehouse. Trully fascist.
This was later found to be without basis and the goverment have been ordered
to restart the program, without effect.
[1] [https://www.clarin.com/politica/paso-paso-fraude-
licitacion-...](https://www.clarin.com/politica/paso-paso-fraude-licitacion-
qunita_0_rJrp8aOPme.html) (in spanish)
[2] [https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/plan-qunita-
inseguros-c...](https://www.lanacion.com.ar/politica/plan-qunita-inseguros-
cunas-nid1871615) (in spanish)
~~~
shitgoose
i would use a lighter term to describe rotting baskets. words have meanings
and "fascist" means something else.
~~~
Gabriel_Martin
Related: I've begun to put people who are extra-pedantic about the word
fascist into their own little silo.
~~~
dang
I don't know what you mean by extra-pedantic but the site guidelines ask users
not to call names in arguments, and that certainly covers the F-word.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
------
whafro
Just before my kid was born here in the US, we got two boxes from Finnish
families, and they were great.
It was approximately 100% of my son's wardrobe for the first several months,
and we actually did have him sleep in it for a couple weeks early-on, putting
the box on a (large, well-supported) stack of books next to our bed before we
moved him into his own quarters. The clothing was unique (in the US) and
attractive in a very Scandinavian sort of way, and held up really well. We've
passed most of it on to other families, and each piece has probably been used
by three or four different kids at this point.
I did a significant write-up on it here:
[https://www.care.com/c/stories/580/a-year-with-the-
finnish-m...](https://www.care.com/c/stories/580/a-year-with-the-finnish-
maternity-box/)
NB: It was on Kinsights back when that existed, and Care.com's redesign kinda
botched the formatting. Sorry to myself and others!
------
_carl_jung
Social policies work best when it appears the government is doing something to
actually care for the population. It sounds like such a great way to help grow
a healthy new generation. Investing in the youth!
~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
Yes but it needs a desire to be helped on part of the populace. If the popular
narrative is that anyone receiving govt help is receiving handouts[1], as is
the case in the US, there's little that can be done that won't be seen as
shameful charity.
[1] Unless the handouts are in the form of tax breaks for big companies, in
which case they are the most patriotic thing to do.
~~~
ptah
> "shameful charity" I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a society
> where charity is seen as shameful
~~~
cjslep
It is rooted way way _way_ back to the Puritan ideal of doing the hard work
yourself and not needing to rely on anyone else to succeed.
~~~
alkonaut
One big difference to the scandinavian mindset is that children are much more
seen as individuals than dependents belonging to their parents. If it's
unacceptable that a child is less successful because its parents _did not work
hard_ (or any other reason they aren't well off) then a lot of social welfare
programs will follow naturally.
For example, having time with parents (parental leave) is a right of the
_child_ , not a luxury for the parents. In that perspective it's much harder
to frame tax-financed parental leave as a handout to the parent. Without it,
some children would miss out on something through no fault of their own.
~~~
thefz
On the other hand, I've had female coworkers carefully plan pregnancies to
chain the maximum amount of paid leave. Others taking as much paid leave (100%
pay, then diminishing, then almost nothing) as possible and then resigning on
the first day coming back to work. It's a double-edged sword, in most cases.
~~~
alkonaut
Resigning on parental leave is probably common, but on the other hand the paid
leave was at least not paid by the company. And at that point the company will
most likely have a trained temp, so seen that way it's not a bad time to quit
(although you could of course have given that notice a while before
returning).
Maximizing the use of paid parental leave I see as pretty much a given. I
don't think many see it as the most important factor for planning a pregnancy,
but I absolutely want to maximize the amount of paid leave I can take. My kids
are 6 and 8 and I still do multiple weeks of parental leave per year.
Typically doubling my summer holiday from 4 to 8 weeks or similar. It's a
benefit I have paid for many times over. There have been suggestions though
that this is an unncessarily luxury and it would be better (for children) if
parents had to use the majority of the parental leave before age 3 instead. I
kind of agree.
~~~
thefz
I'm on the opposite side on this issue, I don't like publicly funded leave nor
benefits and as a taxpayer this kind of opportunistic behavior further cements
my view that the state should not spend public money into helping parents.
~~~
alkonaut
> spend public money into helping parents.
For these policies to be even remotely understandable I think the key is as I
said to fundamentally see it as money spent towards _children_ , not parents.
~~~
thefz
Fine, but downvotes for a civil discussion?
------
SamColes
My wife read this exact article from 2013, purchased a 'Finnish Baby Box' from
a private company that makes and exports them from Finland, and our baby slept
in it for his first seven or eight months. It actually turns out the idea for
the company itself was inspired by the same article too. Here's the follow-up
from 2016
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35834370](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35834370)
------
ksab
When I was pregnant (in Canada), I watched a series of videos about safe sleep
and got a free Baby Box (Telus sponsored it):
[https://www.babyboxco.com/about/](https://www.babyboxco.com/about/)
Baby arrived 2 months early. When we brought him home 6 weeks later, I was
amused by the contrast. Going from a fancy NICU bed to a cardboard box was a
big change for him. He didn’t mind and slept in it for 5 months.
~~~
areoform
That’s so adorable :)
------
marsvin
We got our cardboard box yesterday. It sure does help. Lot of clothes for the
upcoming xmas package. Suitable clothing for even -10 °C naps outside.
From CPS professional point of view this box rocks. Absolutely a perfect thing
for young mothers without the usual social network. Just if they would choose
the box instead of money...
------
eggfriedrice
When this last came up on HN, the Scottish Government was in the process of
rolling this out. It seems to have happened and baby boxes are now given to
all newborns: [https://www.parentclub.scot/baby-
box](https://www.parentclub.scot/baby-box)
------
nirse
Just wanted to point out that Scotland has a baby-box scheme inspired on the
Finnish: [https://www.mygov.scot/baby-box/](https://www.mygov.scot/baby-box/)
It was introduced after our wee one was born, though, so can't comment on the
content, but friends seemed to be quite pleased with it.
------
frankbreetz
They actually do this in some states in the US. I live in Ohio and I received
a box when my son was born. It's very nice and I hope everyone, especially the
people who need it are aware of the program.
[https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/03/26/5213993...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2017/03/26/521399385/states-give-new-parents-baby-boxes-to-encourge-
safe-sleep-habits)
------
atourgates
Just thought someone should start a company that lets people purchase the
Finnish baby box worldwide - I know I would have if it'd been an option for
any of our kids.
Looks like someone already has:
[https://www.finnbin.com](https://www.finnbin.com)
[https://www.finnishbabybox.com](https://www.finnishbabybox.com)
Didn't expect them to be $300+ though. I wonder what the government is paying
for these.
~~~
sbercus10
Hi @atourgates - Shawn (Founder of Finnbin) here. Not all of our baby boxes
cost $300+ - our most basic baby box starts at $65
([https://www.finnbin.com/products/babybox-
boxinet](https://www.finnbin.com/products/babybox-boxinet)).
To answer your comment & questions: The reason our most expensive box (The
Finland Original) costs $450 is because it contains over $700 worth of stuff -
at least on the shelf if you are purchasing each item individually. For a bit
more insight, the bulk of that cost is the organic clothing that we include.
Also, baby boxes have a lot of volume (or dimensional weight if you want to
use the shipping jargon) so baby boxes are incredibly expensive to ship.
Because most consumers would be shocked at the actual cost of shipping, we've
factored shipping costs into the total cost of the box.
To answer your question about what the government pays for these: Finnbin does
have contracts with hospitals, insurance companies, and government entities
who typically purchase hundreds boxes at a time and often thousands - The
average metro hospital does about 1,500 births per year. Like any other
product, volume orders obviously get a price break and because baby boxes take
up so much space, they also tend to receive the boxes on a pallet shipped flat
- which can also lower their costs. Each government order is slightly
different and thus there is no specific cost to a government entity, but they
still pay in the hundreds of dollars if they are purchasing the baby box
containing all of the goods.
Happy to provide additional insight if you'd like.
~~~
atourgates
That's great - glad someone is offering this. Any plans to offer Scotland's
box?
~~~
sbercus10
Unfortunately, Finnbin is not the current supplier for Scotland's baby box
program.
~~~
atourgates
Oh nice - that's a distinction I didn't understand. You're saying that your
company actually supplies the boxes given away under Finland's program, and
you make those same boxes available to consumers?
I was imagining you and your competitors would either obtain the boxes from
the assembler/manufacturer directly or assemble close replicas. Not that you
were the actual supplier.
~~~
sbercus10
Not exactly. Although we do supply healthcare organizations and government
entities domestically and abroad, we are not the suppliers for Finland. The
Finnish baby box program is conducted by Kela, a Finnish government agency in
charge of settling benefits under national social security programs.
Unfortunately, they took some heat earlier this year for their labor practices
to make some of the products they include in their baby boxes
([https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnwatch_majority_of_fin...](https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finnwatch_majority_of_finlands_baby_box_products_made_in_sweatshop_locations/10596896)).
From what I understand, the company Finnish Baby Box (based in Finland) uses
the same products from the same suppliers and makes those same boxes available
to consumer.
Finnbin, the company I founded, manufactures our own boxes and sources the
materials for our box from US-based companies who utililze managed forestries
and are certified to Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) standards, created
to promote responsible forest management.
And, although the original Finnish government program was the inspiration for
our product, we've tailored our product offering to the American consumer and
with American brands. For example, the Finnish baby box contains a regular
sheet rather than a fitted sheet. This would not adhere to the American
Academy of Pediatrics safe sleep recommendations. Therefore, we include a
fitted sheet custom to the waterproof mattress we provide.
Additionally, much of the clothing in the Finnish government boxes program is
designed for a much colder climate than we're used to here in the US. Rather
than including similar products that many people wouldn't likely use, we've
replaced them with more universal clothing and products.
------
bananatron
I visited Finland recently and everybody was so proud of the baby box! I hope
it gets more popular worldwide.
------
GreaterFool
Even simple help/reminder can make a big difference. I recall a bunch of
research on how simple checklists in operating rooms improve prognosis by a
_huge_ margin (and yet they aren't as widely used as they should be).
------
artur_makly
“Not for long. At the turn of the century, the cloth nappies were back in and
the disposable variety were out, having fallen out of favour on environmental
grounds”
im guessing this is a non-starter for most Americans? i remember seeing an
editorial [1] about how in American Prisons ..they are charging the family of
prisoners a huge fee to send their $ to the inmate..and how one mom had to
choose between buying diapers or supporting her husband with prison
toiletries. She said it was a very hard decision to make.
1- [https://youtu.be/AjqaNQ018zU](https://youtu.be/AjqaNQ018zU)
------
m0tive
Follow up from 2017 "Do baby boxes really save lives?"
[https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39366596](https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-39366596)
"[...] leading baby box companies sells its products as an essential gift for
new parents, claiming studies have proven the link.
I asked the company if I could see these studies, but they said that studies
showing positive results had not been published yet. Experts say that there
are no studies showing the efficacy of baby boxes."
~~~
cushychicken
Likely because it's not selling them that's the beneficial part: it's the
"giving them to everyone for free" part.
~~~
collyw
I bet the company is selling them, otherwise it would be a charity, no?
~~~
cushychicken
Right, but what I'm saying is that the study they are citing likely shows the
results of parents being _given_ a baby box, not _buying_ one.
I don't think buying vs giving is important per se. I'm just saying that the
aggregate data will likely show more benefit from people being _given_ the
boxes, as that will have more impact on people of lower means.
------
newsreview1
What a fantastic idea. As a new mother, I cannot tell you how nice this would
have been to get from the hospital. Luckily, the nurses we had were fantastic,
and I had an older sister who gave me many hand me down materials. Some of the
materials she gave, I had no idea what to do with, but because I had them, I
asked, and they turned out to be extremely helpful. I can only imagine how a
box like this could help a less educated, or person with less economic means
than I had. Way to go Finland.
------
dekhn
This reminds me of the Skinner Air Crib
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Air_crib](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._F._Skinner#Air_crib))
------
pier25
Finland also has some of the best primary and secondary education in the
world. I work in an education company and we regularly make trips to Finland
with teachers to show them how modern education should be.
------
Waterluvian
We got one of these kits when my first was born. Having an easily mobile sleep
space is the best thing ever. ( Canada)
------
sbercus10
Shawn, founder of Finnbin Baby Box Company, here. Happy to answer any
questions there might be about baby boxes.
------
mwenge
This is what a society looks like.
------
honksillet
Why condoms? Finnish birth rates are at all time lows.
~~~
snuxoll
For the health of the mother it’s wise to space pregnancies apart, by 18
months according to the WHO. There’s increased risk for a lot of things for
closely spaced pregnancies, so the condoms are a pretty good idea.
------
known
Developing world can imitate it
~~~
sa-mao
I see a lot of corruption opportunities that would make this inefficient if
not dangerous in most 3rd world countries. I think They should start by
rethinking their governance, moral values first.
~~~
AFascistWorld
This is worth over a hundred dollars, not a small amount for many countries, I
can totally see corners being cut everywhere at every level if implemented in
China, recipients will probably just throw it out upon receipt if they don't
want to do harm to their babies.
------
kchoudhu
Of course, this symbol of egalitarianism provides the ideal concept for
companies to exploit for financial gain:
[https://www.finnishbabybox.com/en/](https://www.finnishbabybox.com/en/)
~~~
loriverkutya
We are living in the UK and we ordered this one. If we buy the items one by
one, we would ended up paying more for it. Both me and my wife was super happy
with the box and my daughter slept in it for about 6 month (we also had a cot,
but we realised very early that the box mobility is an unbeatable feature)
------
ncmncm
"Politicians lie, cast-iron sinks; politicians lie in cast-iron sinks"
~~~
sethammons
Baffled by your comment, some research shows that it is a play off of logic
with AND and OR, subbing in IN as a preposition to alter the entirety of the
statement. While I find the word play silly, I think the phrase's usefulness
ends there.
What point are you trying to make?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DeepDive – System that enables developers to analyze data on a deeper level - DyslexicAtheist
http://deepdive.stanford.edu/
======
rstoner
This could be a huge value-add to the groups that have invested heavily in
human-directed knowledge graph construction (e.g. Project Halo/Aristo at the
Allen Institute for AI).
------
signa11
kllj
------
chapulin
It's also being used to aid paleontology research:
[http://fusion.net/story/30751/paleo-deep-dive-machine-
learni...](http://fusion.net/story/30751/paleo-deep-dive-machine-learning/)
------
polskibus
I'm mostly interested in how much does it differ from what IBM Watson does.
Does IBM only rely on probabilistic inference or does it do other data mining
as well?
~~~
nl
It's (very) roughly comparable to parts of it.
Firstly: IBM is increasingly using the Watson brand for things that don't
appear directly related to the Jeopardy winning system (eg, Watson Analytics).
When I talk about Watson here I mean the Question Answering (QA) system.
At a very high level DeepDive consists of a Knowledge Graph construction tool,
and a probabilistic querying tool. Compared to Watson it is missing a natural
language question parsing tool, and any way of dealing with questions that
aren't in the KG.
Watson has (very strong) natural language understanding for multi-claused
questions, and the Jeopardy version can do things like understand puns.
Deepdive doesn't have anything comparable. In the open source space, the
closest thing I'm aware of is SEMPRE[1][2].
Watson also has a evidence scoring module, and my understanding is that this
can work against unstructured data. Deepdive doesn't have this, and instead
relies on probabilistic inference. This is an excellent approach, but relies
on doing content extraction first (ie, extract entities and relationships from
text and/or other sources). The Microsoft Probase[3] group has published lots
in this area.
[1] [http://www-
nlp.stanford.edu/joberant/homepage_files/publicat...](http://www-
nlp.stanford.edu/joberant/homepage_files/publications/ACL14.pdf)
[2]
[https://github.com/percyliang/sempre](https://github.com/percyliang/sempre)
[3] [http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/probase/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/probase/)
------
phreeza
I am wondering what a ballpark figure would be how long it would take to set
up an instance of this for a given scientific field for example. Days? Months?
Years? I fear it is probably the latter.
~~~
batbomb
I've sat in on Chris' class at Stanford.
I think the answer is probably closer to weeks to months if working with field
experts, depending on how deep you want to go.
The core of it is open source.
I think the most exciting thing about it is it brings more sophisticated
computation to the more qualitative sciences.
~~~
tlmr
What about for just a smallish single machine corpus of document (1000)?
~~~
nl
The size of the corpus isn't the issue (apart from processing time of course).
The key issue in estimating how big a job it is is how complex your entity
extraction and inference rulesets are.
------
nl
It does probabilistic inference![1]
So many open source "Knowledge Graph"-y type projects concentrate on building
them like databases, with a query language that assumes the data in them is
correct. You see this in things like Freebase, DBPedia and Wikidata, where
they typically end up in a triple store and you query using SPARQL.
This isn't how the real world works, and there isn't a lot of publicly
available software that takes this into account. There aren't even than many
papers about it (the Microsoft Probase paper is one, and there is work from
Florida University(?) about using Markov chains to reason while taking
probabilities into about).
I'm excited to take a look at this.
[1]
[http://deepdive.stanford.edu/doc/general/inference.html](http://deepdive.stanford.edu/doc/general/inference.html)
~~~
anonetal
Aside from the work on probabilistic inference, there is also many papers on
"probabilistic databases" in the last 10 years (Chris did his PhD on that
topic). That work has looked at SQL-style query processing over
"uncertain"/"probabilistic" data.
These were some of the major projects:
[https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~suciu/project-
mystiq.html](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~suciu/project-mystiq.html),
[http://maybms.sourceforge.net/](http://maybms.sourceforge.net/),
[http://infolab.stanford.edu/trio/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/trio/),
[http://www.cs.umd.edu/~amol/PrDB/](http://www.cs.umd.edu/~amol/PrDB/),
[http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1376686](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1376686).
~~~
nl
This is a fair point. In a similar vein there is also BayesDB
[http://probcomp.csail.mit.edu/bayesdb/](http://probcomp.csail.mit.edu/bayesdb/)
~~~
peterlvilim
An HDFS oriented one (with SQL style queries):
[https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sameerag/blinkdb_eurosys13.pdf](https://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sameerag/blinkdb_eurosys13.pdf)
[https://github.com/sameeragarwal/blinkdb](https://github.com/sameeragarwal/blinkdb)
~~~
nl
Is it?
I thought BlinkDB was data warehousing on hdfs? I dont see any mention of
inference-like features in the docs?
~~~
anonetal
It's not similar. BlinkDB builds upon the work on sampling-driven approximate
SQL query processing (an early project in that space was AQUA@Bell Labs), and
extends it to cloud/HDFS setting.
Although some terms come up in both places (e.g., confidence bounds, noise,
etc), BlinkDB and probabilistic databases are fundamentally different from
each other (I have worked on both topics).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open Source UAV projects giving comfort to the enemy? - ivankirigin
http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/08/can-open-source.html
======
Hexstream
I'd never keep myself from an Actual Good to mitigate a Possible Evil...
~~~
ivankirigin
I think makers need to be proactive though. Regulators could start to treat
hobby planes like 747s, as far as the difficulty of selling them and getting
them off the ground.
It would be wise in the DIY community to show that trying to stop people is a
waste of time. Real security solutions require innovation. An example: SAMs
are by far still the easiest and cheapest way to take out a plane. But we
spend many billions on stopping 7 year olds with safety scissors.
I think it's up to innovators to show how to make things really secure, or
demonstrate that there is no such thing, and best to avoid the pretense and
waste.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
(2012) – Epic 20,000 Dice Roll Randomness Test - programmingpol
https://www.awesomedice.com/blog/353/d20-dice-randomness-test-chessex-vs-gamescience/
======
laumars
I’d be interested to know how the test we carried out. Eg how randomly was the
die shaken? Was the die placed on the same side each time prior to shaking?
Etc
However, even as it stands, this is an interesting test.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which are some of the most expensive off-the-shelf sw products? - digamber_kamat
We all buy windows and at the most photo shop for few hundred dollars. But which are some of the most expensive software products around?<p>I have heard of SCADE suite and SCADE graphics each costing around $100k
======
Shooter
You won't find it at Best Buy, obviously, but we sell a software product that
_starts_ at US$1.4 million, not including any support or customization. (It's
a super-small niche product and saves our customers tens of millions each
year, so we have no trouble getting our price. In fact, we've been told we
should charge more by a few customers.) Several of our companies sell software
in excess of $100k. Price is completely unimportant. Value is supremely
important. That's true whether your selling off-the-shelf software or bespoke
software. Interestingly, our unit sales often _increase_ when we raise prices.
------
RK
One of my relatives works in the petroleum exploration industry as a
consultant. He told me that on a recent stint in Moscow he came across a real,
physical software black market. He said that they basically told him they
could get him anything he wanted, including the $100k+ software packages his
firm uses for oil exploration with cracked hardware dongles for
authentication. They just needed a couple days notice and were charging a few
hundred $.
~~~
digamber_kamat
That is nothing. You come to India and in any metro city you will find several
software DVDs being sold for 1-2$. This includes things from Windows 7 to
Photoshop. From all games to Autocad.
If something is not available they arrange it within two days.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The trouble with exponential discounting and how we undervalue the future - gabaix
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-07-28/einstein-on-wall-street-time-money-continuum-commentary-by-mark-buchanan.html
======
agalmicvinegar
Are people actually making long-term decisions based on that kind of
obviously-too-simple model? That seems like cargo cult science to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Understanding the math behind 0x5f3759df and the fast inverse square root (2012) - ColinWright
http://h14s.p5r.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df.html
======
lemoncucumber
Be sure to read the appendix, which is an easy-to-miss link at the end:
[http://h14s.p5r.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df-
appendix.html](http://h14s.p5r.org/2012/09/0x5f3759df-appendix.html)
The appendix was by far the most interesting part to me, after reading it I
felt like I really got the intuition behind how the trick works.
~~~
numlocked
Wow! Totally agree. The visualization makes it incredibly intuitive. It also
makes me appreciate the importance and elegance of the floating point to int
trick, which my brain had sort of elided over previously, as the "magic
constant" seemed like the crux.
------
lvoudour
I first saw the code in the early 2000's and although I figured out the
newton-rapshon part I couldn't wrap my head around the magic number, until I
read chris Lomont's famous paper[1]. A little gem which reminds us that not
that long ago computing resources were a limited commodity.
Abundance is great and speeds up development time, but unfortunately it leads
to laziness and bloat
[1]
[http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf](http://www.lomont.org/Math/Papers/2003/InvSqrt.pdf)
~~~
gilbetron
Oh man, lets hope Chris doesn't read this - he doesn't need an even bigger
ego!
(he's a personal friend and a great guy!)
~~~
lvoudour
Then don't tell him I've also read all his floating point papers as well back
in the day :)
------
qubex
Surely this is the _reciprocal_ of the square root, not the _inverse_?
~~~
hjalle
Isn't that the same?
~~~
sparky_z
I think what he's getting at is that the "inverse function"[0] of sqrt(x) is
just x^2.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_function](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverse_function)
~~~
qubex
Correct, that is what I intended. The inverse of any function whose
application, subsequent or prior to the function, leads to the identity. The
reciprocal, on the other hand, is very clearly understood to be the quotient
such that the nominator and denominator are reversed.
~~~
ColinWright
_> The reciprocal, on the other hand, is very clearly understood to be the
quotient such that the nominator and denominator are reversed._
That depends on the math you use. In this case you are given a floating point
argument, so there really isn't a concept of reciprocal either, because it's
not a rational number. There are places where "reciprocal" is not specific to
the rationals, but there it is usually a more general term meaning pretty much
the same as inverse.
In both cases context is everything, and trying to read this - as with all
math - in isolation is likely, almost inevitable, to cause confusion.
In this case it's the multiplicative inverse of the square root of the
argument.
------
Havoc
Don't particularly want to understand it to be honest. It's one of those
stories that still has a bit of magic behind it.
------
davvid
These days we have SSE (especially on x64) and its inverse square root
(intrinsic: _mm_rsqrt_ss/ps) is faster and more precise.
------
jmiserez
Dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15024539)
------
ColinWright
To the mods ...
I understand why you've changed the title, but I believe that in this case in
doing so you have reduced its usefulness. Since you've not even changed it to
the title of the actual article, it's clear that you have given this some
thought. Having spent that time, I think your decision is wrong, and don't
understand the reasoning behind this change.
To other readers, the title I originally gave was:
Understanding the math behind
the magic const 0x5f3759df and
the fast inverse sqrt.
Please note: This isn't a complaint - I'm providing this here so the
information the original title I gave isn't lost.
_(Although I fully appreciate that this comment will most likely end up off
the top page of comments, and hence never be seen. <fx: shrug />_
~~~
jmiserez
I’d have to agree. “Understanding the math behind” is what drew me to the
article and it was exactly as promised.
There are many articles about this hack, but many just write about it and it’s
history but don’t actually derive the constant. This article demystifies it by
showing that it’s just simple math.
~~~
sctb
OK, we've added back “Understanding the math behind”.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Become a Successful Corporate Trainer - johnastuntz
http://www.dotnetcurry.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ID=521
======
smiler
Ensure the participants can not have access to the web or their work e-mail
should be number 1. That way they can't get distracted by either and will pay
attention, thus ensuring the training is more effective and people notice you
deliver effective training.
(Coming from my own observation of being present when people are being trained
on a system I developed and have barely paid attention thanks to web / e-mail
access)
~~~
crazylama
That would be a nice addition to the list. Perhaps it can be turned on with
selective access and only at points where it is really needed.
------
crazylama
Instead of number 7, I think "Involve the participants" should be number 2. If
the audience is involved, they're more likely to pay attention and retain the
information and perhaps even try to replicate it themselves after the session.
------
iworkforthem
I think to be a successful corporate trainer, you will also need to Walk The
Talk too. Let's say you are teaching Project Management course under PMI, it
is important that in additional to being certified, you used all the tools and
techniques taught in your own lessons in actual real life business
environments too. Else you will never be able to relate to your students.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Groupon is not in Australia (domain squatter) - elvirs
http://www.groupon.com/blog/cities/why-groupon-isnt-in-australia/
======
phunel
Karma?
From Andrew's Mixergy interview, <http://mixergy.com/andrew-mason-groupon-
interview/> -
Talking in regards to the original British owner of Groupon: "...We’re doing
something somewhat similar to that in the United States, so, maybe we can work
together on this. We can take this to Europe.’ He said, ‘No way.’ We said,
‘Okay. ‘We continued operating. Then we had a trademark for Groupon. That
trademark extended to England. We contact him and say, ‘Hey, you can launch
that thing, but you can’t use the name Groupon because we have a trademark on
it.’ So then, he decided he wanted to sell. I think we bought it in May 2009
or something like that for maybe $250,000, which seemed like a lot at the time
and now it seems cheap."
------
ntoshev
I wonder why they think a local domain is necessary for their business (and is
it really). For example, Facebook doesn't use local domains - it uses .com for
everything.
~~~
wheels
It's probably more about the trademark than the domain. The other company
_applied for the Groupon trademark_ as well, so trading under that name until
the trademark dispute is settled could be quite problematic and using a
different name wouldn't be able to leverage the Groupon brand.
------
cubicle67
I don't have a side to take in this, but I think it should be pointed out that
scoopon have a real business that's been going some time and seems to be
reasonably profitable.
The name thing seems a bit underhanded, but I think it's disingenuous to
simply label them domain squatters
[Edit: I think I may have a bias against US companies intruding on Australian
turf. The whole ugg boot saga has left a pretty sour taste]
~~~
tjmc
Agreed. My wife's business recently did a deal on Scoopon and they were great
to deal with. What a pity that they've resorted to gazumping a competitor for
their trademark and domain here. Totally unnecessary and disappointing.
~~~
khafra
Tangentially, I was astounded and gratified to find out that "gazumping" is a
real word: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazumping>
------
cletus
This is an interesting can of worms and a lesson in being proactive about
securing your trademarks and domain names in other jurisdictions whether you
intend to launch there or not.
Despite the fact that Scoopon is arguably a real business this really is a
domain squatting case. After all Groupon has nothing to do with their business
or branding. Registering the trademark and the domain name was preemptive and
is leverage to get bought out. I don't really care if they are a real business
or not.
Speaking as an Australian, it is important that companies that operate in
Australia have a .com.au domain. It's not uncommon for me to tell someone my
address (gmail.com) and then find out later they'd tried to send it to
gmail.com.au.
I always thought it was a mistake by the UK to use .co.uk instead of .com.uk
for consistency reasons but having thought about it, I think it may make the
distinction clearer.
So what should Groupon do? Basically they should do what Google did in the UK.
For years Google didn't own the gmail name there so branded themselves as
googlemail.
By pressing on you're telling the other side that you're not reliant on them
giving up the name. It gives you bargaining power.
Suing them is a good idea too. It bleeds money they probably don't have (which
clearly Groupon does).
The worst thing Groupon could do is stall their activities waiting for a
resolution. Groupon is a time-sensitive business. There's nothing magical
about what they do and someone else can replicate it (as happened in Germany I
believe).
It would be risky to proceed under the brand name of Groupon however because
the trademark muddies the waters. There is the possibility that if Scoopon
successfully defend the trademark, Groupon will then be liable for damages for
infringing upon it.
Best bet: pick a new brand name, register the trademark and domain name and
proceed. Make the other side an offer with a time limit. If they decline, stop
talking to them. While this is happening simply proceed. There is
infrastructure that needs to be built regardless of the brand name (finding
offices, hiring salespeople and copy editors and so forth).
As you gain traction occasionally make them an offer for the name. As time
goes on LOWER the offer because by this point you've invested in your new
brand so the old one has less value.
At some point the squatters will either give up and sell or it simply won't
matter because you'll have built your business on a new brand.
------
haribilalic
If Groupon is heavily localised, what benefit is there to consumer if it's the
official Groupon, the fake Groupon or another clone that's offering the deal,
other than the clones not being a "brand name"?
I'm assuming that any Groupon clones would be able to sell to businesses just
as well as the real Groupon.
~~~
pchristensen
The merchants in AU benefit from Groupon's worldwide brand and popularity. The
customers benefit from having the best merchants doing well-structured deals.
500 cities into their worldwide expansion, Groupon has done this better than
anyone.
Remember, the product being sold to businesses is a _large quantity_ of new
customers. Anyone can sell deals, but it takes a lot of money and organization
to move the needle. If Scoopon thinks they can do this, then more power to
them. But play fair.
------
jamesaguilar
Note to self: If I ever start a company that secures significant VC funding,
immediately buy domains related to my company in all major markets and begin
securing trademarks as well.
~~~
haribilalic
It's not always as simple as registering a domain name on GoDaddy or a local
registrar though.
To register a .com.au domain name, you're required to have an Australian
Business Number (i.e. incorporate locally). It's easy to get one, but how many
other international domain names do you want to register that require extra
work?
~~~
ohashi
Some registrars specialize in this, SafeNames for example.
~~~
haribilalic
A company such as SafeNames is no guarantee though. They've been in trouble in
Australia before for registering domain names on behalf of foreign entities
that would not have been able to do so normally. In turn, any domains that
weren't compliant were deleted.
<http://www.auda.org.au/news-archive/auda-06122009/>
------
robotkad
While I don't know all the details, it looks as if Groupon has gone about this
the wrong way.
auDA have a very clear stance against this kind of squatting (from
<http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2010-05/>);
_a. Applicable Disputes. You are required to submit to a mandatory
administrative proceeding in the event that a third party (a "complainant")
asserts to the applicable Provider, in compliance with the Rules of Procedure
that:
(i) your domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a name [Note 1],
trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; and
(ii) you have no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name
[Note 2]; and
(iii) your domain name has been registered or subsequently used in bad faith._
~~~
jellicle
Ok, do tell: Please describe the name (Australian personal or business name)
that Groupon USA has rights in, to which the groupon.com.au domain is
confusingly similar.
------
iwwr
Domain squatters may not be OK, but identical business models are just another
legitimate challenge (business models can't be patented). They need boots on
the ground and it may not be possible for Groupon to physically get there
before the competition. Either way, it's good for the end user, who will go
from zero to several choices practically over night. It also prevents Groupon
from becoming a monopoly.
~~~
nedwin
There are multiple Groupon "clones" on the ground in Australia, a few doing
some fairly big numbers. Groupon have acquired one of the biggest (if my
sources are correct) in JumpOnIt.com.au.
Scoopons behaviour is pretty low IMHO. Registering not only the domain name
groupon.com.au but also the company name and the trademark?
~~~
scotty
No. It was LivingSocial who invested $5 million on JumpOnIt, which is one of
the larger group buy site. LivingSocial themselves took funding from Amazon.
Scoopon (and the guys behind Scoopon and CatchOfTheDays.com.au) also
registered other domain names such as Woot.com.au and DealExtreme.com.au. So I
think it's a pretty trivial squatting case.
------
veb
$286,000 bucks for registering a domain name, I'd so take it. In fact, that
makes me want to start up domain squatting... but that's a dick move.
------
MichaelApproved
_none being more sinister than Nopuorg_
If they think Nopuorg is sinister, why give them a direct link and not even
include rel="nofollow" Seems like it would help Nopuorg more than it hurts.
Edit: Have you read Nopuorg's About page? It's ridiculous
<http://www.nopuorg.com/about>
_Nopuorg was effectively launched in 1981 when its visionary founder, Mason
Andrews, was fetally conceived._
and
_Realizing at a young age that he was a Social Media Prodigy, Mason further
self-initiated his education by achieving a Bachelor of Arts Degree from
Basilisk-Online Preparatory Web-Academy._
Edit 2: Reading more based on ceejayoz's reply I see the whole site is an
awful spoof on the daily deals concept. When you try and buy it asks for your
SS#. Makes sense now why they link directly to it.
Am I the only one that thinks it's a lame joke?
~~~
pchristensen
It is one of the joke sites Groupon has made. Andrew Mason, and Groupon as a
whole, loves jokes and pranks.
Two of my favorite Groupon jokes:
Groupoupon (<http://www.groupoupon.com/>), a tease at the Gilt Group luxury
sales. NOTE: you MUST try to buy one of the items. Hilarity will ensue.
The monkey rental deal ([http://www.groupon.com/chicago/deals/rent-a-monkey-
for-a-wee...](http://www.groupon.com/chicago/deals/rent-a-monkey-for-a-
week-49)). NOTE: you MUST watch the video. Hilarity will ensue.
------
smcl
There's a comment which suggested that this happened in "England" (the UK,
grrr) but the roles were reversed and Groupon did this to a local competitor.
Does anyone know anything about this?
Quote: "and this was after you did the same thing to some poor guy in
england."
~~~
fbnt
He's probably referring at the technique they've used to get the groupon.com
domain from a guy living up in UK. This guy bought groupon.com with the
intention of building a group coupon business. While he was sitting on it, the
real groupon guys built the real thing and registered the trademark in US
(which, somehow, extends to the UK) and told the poor english guy to either
take 250k for the domain or prepare to be sued. He accepted the money and
everyone was happy.
~~~
chunkbot
If only he had taken Groupon equity; he'd be a multi-millionaire. Does anyone
know if the owner of the groupon.com domain had such an offer?
------
aik
Pretty sad. I have enjoyed using Scoopon for the past few months and I'm
disappointed by their behavior here. Though I'm not justifying their behavior
with this statement, it's understandable that 300k isn't biting. I have no
doubt that they'll be much happier with you out as long as possible.
Another competitor, and one I've been even more impressed by, is
ourdeal.com.au. You've definitely got some competition here. Good luck!
------
mahmud
9MSN and Microsoft are partnering to launch Cudo:
<http://cudo.com.au/ConfirmUser>
~~~
cubicle67
which has one of the most annoying entry screens ever. It forces to you create
an account before you can even see what the site it about
~~~
awa
Really, I was able to click on the cudo logo and it redirected me to today's
deal in sydney at <http://cudo.com.au/sydney> . I guess you can try entering
other cities names and it should redirect to deals in those cities. This is
very similar to Groupon (and infact a tad easier)
~~~
Nick_C
I couldn't. It wanted my email address to go any further. I quit then.
------
yycom
So, maybe the name doesn't matter so much as long as it's distinct per-market?
It's happened long before the internet and probably has nothing to do with
trademarks, and more to do with local marketing.
Case in point: "groupon" wouldn't work as well here in AU because "coupons"
aren't a big thing. (The concept maybe, the word, no).
------
amccloud
What's wrong with using au.groupon.com?
~~~
scotty
It's much more than just the domain name in this case, but also trademark and
registered business name. Basically Groupon might not be able to operate as
"Groupon" in Australia, regardless whichever domain name it uses.
------
lwat
As an Australian all I want to say is... just use the .com address. Call the
company 'groupon.com' Advertise the .com. It will work!
~~~
gstar
Australians are pretty apt to type <business>.com.au - it'd be a risky trading
environment when that address belonged to one of your competitors and seemed
legitimate.
~~~
josephcooney
Apt to type .com.au - Really? As a red-blooded Australian I can't recall the
last time I typed .com.au. Sometimes I look at it as an indicator for
e-commerce purposes, but it doesn't count for much, at least to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How the Library of Congress Unrolled a 2000-Year-Old Buddhist Scroll - sohkamyung
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/gandhara-scroll-library-of-congress
======
hprotagonist
By 2016 we had figured out how to take very high resolution microCT scans of
things with ink on them and "unroll" them virtually. This was successfully
used to read text from a scroll that had been turned into a column of charcoal
in a fire. The ink is different enough from the parchment, even when both are
partially combusted, to make the technique work.
Figure 1 is ... striking:
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/9/e1601247](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/2/9/e1601247)
[http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/en-gedi-scroll-
deciphere...](http://www.sci-news.com/archaeology/en-gedi-scroll-
deciphered-04216.html)
~~~
habi
Hey! Is 'we' you who has presented this at the Bruker User Meeting? I'm the
guy who presented the zebrafish gills story this year :) Your work with
virtually unscrolling the scrolls is amazing, keep on trucking! Have a good
day!
~~~
interactivecode
Come on, you can't mention zebrafish gills without actually telling the story!
~~~
dredmorbius
Based on username and DDG, I suspect:
[https://www.bruker.com/fileadmin/user_upload/8-PDF-
Docs/Micr...](https://www.bruker.com/fileadmin/user_upload/8-PDF-
Docs/Microtomography/UserMeeting/2019_UM_Presentation02_Haberthuer.pdf)
~~~
habi
Exactly, nice search engine fu :)
Here's a bit more information:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21782922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21782922)
------
ArtWomb
I love digital archaeology. Literally spent an afternoon recently watching a
"virtual unwrapping" of the Herculaneum Papyri found in the ashes of Mount
Vesuvius ;)
Reading the Herculaneum Papyri: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-7-Xg75CCI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-7-Xg75CCI)
Digital Restoration Initiative @ UKentucky
[http://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/](http://www2.cs.uky.edu/dri/)
------
virtualwhys
> Finally translated, the final scroll has no title, beginning, or end
How apropos wrt Buddha's non-teaching. Given more time (decay) the teaching
would be fully revealed :)
------
irjustin
I love this. The thing that got me into conversation/restoration was the
Baumgartner Restoration[0] youtube channel which lead me to the conserving a
michelangelo [1] by The Met from there I just kept going.
Of course, this is another level in fragility and love the care, precaution,
and respect these teams place into preserving pieces, meaning and
understanding of history.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvZe6ZCbF9xgbbbdkiodPKQ)
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-7BKDfaZpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-7BKDfaZpg)
------
spodek
Ironic to work so hard preserving something from a tradition based on
impermanence that says if you meet the Buddha to kill him. Not that there's
any reason not to preserve it.
~~~
roland00
Sigh that "Koan" is not literally about killing the Buddha. It is recognizing
the divinity is not in an idol or image, including other people. That strand
of Buddhism says enlightenment is first found within, and after you find it
you see it also in the external world, not in a specific form but you see it
everywhere.
Most likely that Koan comes from Linji Yixuan aka 1600 years ago, but Buddhism
is likely 2400 or older years ago.
\-----
Linji Yixuan also has another saying "If you meet your forefather, kill him"
once again this is not literal but is once again excessive reverence to other
relationships instead of finding family in all things not just a specific
forefather.
A similar statement would be Jesus Christ in the Gospels such as Luke saying
you can't be his follower if you love your father, wife, children, siblings,
etc more than him. Jesus demanded you love him more than you love your own
life, and your duty to his faith is greater than your traditions saying "I
must wait" to follow you for first I must bury my dead father and so on. [Once
again it is probably not supposed to be taken literally for the Gospels choose
certain metaphors for dramatic effect about how one organizes ones
priorities.]
~~~
Pigo
I never thought about the similarities before, that's an interesting point.
You always hear about how the Bible is a collection of many different genres
of writing, some which no longer exist, so it's confusing to people with no
point of reference. Song of Solomon, for example, is just hilarious if you
think of it as a detailed account of actual events and people. These concepts
were probably spreading across cultures for so long before being deposited in
a book or scroll.
------
yousifa
Is there an english translation of this?
Edit: translation is in this video starting at 18:35
[https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-8586/](https://www.loc.gov/item/webcast-8586/)
~~~
est31
[https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/07/now-online-the-gandhara-
sc...](https://blogs.loc.gov/loc/2019/07/now-online-the-gandhara-scroll-a-
rare-2000-year-old-text-of-early-buddhism/#comment-1660432)
Edit: also found this:
[http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2019/07/gandhara-
scro...](http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2019/07/gandhara-scroll-
online.html)
~~~
yousifa
thanks!
------
jspash
I love this type of thing! In today's age of digital impermanence, to think
simple birch bark can preserve a message from so long ago.
But one thing that stood out from the beginning of the article and wasn't
satisfactorily addressed was the fact that breathing on such a fragile object
could wreck the entire operation...why didn't they just wear surgical masks?
I mean, they went through all the trouble of pre-humidifying the scroll,
laying special little glass paper-weights and even spraying each bit when
necessary. But a single unexpected cough or sneeze could have made everyone
have a very bad day!
~~~
Double_a_92
I guess they probably did... the explanation with the breathing is just to
show how fragile it really was.
------
mandelken
> In 2005, conservators received the scroll in a Parker Pen box on a bed of
> cotton.
Surprisingly light on details of its origin. Part of the US war loot from
Peshawar perhaps?
~~~
pvg
You can google it, the 'perhaps' seems completely unwarranted.
_The Library purchased the single scroll from a British antiquities dealer in
2003._
[https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-073/?loclr=ealn](https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-073/?loclr=ealn)
------
RenRav
So the moisture made it flexible enough to unravel? It looks amazing I can
hardly tell it is so old. Like in old paintings where you can see the
brushwork and feel some connection to the artist long after they have passed
away, I think there is something similar here with the characters plus the
doodle in the center.
------
kickopotomus
The author mentioned that the conservators used bamboo spatulas a couple of
times. Is there a particular reason that they use bamboo versus some other
type of wood or perhaps metal?
------
pbhjpbhj
I've previously looked for Buddhist artefacts (not too hard though) and not
found any from before CE. Is this the oldest direct evidence of Buddhism?
~~~
Mediterraneo10
There is epigraphic evidence (the inscriptions of the Emperor Ashoka) for
Buddhism in BCE times.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
I'd looked at that but understood that the Buddhist parts were from 200CE,
added to dharma inscriptions from 300-200BCE. Thanks for sharing, do you know
other BCE sources?
------
kingkawn
Feels like a desecration
~~~
staplor
I disagree. What's the point of having a scroll if you are unable to read it?
Now it is in a form(digital) to last another thousand years.
~~~
kingkawn
Because it is an object from our ancestors. And the digital form will probably
be destroyed long before you imagine since it’s accessibility is dependent on
an industrial system remaining stable enough to deliver it
------
dredmorbius
In some of the recent discussion of archival (see the Internet Archive /
Archive Team and projects including Yahoo Groups, Google+, Flikr, and more),
is the nature of past historical archival.
_Records are in general scarce._ They're special. They're _highly_ skewed in
what, who, where, and when they cover.
This affects traditional history and historiography which are document-
centric, in that their scope is _limited by available documents_.
(There are other models and methods of history, some of which approach
anthropology in looking at physical artefacts, some based on genetics and
other methods. These are illuminating as well, though of necessity omit
specific textual context.)
That situation has changed, due to improvements in media, reproduction,
literacy, and now, raw data capture. The rate, quantity, and _intention_ of
recording is completely different today than 500, or 1,000, or 6,000 (the
origins of writing) ago. Then, both recording and storage were highly
_intentional_ , for all that implies. Now, it's _avoidance_ of leaving records
that is intentional.
I'm a fan of the Internet Archive's work. I'm also cognisant of the potential
risks and intrusions that it implies. The Archive tries to make such negative
disruptions as small as possible, but the challenges remain.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: C/C++ adjusting variables at runtime - scraft
I recall hearing of a library that can be linked into a C/C++ program that allows you to register variables. When your application is launched, the library would start a webserver, which you can then connect to. The displayed webpage would then show you all the variables you have registered and allow you to adjust them.<p>In terms of games development, this would be very useful, but after spending 90 minutes searching Google, I can't find the library. Either it no longer exists, my search terms are bad, or perhaps I made up this whole idea in my head.<p>Can anyone help?
======
to3m
I wrote an HTTP server ([https://github.com/tom-
seddon/yhs](https://github.com/tom-seddon/yhs)) with pretty much exactly this
use case in mind. (This influenced the main unusual thing about it: it doesn't
use threads, the idea being that when your function is called in response to
an HTTP request, you're less likely to have to do anything special before
modifying values as requested.)
The code is mostly complete, and should be usable as-is, but I never ended up
using it in anger. My quick and dirty stopgap solution at the time was some
on-screen (on the iPhone) widgets, and people seemed to prefer that in the
end, because it meant they didn't need a computer/second iPhone/etc. So I
never rolled out an HTTP-based equivalent.
If I were doing it again, I probably wouldn't bother with a full(ish) HTTP
implementation - I'd support only WebSockets. Then write the Javascript client
code separately from the game, and store it separately in SVN or whatever.
Faster iteration on the client code, and you can update the UI stuff
separately from the game.
Though of course, if people preferred on-screen widgets once, they might then
still prefer it a second time ;)
(As an example, a project that's on my must-take-a-closer-look list, that I
believe but works in the way I suggest:
[https://github.com/Celtoys/Remotery](https://github.com/Celtoys/Remotery))
~~~
scraft
I also stumbled upon microprofile
[https://bitbucket.org/jonasmeyer/microprofile](https://bitbucket.org/jonasmeyer/microprofile)
which has similarities to Remotery.
~~~
to3m
That's another entry for my must-take-a-closer-look list :)
------
scraft
I have come across GLConsole
[http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gsibley/GLConsole/](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gsibley/GLConsole/)
and CVars [https://github.com/arpg/CVars](https://github.com/arpg/CVars) and
[http://anttweakbar.sourceforge.net/doc/](http://anttweakbar.sourceforge.net/doc/)
which are definitely along the lines of what I was after. I just seem to
specifically remember something that displayed the information via a
webserver, at the time I remember thinking I'll come back to integrate it at a
later date, but now can't find the original source!
------
iab
I think you are looking for something like CVars, or equivalent. The doom
source has an implementation, there is also one as part of the library below
which I highly recommend.
[http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gsibley/GLConsole/index.php?n=Ma...](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gsibley/GLConsole/index.php?n=Main.Documentation)
------
scraft
The first post on here lists a lot of cool things it would be nice to be able
to do...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/36d190/h2o_is_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/36d190/h2o_is_a_very_fast_http_server_written_in_c_it/)
------
shortoncash
Kuck and Associates had a performance tuning library with OpenMP support years
ago that did this or something similar to this around 17 years ago. They got
acquired by Intel. I don't know if Intel's compilers and libraries still have
this feature.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Recurse Center switches to online-only until at least May - tosh
https://www.recurse.com/blog/152-RC-is-online-only-until-at-least-May
======
epoch_100
A silver lining: this is the perfect opportunity for anyone who wants to
attend RC but can’t pack up and move to NYC for three months.
------
optimaton
Isn’t the primary intent of having an offline place to cut off the distraction
and to make it feel like a retreat? How can that be accomplished online?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Get Hired at Fog Creek, Part 1 - gecko
http://hicks-wright.net/blog/how-to-get-a-job-at-fog-creek-part-1/
======
henning
The question presents itself: why would someone that good want to work on
project management software with such a funky user interface and oddball
feature set?
~~~
epall
That's the same sentiment I had. The software guys I've worked hated FogBugz
so much they scared the crap out of our CEO. I watched Aardvark'd and once
longed to work for The Great Fog Creek, but I've already moved onto bigger and
better things.
~~~
gaius
In 15 years in the industry I have met many people who like to quote Joel
Spolsky, but I have not come across one single person who actually uses a Fog
Creek product. Kinda like lots of people have read ESR, but no-one is using
his code...
~~~
gms
How are they so profitable then?
~~~
oldgregg
A few things to consider...
1\. They have a stable base of corporate microsoft shops using fogbugz --
which is why none of us knows anybody using it. My guess is their other
products make little if any revenue.
2\. They don't pay most of their people very much. They probably only have a
dozen or so people on staff full time and everyone else is an intern.
3\. Their job board does pretty well. Quite a bit of passive $$$.
Fog Creek seems like a stable and profitable business. That said, there are
thousands of profitable small boutique software companies out there.
------
mbenjaminsmith
I've been on both sides of the hiring table in different professions (staffer,
co-founder) and that article made my stomach turn. Anyone who puts up that
much of a fuss lacks the courage to lead and manage people the right way -
through inspiration.
To the youngsters out there: the more difficult they make it seem, the less
they actually have to offer.
------
nostrademons
I'm curious: how would people compare the prestige of working at Fog Creek vs.
the prestige of working at Google? Or one of the other big Internet companies
- Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo, EBay, etc...?
I remember Joel doing similar how-to-get-hired essays when I was in college. I
was always like, "Pffft. Why would I want to work for a company that does
_bugtracking_ software?" Ended up taking a job at a financial software startup
instead. I'm wondering if other people feel the same way or if I'm just a
gigantic snob. (The two may not be mutually exclusive...)
~~~
brown9-2
I think that working at a company like Fog Creek or 37 Signals would be seen
as highly prestigous, but only by a pretty limited audience: those that follow
software development blogs.
Whereas working at Google, pretty much everyone who has touched a computer is
familiar with who Google is.
So I guess it depends on what your intended audience is.
~~~
twoz
_pretty much everyone who has touched a computer is familiar with who Google
is_
And they'll also generally think you're somehow in charge of search and e-mail
at Google. :)
Kind of like having been in the Air Force and everyone asking you what kind of
jet you piloted.
------
aswanson
Can I get rich working there in a reasonable time frame? Otherwise, why should
I give a shit how?
------
edw519
"The easiest way to show off your brains is to have had good grades in school.
Just put your GPA on your resume and you're done."
Real bad litmus test.
I know lots of people who had a 4.0 who, if you dropped them off in the woods,
would have just died.
OTOH, I know lots of others who were brilliant but too bored to care about
grades.
Coding a one loop bubble sort in hex blindfolded while juggling eggs, playing
12 games of chess, solving a 100 x 100 sudoku, providing an alternate solution
to the 4 color theorem, teleporting tonights winning Powerball numbers, and
cooking dinner would be a more applicable barometer.
~~~
oldgregg
Unbelievable. The thing about fog creek is that they want highly competent
technical engineers without any entrepreneur spirit. Joel is the leader and he
needs code monkeys to carry out the work. People who make 4.0s are the exact
kind of people they need-- discipline, reverence for authority, people
pleasers-- people who won't rock the boat. For Fog Creek this is a great
litmus test.
Think I'm full of it? Watch their little movie they put together then tell me
I'm not spot on. (I hope you enjoy pimple faced programmers verbally fellating
joel spolsky)
<http://www.projectaardvark.com/movie/>
Incidentally, Google has a similar aesthetic, although not to the same degree.
People who are drawn to startups are not usually the kind of people you want
in a corporate structure.
~~~
bravura
I lost all respect for Joel Spolsky when I read this article:
[http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-
th...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-thanks-or-no-
thanks_Printer_Friendly.html?partner=fogcreek)
Summary: Intern comes up with a job sales board for Fog Greek, grosses $1m.
Joel decides not to compensate him, arguing that it is difficult to measure
the contribution of each individual.
The whole article is sickening, because Joel tries so hard to contort reason
and make it sound like he was being fair.
~~~
wglb
Well, not quite so--they did decide to offer him stock conditional upon him
joining. While I don't agree with not coughing up a cash bonus, he is making a
point about their culture, and that is always a dicey thing to fiddle with.
And he isn't really in startup mode.
~~~
gaius
Stock in a company that isn't public and has no plans to IPO is literally
worthless. Joel could have given him ONE HUNDRED BILLION shares if he'd wanted
to. Well, almost worthless: it's worth exactly as much as one sheet of paper.
Or half a sheet, since now you can only write on one side of it!
At least the t-shirt you could wear for yardwork or in the gym...
------
rfreytag
Creativity did not make the list of evaluation criteria.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ulas family is a Kurdish family of 19, five of whom walk on all fours - doener
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulas_family
======
doener
BBC documentary about this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwiz-
yhLpT0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwiz-yhLpT0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strategy HN: How to choose an area for launching my social netork? - starter
My new social network can be ready for launch just after school begins this September.<p>Should I launch at school(s) in the Northeast first?<p>Or, should I choose a launch location based on how many people I know in that specific network?
======
user24
any approach that succeeds is valid. without knowing more it's hard to know
what will succeed for you.
~~~
starter
Thanks. You're 100% right.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Quality, Popularity, and Negativity of 5.6M Hacker News Comments - sinak
http://minimaxir.com/2014/10/hn-comments-about-comments
======
nopinsight
> The minimum average points score of any given comment was about 2 points,
> meaning that all comments received atleast 1 upvote on average. This trend
> has been increasing until 2011 when it peaked at about 4.5 points. Since
> then, the average has trended downward, with a particularly large drop
> starting at 2014.
> Therefore, starting in 2014, both quantity and quality are on a downward
> trend.
The conclusion is unwarranted, because there are other changes in the system
and access points. Most significantly, points are no longer displayed and the
shift to mobile devices. This could affect voter's behaviors over time.
For example, people may be less inclined to vote when they do not see points
(the numbers could trigger voting in some cases). Voting on mobile phones is
also a pain as arrows are very small there, and a lot of mistakes could be
made (clicking down arrow when intending to vote up).
~~~
minimaxir
If people are less inclined to upvote, then they would be less inclined to
downvote as well, offseting it slightly.
Regardless, if the decline could be attributed to mobile devices, it would
have happened _way_ before 2014.
~~~
jimminy
> If people are less inclined to upvote, then they would be less inclined to
> downvote as well, offseting it slightly.
That's not exactly true. Since more people can upvote than downvote, the
threshold for downvote privileges is > 325 karma. So downvoting is reserved
for those that frequently interact with the service in a positive manner.
Downvoting could have had almost zero impact done to it due to the small set
of people with that privilege.
As quantity increased, and newer less frequent users stopped upvoting, because
there was no way to discern one's value in that interaction. Downvotes could
have held at a similar frequency, because of it's smaller group. The decrease
in upvoting could be accountable for a large portion.
Also, I rarely used a mobile device for interacting with HN, until 2-3 months
ago, because the interactions are quite crappy (one of the reasons they
mentioned for opening the API up.)
Edit: It's actually interesting, that the upvote/downvote ability wasn't
considered impactful, since you mentioned it further down in the article.
~~~
minimaxir
> _Edit: It 's actually interesting, that the upvote/downvote ability wasn't
> considered impactful, since you mentioned it further down in the article._
In retrospect, I should have mentioned the downvote threshold. However, it
wouldn't be helpful since I don't have access to the karma values of the
upvoters/downvotes (e.g. are the majority of upvoters people who are under the
karma threshold? are the majority of downvotes those at the karma threshold or
far above?), so I wouldn't be able to make an accurate inference.
------
mgraczyk
I would be interested to see a how the "negativity index" behaves with other
emotionally charged topics. What other sorts of topics lead people to use a
more emotionally charged vocabulary? What if instead of titles containing
(women|female|diversity), you did the same analysis with other topics
associated with toxic discussion? Maybe:
(israel|palestine|gaza)
or
(gentrification|rent control|eviction)
or even
(windows|microsoft)
The data seem to indicate that people use more emotionally charged words, both
positive and negative, when they talk about something emotional/personal like
diversity. I wonder if other topics lead to the same asymmetrical increase in
negativity?
~~~
wutbrodo
Seriously, I found a few of the conclusions drawn from the data here to be
pretty odd. I was hoping for some interesting insight but the article is
really disappointing.
> "The language in the former is more neutral and about the content of the
> article (apparently Hacker News users really like to talk about Open Source
> software), while the submissions about gender and diversity trend to talk
> about tangent topics."
Does the author _really_ find it surprising that combining all topics will
lead to, on average, more "neutral" language than a topic that (ostensibly)
doesn't require any expertise/knowledge of esoterica? It should be obvious
that the number of people who have an opinion about diversity in tech will be
higher than the number of people who feel the same way about "Show HN: Virtjs,
an ES6 emulation library " or "The amazing progress of LEDs" (both from the
front-page right now).
Note: I'm not suggesting that the latter two aren't as _interesting_, but that
contributing a comment of substance is obviously going to be more difficult
and thus have less people go ahead and do so.
~~~
RyanZAG
Is it just me who finds the latter two far more interesting?
It seems the biggest problem with HN becoming more popular is that it's picked
up all of these politically charged topics which were very seldom before (from
memory). If anybody could run the numbers on the percentage of topics
featuring 'diversity' from 2014 compared to earlier that would be very
interesting to me.
There's no shortage of places to discuss diversity and the usual political
issues, but far fewer places to discuss difficult business and tech issues and
having HN taken over by these 'interesting' topics is very unfortunate. Is
this the case though?
------
tonglil
Just a quick FYI for the author:
> "The average amount of positive words in a comment made in thread about
> gender and diversity is 2.48 words, a little higher than the average, and is
> also the most frequently occuring value. However, The average amount of
> positive words in a comment made in thread about gender and diversity is
> 2.10 words, a much higher increase."
I think you mean:
> "However, the average amount of negative words"
Good article though, great graphics and cool insights!
------
probably_wrong
Nice timing coincidence: recently I decided that I would not comment on a
story if I didn't have anything positive to say about it. I found it that it's
a lot easier for me to focus on one tiny flaw and point it out that actually
making a contribution to the article. My number of comments has really gone
downwards since then, but hopefully their quality will go up.
------
davesque
I enjoyed this a lot. I do think the author is tending to make his assertions
too strongly e.g. saying things like "this data shows that..." instead of
"this data suggests that..." It's still a fun read and thought-provoking.
------
aston
I made the worst comment of the month list for a comment I actually thought
was good (!), and now I'm really curious about the context...
Is there any way to recover the thread ids or parent comments for items on the
the worst comments list?
~~~
koopajah
Found it quickly on [https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/) it was
a thread titled "Steve Jobs - To All iPhone Customers" and here is the link:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51226#up_51333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=51226#up_51333)
But I agree, I read some of the worst comments and would be nice to get a link
to the discussion for each of these to get some contexts!
------
gatehouse
Very thorough. Two things I'd like to see are comment score distributions in
the 3 months or whatever before and after scores were hidden (the purple
histogram), and a heat map of article tone versus comment tone.
------
touristtam
I am slightly disappointed in the lack of mention toward posting over a 24
hour period, and by extend to toward the timezone coverage of the users.
Although I have seen article pointing toward this in the past.
~~~
minimaxir
I had done timezone analysis for Hacker News submissions, in February:
[http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-submissions.png](http://minimaxir.com/img/hn-
submissions.png)
More likely than not, comments would show similar behavior. (I didn't include
it in the post because those types of charts are much harder to make)
------
cheshire137
Thanks for this.
Third paragraph from the bottom, you say "However, The average amount of
positive words" when you meant to say "negative." Second from bottom, you
misspell "necessarily."
------
emcarey
Fascinating dive into the data-really appreciate the sentiment analysis of
comments made about women and diversity.
------
serf
> It’s worth noting that on Hacker News, you can be downvoted for being
> factually wrong.
Also for having a differing opinion, the incorrect number of characters in the
post, misaligned chakras, irregular weather patterns, cosmic rays, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I wrote a negative Yelp review and it made my life a nightmare - ytNumbers
https://nypost.com/2018/05/28/i-wrote-a-negative-yelp-review-and-it-made-my-life-a-nightmare/
======
jastanton
I was nodding along until this:
> They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental
> health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and
> home address,” she said.
wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge.
Also, I had a related issue where a doctor threatened to sue based on my yelp
review. I cut the review back to verifiable facts instead of opinion and asked
if that compromise was ok, he said it wasn't and started claiming it was
defamation. I cut off contact and that was that. I wondered if it was possible
to be dragged into court by something like this, apparently I may have dodged
a bullet. Scary stuff.
~~~
Nadya
>Wow. That violates HIPAA law. The counter-sue is going to be huge.
Basically an open and shut case too. Assuming they were smart enough to
"correct" the mistake it may not be a Tier 4 ($50,000+) violation, but instead
a Tier 3 violation ($10,000 - $50,000 per violation) of willful neglect. I'm
not sure if each violation above would be considered a single large violation
or multiple small violations ( 1 violation vs 7 violations is a major
difference in penalty cost). There's also SLAPP.
If litigation has gone on long enough to cost her $20,000 in legal fees I
can't help but feel there is a lot more to this story or my understanding of
the legal system is _completely_ out of touch...
~~~
alexbanks
You seem like you know what you're talking about. A few years ago, I got a
Facebook message from a girl that lived in my town. She said something like
"This is really weird, but did you have shoulder surgery by X doctor last
October? If so, that surgeon just did my knee and after my rehab told me that
she thought you and I would be a good match. Would you want to grab dinner
sometime?"
I was really confused. Wasn't this a HIPAA violation? If yes, what do you even
do about it? Feels like a cause for concern if your doctor is also trying to
play cupid? What should I do/have done?
~~~
Nadya
I work in a tech-related healthcare field where I'm required to undergo HIPAA
training and (often) end up needing to educate clients on potential violation
risks. Nowhere as good as a lawyer but I deal with it on a daily basis at
least. So take this as the typical "I am not your lawyer or pretending to be a
lawyer - go speak with an actual lawyer" disclaimer.
>Wasn't this a HIPAA violation?
100% yes that was a HIPAA violation and honestly anything shy of giving your
information to people who actually need it (aka: any hospital/practitioner you
visit who should be aware of your medical history) is a violation with very
few exceptions (mostly legal ones). Gossiping about patients is probably one
of the most common violations.
>If yes, what do you even do about it?
Depends how much you care and how long it has been since the event happened
and you became aware of the violation. If it happened within the last 6 months
you can report it online through the process xapata linked you. If it's been
over 6 months it's too late to report. I'm not sure if "it happened but I
didn't know it was a violation until recently" counts as a start date for the
"aware of the occurrence" limitation. Would be a great question for an actual
lawyer.
You also don't know what else could possibly have been said about you or your
medical history - so I'd keep that in mind when deciding if this violation is
a "big deal" to you personally or not.
------
AdmiralAsshat
_> “They tried to drag my start-up wine-and-spirits technology business into
it … They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental
health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and home
address,” she said._
That screams HIPAA violation, to me. The practice could (and should) be shut
down over it.
~~~
ceejayoz
_If_ it happened.
The story is in a tabloid, and that's such an _insanely_ egregious breach of
HIPAA that I'm a little skeptical that it played out _exactly_ like that.
~~~
confiscate
why do you blame the tabloid? The quote said "They posted my", so it looks
likely that it was the woman who said it, no?
~~~
ceejayoz
> why do you blame the tabloid?
Because a common tabloid tactic is posting _technically_ true statements in a
misleading manner.
For example, the woman's statement _could_ apply to having introduced her
medical records _into the court transcripts_ , which would be entirely normal
practice. The wording in the article leaves us thinking they uploaded her
records and driver's license in a Yelp reply or something, but I think that's
unlikely.
------
pliftkl
A better headline might read "I wrote a review on Yelp in which I accused a
doctor of committing insurance fraud on other patients that I had no actual
knowledge of, and it made my life a nightmare".
Courts have established that you can write negative reviews and that they fall
well within rights to freedom of speech. She isn't being sued for giving the
guy a one-star review and saying "This place sucks". There's one sentence she
wrote that has cost her $20k:
"I suspect that this doctor gives unnecessary procedure to a lot of people and
then charges the insurance sky high prices and no one knows the difference."
~~~
oliv__
Well, if it happens to one patient, how likely is it that this is common
practice?
Also, she started the sentence with "I suspect", which is very different from
a plain accusation.
~~~
conanbatt
You cant veil an accusation under a single adjective, come on..
It might happen to many others, but her accusation is baseless and she is
responsible for it. Suing for libel is an appropriate right.
~~~
iron0013
How is it baseless?
~~~
conanbatt
She has no evidence whatsoever that this happened to someone else.
~~~
tomtimtall
She has absolute evidence that she in fact suspects this.
------
ssijak
One thing that sticks to me when I read such articles (I am not from US) is
how ridiculously pricey medical services are. Common, 1k$ for a regular exam
that costs like 20euros in my country in private clinics?! And I read about
this ridiculous prices US so often that I am dumbstruck that people are cool
with it.
Another thing that struck me is that if you don`t have money, evil people can
just silence you by suing you (look at those court costs, 20k and counting?!)
~~~
OscarCunningham
The "prices" are moves in a game played between hospitals and insurance
providers, and don't correspond to anything real or to the amount that gets
paid. If a hospital discovers that the patient doesn't have insurance they'll
be charged the real (more reasonable) prices instead.
~~~
nambit
Millions of americans pay those sticker prices. Just because millions more
don't or get discounts doesn't change the fact that those are very real
prices.
~~~
OscarCunningham
Yes. The system is bad.
------
shanecleveland
I had a terrible experience with a vacation rental, so I left a brutally
honest review. Was aggressively met with verbal lawsuit threats. I ended up
talking with the owner quite a bit about how disappointing of an experience it
was for us. I agreed to remove the original review in replace of a less
"colorful" one. He at least said he understood some points and agreed to make
some changes. But I got the feeling it was common for him to use these scare
tactics to prevent bad reviews. And it worked. Not worth it to me to fight
this battle, so I chose not to provide another review. I just wanted to
prevent others from going through the same thing. The rental site was of no
help and said they don't get involved.
In this case, the doctors bigger concern may be insurance fraud , if
overcharging and/or performing unnecessary procedures.
~~~
win_ini
Slightly related - but gives me a chance to tell this story. Recently, I
stayed at an AirbNb with many great reviews. The guy asked me to NOT leave a
review ("We already have lots of good ones"). His issue - the reviews are used
by the county to see how often their place is being rented out.
------
jayess
Call your home/renter's insurance agent and ask them to add a "personal
injury" rider. Increase your liability limit to $1m. You'll be insured against
suits for libel/slander (assuming you aren't doing so maliciously). It'll
probably cost you another $50 a year. It's a life saver. I have a friend to
was sued, wrongfully, for defaming someone online and his insurance covered
the entire defense.
~~~
dawnerd
Just mentioned it above, but my insurance actually bills it as libel
insurance, so might have to ask for that as well.
------
mschuster91
A variation of this scam is also endemic in the German mandatory insurance
system (e.g. [http://www.ln-online.de/Lokales/Luebeck/Krankenkassen-
betrog...](http://www.ln-online.de/Lokales/Luebeck/Krankenkassen-betrogen-
Luebecker-Sonderdezernat-ermittelt)).
In contrast to privately insured people (basically, public servants, company
founders, rich and ultra rich) who get to see the bills of the medical
provider, they can bill the "common" insurance providers (GKV, Gesetzliche
Krankenversicherung) directly without the customer seeing anything of the
bill. This is, of course, ripe for abuse as no one will look if a doctor
really did a specific billed procedure on a patient, especially not something
in the 20-50€ range...
~~~
Semaphor
> In contrast to privately insured people (basically, public servants, company
> founders, rich and ultra rich)
And many self-employed people and also some middle class people. Private
insurance isn't _that_ rare here.
PS: Interesting to see LN linked ;)
------
CodeSheikh
His Yelp page is getting very active: [https://www.yelp.com/biz/joon-song-md-
new-york-2](https://www.yelp.com/biz/joon-song-md-new-york-2)
~~~
mattnewton
Streisand effect all over again[0]
[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect)
------
jimrandomh
The author claimed that the provider in this case committed billing fraud, by
charging the insurance for procedures that were not performed. She should
write the NY attorney general; an investigation by the State would make the
civil case a lot easier to deal with.
------
jchw
Think of how many people this business has bullied into silence before someone
with enough resources to make the news came along. For most people
(unfortunately,) $20k of expenses is bankruptcy.
------
yani
It is good to hear the other side of the story. I find it impossible for a
lawyer company to post medical records of someone else publicly since they are
supposed to know what they are doing. I am all for give power to the people
but I have seen this being abused a lot nowadays.
~~~
csomar
> They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental
> health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and
> home address
If this is indeed true I'm not really interested to hear the other party
story. Remember that the other party started the lawsuit and online reviews
are something to get over with (unless the woman is backed by some entity that
is going after that business)
~~~
yani
Yes. But that sentence is too obfuscated... posted where? I am a bit sceptic
because of the way the article is written around the important parts.
------
hitekker
Yelp ought to stick up for the reviewers, at least in some small capacity. I
mean, if people feel like they can't be honest in Yelp reviews without getting
sued, doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of Yelp?
I'd hate to see it become another ZocDoc, where five stars reviews are
copypasted ad infinitum.
~~~
skj
Yelp's customers are the business owners.
~~~
4ad
Yelp exists only because people trust it.
~~~
DiabloD3
Given how many times "Google is evil because it destroyed Yelp (not because
Yelp is a trainwreck)" headlines cross the HN front page, arguably, no one
trusts Yelp.
~~~
4ad
Hackers News titles are not a reflection of the society at large.
------
dqv
The case is available online through WebCivil Supreme [0] if you want to read
more about the case.
[0]
[https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASSearch?param=P](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASSearch?param=P)
~~~
mcguire
The case name is "GREAT WALL MEDICAL P.C. vs. LEVINE, MICHELLE".
[https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?parm=...](https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASCaseInfo?parm=CaseInfo&index=EQ%2FcE1kqRZ1_PLUS_y5dbxSBFQA%3D%3D&county=hK5AdsEWZTBWkrxZV7J3Bg%3D%3D&motion=M&docs=&adate=06/21/2018&civilCaseId=4DfkdU4iElJ1RJmL3_PLUS_5btw%3D%3D)
~~~
danieltillett
Having read the case I suspect the defendant is going to lose big time.
------
duked
I just went on their yelp page and was noticed a huge spike in negative review
(talk about the streisand effect...). but what surprised me was the yelp
notification: "Active Cleanup Alert
This business recently made waves in the news, which often means that people
come to this page to post their views on the news.
While we don’t take a stand one way or the other when it comes to these news
events, we do work to remove both positive and negative posts that appear to
be motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer’s personal
consumer experience with the business.
As a result, your posts to this page may be removed as part of our cleanup
process beginning Tuesday, May 29, 2018, but you should feel free to post your
thoughts about the recent media coverage for this business on Yelp Talk at any
time. "
So is it like the news coverage never happened ? seems kind of disingenuous to
remove everything during that period (whatever time frame they will decide on
is interesting too)
~~~
lazyasciiart
That doesn't say "everything during that period". It sounds like they're going
to remove all the stuff like "I've never been here but they sound evil 1
star!"
------
caiocaiocaio
Yelp doesn't seem to have brought a lot of a joy into anyone's life.
~~~
PascLeRasc
I visited Spain last summer and my family would typically just walk around
where we were looking for a restaurant that seemed good, and almost always got
stuck in tourist traps with bad Americanized food at high prices. When we
started using Yelp to find places to eat we found little hole-in-the-wall
tapas places with absolutely no American influence and amazing food that we
still talk about to this day.
~~~
retromario
Yes, same here. I used Yelp during a US West Coast trip and always found good
too great places to eat near any place we drove through. The highlight was
finding an amazing, fresh Vietnamese on a concrete island in some random part
of Fresno.
Their coverage is not uniform across different countries (Germany is not bad
but still occasionally spotty) but it's a great filter of the crap
restaurants.
------
Legogris
Slightly related: There is an ongoing process of redditors being targeted in a
defamation suit by a mental health counselor in Tokyo for writing about their
experiences on Reddit:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/7resct/update_offici...](https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/7resct/update_official_gofundme_update_current_status_of/)
------
teliskr
The Yelp episode of South Park is one of the best.
"I'm a food critic with Yelp.com... umkay."
[http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s19e04-youre-not-
yelpi...](http://southpark.cc.com/full-episodes/s19e04-youre-not-yelping)
~~~
rootlocus
I didn't get the feeling that this woman was the kind of Yelp reviewer South
Park were shaming.
------
dominotw
I am suprised zocdoc even allowed negative reviews. They rejected my slightly
negative review. I think reviews have to to be approved by the doctors
themselves to be posted on zocdoc since doctor knew what I wrote( without it
being published) and hounded me to resubmit a positive review.
------
wccrawford
I know someone who left a bad review and the owner of the restaurant stalked
her for years afterwards. She ended up leaving Yelp because of it.
Yelp doesn't do nearly as much as they should to protect their users.
~~~
forgot-my-pw
Didn't Yelp use to coerce businesses too to pay to get their bad reviews
"hidden"?
~~~
turc1656
Yes, yes they did/do. It's a move straight out of the mobster playbook. It's
the modern day equivalent of paying for "protection".
Yelp has also been sued by investor's for allegedly misleading them into
believing that Yelp was filtering out everything that wasn't reliable, first-
hand reviews from people who actually went to those businesses and paid for
services.
On a similar note, I believe business owners have alleged numerous times that
when they refuse to pay the extortion fees to have bad reviews removed, they
suddenly get a bunch of bad reviews all at once. Also, Yelp has seemingly had
a habit of allowing competitor's post bullshit reviews on businesses who
haven't paid them for that "service".
I don't what currently goes on, though. Maybe they have cleaned it up? But I
doubt it.
------
bobthechef
This particular case aside, I'm fairly certain that doctors in the United
States perform unnecessary procedures all the time so that they can charge
more, or drag out consultations across multiple visits to be able to charge
independently for each visit. So I wouldn't be surprised if that's what
happened here because it is so common. Medicine is a corrupt field full of
overpaid doctors. Look at how much doctors make in, say, the UK. At the same
time, wait times in the UK is pretty terrible from what I hear.
~~~
OnMyPhone
Several of the Dr's and specialists in the US write down different procedures
than what is done. I don't think it's malicious (at least to the patient), but
I think it's mainly to avoid issues with insurance companies not covering
stuff. I can see how this isn't kosher with many people though.
I have some weird issues that no one can seem to figure out, so when I go to
the Dr's, they'll sometimes take the shotgun approach. If they know that the
insurance company is going to give me flak for something, the Dr's put down
whatever is needed for insurance to cover it.
One example was when I felt a pop in my jaw after eating something. Within a
few minutes it hurt so bad that I passed out from the pain, and woke up an
hour or so later. I went to the Dr's and had them do what they do. They did a
bunch of tests and the Dr told me that he had to put down that I have "head
pains" instead of "jaw pains" otherwise insurance wouldn't cover it.
I'm not huge on the idea and I'm sure I'm paying for it in one way or another.
It is much better than paying thousands out of pocket 5+ times a year.
------
mattsoldo
Countersue the doctor. Unfortunately without a suit to conterweight theirs,
they only have upside.
And file a suit against Yelp.
------
pseudolus
Apparently (and per the terms of the stipulation electronically filed) the
parties were close to settling and in the interim she agreed to take down her
reviews that had been posted during the pendency of the action and not make
any more "disparaging" statements. I'm guessing the settlement talks fell
through. The issues are, unsurprisingly, not as black and white as the
original story makes out.
------
danso
Google cache of the defendant's now-deleted GoFundMe page:
[http://archive.is/xm4Ce](http://archive.is/xm4Ce)
Has some more details, from her side, about the alleged HIPAA violation:
> _As if that was not enough, in the very early stages of the lawsuit Dr. Joon
> Song had my medical record posted online in it 's entirety. My complete
> medical record was available publicly on the internet. My mental health, the
> details of my body even though i never took the gown off, my bills, my
> insurance details, my photo, my name, my birthday, my address and my phone
> number. All of this was posted._
> _Dr. Joon Song and his lawyers claim that because i shared the details of my
> positive blood test privately with the court (which i was forced to do to
> defend myself) I waived all rights to my privacy and there is no HIPPA
> violation and I am further a liar in stating that he had violated my HIPPA
> rights by publishing my records._
> _In addition to posting my medical records Dr. Joon Song refuses any
> amendment request . His office staff says my medical record is locked
> because he is using it to sue me. He maintains false information on my
> record to date._
Sounds like she's claiming that her medical info was posted as documents
pertaining to the lawsuit.
edit: Others have posted the case filing, in which you can find the exhibits
and affidavits. The alleged posting of medical records was not to the public
Internet, but as part of a case filing. And only after, the plaintiff asserts,
the defendant posted her own records:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179942](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17179942)
------
pwaai
I submitted a complaint to BBB once and the business owner sent me a letter
threatening to sue.
That was the day I realized we as consumers are truly vulnerable.
~~~
Clubber
I've heard rumors that the BBB is pay to play, but I don't have any direct
experience with them.
Gotta watch what I say lest I get sued!
~~~
jayess
That is definitely the case. BBB is a scam.
------
OliverJones
Yelp is basically bad news for everybody.
The subjects of negative reviews often attack the reviewers.
And, Yelp itself attacks the subjects of positive reviews. Their sales people
call positively-reviewed small businesses and use hard-sell tactics to try to
sell them advertising.
So, for your own sake don't post negative reviews. And, for the sake of the
businesses you like don't post positive reviews.
------
pasbesoin
$20,000 as an opener.
Civil as well as criminal proceedings. I worry it's more about the money you
have to spend, especially when this differs significantly between the opposing
sides, than justice.
And, charging $1300 a visit, that doctor's going to have the spend.
Maybe, in this case, the chance of media coverage will produce a settlement
before things hit the stratosphere.
At the same time, going onto social media and using words like "crook", etc.
is... not the best approach. Stick to facts and more neutral language, and let
the reader draw their own conclusion.
But then again, more and more often, _any_ criticism seems to provoke nuclear
escalation. Not to mention the pre-emptive strike of non-disparagement
language in service contracts.
Ours is called a "knowledge economy". But a lot of self-serving interests are
bent on shutting down the knowledge.
P.S. If medical records were shared, state licensing should be looking at
pulling the doctor's license.
There's a purpose to regulation, that includes shutting down the most
egregious behavior.
Also, prosecutors should be investigating medical and insurance fraud.
Back with the wind up of our "war on terror", a _lot_ of law enforcement
resources got directed away from domestic crime including white-collar crime,
to chasing needles in the ever-bigger haystack that was being built.
Even a rich society faces limits to its resources. Especially when there are
arguments and initiatives to reduce them. (The "tyranny of big government" \--
unless it's law enforcement and the military, or is that law enforcement _as_
the military?)
In part, current domestic problems are exacerbated by the pressure and actions
to focus our resources abroad. And not in "economic aid", but in power
politics.
No one's been tending the shop. And the worst and pushiest have been taking
advantage.
------
tomohawk
Yelp is pretty bad with the negative reviews, and is sometimes used by groups
to target businesses for non business reasons.
Here's some examples of veterinarians who have have run ins with Yelp (leading
to suicide in one case), and some of the mitigations they try:
[http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/negative-reviews-yelp-
and-y...](http://veterinarynews.dvm360.com/negative-reviews-yelp-and-your-
veterinary-clinic)
~~~
jessaustin
Lots of good advice there. When in doubt, apologize.
------
himom
She’s already won in the court of public opinion, I hope she recovers a
reasonable amount of fees and damages if her story is legit.
Always post reviews anonymously using an anonymous email address over Tor or
free WiFi.
It seems bad business to go after disgruntled customers punitively rather than
trying to correct the situation positively. There’s always some crazy
customers out there, but either way: going after them just lends them
credibility and a platform.
------
ktosobcy
One thing that annoys me about Yelp is that they pulled my information and put
this info on their site. I have absolutely no intention of being there
(working remotely, had to establish legal entity for 'freelance' work that is
already 7 years with same company). And they refuse to take down my details
(including my address) from their page…
------
eggy
I believe in free speech online, Yelp included, however, I would be factual
and concise when writing a review. The article quotes she wrote "crooked",
which means dishonest, or illegal. I am not saying there are not scammers and
bad doctors, but it's best to keep your language objective and answer after
you have emoted offline, or the legal issues have been resolved. She could
have stated that she was billed for X, but thinks she did not receive X as
defined, and did not receive sufficient clarification or verification from the
doctor. She states the doctor's office were aggressive on the phone when she
called. Per her allegation they stated she complained of pelvic pain and this
required an ultrasound. Did she complain of having pelvic pain and was given
an ultrasound? Is this covered in the annual checkup for free?
I have a bill from my daughter's pediatrician, which on first look appears to
be a double charge for a developmental evaluation (filling out 3 pages of
questions on her). I am not going to jump on Yelp and write the pediatrician
is crooked or otherwise, until I am convinced it is either a clerical error,
includes another form she had us fill out that I am unaware of is a separate,
standard billable practice, or is plain dishonest, and trying to get more
money out of my insurance company. I will admit my first reaction upon opening
the bill, hungry, late, and overworked was "This is bullshit! They are trying
to rob me!" I have been overseas for the past 8 out of 9-1/2 years, so I am
going to tread lightly until I can ascertain the doctor's intentions. I think
many people use Yelp or other online reviews as a forum for knee-jerk,
emotional reactions.
~~~
benburleson
It might be a case of the current American President devaluing the word. Seems
like it would be easy to explain away the use of "crooked" in court these
days.
------
ndesaulniers
I posted a civilized negative review and it got taken down for "not meeting
guidelines." I wonder how many other negative reviews have been taken down on
Yelp? I also wonder that's a paid feature that businesses can use?
~~~
OnMyPhone
"I also wonder that's a paid feature that businesses can use?"
I swear that I've heard about several different people paying Yelp to "remove"
(or whatever term they called it) negative reviews on their site. This was a
few years ago, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was still a thing.
------
p3llin0r3
Dr. Joon Song has never heard of the Streisand effect apparently
------
flippyhead
I love seeing bullies like this get called out and end up worse off than if
they'd done nothing.
~~~
rootlocus
Which party do you see as the bully here?
------
JumpCrisscross
Counterfactual: Dr. Soong is well-rated on ZocDoc. Curious to see how the
judge rules.
~~~
hitekker
ZocDoc explicitly limits critical reviews, implicitly removes negative ones,
and otherwise enables faking/rating-inflation:
[https://www.zocdoc.com/about/blog/for-patients/the-zocdoc-
do...](https://www.zocdoc.com/about/blog/for-patients/the-zocdoc-doctor-
rating-policy/)
> Please note that we can’t publish claims about the accuracy of a
> practitioner’s treatment and diagnosis. Those are factual matters, and to
> verify them would require extensive medical studies.
[https://nycdatascience.com/blog/student-works/web-
scraping/a...](https://nycdatascience.com/blog/student-works/web-
scraping/analyzing-zoc-doc-doctors/)
And so forth.
------
sunstone
Yeah well Yelp considers negative reviews to be their own exclusive revenue
stream.
------
baxtr
Anonymous reviews are a sort of a good thing, viewed from that end
------
hi41
Isn't a negative Yelp review protected by Freedom of speech? Inspite of that
the lady had spent a fortune defending herself.
~~~
danso
She isn't being sued for a negative Yelp review. She's being sued for alleged
libel in the form of a negative Yelp review.
------
Overtonwindow
This almost seems like a Slapp lawsuit.
~~~
ceejayoz
Maybe, maybe not. A new patient visit and a routine annual aren't necessarily
the same thing where insurance is concerned, and it's not the doc's fault if
she's got a copay/deductible.
That said, if she can prove this bit:
> “They tried to drag my start-up wine-and-spirits technology business into it
> … They posted my entire medical record, including notes about my mental
> health, my bills, my insurance info, my driver’s license, birth date and
> home address,” she said.
... they're about to get smacked _really_ hard.
~~~
yani
It does not say where it was posted and why she thinks it was them.
------
newshorts
Yang to the yin of doctors being sued by patients.
------
jhowell
If you wrote a restaurant review 30 years ago and it was seen by millions,
likely the same number who saw your post on yelp, and attached your photo
along with your text, you would have been impacted. Yelp is a saw you held the
wrong way. Do we need instructional videos for saws?
------
hycaria
Patients are by far the worst kind of customer to deal with. So maybe if the
costs were disclosed upfront ("I can perform an ultrasound if you have pelvic
pain, but it will cost you/your insurance xxx") we wouldn't come to such he-
said-she-said extremities. But I guess it's pure fantasy in the USA where I've
heard medical costs can be negotiated... How could they announce full price /
insurance coverage when you're about to get the exam done if it's not even
settled yet ?
~~~
mynameisvlad
Why can't the costs be disclosed upfront? Whenever I go to the dentist and I
need to have some work done, I get an estimate telling me how much it costs
and how much they expect the insurance company to cover. This isn't rocket
science, it can easily be calculated, and should be, as you said, for the
benefit of everyone.
~~~
dfsegoat
I too wonder why the MD side of healthcare doesn't work more like this in the
US.
I was actually very taken aback recently when I needed to get dental work and
was presented with costing info about 10 mins after my visit started.
It did feel a bit greasy, I must admit - but I get that the point is for
everyone to be on the same page before the procedure.
edit: I now recall that I did use Urgent Care for awhile for healthcare while
uninsured - in the US - these are basically "fixed menu" clinics. They have a
menu of services / costs for cash.
~~~
Clubber
I had a dentist present something for me to sign while I was under the
laughing gas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Pricing: How would you price Code Pal? - sshrin
Our product is Code Pal: http://www.codepal.me<p>It is a way to learn programming in a fun and engaging way. Basically, we allow students to learn programming by using their own social data (imagine writing a for loop to print out the names of all your Facebook friends etc.). Our target market is students (and potentially teachers who want to use it in their class).<p>My question is how do you price the product? Right now, I allow students to try out 10 exercises for FREE and then charge $29.95 to access the remaining ones. I am not sure what to benchmark the price against. Charging too much is clearly not going to work but how much is too much. Also, I don't have enough traffic at this time to A/B test pricing.<p>How should we proceed?
======
ScottWhigham
For me, you have to deal with the perception that your course/site is the same
experience as buying a book. That is, I think, your competition therefore you
could price accordingly. There are pros/cons to your course vs. a book and you
could highlight those and position your $29.95 against that. $29.95 could be
right - no clue. Seems good to me as a starting point.
Another thing to think about is this: How long would it take for someone to
complete the 10 exercises? My concern is that there is a short time frame of
user attention and that you are exceeding it with the 10 exercises. You need
to figure out at what point during the free trial people are likely to buy and
then that's when the free trial ends or is close to ending.
~~~
sshrin
Thanks! Yes, the textbook as a reference frame makes a lot of sense and we do
see that come up in user tests.
How would you find out the point at which users are likely to pay?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fly Straight, Dammit (2019) - lelf
http://www.petecorey.com/blog/2019/08/12/fly-straight-dammit/
======
wruza
a_a =: 1 + +
a_b =: [ % +.
py (a_b ` a_a @. has_gcd) y
I know it is math and all that, but when we commit something like this at day
job, it doesn’t give you applause. Can the idea of the article be expressed in
more readable/obvious form? Or is that an alphabet that you should learn first
before solving that?
~~~
wodenokoto
It’s a problem without solutions, when implementing from a mathematical
definition.
Either you write it so it is “easy” to understand or you write it so it is
easy to compare with the source equation.
Both have pros and cons.
------
why-oh-why
It looks like they’re two separate functions merged under a condition. Any 2
functions can generate a “fly straight, dammit” graph. What’s the point of
this?
~~~
sixstringtheory
Any two functions when glued together as a piecewise function can have a
discontinuity, that's true, but that’s not what this is... this is a sequence
with a recursive term. Sort of like the fibonacci sequence where a term is
defined by the one preceding it, so you have to, conceptually, computer all
the way down to the base case. It just so happens that the rule in this
article for some reason becomes very well ordered past a certain step when you
plot the values, at least to our human brains.
The numberphile video to which the article links is a good watch!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The RAMCloud Storage System - bluejekyll
http://blog.acolyer.org/2016/01/18/ramcloud/
======
tyingq
Apparently from John Ousterhout, creator of Tcl/Tk.
~~~
jzelinskie
Also, the Raft consensus protocol was designed to power the LogCabin project
which was designed to manage the configuration for RAMCloud.
------
akeck
Very cool. I wrote up an idea for a "cheap" ram file server a few years ago,
but I never got to test it thoroughly.
[http://www.bashedupbits.com/2010/03/ram-storage-
server.html?...](http://www.bashedupbits.com/2010/03/ram-storage-
server.html?m=1)
------
MCRed
Personally, I use Couchbase for this kind of stuff. Make a Membase (memcached)
bucket and all the data is in RAM. Its easy to persist of course, by putting
data in a Couchbase bucket as well.
~~~
derefr
Another cheap solution would be to use Erlang's mnesia with purely ets-backed
copies on nodes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Faster than C? Parsing binary data in JavaScript. - tuxychandru
https://github.com/felixge/faster-than-c
======
tabbyjabby
I am _extremely_ doubtful that optimized C is going to be equally performant
as optimized JavaScript. There is innate overhead when using an interpreted
language, no matter how advanced the interpreter. JavaScript is also garbage
collected, while C is not, adding an additional level of overhead.
At no point in this article are we shown the code of this new parser. We are
also told that is incomplete. So we have a parser which we can't see and which
is not finished, but apparently dominates its C counterpart in performance.
This leads to me to believe one of two things:
1\. The parser isn't complete, and its unimplemented functionality is going to
be more expensive in terms of performance than the author anticipated, thus
rendering his preliminary results void.
2\. The implementation of the C extension he is comparing against is not very
well optimized. As said above, I find it _very_ hard to believe that well
optimized C is going to be beaten by well optimized JavaScript.
~~~
tptacek
It feels likely that the fundamental problem facing JS programs competing with
the entire solution space available to C programs --- apart from the nerd who
will implement an equivalently fast JIT compiler to run the JS on just to make
a point --- is that C code has much better control over the layout of data in
memory. You can work around the GC issues and modern compilers work around the
interpretation overhead, but a C program is going to tend to have the easiest
time ensuring that its working set fits into cache.
Of course, the real problem here is that he's comparing his JS code to a
random blob of C code that just happens to be part of the MySQL package. Is
the MySQL client library famously performant?
~~~
SoftwareMaven
I agree with you. If getting every bit of performance out of your hardware is
important to you, C (possibly with inlined assembly) is the way to go.
I am _so_ happy that I've never had to do that in my career.
~~~
DeepDuh
That being said, Fortran is being used equally often, if not more often, in
HPC applications. The reason being that modern Fortran both gives you bare
bone access to the memory structures and offers array slicing notation as well
as good multidimensional arrays for HPC. (C multidimensional arrays usually
don't offer optimal performance, leading to the pointer arithmetic notation).
It's still an ugly language though. I've yet to find a C language extension
that gives you the higher level features of Fortran however - and even then it
would have to be an industry standard to be supported by the wealth of HPC
compilers out there - remember it's not only x86, you also have GPUs, Itanium,
PPC.. Looking forward to a world where LLVM actually gives the performance
people need in that field, because architecture wise this could turn out to be
a silver bullet.
~~~
ams6110
Fortran is not exactly a general purpose language though, it's specifically
designed for the sorts of problems that scientific and HPC tends to deal with,
and it's probably rare especially nowadays to see it used anywhere else. I'm
guessing there aren't any web frameworks written in Fortran (though I'm sure
someone will now point one out....)
~~~
DeepDuh
Web development with Fortran. _Shudder_. (String handling is abysmal in
Fortran so I wouldn't wish that to my worst enemy).
No, but my parent was talking about deep code optimizations being almost
exclusively being done in C. I'd say HPC is a significant market for code
optimization, so I wanted to point out that Fortran is kind of the industry
standard there.
~~~
evoxed
If I'm trapped on a desert island with (somehow) my MacBook and a solar
charger, this will definitely be the first project I take one...
------
snprbob86
I love the "eval is awesome" section.
It's taken my _years_ of study, but I finally "get" Lisp. Let me summarize
pg's On Lisp:
"Lisp is a language for writing _programs fast_ "
1) Write a function
2) Write a function that does something similar to #1
3) Begin to write a function that does something similar to #1 and #2
4) Abstract out the commonalities between #1 through #3
5) Encounter all kinds of new use cases for your abstraction in #4
6) Wait for #5 to become unwieldy
7) Abstract #4 even further, until you have something that resembles an
interpreter
8) Wait for #7 to become a performance bottleneck
9) Write a compiler that takes inputs to #7 and turns them into #1 through #5
"Lisp is a language for writing _fast programs_ "
~~~
yairchu
Doesn't it cause a "Javascript eval injection" vulnerability?
I don't know Javascript so I may be wrong here, but:
* Suppose someone uses this library to create a "MariaSQL Explorer App", where you give the app connection credentials and it connects to the database and shows you the data etc.
* A malicious attacker tells a user "have a look at my database" and the user goes to the attacker's database.
* The attacker's database (or spoof of one) has a column called 'dummy": MALICIOUS_CODE(), "colname'. notice the '"' chars inside column name.
* The MALICIOUS_CODE() runs in the user's node.js app. Perhaps it sends the attacker the passwords to other databases from the app's keychain or something..
* Profit
~~~
Groxx
Which is why you sanitize input. Which _every_ sql-communicating system must
eventually do somewhere - this is no different.
Besides, that's just an example snippet.
~~~
Zr40
If you sanitize input, it implies you're inserting the input into an execution
environment. If possible, it's better to treat data as data.
In the Javascript eval case, it's definitely possible; just access the data
through a variable instead of inserting it into the eval'ed code.
------
mkaufmann
For me myself it is often very motivating (sometimes demotivating) if somebody
comes up and implements the same thing I want to do - but they accomplish 10x
faster performance (even better if it is written in a cleaner style). The
author seems also to rather enjoy those challenges ;)
In my interpretation the question "Faster than C?" is relevant because it is
very easy to think that certain problems (like parsing binary data) are just
not a good fit for language Y and thus the performance can't be good. Even if
C performance is not attainable sometimes one cat get closer than one would
think.
My last question is regarding his optmization example.I don't program
javascript and thus have difficulties understanding how the optimized variant
could every be faster than the original one. String concatenation and
evaluation should not be faster (from my laymans perspective) than setting an
indexed value to an array? (Ok actually it probably is not an array but a hash
map, but are those so inefficient in java script? Or is it rather behaving
like a sorted list where every value is inserted via binarcy search?).I would
be very happy to get some insight.
~~~
dbaupp
Regarding your last question: the string concatenation/evaluation happens once
while creating the parseRow function and from then parseRow is a
compiled/JIT'd function object, no string handling happening. The problem with
the original is not the hash map creation, but the fact that it requires all
sorts of extra loops, and array & property look-ups.
Also, I think that is possibly some missing information there, since in the
second version the column names are fixed (so the columns argument to parseRow
is ignored), while in the first they are not.
~~~
mkaufmann
Ah ok so this is probably the parser equivalent to precompiled queries. Given
a fixed query, a specific parse row function is created once and than reused.
Thanks!
While I think code generation is certainly the right approach in some
examples, I see one problem in this example: As the parser is basically
pregenerated using a certain column definition, why does the generated
function has an parameter columns? It is simply discarded. So I would say it
should rather be:
var parseRow = new Function('parser', code);
~~~
dbaupp
I agree, and I don't know. (I even looked through the source to try to find if
parseRow is a function from node-mysql. It's not, as far as I could tell.)
------
PommeDeTerre
The excessive use of "fuck" and "shit" throughout the entire article really
takes away from its message. It just seems very immature. It's hard for me to
take it seriously when it sounds like it was written by an angsty teenager
who's trying to look tough in front of his friends, or something like that.
~~~
jlgreco
I would hardly call that excessive profanity. In a 2000+ word article there
are what, 10 instances of 'profanity'?
Honestly I think it speaks more to your maturity that you would find that _so_
bothering that it could detract from the _content_ of the article.
~~~
PommeDeTerre
I don't take offense to the words that were used. It's more akin to articles
that use absurd fonts or blatantly poor color schemes. Such things are
unnecessary, and make it more awkward to absorb the actual content.
When I see authors doing things that obviously make their work harder to read,
it does make me question their judgment, which in turn makes me question the
validity of what is being expressed.
~~~
mercurial
I pretty much agree with you, though it certainly depends on the context (I'm
more likely to not be bothered by it in a post on a mailing list). But for a
technical writeup? You want to be treated like a professional, write like one.
------
eric_bullington
This is an outstanding overview of how to build fast programs in JavaScript. I
really appreciate the fact that Felix took the time to write it. I learned a
lot, and will definitely integrate this into my work whenever performance-
critical code is involved. Particularly since I enjoy dataviz so much.
I'm a little surprised that someone so into JavaScript is using R and ggplot2
to visualize his data, and not d3 along with CoffeeScript for munging data (or
Python if you can't stand CoffeeScript). Don't get me wrong, R is a powerful
tool, but with d3 you can skip the whole ImageMagick/Skitch step since you're
making visualizations directly for the web. Plus, once you've grasped d3's
declarative approach (took me a while), it's so easy to quickly make powerful
visualizations with it. In fact, it was partially inspired by ggplot2, if I'm
not mistaken.
And to quickly munge/clean data, I've found CoffeeScript does very well here,
similar to how easy it is to use Python for this task. I wouldn't want to
write out JavaScript when rapidly trying to get data in the right format for
visualizations, but with CoffeeScript and a functionally-oriented library like
underscore, it's pretty easy.
That said, I'm sure once you've mastered such an intricate tool as R, it's
hard to give up that power. But if you're a node devotee and you're looking
for a good tool in JavaScript to visualize data, you can't get much better
than d3. I know a lot of dataviz folks are learning JavaScript just so they
can have access to d3.
~~~
rgbrgb
Really the nice thing about ggplot2 is that each of those figures were
probably like 1 line of code. Having a DSL designed for your data analysis is
awesome.
------
masklinn
> But, life is never this easy. Your code may not be very profilable. This was
> the case with my mysql 0.9.6 library. My parser was basically one big
> function with a huge switch statement. I thought this was a good idea
> because this is how Ryan's http parser for node looks like and being a user
> of node, I have a strong track record for joining cargo cults. Anyway, the
> big switch statement meant that the profiler output was useless for me,
> "Parser#parse" was all it told me about : (.
FWIW this is also a case of "get better tools". Line profilers exist, and they
can handle that kind of cases (though the instrumentation costs go up
likewise).
~~~
netghost
For Node and V8? I'm sure you're right, but when I was poking around I didn't
see much more than suggestions to use "node --prof".
Which tools have you found useful?
~~~
masklinn
> For Node and V8?
I don't know, I use neither. I'm just saying, there are profiling tools which
handle the "One Big Function" pattern.
------
kghose
I write code primarily to analyze data from my experiments, and I do it
primarily in Python. I have been told (and have read) repeatedly, that
optimizing is to be done right at the end and only to optimize the inner most
loop etc.
From my reading, this guy is advocating the exact opposte: optimize as you
code. It sounds sensible, but what to other people who have to optimize for a
living have to say?
~~~
simonw
I think the difference here is that the problem is completely understood from
the start: there's a MySQL protocol (which the author has already implemented
in the past) and his project needs to be able to handle that exact protocol as
quickly as possible.
~~~
mkaufmann
This. Also the applicability of the optimization rule depends a lot on the
context. It is typically stated for a complete project. Writing a library is
different from that.
Depending on the kind of library you write, it could be that it is called in a
hot inner loop of an outer project. So yes in that case it would make fully
sense to optimize the heck out of the complete library (like e.g. a mysql
client).
Another point is to see the reasoning behind the optimization rule.
Optimization always is associated with cost (cost of programming, additionaly
complexity in the code, maintance). This cost has to be recovered from the
effects of the optimization. As the number of users for a piece of code grows,
the benefit of optimization rises, but the costs should be more constant. Thus
at scale it also makes sense to look a smaller optimization potentials.
But this does probably apply to not even 1% of the typical projects.
------
latchkey
I really like the style of this writing. Thanks, I learned a bit. I just wish
the presenter dug deeper into the final mystery to round out the entire
presentation.
------
willvarfar
I think that the drivers can do a lot more to improve DB performance.
[http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16516763725/how-i...](http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/16516763725/how-
i-got-massively-faster-db-with-async-batching)
At low load, the DB worker is idle when a request arrives and it can be
dispatched immediately. But under load, the DB worker is busy when requests
arrive and they build up as a backlog.
When a backlog builds, the DB worker can examine the pending requests and
combine those that it can to reduce the total number of requests.
Not all requests are combinable and there can be subtle rules and side-
effects. It is likely that a driver with just a modicum of combining ability
would be very conservative e.g. simply combining single-key selects that are
queued adjacently or such.
Even still, the gains can be massive and performance never worse.
(Oh, equally applicable to NoSQL too.)
------
faragon
No way. Even with equal-efficient code, there is an additional point that is
often ignored: Data structures are way more simple in C, with less overhead,
and with higher cache-hit ratio, because more data fits in CPU data cache.
As example, gcj is as fast as g++ for code generation (both generating machine
code, without virtual machine involved), however, in benchmarking appears to
be slower, just because the data structures. If you tweak the Java code for
use simpler data structures, e.g. integer or byte arrays, data overhead gets
reduced, so memory cache hit increases, thus keeping similar performance to
C/C++.
Other cases, like Java bytecode running on a VM, even with great JIT like
HotSpot, suffers also _a lot_ because of data structures, so even when
generated code is quite decent (runtime profiling, etc.), penalty is there, so
code will suffer great penalty unless running with huge L3 cache (e.g.
32-48MB), being noticeable anyway no matter how much cache you add when having
to do many memory indirections more.
And of course, when comparing, you have to compare equivalent things, e.g.
Java <-> C/C++ ports, and not completely different software with different
implementation (e.g. optimized built-in string handling vs non-optimized C
string handling -e.g. ASCIIz string handling is slow, because of stupid C
string function implementation, not because the C language itself, being the
reason of C strings not being used for high performance code, even when
writting in C-).
------
Groxx
_Excellent_ read. Written well, convincing examples of why it's good advice,
and doesn't waste space in making its point.
------
agentultra
I guess the hope of high-level languages is that you can build a more
interesting vocabulary from complex concepts.
[http://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2012/08/27/tabasco-sort-super-
optimal...](http://www.pvk.ca/Blog/2012/08/27/tabasco-sort-super-optimal-
merge-sort/)
It seems that there's a lot of effort going into making languages, "faster
than C." Perhaps we would all be better off working with languages that just
give us better abstractions -- user vocabularies. Layers on layers.
Don't get me wrong, C is the right language and a good tool for many
situations. It's just that if you're going to extend the vocabulary then why
do you have to change the implementation? If you want to optimize why optimize
the compiler at such a low level?
Either way I just want to say that it's an interesting conversation and I'm
looking forward to seeing more.
------
tantalor
My only problem with this article was that it didn't once mention parsing
binary data, except in the title.
------
sil3ntmac
Very worthwhile and well-designed writeup! I do wish that he had expanded the
last argument to show what/how he fixed the performance problem. Also, does
anyone know _why_ eval is faster than just defining the function? I mean wtf,
why doesn't v8 make this optimization?
~~~
mistercow
>Also, does anyone know why eval is faster than just defining the function? I
mean wtf, why doesn't v8 make this optimization?
There are three optimizations I see in the eval example:
1\. The object is created as a literal rather than by property assignment (see
<http://jsperf.com/object-literals-vs-object-properties>).
2\. The for loop loop is unrolled.
3\. The column names are cached in the function and do not have to be
retrieved each time.
The reason these can't be done by v8 on its own is that they make assumptions
that v8 can't guarantee. For the first two, you have to guarantee that the
columns array is always the same length. For the first and last, you have to
guarantee that the columns will always have the same names.
So even though you take a big hit on the initial eval of the function, you'll
likely make up for it by having a better-optimized function.
~~~
rb12345
I noticed a possible issue with the code generation, which may cause the
issues with excessive heap allocation that were reported:
var code = 'return {\n';
columns.forEach(function(column) {
code += '"' + column.name + '":' + 'parser.readColumnValue(),\n';
});
code += '};\n';
var parseRow = new Function('columns', 'parser', code);
Instead of performing so many appends to a single string, I would try using
map() and then join() the resulting strings:
var code = ['return {\n',
columns.map(function(column) {
return '"' + column.name + '":' + 'parser.readColumnValue(),\n';
}).join(''),
'};\n'].join('');
var parseRow = new Function('columns', 'parser', code);
Of course, this depends on how often the parseRow function is created...
~~~
mistercow
That might be an improvement, but you probably wouldn't want to use Array.map,
which generally has pretty terrible performance. See <http://jsperf.com/map-
vs-native-for-loop/5>
~~~
rb12345
Yes; the only reason for using Array.map() here is conciseness and similarity
to the original code.
------
pmiller2
I'll just leave this here: <http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FasterThanCee>
------
username_taken
This is only part of the picture. This version of the driver is much slower
than the driver based on libmysqclient. See the benchmarks at the bottom. It's
a more real world test combining both reads and writes.
<https://github.com/mgutz/mapper>
------
overbroad
"Faster than C" seems to imply that the author is not seeing the true value of
C. It is more than just speed.
You can only build so much with Javascript.
With C, the possibilities are limitless.
For a specific task like parsing, use whatever language you want. But please
do not believe that by knowing Javascript you can both dismiss C as an optimal
language and that you can build anything. You can't, as to either. As it
stands, by relying on Javsacsript you're restricted to a browser or Node.js
and whoever controls the browser and Node.js effectively has final control
over your opportunitities. What's the browser written in? Javascript? What is
Node.js written in?
Who cares if your parser is faster than C? If it's "fast enough", that's all
that matters. Users of big, complex, graphical browsers or mySQL databases are
well accustomed to slow speeds. They have learned how to wait.
~~~
icebraining
Technically, you can write anything in JavaScript, for the simple reason you
can manipulate bytes arbitrarily (using Typed Arrays), and platforms like
NodeJS and Rhino let you write those bytes to a file and execute it, so you
could (in theory) write a x86 compiler in JavaScript and run the result
without ever dropping to C.
As an existing example, PyPy -a Python JIT compilter- is itself written in a
subset of Python.
In the browser case, it's true that your JavaScript is restricted, but C is
even more restricted: it doesn't run at all! (NaCl excluded)
~~~
overbroad
Does Javascript run outside the browser and outside of a platform like
Node.js? I want stuff that can run on bare metal as well as on top of other
code (software platform).
Personally, I don't care about browsers. One application of a gazillion
possible applications. They are an afterthought. I care about sockets and the
ability to connect a machine to other machines over a network.
I care about code that can boot a computer, code that can be used to write
drivers to control hardware (maybe some new hardware that just hits the
market), and code that let's us build on top of that. With this code we should
be able to build a kernel and userspace utilities and thereby manage to
operate the hardware. Once everything is up and running, then we can install
any scripting language we want. We don't have to use the same language we used
to build the system to do any work after that, but we could. Indeed many
higher level things are written in C, e.g., the interpreters for languages
like JavaScript and the web browsers they are a part of. Maybe there's a
reason for that?
If the best code for building from the ground up on any given piece of
hardware is Javascript, it's news to me. Any examples? I have a new piece of
hardware. Can I boot it using JavaScript? Can I control the hardware with
JavaScript?
I believe the OP just wanted to do parsing in userspace. Personally I use C
for that (generated from flex), but there are countless languages that can do
parsing. Why he chose to attack C I have no idea. Like I said, once the
computer is up and running (thanks to C), we can use any language we like. We
can run "web browsers", and software platforms. And JavaScript. So, have fun
with your JavaScript. But I'm pretty sure C isn't going away anytime soon.
~~~
icebraining
Nobody attacked C, not me, not the author. If you disagree, please be so kind
to indicate the excerpt where he attacks it.
Interpreters and kernels are written in C because C is a great, and probably
the best language for the job. That doesn't mean, and this was my only point,
that it's the only possible language that can ever do that; it isn't.
_If the best code for building from the ground up on any given piece of
hardware is Javascript_
Where did _anyone_ say that? I didn't say that. The author didn't say that.
As far as I'm concerned, JavaScript is not the best code for anything except
pushing code to the browser.
The only thing I said was that _technically_ , you can write JS to do it.
That's all.
_Can I boot it using JavaScript? Can I control the hardware with JavaScript?_
The only thing that can control the hardware is machine code. You can control
the hardware with anything that can generate that. JavaScript can, therefore
_in theory_ you can control the hardware with it. Doesn't mean it's a good
idea. Doesn't mean it's better than C. Nobody ever claimed that.
_But I'm pretty sure C isn't going away anytime soon._
No, it must certainly won't, and thank $DEITY for that.
~~~
overbroad
ice: "Nobody attacked C, not me, not the author. If you disagree, please be so
kind to indicate the excerpt where he attacks it."
author: "So fuck - maybe it's time to finally give up and accept that I cannot
compete with a well engineered C binding. C must be faster after all.
Well - fuck this! This is unacceptable. Fuck this "C is the only choice if you
want the best performance" type of thinking. I want JavaScript to win this.
Not because I like JavaScript, oh it can be terrible. I want JavaScript to win
this because I want to be able to use a higher level language without worrying
about performance."
ice: "As far as I'm concerned, JavaScript is not the best code for anything
except pushing code to the browser."
We are in 100% agreement then.
Sure, technically (i.e. by creating a language using a lexer+aprser and some
primitives in asm), any language could be used for any purpose. The reason I
said what I said about JavaScript being limited is that it was not designed
that way, i.e. to do anything. It was as you state, designed to run in a web
browser. I would love to use JavaScript from, e.g. the command prompt, outside
of a browser, but it has never been easy to do that without pretending you are
running a web browser (learning DOM an so forth). The language is designed for
a browser. Is that a limitation? To me, yes.
C does not have that sort of limitation. That's all I'm saying. And C works
for many purposes right now - my OS has a vast library of C functions to do
all manner of things low and high level. And that's without even looking at
other huge repositories on the web. Compare this with mere "theoretical"
capabilities, e.g. ideas like "low level JavaScript".
I told you why I like C and why I see JavaScript as limited. Not to contradict
anything you said, but to explain where I'm coming from. Maybe I would like
JavaScript even more than C, if I explored it more fully, but there's no way
I'll like it more when it is so limited in what it can do (practically, not
theoretically). I approach computer languages from a practical standpoint. I
ask myself what can I do if I learn this language? I concluded that for me, C
opens more doors, many more doors, than JavaScript. Some people know both. But
I'm not that smart. I have to choose.
If I was smart, I'd learn many languages. But I have to work with a smaller
set of knowledge.
Given that I have to choose, truthfully, if I had my preference, I'd choose
FORTH and devote all my effort to learning and writing in FORTH. Technically
anything is possible using FORTH. So what? By focusing only on FORTH I would
be losing all the leverage that people's work with C can offer. There is only
so much I, with my limited smarts, could accomplish.
Certainly you can understand my position a little, can't you? Why do so many
people love Perl and Python? If we took away all the libaries (=enablement,
empowerment) would they still love them as much? For what I want to do (i.e.
potentially anything, from booting to browsing), C gives me ample enablement
and empowerment. Self-hosting JavaScript doesn't. And if someone writes a BIOS
for ARM scriptable in JavaScript, but they write some part of it in C, well,
I'm still going to want to learn C before JavaScript. That's just how I think.
~~~
icebraining
I don't think those excerpts show any attack on C, he just doesn't like that
he can't use higher level languages without sacrificing performance. Which is
a position that you may disagree with, but I don't think it's an attack on C.
_would love to use JavaScript from, e.g. the command prompt, outside of a
browser, but it has never been easy to do that without pretending you are
running a web browser (learning DOM an so forth). The language is designed for
a browser._
I don't think there's anything in the language itself that is designed for the
browser; it's just the standard library that is lacking.
The Rhino shell, for example, comes with functions like readFile/2 and
runCommand/N which are much more adequate for that kind of programming.
But it's certainly not as useful as C, and I certainly don't use. Though I
tend to use Python, not C either (ctypes is _awesome_ ).
_C does not have that sort of limitation. That's all I'm saying. And C works
for many purposes right now - my OS has a vast library of C functions to do
all manner of things low and high level. And that's without even looking at
other huge repositories on the web. Compare this with mere "theoretical"
capabilities, e.g. ideas like "low level JavaScript"._
Sure; I don't think anyone denies that.
That said, it's not true that those functions are closed to you if you use
JavaScript; check out node-ffi: <https://github.com/rbranson/node-ffi>
Running JS on bare metal is, at the moment, a pipe dream, though.
_Certainly you can understand my position a little, can't you? Why do so many
people love Perl and Python? If we took away all the libaries (=enablement,
empowerment) would they still love them as much? For what I want to do (i.e.
potentially anything, from booting to browsing), C gives me ample enablement
and empowerment. Self-hosting JavaScript doesn't. And if someone writes a BIOS
for ARM scriptable in JavaScript, but they write some part of it in C, well,
I'm still going to want to learn C before JavaScript. That's just how I
think._
Sure, I can understand your position perfectly. I just don't think your
portrayal of the article was fair to the author, that's all.
------
philhippus
An equivalent claim: Faster than Assembly? Parsing binary data in JavaScript.
Pah.
------
chmike
Check the code : <https://github.com/felixge/node-mysql>
Note: it uses node_buffer.cc which is some C++ code in node. So it is not
exactly pure Javascript.
------
afhof
Why does everyone keep saying Doing X in Language Y is faster than X in
Language Z?
Really they are comparing compilers, not languages. Everyone seems to just
keep making potshots at Language Z.
------
goggles99
Please stop with the X higher level language can be faster than C unless you
can challenge the limitations imposed by the laws of physics. Not which
compiler is better. I can always find a better or worse C or JS
compiler/JITter so that proves nothing.
Doing more (Which all more highly abstracted languages currently do) in less
time with all else being the same is not possible as we understand quantum
physics today.
This title is clearly linkbait...
~~~
rat87
> Please stop with the X higher level language can be faster than C unless you
> can challenge the limitations imposed by the laws of physics. Not which
> compiler is better. I can always find a better or worse C or JS
> compiler/JITter so that proves nothing.
Turing equivalence and not even turing equivalence but 2 pieces of code with
roughly the same functionality does not dictate the speed between them. You
seem to be under some sort of misconception that two pieces of code have to be
implemented in the same. For a long time tcl led the computer language
shootout regex test because it has a wicked fast regex library(written in c I
think). Nowadays the c version of that test uses the tcl regex library and is
beaten by v8(chrome) javascript's even faster regex library(written in c++).
It is hard to beat c in speed and it is rare when something implemented in a
different language does it. When it does it is frequently do to the
algorithm/way it was implemented. The reason that this is so is that few
people care enough about beating c with c++ being the only real contender. if
you are careful you can beat c code with c++(almost all c++'s slower features
do not slow it down if not used) add that to some cool compile time tricks
with template metahackery and c++'s better inlining and you can do it.
The other part about beating c is complexity. Certain things are complex to
implement in c. There is a reason we use so little assembly anymore, it's
possible for smart people to beat optimizing compilers for certain cases but
the general case isn't so pretty for it. Also with the rise of more/cheaper
memory for gc to work well(and when it does it goes like hell on wheels) and
parallel computers(parallelism being much easier in some languages then c) we
may see it more soon. People have been saying that for a while but still.
~~~
goggles99
_> Turing equivalence and not even turing equivalence but 2 pieces of code
with roughly the same functionality does not dictate the speed between them.
You seem to be under some sort of misconception that two pieces of code have
to be implemented in the same_
I am merely pointing out that there is overhead with every VM. This is
especially true with every current JITted JavaScript in use today (more so
than with the JVM and CLR). So how could it possibly be faster if both
implementations use an equal amount of optimization otherwise.
How is this even ever an argument?
~~~
rat87
> So how could it possibly be faster if both implementations use an equal
> amount of optimization otherwise.
Who says they are?
~~~
goggles99
Anyone who says that JS or X other VM dependent language can be faster than C
must say this to have a leg to stand on.
They cannot say this??? Thus my point...
------
camus
INFLAMMATORY headline for self-branding and publicity , doesnt go much
further. Yes javascript can be fast but in the end , having to write evals to
gain performances demonstrate that there is something really wrong with that
langage...
~~~
ben0x539
I disagree!! Being able to use evals to dynamically generate code for unrolled
loops (and other similarly specialized procedures) sounds like a pretty
amazing tool, and I can't not consider having it readily available an
advantage of Javascript compared to C.
------
goggles99
Um every fast and decent JS engine IS WRITTEN IN C!!!
I refuse to click on anything as ridiculous sounding as "Faster than C?
Parsing binary data in JavaScript".
_JavaScript will NEVER be faster than C._ If you personally test it and it is
- all that you have really proven is that the C compiler you are using was
horribly written and is probably 20+ years old. The level of ignorance that
programmers have about low level languages and the performance cost of
abstractions amazes me sometimes.
~~~
tptacek
This is a very silly point of view. What you think you're arguing is that
Javascript can't conceivably be faster than native code, and you're conflating
C with native code. But C isn't machine code either; like Javascript, it's
transformed into machine code by a compiler.
I don't generally think that Javascript runtimes are going to routinely beat C
compilers for most performant execution of basic programs any time soon, but
I'd happily bet that some high level language JIT is going to give C a real
run for its money sometime soon. That JIT will inevitably be expressible in C,
but when your recourse as a C programmer is "implement the important parts of
the JIT for language X, then proceed to solve your real problem", you're not
making much of a case for C.
~~~
goggles99
I am not even close to conflating C with native code (although it is the
lowest level language next to Assembly). C is the lowest level structured
language and JS is among the highest. The fact that they are both ultimately
compiled to a processor level binary means very little.
Since it seems so simple and plausible that a high level JITted language can
be on par with C, why did you not explain how?
You cannot because you clearly don't understand language compilation and the
laws that exist between performance and abstractions - so I am confused by
your argument.
Let me put it simply, take any two languages - both ultimately compile to
machine code, one has the overhead of bounds checking, run-time type
resolution and garbage collection (there is actually much more that I could
mention but for brevity...) and the other does not. Now please explain to me
how the one WITH all this overhead could possibly be faster?
There is only one way - If the C compiler were egregiously under-optimized.
This will be the case till the end of time. All other things being equal, the
executable code with more overhead to slow it down will lose. This seems a
very simple concept to me - I cannot understand how it is so hard to grasp.
Perhaps it is because along side learning Java, HTML and JavaScript - I also
learned Assembly Language, C, C++ and hardware architectures.
~~~
tptacek
"C is the lowest level structured language and JS is among the highest."
What does this even mean?
Ten message board style points for assuming that anyone who disagrees with you
must not know C.
~~~
goggles99
If you or anyone does not know what a high/low level or structured language
means - that is fine.
But WHY would you attempt to make arguments that require basic understanding
of such things.
~~~
andoriyu
How about you stop calling "C" a low level language?
~~~
goggles99
That you for the valuable response - BTW I only claimed that it was the lowest
level structured language.
~~~
tptacek
Which is also a silly claim.
------
andoriyu
And not a single word about DTrace?
------
sneak
Thousands of words about optimizing the reinvention of a wheel.
I thought we were hackers? We use libmysqlclient and stfu because we don't
give a shit what language a client library is in because it WORKS and isn't
unacceptably slow and LETS US SHIP.
I really dislike this whole crowd and attitude.
~~~
LnxPrgr3
Reinventing the wheel is a good thing when what you get is a better wheel, or
even just one better suited to your purpose.
Ever notice we're not driving cars on ox cart wheels?
~~~
gruseom
As someone once brilliantly (I thought) put it on HN: has anything ever needed
more reinventing than the wheel?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Improving Linux networking performance - sciurus
https://lwn.net/Articles/629155/
======
zelos
I love reading articles like this: _" So, for example, a cache miss on
Jesper's 3GHz processor takes about 32ns to resolve. It thus only takes two
misses to wipe out the entire time budget for processing a packet."_
Then I go back to adding another layer of abstraction to my bloated Java code
and die a little inside.
~~~
gretful
yeah, it's easy to cry when you see a real artist working on something, and
you have to go back to your etch-a-sketch.
~~~
npsimons
Real art may inspire the soul, but road signs keep you from dying.
------
joshbaptiste
Indeed, there has been a large amount of "bypass the kernel" campaigns in the
last couple of months. Robert Graham's 2013 Shmoocon talk has a great
introduction into the whys and hows of this movement.
[https://www.youtube.m/wco?v=D0atch9jdbS6oSI](https://www.youtube.m/wco?v=D0atch9jdbS6oSI)
Facebook had a job posting that showed up on HN for a position to help speed
up Linux's networking stack. While I doubt these improvements will surpass the
kernel bypassing model, I'm glad a developer has decided to tackle this head
on and help overall efficiency.
~~~
mobiplayer
It seems to be pretty uncommon for Linux setups to have, e.g. TOE enabled, but
in my humble opinion it is an easy win on performance on 10G networks.
~~~
wmf
TOE isn't supported under Linux and it was only a win if your TCP stack was
slow (and by "your" I mean Windows). TSO is enabled by default in Linux and is
indeed an easy win.
------
fulafel
Too bad improvements in network technology haven't found their way to consumer
level. It's probably related to the stagnant broadband speeds, last mile
bandwidth improvements slowed to a crawl many years ago and concurrently
device connectivity actually moved to a slower networking tech, wi-fi. Now
people are happy to use wi-fi for home desktop computers since their last mile
net connection is so slow anyway.
It's 10 years since motherboard integrated 1G became commonplace in regular
PCs, same for 10G is nowhere in sight...
~~~
skuhn
10 gig still isn't even commonly available on server motherboards, because of
power / space / cost. There also aren't many copper 10 gig top-of-rack
switches, just the Cisco Nexus 3064T and Arista 7050T come to mind. Juniper
doesn't even have one.
It's easier for a lot of places to use twinax with 10 gig SFP+ switches rather
than going copper 10 gig. That is definitely not going to trickle down to the
consumer level.
It will probably be another 1-2 years before 10 gig is ubiquitous at the
server level, and another 2-3 years after that before it is commonly on
consumer equipment. Or maybe it never will be, and things will go in another
direction.
~~~
donavanm
> There also aren't many copper 10 gig top-of-rack switches, just the Cisco
> Nexus 3064T and Arista 7050T come to mind. Juniper doesn't even have one.
I might be missing your definition of tor. The juniper QFX5100 series has the
48T which does 48x 10GBASE-T plus 6x QSFP. the 5100-96S does 96x SFP+ and 8x
QSFP. There are plenty of other cheap merchant silicon platforms that look
similar. Personlly Im happy with DAC on SFP+ ports.
~~~
skuhn
Oh yeah, I always forget about the QFX series. Seems like that would do the
job.
List prices are utter nonsense for switches, but the QFX does come in above
the other two I mentioned. Perhaps because of its fibre-channely nature that
no one (I hope) cares about.
QFX5100-48T: $24,000 Nexus 3064-T: $13,000 7050T-52: $20,000
Still, any of these would work if you get the right deal. I could see an
advantage for 10g copper if I had mixed racks where not all of my hosts needed
10g on the server side, but that's a big premium to pay over 1g TOR if you
aren't using lots of 10 gig ports.
For me, I just use copper on 1 gig racks and DAC on 10 gig racks. So far, so
good.
------
arca_vorago
Am I the only one that thinks we need to start at re-evaluation of BSD sockets
first? I know Apple tried and gave up, but it just seems like so many of the
building block pieces we use everyday could really use a major polish or some
good competition.
~~~
wmf
This article is mostly about the lower parts of network stack like QoS and
talking to the NIC; the user API is kind of orthogonal but equally important.
There have been several research projects about improved networking APIs; my
favorite is IX which gets line-rate performance while retaining kernel/user
protection. [https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical-
sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi14/technical-
sessions/presentation/belay)
------
jalcazar
This reminds me of MegaPipe. Basically it creates a pipe between kernel and
user space. It uses batching too
[https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi12/technical-
sessions/...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi12/technical-
sessions/presentation/han)
~~~
trentnelson
It bugs me that the source isn't available for stuff like this. Makes it tough
to objectively evaluate things.
------
alricb
Possible contrast & compare: the presentations on OpenBSD's network stack at
[http://openbsd.com/papers/](http://openbsd.com/papers/)
~~~
scott_karana
The first relevant-seeming presentation is from 2009[1] and doesn't really get
into the pitfalls of low-latency switching/handling like this article does.
I'm definitely interested to see how other operating systems handle this,
though. In particular: Windows (is networking in user-mode?) and Solaris-
likes.
1 [http://quigon.bsws.de/papers/2009/eurobsdcon-
faster_packets/](http://quigon.bsws.de/papers/2009/eurobsdcon-faster_packets/)
------
xenadu02
Why are we still using 1500 byte packets at 100G again? Seems like there won't
be any tricks left to make 1000G work. Does that count as technical debt?
~~~
donavanm
Pretty much everything has supported 9k jumbos for over a decade. The
internets mostly 1.5k MTU, but you normally arent doing multi gigabit streams
over public connectivity. The other argument is TSO. Your kernels probably
writing a 64K "packet" to the NIC driver. When segmentation etc is handled by
the hardware why do you care about the MSS? On the network device side the
SerDes are the issue. And were already running parallel lanes there; 40 is 4x
10 lanes and 100 is 4x 25 lanes. Why not 10x 100 in a couple years?
~~~
nitrogen
_When segmentation etc is handled by the hardware why do you care about the
MSS?_
Because of Ethernet's mandatory minimum inter-packet spacing.
~~~
donavanm
Ok... So looking at IFG as 96 bits or 12 bytes of "overhead" thats 0.8% or
0.13% for 1.5k and 9k frames. Why do I care about 0.67% of throughput? And
pretty much all silicon in over a decade does line rate at 1k anyways. Or if
its latency a hypothetical higher clocked lane would be something like 1ns
instead of ~3ns per frame? Thats the difference between 2 clock cycles and 6
cycles of latency.
So what is your shorter/faster ifg buying in practice.
~~~
nitrogen
I've seen an audio bus that had to shorten the gap to have enough bandwidth,
but that was with 100mbit.
------
arjn
Interesting article. Reminds me of my time in grad school :-)
Looks like jasper's recommended way is to improve or find a way to bypass the
memory managment (slab allocation) subsystem.
There should be a way to tack on a more network optimized memory management
layer or allocator onto the regular one.
Could turn out be a good research project.
------
icantthinkofone
The first they should do is do what Facebook is doing and turn to FreeBSD for
ideas in their attempt to make Linux as good as FreeBSD's:
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/07/facebook_wants_linux...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/08/07/facebook_wants_linux_networking_as_good_as_freebsd/)
~~~
riffraff
IIRC netmap was a cool concept born on freebsd but also available for linux.
[http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/](http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/netmap/)
------
fideloper
So...we're all upvoting this hoping _someone else_ understands networking at
this level, right? And that maybe they'll do something awesome with it.
~~~
wmf
I understood this article and it is relevant to my interests since 25G NICs
are coming this year.
~~~
agrover
source? I thought the next step was 40G?
~~~
wmf
[http://25gethernet.org/](http://25gethernet.org/)
40G has been out for a few years but it's fairly expensive since it uses four
lanes. 25G will be the best option if you need something faster than 10G IMO.
~~~
mcpherrinm
To expand on that: On a switch chip today, like the common Trident 2, you have
10 and 40 gig interfaces. The 40 gig are just four lanes bonded together (10
being one). These 25 gig products runs each lane at 25G instead of 10, so you
get a 25G port in the same density you used to have 10, 50G at double the
density of 40, and 100gbit/s at the old 40 gig density.
I think this is largely being driven by the server folk, who want to connect
at 25G instead of 10.
~~~
justincormack
There was an attempt to do that with 2.5G, but it has been relegated to
backplanes and was never formally standardised.
~~~
donavanm
The atom server boards released last year actually have 4x 2.5g lanes. As far
as ive seen everyone just uses 4x 1g serdes on them instead of the hybrid 10.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Fair buyout price for my partner? - buyingout
I'm using a shadow account but I've been a member of HN for a while. My partner has asked me to buy him out of our business, and we're trying to come up with a fair buy out price.<p>Details:<p>- launched an app mid 2010 with a partner (50 / 50 split, not incorporated, no contract)
- this year, gross revenue is $21,948
- net revenue, after income taxes taken off for 2011 will be $17,558
- i'm the designer + idea guy
- he's the coder
- equal time contributions so far (we'd both agree)
- he'd like to keep 5% share and be an advisor<p>What do you think is a fair price? We're on good terms, no disagreements, everything's cool. What's fair?
======
relaunched
This is a common and interesting situation, so here are my thoughts.
1) If he wants to be bought out in cash & wants to stay on as an advisor
(won't be doing product updates, coding tweaks, etc.), I'd look at sales
trajectory of the app he worked on overtime. If it's trending down, it's okay
to make an assumption that it will continue to do so, at some reasonable rate,
an calculate the present value of projected future earnings / 2, assuming that
you won't make any product changes. There is nothing wrong with keeping him on
-on a rev share basis, but be sure you know what you are getting.
If he doesn't want a cash up-front buyout and just wants nothing to do with
the app anymore, just keep his 50% share alive up until a max of the agreed
upon future earnings of the app, as is.
However, if you are planning on keeping the app going, any agreement has to
codify the terms of your relationship, contingent on accepting the buyout
(consult an attorney). Who knows where things will go in the future and who
else you will be bringing on-board.
If you are on good terms, coming up with a number shouldn't be a big deal.
Especially, if he has a specific need for the money. If not, this might be the
time to incorporate your venture, issue him some stock for contributions thus
far and let him participate in whatever upside there may be.
Good luck,
~~~
buyingout
thanks for the detailed reply! he does indeed want a cash payment for his side
of the business.
quick question:
when projecting future earnings, what time period is fair to assume?
the business has been steadily chugging along, growing some months, shrinking
some months. we both planned to invest more time into it, but have been busy.
the idea is that if i own most of it, then i'll have more incentive to invest
new features into it.
~~~
relaunched
I've heard that, "you know a deal is fair when neither party is happy". Which
is to day, I have no idea.
Maybe 1/2 average rev from latest sales trend period x 12 months. I commend
you on trying to be fair, b/c most deals don't happen that way.
------
chris_dcosta
There are a number of things your need to consider, not least that without a
contract if your thing hits big time he'll want his 5%, and it'll be
worthless.
What I'm trying to say is that a notional 5% is actually worth nothing unless
you have some form of company set-up.
Here's where it starts to get tricky, because the set-up costs of the company
are something that both of you should carry equally even if he's leaving. At
the end of that process you'll have a value for each share based on the actual
worth of the company. I'm not sure what the rules are in the states (or
wherever you are) but in the UK at least the company is worth the sum of it's
assets, at the start of it.
He'll be selling you 45% of his 50%, but you'll find that the sum of the
assets to be far lower than the 17K that you have now. You may also want to
consider what type of shareholding he has and what are his options for selling
the 5% to someone else. That's just the tip of the iceberg of possibilities.
What you might be able to do, is agree a smaller payment now with a larger
payment should the company meet certain targets, and nothing if it doesn't.
That might give your partner the feeling that he still can benefit, and it
gives you the flexibility to take control.
Honestly speaking the legal and accountancy fees in setting this whole thing
up may just eat into the whole budget.
EDIT: On reflection, you could just say "here's 10K (if you're feeling
generous) for your 50%, I'll set up a company worth 100 dollars that owns
everything and give you 5% for which you pay 5 dollars."
Let us know how it turns out!
------
jellicle
You make an offer, he can either take it OR he can pay you that price and buy
you out of the business. Sign an agreement to that effect before you make the
offer.
Thus, you will offer enough that if he decides to buy you out, you'll be
satisfied with the amount. This is the fair price. You cut the cake, he gets
to choose which half to take.
~~~
buyingout
this sounds like a fair approach - a shotgun clause right? i feel emotionally
invested in the product since it was my idea, but he put a bunch of time into
it and we both believe in it.
~~~
afdssfda
"i feel emotionally invested in the product since it was my idea, but he put a
bunch of time into it"
Ideas often aren't worth as much as execution.
~~~
buyingout
we've both contributed equal time to it, using our different skills. he's
written more of the code, but the designs are mostly mine, and i've done all
the research into advertising, CTR, managed our intern, and done the biz
admin.
------
md1515
The buyout depends on the method in which you make your money. If you make
money on advertising you have to make sure your users are as engaged as they
have been since your launch (this often doesn't happen if it is a short game
or you don't add features etc).
If you make money on app purchases then you need to be careful that you
continue to have as many users buying it.
If it is in-app purchases then you need to make sure that features are
promoting users to purchase.
Anyway, you probably know all that - the point is, you have to realistically
forecast your revenue projections for the next few years. IF you think you can
make the same amount then it is not a big deal to buy out for 2x his share of
revenue (so $17K). If it looks like projections for next year will be $10,000
you need to seriously consider the offer. Good luck
------
huhtenberg
One common option to valuate the company is to take its estimated 5 year
revenue. In your case, assuming 20% YoY growth it works out to 141K (20K + 24K
+ 29K + 35K + 41K), 45% stake buyout -> 67K.
YMMV, etc.
------
staunch
Maybe he takes the $17k and keeps 5% and you get 95% of the future?
------
afdssfda
How about 50% of valuation - valuation of his 5% share?
Not sure the best way to get business valuation is an online form... but
here's one: <http://www.caycon.com/valuation.php>
:)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Next Wave - chermanowicz
http://edge.org/conversation/john_markoff-the-next-wave
======
mcshicks
I really enjoy John Markoff's writing and happened to read that article before
this was posted. If you really want to understand more of where he is coming
from with respect to this article I would recommend reading his book "What the
dormouse said". If you look at some of his comments in the article, like this
one
"What worries me about the future of Silicon Valley, is that one-
dimensionality, that it's not a Renaissance culture, it's an engineering
culture. It's an engineering culture that believes that it's revolutionary,
but it's actually not that revolutionary. The Valley has, for a long time,
mined a couple of big ideas."
You can really see how he is referring to the some of the earlier generation
that was more influenced by the 60's counterculture movement. For myself I'm
not so sure, because I think there is a danger in being nostalgic when
comparing the accomplishments of the past with today. But again I think he's a
great writer and I loved the quote from Kahneman about "the robots are going
to come just in time"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said)
~~~
api
I've thought this for years. Basically SV is still just mining the stuff that
came out of SRI/Engelbart and PARC. There has been very little fundamental
innovation (a.k.a. _invention_ ) since then, and we don't have a fundamental
innovation culture. We have an incremental advance culture -- basically just
massaging and refining old stuff.
~~~
qwtel
Any businessperson would estranged by the negative attitude towards making
"the stuff that came out of SRI/Engelbart and PARC" available to millions if
not billions of people, which, one could argue, is the more difficult part.
~~~
api
That's not what I mean. What I mean is: where is the creative stuff now?
------
InclinedPlane
A big "problem" is that things are too easy actually. Slap together an MVP
based on an obvious idea, execute it half-assedly on the ragged edge of
competence, expand with VC money, make tens of millions at the lower end,
maybe billions. Because so much of industry, the economy, etc. still hasn't
been hit fully by the disruption of 21st century technology. Uber being the
perfect example, disrupting an industry that had barely changed much in a
century. There are countless similar examples. In SV you can snowclone your
way to success because there's just so damned much low hanging fruit that
hasn't been executed on hardly at all. The same's been true in the mobile
space for years as well. Hardware wise, just rev the display and the proc. and
you're golden, as long as the device wasn't garbage you could demand a huge
profit margin (amplified further by the "subsidized" handset purchase model).
Easy money makes for laziness. When google hit big they entered a tight market
during an economic downturn. That's also when amazon started hitting its
stride. But there is so much potential right now for easy money in tech that I
suspect it'll be a long time, if ever, before economic pressures force a
serious drive for innovation.
But there's also a huge need for real innovation. Mobile devices are still
largely consumption rather than creation devices, for example, though they
have no shortage of capability. And there's a huge need for fundamental
research into programming languages, operating systems, and especially
software development as an activity (what works, what doesn't, in which
situations and circumstances, and why, etc.) Consider, for example, how
utterly lacking in universally acknowledge best practices is the development
of firmware with potential safety implications.
------
dmritard96
A few reactions:
Engineering cultures can be revolutionary even if the core ideas are the
revolution. The startup community knows this well as it is repeated ad naseum
- ideas are worthless (mostly), and its largely about the execution. Calling a
cab from a phone is not new or original. Uber didn't think of it nor did they
execute it first or probably even technically best. But their combination of
technical execution and business acumen allowed them to raise shit tons of
money, aggressive loss lead into users and grow internationally rapidly. And
Taxis drivers in France are lighting cars on fire. Engineering itself can be
revolutionary.
Second, and more pedestrian I suppose - It seems odd in the time of
intelligence being move to the cloud, Waze and autonomous cars, to predict
that the 101 will be a parking lot and investing in yesteryears mass transit
is the right move. It would seem that autonomous fleets will be optimized to
move people with less resources including energy, roadways, and vehicles. If
anything one could argue that we should be pumping money and engineering into
vehicle autonomy as its likely a better long term (something he should be able
to get behind) investment than more lanes and asphalt. Sure we need to
maintain roadways, but I would rather plan for more efficient and safer
transport.
~~~
fscherer
even if autonomous cars will be cheaper than having your own car, it may still
not be affordable for the people who rely on public transportation and which
could not afford a car anyway. (for example in my hometown an uber is still
about 4 times the price of taking the bus or subway).
the problem is that autonomous driving and services like the high class busses
will still take a lot of money out of the public transportation system, and if
then they need to raise their prices, some people would loose their only means
of transportation
~~~
netcan
Public transportation is not necessarily all that "cheap," it's often
subsidized directly or indirectly. Cars are increasingly taxed (inc. fuel
tax).
It's hard to legitimately say which is cheaper. Buses don't need their own
infrastructure, but they do need roads and these are often funded by various
car taxes. Still, they often need subsidies to run. Many also have subsidized
rates for poorer people on top of that.
Transport is generally expensive. I don't think it can be taken as plain fact
that driving cars is the most expensive method, especially outside of dense
urban areas. If you gave those same subsidies to poor drivers, many _would_ be
able to afford to drive.
Excluding taxes, driving a low cost vehicle has a fairly decent cost per-km. A
litter of petrol can take you 15-20 km in an efficient, small car. Untaxed,
that's <$1. If you travel 500km per month, that's about $30. Add $110 for
purchase and repairs (cheap car), $40 for insurance and we are at $170 per
month. $5.50 per day. Pretty close to the price of public transport in many
European cities, maybe less.
This is driving relatively little, but most car owners just consume more
transport (travel more/farther) that public transport users. Also, more than
one person can ride.
It also doesn't take into account for infrastructure costs though, but public
transport's purchase price often doesn't' either.
I'm not saying cars are better/cheaper, just that it's not a clear win for
either mode. Transport is expensive. If you have no money, you can't afford
much of it. We subsidize public transport for poor people and could do the
same with cars.
~~~
fscherer
hmm I have not thought about it that way, but don't we subsidise public
transport not only to make it affordable but also too use less energy for the
same amount of people? Wouldn't fuel consumption per passenger be much higher
if we subsidise cars?
Also most cities would not have the road-space to replace subways and busses
by individual cars
------
ThomPete
I am not so convinced about his claims and ironically see them as equality
living inside the bubble.
The thing about robots is that even though very few of them even made it
through the challenges some of them did and the ones that did now serves as
the baseline for every other robot.
And so contrary to human where each individual have to learn a skill in the
time it takes them to learn it, once one robot get it right this is instantly
transferable to all other robots.
This is the big insight with robotics and not so much how good humans are at
making robots do what they want them to. The steps they do take in the right
direction is instantly applicable to all other robots.
~~~
alan-crowe
Yes! Training costs for humans are _per employee_. Training costs for robots
are _per job function_. Also robots are very stupid and very expensive to
train. Automation will take over the job functions that each employ larger
numbers of persons. So that will have a big economic impact, because lots of
jobs are involved. But will lots of job functions be involved?
Automation could impact a few lots-of-employees job functions (such as driving
cars, receptionist, and, err, my crystal ball has gone cloudy) and then stall.
Researchers will have good ideas for how to automate job functions, but be
unable to get the funding because only a few thousand humans do that
particular job and it is cheaper to pay to train humans (times a few thousand)
than it is to fund AI research (once).
There are precedents for stalls. Think about garments. The sewing machine
automates the process of passing the needle through the cloth. That is a big
deal and causes a dramatic step change in productivity. Then what? Not much.
For a hundred years and perhaps a little longer yet garment making remains at
the same level of automation, with huge numbers of persons working in
factories using the same old tool.
That is why my crystal ball is cloudy. The penetration of robots into job
functions that have non-huge numbers of employees depends on coming up with
clever hacks analogous to the invention of the sewing machine. Without a
clever trick, AI researchers might still be able to brute force things
(imagine an industrial robot programmed to hold a manual needle, sewing
needle-and-thread human style) but it will be too expensive and not replace
human workers.
I imagine the clever tricks trickling in a few per decade, dragging out the
automation of the economy over a century or two (or three).
~~~
ThomPete
It's not per job function though but per human function (image recognition for
instance)
Keep in mind that once image recognition is done properly it's applicable to
all jobs that require image recognition. Ex. a radiologist AND a quality
control function.
So it's much much worse for humans ability to compete in the long and short
run.
------
flashman
> When the conversation turns to Uber for "x," you can tell there we're out of
> ideas, that people are basically just trying to iterate and get lucky. I
> suppose some of them will be lucky.
This is true - but then where do you think ideas come from? They aren't woven
from thin air, they come from experimenting with existing ideas. I see it as a
positive that so many people are experimenting with dumb-on-the-face-of-it
apps... maybe instead of the latest messaging app one of them will make a real
innovation.
------
eli_gottlieb
>This is against the background of a technological culture in America during
the middle of the last century, which was based on industry monopolies that
could afford to create giant research laboratories—places like IBM, the Bell
Labs—and fund researchers to do things that would take place over years.
That's gone away. In Silicon Valley, Xerox PARC was started as an effort to
get Xerox—the copier company—into the computer industry. They failed to make
Xerox a computer company, but it had this wonderful spinoff effect. That is
possible, that some of these efforts may still have serendipitous
consequences, but nobody is willing to place the long bet anymore. That period
of America, that type of technological economy in America is just gone. I
don't know if it's any place else in the world either. > >There's been a
dramatic shift in corporate America, and the time horizons have shortened.
Even DARPA, which was created in the 1950s to prevent America from suffering
from technological surprise, in the wake of 9/11 and the Iraq war DARPA
shifted its focus and has become focused on much shorter term results. Clearly
something has been lost.
Oh bugger.
~~~
cma
PARC didn't just have an external spinoff effect, with the laser printer
invention alone they supposedly made enough profits to cover all the PARC
costs.
------
klunger
I enjoyed the anecdotes in here about the history of Silicon Valley. But, it
read like 3 or 4 essays mixed up and crammed into one. What was the point?
~~~
mmatants
I think it's a transcript of the interview-style video at the beginning of the
article, so it kind of flows topic to topic.
~~~
klunger
Wow! This turns my perception of the piece on its head. He is such an eloquent
speaker that I mistook his ad hoc answers as a somewhat ramble-y but
nonetheless interesting essay.
------
michaelochurch
The faster-than-exponential growth phenomenon (I prefer to avoid the term
"singularity", which makes no physical or mathematical sense) goes back
billions of years. It took 2.5 billion years for life to get to sexual
reproduction, another 700 million to the Cambrian explosion, and so on with
each phase getting shorter and the growth rate getting much faster. In human
history, we've seen typical economic growth go from less than 0.001% per year
(paleolithic) to 0.1% per year (urbanization, agrarian life) to 1% (early to
mid-industrial) to ~6% per year in the 1960s. (We've slowed down to about
4-5%, globally, and the developed world is stagnant. That's another topic.) I
don't know what will happen in the next 10 years regarding Moore's Law, but I
don't see any reason to doubt that the faster-than-exponential growth _can_
carry on for a while. It would surprise me not to see 10% world economic
growth by the end of my life.
The OP does a great job of explaining why Silicon Valley won't be involved in
much of a meaningful way. I think that the biggest problem is that the balance
of power between connections guys and talent has fallen into a state of
irreversible moral calamity. In their time, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were
approximate equals. The business partner wasn't innately taken to be superior
to the engineering partner. That changed somewhere between 1995 and 2005. Now,
the connections guys are the only people who really matter and engineers (even
up to the CTO level) are largely viewed as interchangeable. And they probably
_are_ interchangeable given that these businesses are all built to be dumped
on a buyer inside of 3 years, and the consequences of mediocre engineering
generally don't have business-macroscopic effects (beyond "throw more money at
it" problems) until 5 or 6 years have passed.
I don't know where, when, or how the positive-sum mentality of the old Silicon
Valley will reconstitute itself. I do think that it will be at least 500 miles
away from the current one, because the current tech hub has "Future Detroit,
But With Less Architectural Character" written all over it.
~~~
InclinedPlane
I believe that two things will happen in the 21st century that will have
outsized impacts on the economy, both of which are software related.
One is that we'll finally get a leg up on software development. This is more
likely to be the result of lots of incremental improvements. We've made huge
strides since the '60s, we have tons and tons of tools that we've built and
use, but still at the end of the day software development is a crude endeavor.
More often than not projects end up with "big ball of mud" architectures. And
we lack the fundamental models and terminology to even talk about software
design and architecture at a reasonable level most of the time. We have all
these tools like TDD, static analysis, and so on, all of which is more or less
bolted on to our other tools. And I can't help but be reminded of both the
pre-structured programming era and the pre-OOP era, when there was a
transition from a kludgy mess of useful components bolted on to existing
paradigms that congealed into a cohesive design that became a universal
standard. In, say, 30 years programmers will not only have better tools
they'll have better techniques, better standards, and better models. They'd be
able to look at the software projects of today and go "oh, well, here you have
a classic example of X common architecture design anti-pattern, which you can
fix using techniques U, V, W, and Z" and so forth. I think that alone will
unleash a tremendous amount of potential in the use of computing systems and
result in an inflection point in the effectiveness of software development
projects.
The other is fully automated and configurable manufacturing. We have almost
all of the necessary components in place for that today, but nobody's put them
all together yet, but it'll be transformative. Imagine being able to upload a
handful of files to some service somewhere and then those files would be used
to produce PCBs; mechanical components and structures built from various
materials (plastics, metals, composites, etc.) using 3D printing, injection
molding, CNC milling, etc; and then having all of that assembled into a final
device then shipped off to you. Imagine how that changes the economy we have
today, how much it could accelerate innovation, how it could result in un-
serviced economic niches finding satisfaction, and so on. Think about how many
thousands of kickstarter projects would translate into simply designing
something then making use of such a service. Also imagine how much things
change if you can have a completely automated factory pumping out parts and
goods 24/7\. Imagine if you could bootstrap an industrial economy anywhere on
Earth, or off, with a few shipping containers of machine tools set up the
right way. And then you get into idea like self-replicating factories. Think
about how all of this changes the economy into something that we would
scarcely recognize today? What if manufacturing an automobile in 2100 was
economically equivalent to manufacturing a diecast hot wheels toy today?
~~~
mrqwerty
I disagree wrt software engineering. I have been a dev for 10 years, so still
new. But. I don't think the problem can be solved with better techniques. I
think the problem is humans just aren't smart enough to do the work. There is
a fundamental limit to how much you can compress certain things. It's called
the algorithmic complexity of the thing. Some things are just complicated.
Some things are just large and hairy which ever way you turn them, whichever
basis you construct. This is why we are spinning our wheels, why the next big
architectural technique never lives up to the hype. There comes a point where
the complexity of the thing you are trying to construct exceeds the capacity
of any network of human beings to construct. I think there is a way to go with
tooling, freeing people from the overhead of mundane work, which fractures
people thinking time and reduces the complexity of the things that they can
hold in their head at any one point in time. But the fundamental limit
remains. I think ML is going to be the next big tool set. It will allow us to
add layers of perception over the code and allow us to perceive the code and
problems in different ways, freeing us to think at a higher level. But the
fundamental limit remains. What we need is the ability to not just apply the
human mind, with it's 20watts of power, but to open up a multi megawatt power
station on the problems. We need genuine AI and I think this should be our
main focus, not pissing around with little problems around the edge, not
building the next phone app. Every other programmer and scientist in the
entire fucking world should be working on AI.
~~~
technomancy
> I think the problem is humans just aren't smart enough to do the work.
I think this is true if you define "the work" as building on top of the
infrastructure we have today. I believe we're capable of building conceptually
clean, non-ball-of-mud architectures, but the need to interoperate with piles
and piles of legacy systems forces compromises into the design. Just look at a
typical web application stack; you've got layers and layers of cruft, and
nobody is able to pull off a bold move that tears layers off; the best we can
do is add more layers on the top.
~~~
verbin217
Using express in nodejs versus php jerry-rigged into apache is sort of an
instance of what you're describing.
~~~
technomancy
Technically yes, but in a way that's so trivial so as to be basically
meaningless.
~~~
verbin217
The amount I have to think about is considerably less. All the complexity just
melts into Functions and Objects. There's similar stuff happening in React
with inline styles. Mixins, variables, custom-properties, state-dependence,
automatic-prefixes, and more are available without language extension when
styles are expressed as Objects of css properties. Whether or not they're
satisfactory, there are occasional efforts to derive more functionality from
fewer abstractions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Horsey – Progressive and customizable autocomplete component - bevacqua
https://github.com/bevacqua/horsey
======
fiatjaf
Needs to autocomplete with tab.
~~~
bevacqua
And break navigation? No thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
French Government Looks To Create Great Firewall Of France - nextparadigms
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110616/01431614712/french-government-looks-to-create-great-firewall-france.shtml
======
d0ne
This already happens in almost every major country, US included, with the use
of various Gag order like methods. Everyone just wants it to be easier, and
obviously they need to pay some related contractor to make it so, and the
cycle just keeps going...
There is one thing that is certain: Freedom is not free.
Freedom is the most expensive thing any human can posses. The maintenance cost
on Freedom grows exponentially the longer you choose to put it off.
We've are reaching, some would say we have reached, a point where the majority
of the 'Free World' has forgotten this fundamental fact.
I, for one, have not.
------
pasbesoin
China was the prototype.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
K-means clustering is not a free lunch - __Joker
http://varianceexplained.org/r/kmeans-free-lunch/
======
darkxanthos
On the one hand the article is saying, "Look at your data." On the other it's
saying, "Visualizing data is hard in more than two dimensions." It doesn't
really offer any suggestions to fix that.
I imagine using something like PCA comes with its own warts. What is a
clustered to do?
------
a_bonobo
FYI: I had some problems accessing the site, here's a mirror:
[http://www.r-bloggers.com/k-means-clustering-is-not-a-
free-l...](http://www.r-bloggers.com/k-means-clustering-is-not-a-free-lunch/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Firefox OS for Raspberry Pi with WebGL demos - mariuz
http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/oleg-romashin
======
nitrogen
I look forward to one day getting my hands on an Rpi. That is, if Allied ever
ships the board I ordered _ages_ ago (the page I ordered from no longer exists
on their site).
Seriously, with all this RasPi news, does anybody in the US _actually have
one_?
~~~
shanselman
I've got three and they are great. Using one for AirPlay and XBMC and the
others for random stuff.
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Top10RaspberryPiMythsAndTruths...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Top10RaspberryPiMythsAndTruths.aspx)
~~~
nitrogen
How/where/when did you get them?
~~~
shanselman
I got them from Element14 here <http://www.element14.com> and got them about a
month(?) later.
~~~
nitrogen
In the United States, Element14 redirects to Newark. Their ordering process,
like Allied's, is, shall we say, somewhat less than pleasant. Here's hoping
that the RPi actually arrives this time. It would be nice if the Raspberry Pi
foundation used a more consumer-friendly distributor, like Via's APC being
distributed by Newegg.
------
luriel
As much as I love the idea of the Raspberry Pi, until it has open video
drivers it can't really be considered an open platform.
Anyone knows what is the status of that?
~~~
lunarscape
There's also the hardware to consider. They posted a PDF of the schematics but
no files or layout. They've promised to eventually but I haven't seen it yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we failed, then succeeded, at migrating to TypeScript - drob
https://heap.io/blog/engineering/migrating-to-typescript
======
AriaMinaei
I was looking at some of my old repos today. Enjoyed the nostalgia. Lots of
CoffeeScript there. I had to switch to ES and then TypeScript because
CoffeeScript was abandoned at the time and I was stretched over other projects
to be able to help maintain it.
Reading my old code, I was surprised by how _clean_ it looks. How easy it is
to digest. There is a certain sense of calm when your brain doesn't have to
process all the visual clutter of a C-style syntax. I miss that.
I wish I didn't have to choose between CoffeeScript and TypeScript.
TypeScript first and foremost is about type safety and tooling. Its
architecture is largely syntax-agnostic. It operates on the AST, so the parser
and code generator can be swapped for a different syntax.
CoffeeScript is all about syntax and does not (and should not) concern itself
with most of the semantics.
They could theoretically be used together if TypeScript simply allowed custom
parsers/generators/formatters to be plugged in.
This would work with ESLint and other JS tooling as well. I did a POC on that
a few years ago [0].
[0]
[https://github.com/gkz/LiveScript/issues/821#issuecomment-18...](https://github.com/gkz/LiveScript/issues/821#issuecomment-183640299)
~~~
sa46
> How easy it is to digest
I’ve not had this experience. I’ve found the ambiguity in coffeescript a
maddening adventure in syntax confusion.
\- function call syntax doesn’t need parens except if a 0 parameter method
\- commas are largely optional both in arrays and function parameters. How do
you parse: [f, f(), f a b c]
\- implicit returns are a terrible idea.
\- the @ syntax refers to either a ‘static’ method or an instance variable
depending on the context.
\- I have to do a double take for the object literal syntax every time
~~~
AriaMinaei
Don't want to invalidate your experience. For me though, I rarely struggled
with ambiguity.
> function call syntax doesn’t need parens except if a 0 parameter method
Function call syntax doesn't require parens so to make multi-line calls
punctuation-free. Especially if some args are objects.
> commas are largely optional both in arrays and function parameters. How do
> you parse: [f, f(), f a b c]
Well commas are not optional.
> implicit returns are a terrible idea
They're especially elegant in writing declarative code. It takes some getting
used to though.
> the @ syntax refers to either a ‘static’ method or an instance variable
> depending on the context.
Agreed.
These are all tradeoffs though. For me, they struck the right balance between
ambiguity (very little) and expressiveness.
LiveScript in comparison was much more sugary (which I preferred):
[https://livescript.net/](https://livescript.net/)
~~~
k__
Haha, yes. LiveScript should have won. It were awesome times.
Well, guess it's Reason for me now :D
------
davidjnelson
> The most important realisation we had going into this renewed effort was
> that a successful migration has to be centered around people, not just tech.
Key insight. It’s always people first, code is a far distant second. Love Kent
Beck’s series on this, so insightful
[https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/software-design-is-
human-r...](https://medium.com/@kentbeck_7670/software-design-is-human-
relationships-part-3-of-3-changers-changers-20eeac7846e0)
Great read, Heap team! Thanks for sharing :-D
~~~
EdwardDiego
I routinely bore people with the Abelson quote that programs are written for
humans to read and only incidentally for computers to execute.
------
seieste
Typescript seems to be approaching C++ levels of syntax and expressiveness.
The main difference seems to be the existing tooling, tutorials, libraries,
etc for node.js and others.
But if compiled languages like C++ or Go had as many dedicated libraries for
webserver management as JavaScript, would there really be a benefit to using
Typescript?
~~~
throwaway_bad
> Typescript seems to be approaching C++ levels of syntax
I've been a bit traumatized by C++ so I can't help but see this as a bad
thing.
A lot of the insanity in C++ is because template metaprogramming made a lot of
micro-optimizations possible. You can use CRTP to achieve static polymorphism.
You can use SFINAE for tag dispatch to choose a different algorithm at compile
time. You can even fold entire algorithms down to a constant with constexpr.
This is great if you care about low level control of your code, but this is
usually premature optimization in the JS world.
Luckily typescript will be immune to this because the types can't affect
runtime at all. So far I haven't seen any truly monstrous generics that are so
prevalent in C++.
~~~
desert_boi
There's some Typescript type stuff that can probably get close.
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/47914631/1924257](https://stackoverflow.com/a/47914631/1924257)
[https://stackoverflow.com/a/53229857/1924257](https://stackoverflow.com/a/53229857/1924257)
~~~
morelisp
I don't agree - the TypeScript code you link is "complicated" because it's
modeling complicated types, or implementing higher-order types which need to
handle complicated types. And honestly it's not that complicated - an
explanation of what RecursivePartial must do maps closely to the type
expression ("each key of the partial type is optional, and each value's keys
are also recursively so").
This isn't at all close to CRTP or SFINAE, not just because TS/JS lacks the
dispatch features necessary, but because in both cases you link it's still
just about type declaration. CRTP and SFINAE are both ways to hack the type
system to _run_ differently.
------
gingerlime
We’re now considering switching from coffeescript to ES6 (or maybe also
Typescript). But coffeescript is seeing a bit of a revival, and I’m starting
to wonder if we should stick with it?? Tooling seems a bit behind and also
lacking things like tree shaking etc (??). But coffeescript is so clean and
fun...
Any tips/thoughts??
~~~
eropple
YMMV, but I’m less worried about “clean and fun” and much more worried about
_rugged and correct_. TypeScript makes it easier to unambiguously express
intent both inside an application and when talking to external modules. Some
parts of the syntax are unfortunate but I care about that a lot less than I do
not having my systems break.
I’d switch and I wouldn’t look back. I _did_ switch my focus of learning and
use, albeit from Ruby and Kotlin (which is better than nothing but nominative
typing is insufficient IMO) to TypeScript, and it was among the best decisions
I’ve made in my professional career.
~~~
The_rationalist
What do you think about nominal typing vs structural typing? My friends that
have been only used to statically typed, nominal programming languages, thinks
this is the worst feature of TypeScript.
~~~
eropple
I don’t hate nominative typing but TypeScript has definitely coached me
towards thinking more about data and operations on data. It does a lot to
encourage you to move away from the traditional OOP patterns that make most
people dunk on Java.
If I had to directly compare the two I think nominative typing is superior
only in the case where you have two identically-shaped (down to the property
name) classes that have different semantics. I feel like if you are in this
situation you should take a very large step back and re-think your decisions.
------
RangerScience
AFAIK, Ruby is the only language that people make other languages look like
(CoffeeScript) and JS is the only language that people make look like other
languages (CS, TS).
Are there others?
Edit: Well, I guess the JVM would be considered another?
~~~
phamilton
Lisps exist on all the runtimes. LFE (liso flavored Erlang) is a good example.
~~~
greggyb
Don't forget Hy and Clojure (which pop to mind, but I don't intend to be
exhaustive).
------
Scarbutt
_Yes, we were adding TypeScript code, but we were adding CoffeeScript at a
faster rate_
So the devs were able to iterate faster with CS than with TS?
~~~
breakingcups
Another interpretation would be that a majority still picked Coffeescript out
of familiarity and interop issues in their specific codebase. Iteration speed
could be comparable or better in Typescript too, we don't know.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SinGAN: Learning a Generative Model from a Single Natural Image - groar
https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01164
======
jeeceebees
I think the approach is really cool but the processing time required is too
much for this to be very useful at the moment.
On a 1080 Ti it takes 45-90 minutes to train networks for the various tasks on
256px images (depending on some quality parameters and which task). Each task
also requires training individually so if you'd like to try them all for a
given image you'll need to train 6 times.
Also the pyramid of GANs approach is very memory hungry. I was only able to
get up to 724px images with 11 GB of VRAM. This was also only possible with a
higher scale factor (sparser pyramid) which sacrifices a lot of quality and is
incredibly noticeable at larger image sizes. I only tried for larger sizes
with the animation task though, perhaps there is a way to combine the super
resolution and animation task and achieve better results. Training on larger
sizes was taking upwards of 6-8 hours.
All of this was tested with the official repo[1] about a month ago.
[1] [https://github.com/tamarott/SinGAN](https://github.com/tamarott/SinGAN)
~~~
spunker540
Could you put that in context in terms of $$? How much does it cost in
aws/gcp/azure to run a 1080 ti for 90 minutes?
Would you say that could be a downside of the single image approach? Rather
than feeding images into a generalized model you’re training a whole model per
image which is costly to scale?
~~~
marcyb5st
You can't run nVidia consumers cards in datacenters. You need to use the
expensive versions. However, for a one-off of 90 minutes they still come cheap
(like
[https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=cd604b5c-76...](https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator/#id=cd604b5c-7644-48f7-a52c-afa3b2898b85)
)
------
maffydub
Not read the paper in detail yet, but it reminds me of Deep Image Prior
([https://sites.skoltech.ru/app/data/uploads/sites/25/2018/04/...](https://sites.skoltech.ru/app/data/uploads/sites/25/2018/04/deep_image_prior.pdf)).
~~~
xenonite
the authors of the paper were actually aware of the deep image prior and even
compare to it. The SinGAN is apparently clearly superior to the deep image
prior (DIP).
------
kidintech
This looks fantastic and gets me excited about where the field is going,
despite the performance issues.
------
ticktockten
Having spent some time in trying to do style transfers, this looks very
promising.
The harmonization aspect of the paper actually makes it very useful. There
certainly are cases where you want to introduce an image component as an
overlay and want the style to integrate.
Really cool stuff, and with code!
------
sharemywin
where there any images with people?
~~~
alleycat5000
Check out
[https://github.com/tamarott/SinGAN/tree/master/Downloads](https://github.com/tamarott/SinGAN/tree/master/Downloads)
They ran it on the Berkeley Segmentation Dataset; the human faces came out a
little interesting...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Trin Trin: Text That Rings - bharath_trin
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.trintrin.app&hl=en
======
bharath_trin
Trin Trin is a social messenger which let's you text your friends in most
alerting way. Tap on a contact, type and TrinTrin - Your friend receives a
flashing text with ringtone and big typography till he/she responds with a
simple tap on response templates.
I'd love to hear your feedback, currently android version is out and iOS is
few weeks away. Here is our website:
[http://www.trintrin.co](http://www.trintrin.co)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Drogon becomes one of the fastest web frameworks - an-tao
https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=test&runid=26a79c95-5eec-4572-8c94-dd710df659d7&hw=ph&test=update
======
an-tao
[https://github.com/an-tao/drogon](https://github.com/an-tao/drogon)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why You Should Put Your Content on Both Medium and Your Own Domain - michaelbuckbee
https://sendcheckit.com/blog/why-you-should-put-your-content-on-medium-and-your-own-domain?rel=hn
======
fiatjaf
Well, you should do a lot of things. The difficult part is to know what is
worth doing.
~~~
michaelbuckbee
In general, writing things that are helpful to people is good marketing
(certainly better than buying more banner ads). Controlling your own fate and
keeping your content on your own domain is also incredibly valuable.
Currently, Medium has some nice distribution and people like following content
on there, so this lays out an easy way to hit all those points.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Gmail spam filters acting up? - laurenia
I just checked my Gmail spam box, and there have been over a dozen emails in the past month that were incorrectly sent to spam. Most were promotional (Yelp, Taskrabbit, a couple of hotels I've visited and newspapers I subscribed to), but some were personal -- a receipt from the Apple store, two from my car dealer confirming an appointment.<p>Has anyone else noticed this recently?
======
emilburzo
You can't say it's "acting up" because spam filtering is an art, not an exact
science.
And if you want to complain about Gmail's spam filter, try using Yahoo Mail
for a while, you'll quickly learn to appreciate it.
Anyway, it's a good habit to regularly check your Spam folder.
------
ChuckMcM
If you do "show original" you can see the reason in the headers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gasper, Your Cloud in a Binary - alphadoze
https://github.com/sdslabs/gasper
======
alexellisuk
Have you seen OpenFaaS?
[https://github.com/openfaas/faas](https://github.com/openfaas/faas)
It seems like it covers most of your use-cases and with more modularity and
scale-out on Kubernetes if needed. For single node use k3s or Docker Swarm.
~~~
alphadoze
Author Here:
Gasper serves a use case different from OpenFaas.
OpenFaas needs a specific functional configuration for deployment like
[https://github.com/openfaas-incubator/node10-express-
templat...](https://github.com/openfaas-incubator/node10-express-template) ,
hence it cannot deploy generalized applications such as
[https://github.com/sdslabs/gasper-sample-
nodejs](https://github.com/sdslabs/gasper-sample-nodejs)
As stated in the readme, Gasper is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) and not
Functions as a Service (FaaS) like OpenFaas.
Gasper can deploy any generic application such as
[https://github.com/sdslabs/gasper-sample-ruby-on-
rails](https://github.com/sdslabs/gasper-sample-ruby-on-rails) with little
configuration i.e the user doesn’t need to create specific Functions for his
service. He can make any generic application in a language of his/her choice
and deploy it via Gasper. The same goes for creating databases via Gasper.
You can think of it as an open-source WIP alternative to Heroku
([https://www.heroku.com/](https://www.heroku.com/)) and Render
([https://render.com](https://render.com)) with super-easy setup procedures
and high scalability and reliability
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AT&T Discussed Idea of Takeover in Time Warner Meetings - JumpCrisscross
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-20/at-t-said-to-discuss-idea-of-takeover-in-time-warner-meetings
======
warrenm
TWC is already merging with Charter (interestingly, it's the _smaller_ company
(Charter) who's "buying" TWC)
So .. how would this work?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unusual Red Arcs Spotted on Icy Saturn Moon - deviantkt
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4671
======
DanAndersen
Made me think of some sort of bloody monument a species of spacefaring
conquerors might leave.
(Did some back-of-the-envelope calculations out of curiosity and found that
the amount of blood in the current human population would be sufficient to
paint a surface area roughly the size of Germany. I wonder if any grimdark
Warhammer 40K story featured such a thing.)
~~~
parshimers
TIL: Tethys might look like a moon, but it's really a shrine to Khorne.
~~~
personjerry
A shrine to the Shrike!
------
yellowapple
Almost looks like what'll happen to a wall if you give a red marker to a
little kid.
------
naturalethic
Why are almost all impact craters perfectly circular?
~~~
dweinus
I'm not a physicist, but I would hazard:
it would require a very non-spherical object to create an a-circular crater
because ground resistence forces material to move primarily parallel to the
surface of the planet/moon, which tends to regularize the shape. Any
atmosphere will make the impacting object more spherical through resistance.
Lastly, large bodies in space tend to spheres naturally as their mass
converges by gravity.
------
ridgeguy
Maybe Banksy's gone further than we suspected...
------
brock_r
Blood trails...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MacOS VPN architecture from System Preferences down to nesessionmanager - Timac
https://blog.timac.org/2018/0717-macos-vpn-architecture/
======
teilo
What boggles me about the VPN implementation on Mac is the massive amount of
functionality that is not accessible unless you are using Apple Configurator
to create a profile. Then you have to install the profile, and for any
configuration change, you have to repeat the process.
For example, even though you can create a basic IKEv2 config, most of the
parameters that are needed to actually make it work with a given router are
not accessible except in Configurator. You cannot configure the encryption or
hash algos, DH Group, group identifiers, etc.
And there is no access at all to other VPN types, such as a number of vendor-
specific options, custom SSL, etc., even though they are supported.
Why can't there be advanced options for this stuff? It makes no sense.
~~~
derefr
You're supposed to be managing the deployment/delivery of Apple Configurator
profiles through Server.app's MDM features. If that is in play, then the
workflow looks like:
1\. You navigate your device to the MDM web portal served from the Mac running
Server.app;
2\. the MDM portal recognizes your MAC address as a new device, and allows you
to register it;
3\. an MDM profile is auto-generated for you, which you download and install;
4\. the MDM profile transparently manages/updates a _real_ (Apple
Configurator) profile, which has been customized by the MDM for any settings
keyed specifically to your computer's MAC address.
Using Apple Configurator without MDM, just using Configurator .profile files,
would be like using Windows Group Policy without Active Directory, just using
GPO .cab files. It's _possible_ , but just kinda silly.
~~~
auslander
> It's possible, but just kinda silly.
Why silly? In one .mobileconfig file, I created complex VPN config for my
provider, with my own preferences, and loaded it without any MDM, to all my
macs and iPhones.
~~~
derefr
Because, what happens when you want to update that config? Even if you're just
doing it for your personal stuff, MDM means centralized push-based management.
~~~
auslander
I'm not centralized, I will just update my config myself. Simply clicking on
new myvpn.mobileconfig file :)
~~~
derefr
I guess I just don't like the idea of forgetting to update a device that I
rarely touch (e.g. my iPad) and then being unable to VPN home with it later
when I do go to use it, from a café on vacation or something.
Much easier to just leave Server.app running on my iMac. (It's basically what
Server.app is built for; it's certainly not targeted at enterprises!)
------
dguido
This might be useful for Algo! It's been a pain in the ass that IKEv2 has been
a second class citizen on macOS.
[https://github.com/trailofbits/algo](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo)
~~~
striking
Algo already provides .mobileconfig files. Works great.
[https://github.com/trailofbits/algo#apple-
devices](https://github.com/trailofbits/algo#apple-devices)
------
closeparen
Are there any reasonably straightforward open source VPN servers compatible
with Apple’s clients? For cloud and VPS setups, I always end up mucking around
with OpenVPN/Tunnelblick.
~~~
latchkey
I tried the OSX VPN stuff and gave up really quickly. It all just felt really
clunky, without much control.
Tunnelblick and [http://www.pivpn.io/](http://www.pivpn.io/) work great. PiVPN
targets Pi installations, but I found it works just fine on any modern ubuntu
install. The cli tools to generate / revoke configs are very easy to use.
~~~
auslander
Apple does not provide native support for OpenVPN protocol, only IPsec. It'll
take third party app to support OpenVPN, risky.
------
blacksmith_tb
Interesting - do I remember that macOS 10.12 (or maybe 10.13) was supposed to
allow for per-app VPN access? Does that use this API, or something else
(assuming it actually exists)? Also, quite the cliffhanger on VPNStatus, which
sounds promising (any chance it could also support Wireguard?)
~~~
pvg
The Network Extension framework mentioned in the post is that API. It's been
an iOS thing for a while and came to macOS more recently (10.12, I think).
~~~
orbitur
The docs say 10.11 for most of the APIs. A few are still (and forever?) iOS
only.
~~~
pvg
Yes, I counted counted versions/WWDC videos wrong - the macOS version popped
up in 2015 along with the El Capitan/10.11 announcement.
------
dqh
It's possible to build a macOS app that manages an IKEv2 connection using the
public NEVPNManager, NEVPNProtocolIKEv2 and related APIs. This also gives you
full control over DH group, algorithms, dead peer detection etc.
------
sargun
Does anyone know if there are any plans to standardize (d)TLS VPNs?
~~~
oneplane
I highly doubt it. Most vendors try to sell it as an USP and as an "it is easy
because it is TLS and runs over 443 so inflexible environments will allow you
to work"-type of solution which is trying to fix symptoms instead of causes.
For anyone who is reasonable at *nix configuration, setting up OpenVPN, IKEv2
or classic IPSec tunnels is not 'easier' than any SSL/TLS VPN, which makes it
lose a lot of it's value vs. other VPN options.
~~~
rmwaite
IPSec provides unique problems when it comes to NAT traversal - something that
is extremely common.
~~~
auslander
Not so sure. All current implementations have Nat-T on as default. Could you
give an example, please? IKEv2 preferred.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chariot for Women is a new ride sharing service for women only - gberger
http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/08/chariot-for-women-is-a-new-ride-sharing-service-for-women-only/
======
slg
A premium ride sharing service that puts safety at the forefront and targets
women sounds like a viable business. This doesn't. Not only are they refusing
service to men but likely the bigger problem is they are refusing to employee
(or contract) them. I'm sure the lawyers are already circling for the
inevitable discrimination lawsuits.
~~~
klipt
Yeah, I can't see this succeeding anymore than a hypothetical "Uber for white
people who are afraid of black drivers".
~~~
danieltillett
I am sure an Uber for white people would be quite a success despite being
morally offensive. Thankfully people fought (and still fight) to stop this
sort of crude discrimination and any such business will soon be sued out of
existence.
I am interested to know what sort of thinking went through the investors heads
when they were pitched Chariot.
------
sridca
Comment from a Uber driver:
> _you know this is bullshit, this is so sexist and honestly very offensive. I
> am an UBER driver and im an excellent driver and treat all my riders with
> respect and equality. This app is basically saying that all UBER drivers are
> sexual predators which is not true, yes I agree that UBER should increase
> the throughness of their background checks because every rider should have
> that peace of mind of being safe when riding with UBER, but this is not the
> solution because this is catagorizing me as a sexual predator which is
> bullshit. I hope this guy who made this reads my post because this is
> bullshit._
~~~
1123581321
From a business perspective, he needn't worry. There likely aren't many Uber
customers who use the service but dislike it enough to switch. So, Chariot's
growth will come from people who don't use ride share, which means if it
succeeds, it'll expand the market. People become less afraid as they become
more familiar, so a percentage of Chariot customers will start riding Uber as
well since they see Uber drivers are very similar to Chariot drivers. In the
long run, Uber could have more customers because of Chariot and possibly
purchase the company outright.
------
danieltillett
I can't wait for the next version - Chariot for White People.
Couldn't this whole issue of women feeing unsafe be solved by a real time
camera in every car and something like a Amazon Echo with a safe word that
triggers human intervention. Actually use technology to solve a problem rather
than millennial old discrimination.
~~~
Cartwright2
Chariot for Men:
The premise is the same as all the other ridesharing services, There’s a
driver app and a client app, except that what makes us unique is our safe
driving feature that other apps forgot to do. We ensure every driver in our
entourage is a male.
~~~
danieltillett
I am all in as long as every car comes with fluffy dice and a huge sub-woofer.
------
blackflame7000
Seems to me, that if the same service was offered for all men it would be
considered sexist.
------
ocdtrekkie
I find it amazing that anyone thinks this could even be legal, much less
ethical. Both to refuse service based on gender, as well as refuse to hire
anyone who is male? This can't possibly be a legal company to operate in the
United States.
It's sexism, plain and simple.
~~~
danielvf
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_quali...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bona_fide_occupational_qualifications)
There's an exception to US anti discrimination laws for jobs that require a
certain age/sex/gender/race etc. Catholic schools for example can exclude non-
Catholics from being theology teachers, for instance. Actors can be excluded
on the basis of race, if the character requires a certain race.
I'm not sure though if this qualifies though. Seems like there would be
caselaw somewhere on it though.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
"Bona fide occupational qualifications generally only apply to instances in
which the BFOQ is considered reasonably necessary to the normal operation of a
particular business. For example, a Catholic college may lawfully require such
positions as president, chaplain, and teaching faculty to be Catholics, but
membership in the Catholic Church would generally not be considered a BFOQ for
occupations such as secretarial and janitorial positions.
Mere customer satisfaction, or lack thereof, is not enough to justify a BFOQ
defense, as noted in the cases Diaz v. Pan Am. World Airways, Inc.[6] and
Wilson v. Southwest Airlines Co..[7] Therefore, customer preference for
females does not make femininity a BFOQ for the occupation of flight
attendant.[8] However, there may be cases in which customer preference is a
BFOQ—for example, femininity is reasonably necessary for Playboy Bunnies.[9]
Customer preference can "'be taken into account only when it is based on the
company's inability to perform the primary function or service it offers,'
that is, where sex or sex appeal is itself the dominant service
provided."[10]"
My guess would be that excludes gender discriminating people driving cars
outright. While obviously, as discussed in the article, women may prefer women
drivers, the driver being a woman is not functionally necessary to drive a
car.
------
jackvalentine
So predators can sign up fake accounts and lure women right to them then?
Seems like not knowing the specifics of who will turn up when you press the
button is just a good idea. Even if it may be someone from a group more
routinely targeted by predators, they don't have a guarantee.
------
sotojuan
Reminds me of the Nathan for You episode with the dating site that sends a
bodyguard with every woman that goes on a date.
------
dpweb
I wouldn't be so absolutely convinced the legal case against this. For
instance, designating something a private club. Private clubs include whomever
they choose.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How would you pick a uniform random element in linked list with unknown length? - polm23
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9401375/how-would-you-pick-a-uniform-random-element-in-linked-list-with-unknown-length
======
bediger4000
Seems like a job for Reservoir Sampling:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_sampling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reservoir_sampling)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Level 3 are now hijacking failed DNS requests for ad revenue on 4.2.2.x - doctorshady
http://james.bertelson.me/blog/2014/01/level-3-are-now-hijacking-failed-dns-requests-for-ad-revenue-on-4-2-2-x/
======
skymt
Seems reasonable. Those servers were never intended for widespread public use,
so they may as well make back some funds for upkeep, and maybe encourage some
more-technical users to switch away.
Here's a blog post with some background on these servers:
[http://www.tummy.com/articles/famous-dns-
server/](http://www.tummy.com/articles/famous-dns-server/)
~~~
oasisbob
I'm fairly sure that the "4.2.2.x was never meant to be public" line is a
myth. Though the NANOG thread cited in that post is good historical
background, it is contradicted by more modern sources:
"[...] DNS infrastructure is largely split into two types; open (public) and
closed (private). Open DNS is provided by companies like OpenDNS, Google and
Level 3. You can use it wherever you are on the Internet with no restrictions
or authentication required."
\- Mark Taylor, VP at Level3
[http://blog.level3.com/level-3-network/a-flawed-study-of-
cdn...](http://blog.level3.com/level-3-network/a-flawed-study-of-cdns-and-
dns/)
I can't find any cite where anyone else who I would consider a reliable source
in the DNS world (Vixie, &c) repeat this claim. To the contrary, Level 3 is
often grouped with Google, OpenDNS and others in discussions of open public
resolvers [1][2][3], and those in the know never seem to speak up and say
otherwise in these discussions.
That being said, I have absolutely no personal knowledge on any of this.
[1]
[http://www.maawg.org/system/files/Fergie_DNS_Open_Resolver_M...](http://www.maawg.org/system/files/Fergie_DNS_Open_Resolver_MAAWG_India_SANOG.pdf)
[2]
[http://markmail.org/message/gh7f2wvfbn5mpvuq](http://markmail.org/message/gh7f2wvfbn5mpvuq)
[3]
[http://www.circleid.com/posts/87143_dns_not_a_guessing_game/...](http://www.circleid.com/posts/87143_dns_not_a_guessing_game/#4234)
~~~
rdtsc
Presumably it takes non-0 costs to maintain 4.2.2.x DNS servers. While I'd
want to believe Google and L3 just try to help out the public at large with
free DNS services, I suspect they are not doing that just purely out of
altruism.
~~~
fragmede
Google's motivations are long-range, but simple - more ad dollars. Faster DNS
means more people using the web (rather than give up in disgust - and if don't
believe that happens, let me introduce you to comcasts's DNS servers...); more
people using the web means more page view which means more ad revenue.
So no, definitely not altruistic.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
I just thought it was to track user actions via DNS - they can see which sites
you visit without needing tracking bugs on those sites. Better profiling means
better ad serving for Google ... profit.
~~~
arantius
[https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/privacy?hl=en](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/privacy?hl=en)
"We built Google Public DNS to make the web faster and to retain as little
information about usage as we could, while still being able to detect and fix
problems. Google Public DNS does not permanently store personally identifiable
information."
------
_Lemon_
I heard years ago that Level 3 were trying to encourage people (non-
customers?) not to use these DNS servers. I guess this is one way to ask
people not to use them.
Having said that, 8.8.8.8, Google DNS, has been planted firmly in my memory as
my go to "is this machine up?" IP.
~~~
tracker1
My issue is that level3's dns has always been very fast, and more importantly,
up... When google's dns is slow, level3 is fast... when my isp's dns goes down
or wonky, level3's is up... I'd pay them $10/year to use them without the ads.
~~~
karlshea
Why not use OpenDNS then? If you have an account you can configure them to
behave however you'd like.
~~~
ds9
And then they have your entire history of internet activity, _matched to you
name, address and CC number_. Fine if all you want is reliablility. For those
who want to imped surveillance it is as bad as the ISP.
~~~
JohnTHaller
So does Google, for what it's worth.
~~~
eli
No, they very clearly and explicitly promise otherwise
[https://developers.google.com/speed/public-
dns/faq#privacy](https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/faq#privacy)
------
dsl
To be perfectly clear: It is not hijacking when you are sending them queries
for which you should have no reasonable expectation that they service. If you
are actually a Level 3 customer, call your sales rep, but I believe this is
only for non-customers.
EDIT: By the way, this is the actual company operating the "service" behind
the scenes for Level 3
[http://www.xerocole.com/searchguide/](http://www.xerocole.com/searchguide/)
~~~
wpietri
If you're not going to service a query, there are perfectly good ways to do
that. Since they didn't do one of those, I'm happy to call this hijacking.
~~~
pyvpx
and one of them is returning bogus junk. why should they (the NSP) care?
especially if you aren't paying them for a network service? it's not hijacking
-- 4.2.2.2 isn't a public resolver and never was. it just happened to become
one.
~~~
wpietri
I'd say they should care because the Internet only survives through
cooperative effort. Breaking something so they can pocket money is greedy and
dickish.
But if they are being jerks rather than just being thoughtless, then maybe
that isn't enough. In which case, my fallback answer is "bad PR". It would
have been easier for them just to deny service to anybody they didn't want to
serve. They went to a lot of trouble break something in a profitable way. To
me, that says they might not be a trustworthy vendor, and thousands of nerds
are now aware of that.
------
chmars
I have used the DNS servers of the Swiss Privacy Foundation for some time. The
IP addresses are not easy to remember but it is great to have uncensored DNS
from a Swiss non-profit organization:
77.109.138.45 (Ports: 53, 110; DNSSEC), 77.109.139.29 (Ports: 53, 110; DNSSEC)
and 87.118.85.241 (Ports: 53, 110; DNSSEC).
[https://www.privacyfoundation.ch/de/service/server.html](https://www.privacyfoundation.ch/de/service/server.html)
(The Swiss Privacy Foundation operates Tor exit nodes too.)
~~~
escapologybb
I have a newbie question, what would an end user do with the (Ports: 53, 110;
DNSSEC) information?
I've set my machine to use those three IP addresses as the DNS servers, is
there something else I'm missing? Thanks!
~~~
ds9
Normally DNS is on port 53, but if your ISP is preventing you from DNS
requests to servers other than theirs on port 53 you can use the other one.
'DNSSEC' means DNSSEC is supported by the server if your resolver can use it -
it's a digital signature regime to prevent DNS forgery (disclaimer: look up
criticisms of it as well as selling points).
------
mcpherrinm
Yep, I'm seeing what should be NXDOMAIN results returning the IP
198.105.254.11 which brings me to a page like
[http://searchguide.level3.com/search/?q=http://198.105.254.1...](http://searchguide.level3.com/search/?q=http://198.105.254.11/&=)
Does anyone know if actual Level3 customers see this page, or is it only for
off-network requests? Up until the end of last year, my employer had a Level3
internet connection and we legitimately used 4.2.2.1 as our DNS recursive
resolver. I'd be pretty pissed if they returned spammy results to their
customers, but to non-customers, well, I don't care: That's what you get. Use
a DNS server that somebody says you're allowed to (8.8.8.8, maybe)
~~~
jlgaddis
Querying from one of my personal servers on a Level3 DIA circuit, I am getting
NXDOMAINs for non-existent hostnames.
------
mfincham
Suggestion: if your network provider's recursive DNS service sucks so much
that you cannot bear to use it (and even if it doesn't, quite frankly) your
next best bet is probably to install unbound
([https://unbound.net/](https://unbound.net/)) listening on localhost on your
workstation.
Not only does this give you known-good DNS resolution, but you can also enable
DNSSEC validation and be fairly confident that it'll actually do its job in
preventing your local machine from resolving poisoned zones.
~~~
aidenn0
I set up a caching recursive DNS server on my lan, but had to add a second
entry for a caching public DNS server since:
1) Most DNS entries these days seem to have _very_ short TTLs
2) Occasionally the recursive queries would fail
~~~
mfincham
Would you mind clarifying what you mean by "second entry"?
------
intslack
When their DNS seemed to go down a few days ago I also noticed this behavior
and immediately switched to a local independent ISP's DNS that namebench spit
out.
Doesn't seem too out of character, if they're returning this for actual
customers, from the company that most likely allowed the US government to tap
into Google and Yahoo's fiber lines.
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/technology/a-peephole-
for-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/26/technology/a-peephole-for-the-
nsa.html)
~~~
dsl
That is a pretty big, and very uneducated, accusation.
Since the 1970s the CIA has been installing taps on undersea cables using
specialized submarines. This is well documented, and it is well known that the
NSA prefers to use methods that involve the least amount of interaction from
uncleared individuals even if it is at a much greater expense.
~~~
pyvpx
the NSA is the one installing the taps. CIA tried to do a radio tower once --
or maybe that was the FBI. anyway, when it comes to sigint, it's NSA all day
every day.
~~~
dsl
Nope. The Special Collection Service is responsible for deployments. It is a
joint program with the CIA providing the field resources and management and
the NSA providing the toys.
------
matthewbadeau
I have to plug OpenNIC[1] anytime I hear of a DNS hijacking story. OpenNIC is
a peer run network of DNS servers that are open for public use.
[1][http://www.opennicproject.org/](http://www.opennicproject.org/)
~~~
aroman
This looks cool, but why should I use and trust this over something like
Google's Public DNS?
~~~
matthewbadeau
Honestly, I have no argument for OpenNIC over Google's DNS that will convert
you right now. It really depends on who you trust more.. strangers over the
internet or a large corp who was the target of espionage. That's really up to
you to decide the lesser of two evils.
A cool thing about OpenNIC is that they offer alternative TLDs that aren't
part of ICANN's gTLDs. Also, the owners of the public servers strive to be as
open as possible with their policies and features, such as no logging or using
DNSCrypt. One of them even offers DNS level ad blocking, though I don't like
it because I prefer the internet at its purest form and that policy doesn't
seem to flow well with their anti-censorship mantra.
------
skrause
Can everyone else reproduce this problem? People from different locations and
ISPs should try it.
I'm not a Level 3 customer in a any way and I'm on a German VDSL connection
provided by Deutsche Telekom. And here the Level 3 resolvers still return
normal NXDOMAIN answers:
; <<>> DiG 9.8.3-P1 <<>> thisprobablydoesntexist.com @4.2.2.2
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 44948
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
~~~
dsl
Lots of well meaning kids go and setup Level 3 resolvers on grandma's home
network, then the ISP has to deal with support calls when someone elses DNS
servers go down.
As a result quite a number of networks "hijack" 4.2.2.0/24 and route it
locally to their own resolvers.
~~~
ds9
How can one detect whether this is happening?
~~~
sexmonad
I'm not sure if it's a certain way to tell, but try running a traceroute. If
your traffic seems to go into Level3's network, that's a good sign that it's
not getting rerouted.
Here's what I see from my DigitalOcean droplet.
root@derpy:~# traceroute -I 4.2.2.1 traceroute to 4.2.2.1 (4.2.2.1), 30 hops
max, 60 byte packets 1 198.199.122.1 (198.199.122.1) 12.055 ms 12.123 ms
12.314 ms 2 xe-10-3-3-100.edge3.Newark1.Level3.net (4.28.6.69) 0.948 ms 0.959
ms 0.959 ms 3 ae-31-51.ebr1.Newark1.Level3.net (4.69.156.30) 1.396 ms 1.477 ms
1.478 ms 4 ae-10-10.ebr2.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.132.97) 1.530 ms 1.630 ms
1.659 ms 5 ae-62-62.csw1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.148.34) 1.465 ms
ae-82-82.csw3.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.148.42) 1.464 ms
ae-62-62.csw1.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.148.34) 1.390 ms 6
ae-1-60.edge2.NewYork1.Level3.net (4.69.155.16) 1.363 ms 1.389 ms 1.395 ms 7
a.resolvers.level3.net (4.2.2.1) 1.456 ms 1.466 ms 1.421 ms
------
sdkmvx
> At the least it’s leaking, in clear text on the wire, things that I expected
> to be sent to an encypted DDG search. If there was sensitive search terms or
> information in that query, it just dropped into Level3′s logfiles.
He must not realize that even if the DNS server was working correctly, the
original request that should result in NXDOMAIN is also passed in clear text
over the wire and naturally potentially logged by the DNS server. The lesson
is not to rely on DNS security. Your ISP can see what servers (IPs) you
communicate with anyway.
------
diakritikal
I'm rather curious. I thought this kind of predatory network shenanigans was
par for the course in the US?
~~~
nknighthb
By residential ISPs, sure. Level 3 is not a residential last-mile provider.
I'd be surprised if you could get any sort of service out of them for less
than $1k/month.
------
gergles
Why Am I Here?
The Example Net Web Helper has been enabled to provide helpful searches from
web address errors. You entered an unknown name that the Example Net service
used to present site suggestions which you may find useful. Clicking any of
these suggestions provides you with Yahoo! search results, which may include
relevant sponsored links. Why should I use this?
The Example Net Web Helper makes finding what you are looking for easier and
more convenient. The service uses the entered non-existing website name to
determine useful search results. Often, you will see a desired website or page
that meets your needs. Do you track my Internet usage?
No. The Example Net Web Helper simply redirects queries to non-existing domain
names to a useful search results page instead of a cryptic error message page
or browser-defined page.
The "Example Net" huh?
------
kbar13
don't use L3's 4.2.2.x resolvers, as they aren't meant for public use, unlike
google's public dns
~~~
__david__
You say that, but if they weren't meant for public use, they wouldn't be
accessible to the public. Time Warner's DNS, for example, are not available
from outside their network.
~~~
eli
And if your car is unlocked it's meant for joyriding?
~~~
__david__
If my car became very well known for being unlocked and immensely popular with
people taking joyrides, then yes, my continued unlocking of the door would
constitute tacit permission.
------
5teev
Comcast also did this to me. Not one of the several tech support people I
talked with seemed to be aware of Comcast's non-hijacking DNS servers at
75.75.75.75 and 75.75.76.76.
~~~
pudquick
Fortunately they haven't done this for 2 years. They killed it when they
flipped on DNSSEC because the practice of NXDOMAIN hijacking is incompatible:
[http://dns.comcast.net/index.php/help#faq2](http://dns.comcast.net/index.php/help#faq2)
Now no customers from Comcast suffer this.
... JavaScript and HTML injection when you reach a cap limit in a throttled
market or when you get a cease and desist for pirating, however, is another
matter.
------
ballard
I use mdnsresponder nomulitcastannounce -> dnsmasq 127.0.0.1#53 -> dnscrypt-
proxy 127.0.0.1#54 -> an encrypted DNS proxy that does dnssec. All of which is
locked down by a minimal whitelist leak-preventing fw ruleset like little
snitch. I have a script which checks for authentic internet access to allow
captive portals to work which leaks temporarily (which I prob need to toggle
between rulesets to only allow the captive portal agent to work and deny
everything else).
------
ck2
Can't really blame them since they have been telling the public not to use
their service forever.
Still, I am guilty of using them too.
Not really thrilled with the idea of using Google DNS.
~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
> Not really thrilled with the idea of using Google DNS.
You can use your own dns server. Just install a recursive dns server on your
own network like
[https://www.powerdns.com/recursor.html](https://www.powerdns.com/recursor.html)
or [https://unbound.net/](https://unbound.net/)
~~~
dmourati
unbounds https cert is broken. The identity of this website has not been
verified. • Server's certificate is not trusted. • Server's certificate cannot
be checked.
Not a good first sign.
------
userbinator
I noticed this a few weeks ago (not sure exactly, but I don't really mistype
domain names all that often either) and I can remember the first time that
198.x IP showed up I was rather shocked since the domain I mistyped was my own
site's (!), but they seem to have stopped doing it now.
Perhaps L3 themselves have a lot of stuff both within and outside their subnet
that depends on these servers behaving correctly.
------
reedloden
Is this only affecting Level3's 4.2.2.x nameservers (when it happens), or are
their 209.244.0.x ones doing this as well?
------
nly
I can't reproduce this behavior from the UK. In any case, DNSmasq (the DNS
cache daemon that is part of OpenWRT) has an option to filter bogus NXDOMAIN
responses if you can get a list of the IPs.
Alternatively, run your own recursive resolver and cache, it's worth it.
------
d0ugie
While in search of a new DNS server because of this and for lower latency,
namebench is your friend:
[https://code.google.com/p/namebench/](https://code.google.com/p/namebench/)
------
mp3geek
The tracker should now be blocked also in Easyprivacy.
[https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/rev/303e65d3a2bd](https://hg.adblockplus.org/easylist/rev/303e65d3a2bd)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NodeMCU v2 – Lua-based ESP8266 development kit - kfihihc
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/NodeMCU-v2-Lua-based-ESP8266-development-kit-p-2415.html
======
TD-Linux
I have been avoiding the ESP8266 because of the toolchain - when it was
released, it was essentially a complete (buggy) proprietary firmware with the
ability to write simple Arduino-like plugins.
The situation is better now, but it still requires several proprietary bits:
[https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk](https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-
sdk)
The cost of the esp8266 is very nice. A comparable solution from TI (the
CC3200) is $15. But it's sad to see the hardware needlessly crippled by bad
software.
~~~
tcas
Where can you get the CC3200 for $15 in a module format (or the 3100)? The
bare chip you can probably get around that in quantity, but then you need the
support hardware and the FCC intentional emitter testing ($15K+).
The ESP8266 seems really interesting, however, until I can order 500-1000 from
a reputable vendor in trays / tape and reel I'm too scared to think about
using it for a small run product.
~~~
GeorgeHahn
I don't believe there are any ESP8266 modules with FCC modular certification
yet.
I prototyped a CC3200 module but stopped working on it when it became apparent
that the ESP8266 was here to stay. It's a simpler chip with fewer available
GPIO pins and less processing power, but it can be packed into a much smaller
area than the CC3200 (CC3200s require 3 separate power inductors!).
It's important to note that the ESP8266 may well be more open than the CC3200!
Much of the CC3200's functionality is packed into a binary blob from TI, and
the chip runs this code on a second core that you don't have any control over.
~~~
Kliment
They do exist - see [https://www.tindie.com/products/EmbeddedDay/esp8266-wifi-
mod...](https://www.tindie.com/products/EmbeddedDay/esp8266-wifi-module/)
~~~
GeorgeHahn
I sell a bunch of these modules on Tindie too!
[https://www.tindie.com/stores/George/](https://www.tindie.com/stores/George/)
I only know what I've read. That said, take a look at the FCC certification
document for the ESP-12:
[https://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=2ADUIESP-12&id=253176](https://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=2ADUIESP-12&id=253176)
Notice that it is certified as a "single modular" device.
The FCC requires that single modular devices be totally self contained:
[http://www.lsr.com/white-papers/fcc-guidance-on-
transmitter-...](http://www.lsr.com/white-papers/fcc-guidance-on-transmitter-
modules)
[https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct09/Modular...](https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct09/ModularTransmittersReview_%20Oct09_JD_TH.pdf)
[PDF]
The ESP-12 module does not have onboard voltage regulation. Thus, it is not
totally self contained and its certification is meaningless.
Regardless of the above discussion, these modules do not have a marked FCC ID,
so any certification they do or do not have is meaningless.
Like I said, I only know what I've read. I don't understand how they reached
certification without onboard voltage regulation, but they did. I don't know
if that means the certification will be voided, but I certainly wouldn't want
to be selling a product using these modules right now.
------
krampian
There is now also the option to use an Arduino-compatible IDE with the
ESP8266:
[https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino](https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino)
------
officialchicken
Like many, I'm excited about the MIPS Espressif chips. I have had several on
my desk since the end of last year along with with various "programmers" from
Tindie for flashing bootloaders, firmware, etc.
At less than $4 for an ESP8266 on ebay, the lack of security support is a
critical, if not fatal, flaw.
Until it supports crypto, reliable SSL/TLS connections, and ability to
securely store Wifi passwords / credentials in flash - it's a liability to use
one of these chipsets for WiFi - not a benefit.
~~~
GeorgeHahn
The ESP8266 has an Xtensa processor (IP from Cadence, originally Tensilica).
As far as I'm aware, all Espressif wifi ICs use this core.
------
elecengin
I have not yet heard of any of the ESP8266 modules getting FCC module
certification. The page implies it is coming soon, but my understanding is
that those that have looked at it before had doubts that it would meet the
certification criteria. I wonder if/how they resolved these issues...
~~~
tdicola
Some of them have been certified, check out the raw module and nice breakout
version from Adafruit (both FCC certified modules):
[https://www.adafruit.com/products/2491](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2491)
and
[https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471)
edit: See also: [http://hackaday.com/2014/12/17/esp-gets-fcc-and-
ce/](http://hackaday.com/2014/12/17/esp-gets-fcc-and-ce/)
~~~
GeorgeHahn
This is incorrect. No currently available module has passed FCC modular
certification. The ESP8266EX chips themselves have passed certification, but
that's only one part of the process. The 'certification' reached by the ESP-12
module is suspect. Additionally, I've yet to see an ESP8266 module marked with
a legitimate FCC ID (which is required for a certified module).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Macroscopic quantum objects cannot exist if P ≠ NP? - sleepysort
https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-astounding-link-between-the-p-np-problem-and-the-quantum-nature-of-universe-7ef5eea6fd7a
======
Dunnorandom
For anyone interested, here's Scott Aaronson's response to the paper:
[http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1767#comment-103591](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=1767#comment-103591)
~~~
awhitty
I understand that people get a little passionate about their fields of study,
but the tone of Aaronson's response is wildly inappropriate. Phrases like "a
common novice mistake" and "as if he just emerged from a cave" are unnecessary
and entirely condescending. This style of discourse fosters a really awful and
exclusive atmosphere, and I wish it wasn't the norm.
I don't know this guy at all, and I'm guessing he's pretty respected in his
field, but at the end of the day, he doesn't have to be a jerk to get his
point across.
~~~
soganess
I find the dismissive tone and holier and thou attitude that Aaronson has
garnered more that bit of notoriety for really detrimental to the growth of
both our collective understanding of QM and our understanding of
computability. if knowledge is truly power, lording your knowledge over a peer
is paramount to oppression. A bit dramatic, of course, but not completely
without warrant.
This maybe a bit of a kumbaya, everyone hold hands argument, but I'm going to
make it. Its not as if the number of people that have the ambition to collect
the wealth of knowledge required to characterize(even incorrectly) any
perspective overlap between computation and quantum is exactly a huge working
set. I don't consider it reasonable to shit on someone's work so
indiscriminately in this space where its rather hard to be right and quite
easy to be wrong.
Prima facie, the paper was accepted for publish in a peer reviewed journal
(Physical Science International Journal), and. from all the terse looks of it
I've encountered, is likely erroneous on a fundamental level. Highlighting
this is not meant to imply that peer-review is a good/bad measure of academic
muster, but rather an indicator of how complex comprehending and qualifying
such theories might be.
My point is, even in its incorrectness, a bravo for thinking so wildly is
likely in order.
Disclaimer: I'm a quantum chemist and computer scientist. I'm also not the
biggest fan of Scott Aaronson, so I might be harder on him that is likely
deserved.
------
raverbashing
I'm not buying it
1 - P=NP is a mathematical problem. It has nothing to do with Physics. Physics
has to do with Mathematics but one should be _very careful_ when extrapolating
(range, constraints, etc).
2 - Nature has no problem whatsoever solving complicated equations. Our
mathematical models are the ones who suffer to model simple everyday stuff in
Physics. Turbulence and Navier-Stokes equations, electromagnetic propagation,
the way lightning goes through the air, etc.
~~~
swombat
Unless, of course, our entire reality is running on a very powerful, but not
infinitely powerful computer, and the Great Programmers in the Sky decided to
cheat by putting in a hack that cuts off quantum behaviour at a larger
scale...
Unlikely, but cute...
~~~
cstross
_Or_
The granularity of the simulation of our reality is the Planck length. This
constraint does not apply to the real, underlying, reality within which our
simulation is embedded.
------
wcoenen
We can't directly observe superpositions (macroscopic or otherwise) because
when doing so, we become entangled with the state of the observed object. The
only thing special about macroscopic objects is that it is difficult to
prevent or postpone their entanglement with the environment.
Think about Schrödingers' gedankenexperiment from the cat's point of view. It
finds itself to be either comfortable or dying by toxic fumes; it can't see
the superposition because it is _inside_ of that superposition. The same thing
happens to any observer trying to look at a quantum superposition.
~~~
JulianMorrison
Box closed: two cats, one scientist. Box opened: two cats, two scientists,
each sees one cat. Entangling yourself with the superposition pulls you into
it.
~~~
trhway
>Entangling yourself with the superposition pulls you into it.
following that logic and taking cat as the observer, Mr.Cat PhD, the
superposition is that doubles the number of cats (and PhD's :).
Yet it works in the other direction - entangling a cat (a macro-object with
macro-state) with superposition had already destroyed the superposition well
before box is opened.
>> it can't see the superposition because it is inside of that superposition.
it can't see the superposition because the superposition is gone because he
got entangled with it.
~~~
JulianMorrison
The cat is pulled into the superposition by interacting with the results of
the detector and the poison vial. There are two cats from the "outside", but
from each cat's perspective it sees only a single "random" outcome.
Superpositions _aren 't_ destroyed - you are subsumed within them.
~~~
trhway
>There are two cats from the "outside", but from each cat's perspective it
sees only a single "random" outcome.
in a given Universe there is only one cat. A human observer just doesn't know
what the state of the cat in his Universe. The cat knows.
------
kazinator
This hypothesis seems to rest in the flawed idea that quantum processes must
unfold as if by a step by step calculation which consumes time, in the
ordinary temporal dimension. And so certain complex state changes are
impossible simply because they don't have enough time to execute within some
predetermined slot, or something like that. Time in the simulation is not the
same as time in the simulator. Come on, this is not even basic science as much
as basic sci-fi! :)
~~~
sambeau
Surely Schrodinger’s Paradox implies cause and effect?
------
tomp
Wait what? What this article is arguing is totally absurd - just because we
can't model certain physical objects, they cannot exist?! That's like saying
that since we can't model three gravitational objects interacting (i.e. the
numerical solutions diverge, therefore to properly model the system, we would
require increasing amounts of memory and time), therefore they cannot exist.
I'm not saying that the physical claim is wrong - I'm just saying that the
explanation in the article is severely lacking/logically inconsistent.
~~~
SnacksOnAPlane
I'm a simulationist. I believe that the universe we're experiencing is a
simulation made by a far-advanced civilization. So in my reality, if something
can't be modeled, it can't exist.
Not saying that this is the truth, just the way I choose to understand things.
~~~
mdxn
I think you would have to be assuming that the far-advanced civilization's
simulator has the same complexity as the models of computation we can
construct. I think that's a huge leap to make. We might not be able to model
something due to issues with, let's say, Turing decidability. Unlike us, the
advanced civilization's might be able to because their constructable models of
computation are strictly more powerful.
~~~
drdeca
I think you described what I wanted to in a much better and more concise way.
Thank you for doing that.
------
pndmnm
Interesting and semi-related:
[http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?id=140598](http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/abstract.cfm?id=140598)
Essentially, solving the traveling salesman problem in quadratic time using
photon interference -- however, since the photons scale up as N^N, the
Schwarzschild radius of the effect means it's not observable in less than
exponential time.
------
kipple
One part I didn't like is towards the beginning the author says: "Nobody knows
why we don’t observe these kinds of strange superpositions in the macroscopic
world. For some reason, quantum mechanics just doesn’t work on that scale. And
therein lies the mystery, one of the greatest in science."
But I thought the reason we dont see macroscopic events exhibiting quantum
superposition behavior was because of quanutm decoherence? It's just so hard
to get a macroscopic situation that hasnt already been observed and collapsed.
But then the author kinda hints at this point later when he mentions:
"Physicists have become increasingly skilled at creating conditions in which
ever larger objects demonstrate quantum behaviour."
Am I missing something, or is he blowing the problem (and the impact of
Bolotin's computational limit theory) way out of proportion?
------
Strilanc
I hope Scott Aaronson blogs about this article, because it espouses several of
the wrong-facts he complains about _and then cites him_.
\- Limitations on computers _within_ physics are not limitations on _physics
itself_. Analogously, you can simulate system so simple that a computer can't
be made in them without your computer unmaking itself. Relevant: xkcd.com/505
\- We do understand why we don't observe superpositions. It all comes down to
this thing we call "quantum mechanics", which precisely describes those sorts
of situations.
\- The article consistently mixes up NP-Hard and NP-Complete.
> "And how does the universe decide whether a system is going to be quantum or
> not?"
Seriously, is this article a satire?
~~~
PeterisP
An interesting point is that limitations on math (i.e., things that would be
true regardless of the details of the physical world) would put limitations on
_any_ physics simulations - including hypothetical physics simulations done by
someone outside of our universe with potentially different physical
limitations.
So the point of the article is something like - if phenomenon-X can't be
simulated by anyone, no matter how good their computers become; and if our
universe is a simulation (which is a possibility), then our universe won't
contain phenomenon-X.
~~~
TheLoneWolfling
The problem is that there is no proof that there is any such thing as
something that would be true regardless of the details of the physical world.
------
ctdonath
This is radiantly insightful. It makes perfect sense to me. The effect of
reading it is like drinking a _Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster_ : feeling like my
brains were smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick.
Yes, in real physics solves vastly complex equations fast. That's not enough
to discount the point here. There _are_ limits on _physics itself_ : the
particles in a cat (presumably one owned by Schrodenger) are so numerous that
for all of them to express, within a reasonable time, superpositioning the
effects of a single radioactive atom's unobserved state would require particle
interactions occur _way_ faster than Planck time.
Nothing moves faster than light. There are a finite, albeit large, number of
particles in the universe. Nothing can be smaller than Planck length, and no
particle interaction can occur faster than the time light takes to move one
such unit. Upshot: macroscopic superpositionining effects cannot occur because
it takes too long for full propagation among particles numbering on the
magnitude of Avagadro's number.
There's an upper limit to what can happen, because there's only so much stuff
and "happen" can only be so fast.
------
jjgreen
The Navier-Stokes equations are also hard to solve, that does not stop fluids
from obeying them.
~~~
kazinator
Also, how can N bodies orbit each other? Don't they know there is no analytic
solution to their problem? Sheesh! (Maybe they are using floating-point?)
------
bcbrown
An interesting assertion. I don't think it's valid to object that this is just
about hard-to-solve equations. As I understand the article, this is the
argument:
1) It's not possible to directly observe a macroscopic quantum object. This is
because the act of observation collapses the wave function.
2) It's possible in theory to describe macroscopic quantum objects in the
solutions to Schrodinger's equation
3) That solution for macroscopic systems is NP-hard
4) A physical theory that can neither be observed nor modeled is "nothing more
than [a] nontestable empty [abstraction]"
------
baddox
> What’s interesting about NP-hard problems is that they are mathematically
> equivalent. So a solution for one automatically implies a solution for them
> all.
That's a mistake. The author is describing NP-complete problems, which are all
roughly equivalent (reducible in polynomial time). NP-hard includes all NP-
complete problems, but also includes problems much harder than those in NP-
complete, including undecidable problems like the halting problem which aren't
even in NP.
~~~
pcvarmint
> That's a mistake. The author is describing NP-complete problems...
Correct. I think that quote basically killed the whole article for me.
~~~
baddox
It didn't kill the whole article for me, although it seems to be a consistent
misconception rather than an isolated typo. To be fair, the naming convention
is pretty tricky, considering NP-hard contains things outside NP.
~~~
icodestuff
And the diagram did get the terminology right. The author may need a (better)
proofreader, but it wasn't impossible to see what the author meant. They only
conflated the names, not the concepts.
------
snake_plissken
I thought you could observe quantum effects but only when it was the
superposition of all the eigenfunctions? You never observe the ones with a low
probability density because they are dominated by the others. And also does it
matter if you could solve numerically all of the functions for a macroscopic
group of particles if in the end all you would care about is the average value
(due to Planck's constant and the uncertainty principle)?
------
Iftheshoefits
I think the explanation for why we don't observe macroscopic quantum phenomena
is rather more simple than that, and likely has more to do with the results of
a superposition of a large ensemble of possible states than some fairly
strained analogy with computation (think of it as something like fourier
decomposition of a function).
------
TheLoneWolfling
An interesting tidbit:
If the smallest proof for something takes up more than ~10^123 bits, or the
fastest proof requires more than ~10^120 operations, it cannot be proven in
our universe.
------
dllthomas
_" Nobody knows why we don’t observe these kinds of strange superpositions in
the macroscopic world."_
Yeah, why can't we observe processes that rely on lack of observation?
~~~
bcbrown
We can observe processes that rely on lack of observation in the microscopic
world. Look up the one-slit and two-slit experiments[0]. In the two-slit
experiment, we don't observe which slit the photon takes, but we can observe
the interference pattern on the screen.
The two-slit experiment works with photons, but not with bullets, or cars, or
baseballs.
[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_slit_experiment](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_slit_experiment)
~~~
dllthomas
Hmm, probably fair.
------
typon
This is such a poorly written article. I can't even begin to point out the
mistakes. I'm sure Scott Aaronson will write a response and strike this down.
------
agorism
This is almost the same as the free-will vs determinism problem. Our universe
is deterministic, but computing into the future is NP-complete.
------
lfuller
By this logic, shouldn't the existence of the universe be impossible since
simulating it mathematically in its entirety is infeasible?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
iKe/oK/k5 Livecoding Demo - srpeck
https://github.com/JohnEarnest/ok/tree/gh-pages/ike
======
brudgers
Recent discussions:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310842](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10310842)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048046](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9048046)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
F.lux - satyampujari
http://justgetflux.com/
======
aroch
I, and I'm sure the rest of HN, loves F.lux...but is there a reason why this
needs to be posted every month or two? There hasn't even been an update (and
the promised OSX update is no where to be seen)
~~~
crazygringo
Honestly, for most things I would agree... but F.lux has made such a
difference in my own sleep, at least, and therefore overall life quality, that
I feel like it's one of the very few thing that deserves to be posted every
month or two (in fact, I can't really think of anything else).
It's funny how, even after years, it's such an amazing tiny piece of
software... that still almost nobody knows about, outside of mostly just the
hacker community.
I mean, it's almost a crime it isn't already a native part of OSX and,
especially, iOS.
~~~
GuiA
Yes- I always point to f.lux as an example of little feature that every single
graphical operating system could benefit from having, and yet that no OS
creator includes as a feature. More than that- I want an entire OS that has
dark on light windows/text/widgets/etc. during the day, and light on dark at
night - this would be configurable, but by default automagically determined by
your geographical location. On OSX, one can hack such a setup using an app
like Nocturne, but it's clunky.
At every new Windows, OSX, iOS, Android release we get new features (some
debatably useful - i.e. notification center in OSX, or integration with the
new social network of the day) - but some key stuff that would make human-
computer interaction noticeably better is just missing.
A few other things that I can't believe are still not standard in a 2014 OS:
better copy and paste (the damn thing has been clunky for 30 years, see Ted
Nelson's rant), better window management, better support for interacting
across multiple nearby computers (Airdrop is a tiny step in that direction),
...
------
elorant
Most important. Desktop. Utility. Ever.
I'm surprised of how few people even in our industry know about it. There
hasn't been a single case where I show it to someone and he/she wasn't
impressed. I'm so accustomed to using it that if for some reason it stopped
working I believe my productivity would suffer at least 40%. Especially for
those long winter hours it's a life saving app.
Where's the damn donate button?
~~~
michalu
Sorry to maybe sound silly but why? I've used it, it didn't feel good (my eyes
kind of hurt) so I removed it. I see you're enthusiastic about it, what other
benefits does it have if you don't mind me asking?
~~~
elorant
You have to adjust the settings. I'm using 5900K for day and 4600K for
evening. I like it because it makes the screen more bearable especially during
late evening hours.
~~~
michalu
Thank you
------
dennis_vartan
F.lux (or something similar) is one of those things that should come pre-
configured with each operating system. I find it indispensable for coding at
night (and I use Photoshop quite a bit, too.) Shame there isn't a way to do
this on iOS without jailbreaking.
~~~
jamesbritt
I tried it and the color change was ubearable. I'm happy people for whom this
works have the option to install it but I do not want my OS changing my screen
colors for me.
~~~
quadrangle
You did NOT really try it. The color change is adjustable to your preferences.
You just had it set too strong if it was unbearable. You seriously didn't give
it a chance and don't have a clue. I would be skeptical to accept any other
recommendations from you knowing how much you're willing to judge things by
very first impressions and even comment to others about your judgment as
though it is valid.
~~~
jamesbritt
Wow. You know so much about me based on one comment.
That's amusing.
------
typpo
Open source/linux version:
[http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)
(apt-get install redshift)
~~~
JetSpiegel
Works flawlessly, and the configuration file is a single file, which makes it
easy to keep synced between computers.
------
pkfrank
I love the confidence of F.lux's domain name. "JustGetFlux.com" \-- it's like:
"why is this even a question?" Judging from most of these comments, I'd say
we're all in agreement.
I definitely make a habit of telling everyone I know, especially when I happen
to be looking at their screen at night.
------
Anderkent
My major pain with f.lux is the inability to manually specify when it should
start shifting colours. I work in a brightly lit office until way after the
sunset (esp. in winter), and it makes no sense for my screen to start colour
shifting at 5PM.
My current 'solution' is simply manually starting f.lux when I get home, and
killing it when I go to the office. Tedious!
~~~
benjohnson
Lie!
Tell F.lux it you live on the equator in the settings. If it's triggering too
early, move your fake location west.
~~~
Anderkent
That's one way to do it in winter, if exactly 12 hour days suffice, and don't
move too much. Manually adjusting the longitude every time I fly to the US
would be a pain though.
What I'd really like is to tell it 'turn yourself off at sunrise, turn
yourself on at sunset or 2100, whichever's later'.
------
dpcan
I have some questions / issues before I blindly use this software:
1) It's not open source, or is it? I don't see anything about getting the
source. In today's world, utilities like this are open source, or have an open
source alternative. This is something that runs in the background of my
computer all day, every day, so I would like to know what's going on.
2) How does this affect graphic design? Does it make it impossible to get
colors just right?
3) Why does this matter? My lights are on in my office. It's ALWAYS the same
brightness in my office, all the time. Daytime. Nighttime. I don't really
understand what my monitor is adjusting to. Is it JUST that my eyes are
probably more sensitive when I'm tired? If so, that makes sense I suppose, but
how does it know that I'm tired just based on the time that I'm using my
computer?
Anyway, I'm not trying to be negative, these are just the questions I have and
the reasons why I haven't jumped on the bandwagon yet.
~~~
crazygringo
2) Everybody says not to use it for graphic design... but I haven't found any
problems. I think my brain judges colors relative to whatever the "white
point" is, and there is always enough white/gray in my OS interface to judge
photos or artwork alongside. Remember, color perception is fundamentally
relative. When I look at my work the next day, it looks just like I remembered
it. But other people have found the opposite, though -- it may be a personal
thing.
3) It's not about brightness, it's about color temperature. If you have
fluorescent lights in your office that are on at 10pm, you're right, it's not
going to help. It really only makes sense to use F.lux under non-super-bright
warm-ish nighttime lighting, or in a dark room.
------
mikemikemike
I'm conflicted... my eyes give me a ton of issues and this is tempting, but I
also do a lot of front end work and visual design. I don't want everything I
design at night to turn out blue because my screen was orange when I made it.
I think for now I'll stick with my computer glasses, they've helped a ton.
------
benologist
Does anyone have a solution for using F.lux + Shades?
[http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades](http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades)
If I run them simultaneously my monitor flashes yellow-and-normal.
------
Antwan
Don't install this, it's a trap. Spent 30min to reset the
lightness/contrast/gamma of my 2 desktop screens using these painful OSD
buttons.
------
RafiqM
I used to use it but had to disable it because I find myself regularly working
at 2 or 3am and being tired would be a terrible idea...
~~~
Zancarius
I find that the reduced color temperature doesn't make me tired so much as it
seems to interfere less with my ability to get to sleep. Although judging from
previous times this has been posted, there are a few people like you and react
a bit more dramatically to the color shift.
For anyone who's never used it, it's certainly worth trying. This is
particularly true if you have mild insomnia that's likely caused or
exasperated by staring at a screen before bed. It's not a panacea, but used
with other habit changes, it can certainly help!
------
tokanizar
I once doubted the usefulness of this application. Now it's one of my must-
have apps. My eyes will sore without it for a while.
------
lclemente
Just out of interest, what is your temperature setting for night? I'm at
3600K, decreasing it every few weeks.
------
jbrooksuk
I was hoping this was the new version being released on OSX, but alas, it
wasn't.
Oh well. Soon I hope!
------
quadrangle
Nobody should EVER use any computer without this. And, Apple is evil… because
their proprietary walled-garden iOS censors out F.lux (among other things).
For those using GNU/Linux, use Redshift instead:
[http://jonls.dk/redshift/](http://jonls.dk/redshift/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The African Hacker News - drethemadrapper
There used to be a news website like the HN for Africa-related stories/news sometime ago. I ran a search for it a lot of times in the past but no luck. Any news about it?
======
jkuria
Yes, I was the creator/host of the site but decommissioned it because there
was no way to monetize the moderate traffic and I didn't have the time to
invest in getting it to be bigger. I will revisit it in about a year, with a
broader focus on business & tech in Africa. Email me at jkuria gmail and I'll
let you know when it is back up.
------
codesci
Not the one your looking for but I've found interesting startup stories on
[http://www.iafrikan.com/](http://www.iafrikan.com/)
------
gamechangr
I find that funny by itself.
You ran a search for a news Aggregator and couldn't find it?
That's not a good sign it is very relevant right?
~~~
drethemadrapper
That's ridiculous.It was very relevant. By the way, there are other resources
like that that are no longer visible/retrievable online - no cache.
------
j3andidier
[http://rondera.com/](http://rondera.com/)
~~~
drethemadrapper
THe referred website doesn't fit-in. The African hacker news was pretty much
like this hackers news save that it had a blue colour.
------
lutt
I was looking for that site too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Managing "Unproductive" Meetings - tortilla
http://avc.blogs.com/a_vc/2008/06/managing-unprod.html
======
terpua
* But there is a lot of serendipity in this world and you never know when an unproductive meeting turns into a productive one.*
"Money!"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
George Bell - MIT Startup Bootcamp (video) - venturefizz
http://venturefizz.com/blog/george-bell-mit-startup-bootcamp-video
======
ijreilly
George Bell at Excite: Decided not to buy Google for $1M. Decided to buy Blue
Mountain for close to $1B. Flipping a coin for each decision would have
yielded a better result with 75% probability.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please, Java. Do Finally Support Multiline Strings - javinpaul
http://blog.jooq.org/2015/12/29/please-java-do-finally-support-multiline-strings/
======
PaulHoule
That's what resources are for!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
“Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself” - cwyers
https://twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1143925272464506880
======
freehunter
My business does a lot of posting on Facebook of sometimes controversial
things (we're a news site and we sometimes cover local politics). By far the
most engaged stuff is the most controversial where people begin to fight and
attack each other.
I have ~3k followers on one of my pages. Usually ~200-300 people see any given
post if it has no engagements. If it has normal engagement, it might get to
1000-2000 views, still short of my follower count. If it has sparked
controversy and there is a fight, I've had the views spike up over 8000-9000
without any shares. Facebook posts to your timeline "your friend commented on
this" and others start piling in too. Facebook emails me saying "this post is
getting more attention than 95% of the rest of your posts, please pay us money
to show it to more people". The more toxic the comments, the more views it
gets and the more Facebook begs me to pay them for it.
That's the problem with these algorithms that humans don't watch over. Usually
it works great and good content is seen by the people who want to see it. But
every now and again it goes out of control and people end up getting hurt and
Facebook/Twitter profit from it and even promote it. And as the person who
posted it, I have zero ways to stop it from spreading other than deleting the
post.
-edit- oh another story... I run a news site for a town, lets call it Townsville. There is another Townsville in another state, but it is not my Townsville. I had a post go super viral, 90,000 views from my 3k followers, because somehow the post made it to the wrong Townsville and 87,000 people were being shown the wrong news article. Again, I had no way to stop this, no tools to correct it. Absolute insanity.
~~~
omegaworks
The surprising thing about all of this is that sentiment analysis--machine
learning algorithms that can interpret the feeling you're trying to convey
with your words--is a fairly solved problem.
These companies can easily put a filter over this engagement maximization
algorithm and they are choosing not to.
~~~
trickstra
But why would they do it? They have some pretty solid data to support the
argument that more engagement, whatever the quality, equals more money to the
poster, and more money to the platform. There is no _bad_ publicity. The
question is what can we do about it? It exploits basic human psychology.
------
lilbobbytables
"Twitter has an algorithm that creates harassment all by itself"
What am I missing here? There was no harassment of any sort. Alternative
headlines could have been:
"Twitter has an algorithm that helps you gain more followers"
"Twitter has an algorithm that helps you drive awareness"
"Twitter has an algorithm that helps you get more twitter followers for your
cause or business"
"Twitter has an algorithm that expands your social impact from beyond your
sphere."
\---
In other news: public posts on public site go.... public.
~~~
wmil
I guess the point is that Twitter could easily tone down pile ons by noticing
that a tweet is generating many more replies than likes. Then reduce display
of that tweet instead of boosting it to non-followers.
Perhaps not for blue checkmarks (they've declared themselves central to the
public debate), but for average users Twitter should try to calm down pile
ons.
~~~
izzydata
That doesn't sound like a solid indicator of an issue. Two friends could be
having a back and forth discussion with no harassment or conflict. You'd end
up with 25+ replies and 1 like.
~~~
freehunter
What's the point of locating in Silicon Valley and hiring the smartest
programmers in the world if you can't figure out an algorithm to make hateful
posts not show up as often in someone's feed?
I doubt it's because they can't. The more likely answer is they don't want to.
~~~
pmarreck
It's actually a hard problem, similar to porn detection without using humans
(see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_know_it_when_I_see_it)).
Blocking purely based on keywords or Bayesian filtering usually paints too
broad a stroke and ends up limiting well-intended free speech (I once had a
comment blocked for arguing AGAINST racism!). It's similar to the "blocking
all mention of sex also blocks sex education" problem. It seems to take a
fully-fleshed-out intelligence to grasp the true meaning behind even something
as innocuous-looking as a written sentence.
Your assumption that people more intelligent than you "should have figured
this out by now" belies the very problem- _no one_ has yet come up with a good
automated solution for this. If YOU do, you'll be a millionaire.
~~~
freehunter
Again, I disagree. Twitter came up with a way to make some posts more widely
shown, and you're trying to tell me they don't have a way to make some posts
_less_ widely shown? As someone else said, if there are a lot of comments and
few likes, don't put it in the trending feed. That's one solution for free,
and I don't even work for Twitter. If it's two people having a conversation
back and forth, the broader Twitter audience doesn't need to see it. It's not
censored, it's not hidden, it's just not broadcast either.
People have become millionaires, billionaires even, for the exact opposite of
what you say. You become rich by making sure controversial content is spread
as far and wide as possible, because hatred and fear sell as entertainment.
People get addicted to it. You don't become rich by filtering out hateful
content, you become rich by enabling it and spreading it because that's what
people want (as long as they're not the target).
------
minikites
To an algorithm, harassment looks like engagement. To the market, engagement
looks like success. We're participating in a system that has no choice but to
create this result.
------
amatecha
Yeah, this has been a pretty obvious change in the recent months/years. I
started noticing tweets in my timeline that were there because it was
something someone I follow had replied to -- and these tweets were often
"outrage-worthy" or otherwise click/flame-bait. I have since written my own
Chrome extension to hide all "suggested" tweets of that sort (as well as
hiding all sponsored tweets, and the "Favorite" button).
There's a pretty long list of CSS classes you can just toss a "display: none"
on, but unfortunately other stuff can only be discerned by checking that
certain elements are inside a given container. I had to start writing actual
JS to evaluate the contents of the page and omit/delete stuff that way.
~~~
chipperyman573
Out of curiosity, why did you hide the favorite button? Couldn't you just not
click it?
~~~
amatecha
Yeah, but I just don't even want to see it. It's a feature I would prefer had
never been added to Twitter (just like the other stuff I omit using my Chrome
extension). Visual noise distracting from the stuff I care about seeing. :)
------
crb
There are two tiers of Twitter: the early-adopter tech users, who use third-
party API clients like Twitterific and Tweetbot, and everyone else.
The first bucket has a vastly different Twitter experience. As an API client
user I have no ads, no polls, no recommendations or friends likes, no "someone
you follow replied" experience. Just a timeline of who I choose to follow, the
blissful way it always was. No wonder they wanted to shut the API down.
(Apropos of nothing, the first bucket contains all the tech journalists.)
~~~
zippergz
I don't know if this is such a clean distinction. I have been on twitter since
the first 3-6 months that it existed as twitter, and I use the website and
first-party mobile apps. Are the ads and recommendations annoying? Yes. But
back when I used third-party apps (tons of them over the years, I think
starting with Twinkle, and then in some order Tweetie [which became the
official app], Tweetbot, Twitteriffic, and probably some I'm forgetting), the
experience was bad in lots of other ways. As native photos were added, they
didn't display right. As native retweets and quote tweets became a thing, they
didn't work. I imagine now with tweet threading, there was at least some gap
between the feature existing and the third-party apps supporting it.
Obviously it's a tradeoff, but I found the downsides of the official
experience to be less frustrating than the downsides of the third-party
experience.
------
scythe
I am slightly salty about this because I had complained about the same effect
on reddit with the red inbox — I disabled my own inbox years ago — but nobody
really cared.
It’s a more general case of advertising pollution. Just as it benefits
advertisers to make viewers uncomfortable and manipulate their attention,
Reddit and Twitter (and Facebook!) systematically display messages that make
users uncomfortable to get their attention, stimulate emotional vulnerability,
and create opportunities for marketers to step in with a palliative, “shopping
therapy”.
------
numbers
It might be just me but wow, it's really hard to read multiple tweets as a
timeline since I don't know where to start and where to end.
~~~
kevingadd
This is because they broke threading and the replies section for a tweet now
shows parent tweets. It's bizarre, and twitter breaks the replies view on a
regular basis and only notices weeks later. It's not just you.
------
noobermin
The magical step is the final step in the argument. The algorithm does seemt
to increase engagement altogether, but people's negativity bias will give more
weight in ones' mind to the harrassing comments. The algo does incentivize
replies it seems, which could potentially be negative, given people don't
reply to positive things beyond to like or RT them, so that's an argument in
their favor.
Of course, most people don't notice this. I've never had a post with more than
100 replies for example, so I would have never been aware of this.
------
ankushnarula
Why would an amoral view of user engagement be a surprise for a company's
whose goal is to show as many ads as possible?
And on top of all that, Twitter's own editorial team regularly stokes
political/cultural controversy by boosting non-issues in Twitter Moments and
Trending topics.
------
truculent
Gradient descent into hell
------
6gvONxR4sf7o
I'm not engaged in the twitterverse, so a lot of the jargon goes over my head.
Can someone translate what happened?
------
vqdwj
>The experience of having _made_ a viral tweet is The Worst Fucking Thing.
If you make a "viral tweet", don't read the replies. You have the tools to do
so, since Twitter allows you to mute a thread.
~~~
laughinghan
Most people use social media not with the intention of shouting into the void,
but with the intention of getting replies that they want to read, that they
then do read, and perhaps reply in turn.
If that's what usually happens, but sometimes randomly they get tons and tons
of replies that they _don 't_ want (as claimed by this post), that's an
interesting and noteworthy flaw that I've never seen specifically discussed.
~~~
nyuszika7h
You can also mute notifications from people who don't follow you / who you
don't follow, though it may not be desirable to keep it like that all the
time.
------
parliament32
"Creates harassment" is very misleading. Twitter has an algorithm that shows
high-interaction tweets to more people, that's it.
I'm usually the last to defend Twitter but this title is pure clickbait.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RockMelt: Netscape's Andreesen Backing Stealth Facebook Browser - peter123
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rockmelt_netscapes_andreesen_backing_stealth_facebook_browser.php
======
figital
It's more likely that Facebook (or Ning) would begin to dig into your desktop
(or Jetpack) versus the other way around.
(unless Rockmelt is itself a desktop shell replacement)
------
thunk
1) Connect 2) Nauseate me 3) _Go_
------
zandorg
A guy at a conference once called Marc 'Loudmouth'! As a joke on 'Loudcloud'.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
At least one Vim trick you might not know - appleflaxen
https://www.hillelwayne.com/post/intermediate-vim/
======
ilvez
Thanks. Found vim-swap and and vim-surround from there. Undotree also, but
this is some corner case when I usually need that.
Obviously I'm not a purist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Life before the web – Running a Startup in the 1980's - whyleyc
https://blog.zamzar.com/2016/07/13/life-before-the-web-running-a-startup-in-the-1980s/
======
martin-adams
I think what really makes me appreciate building a startup today compared to
the 80's is the low cost of entry.
They had to travel to editors of magazines to demo software, fax documents,
manage a toll free number and of course, distribute on physical disks.
Growth hacking in the 80s without the web and mobile was a very different
landscape.
------
whyleyc
My favourite fact - it took 185 person-months to develop PowerPoint for
Windows at a cost of $500,000 :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: iOS game teaching kids about Personal Finance - freshrap6
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mindblownlabs/mindblown-life
======
Killah911
The Project is pretty awesome, and the guys/gals on the project are hardcore
believers and doers. I just pitched in a little, hope this project and ones
like it gets lots of traction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The risks of someone calling you smart and how to avoid them - spodek
http://joshuaspodek.com/risks-calling-smart-avoid
======
arscan
Awhile ago I realized that it was extremely detrimental to think of myself
first and foremost as a "smart" person. Not because that self-image was
directly harmful to me in business/the real word (though I don't doubt that it
was), but because it reinforced very bad behavior on my part.
In order to protect my image of being smart, I would avoid situations where I
could make mistakes or appear less intelligent than I thought I was. And so I
wouldn't try new things, and I would stay away from any activities that could
"out" me as not actually being smart. Its really a vicious cycle, and the
result was that I was far less productive & useful than I should have been.
Now I try to project an image of being hard-working instead. It frees me from
having to constantly worry about messing up -- all that matters is that I get
the job done. And I think I'm much better for it.
~~~
taylorlb
It's great to hear someone talk about this. I've struggled with the same
situation my entire life. When I was a kid I was constantly told by adults how
bright I was, that I could do anything if I applied myself, and it became this
odd burden despite the clear advantages of whatever smarts I may possess.
I've always wondered what my adult life would be like if a different
perspective had been pushed on me as a child. Something different than 'you
should be doing this at this level because you're so bright, you can do X
without much effort even'. I'm hoping to not make the same mistake with my
child.
------
dfxm12
This article is conflating "calling someone smart" and "implying the person
has bad social skills".
If you have good social skills, they'll be evident as soon as you are
introduced to someone, no matter how you are initially described. Look that
person in the eye & shake their hand (or do whatever culture dictates you do).
That's more of an impression than what someone else says.
Even if the way you are described is what sticks out most, and your
intelligence is stronger than your social skills or experience, that does not
imply (and I really don't think most infer) that you have "negative" social
skills. You could have "good" social skills (or experience) that is just
outweighed by "excellent" intelligence, or even neutral social skills.
A sample comparison: When you say someone has a nice personality, is does
_not_ mean they're also ugly.
~~~
jessedhillon
You're talking about logical possibilities -- yes it is logically possible
that someone could be called smart when their best quality is actually tap
dancing. Author is talking about why people introduce you as the smart guy,
and not the friendly guy or the guy who gets shit done. Because they are
speaking a code, of sorts, in that they are attempting to portray you in a
positive light but your intelligence is actually not a highly-valued trait.
If, when asked "what did you think of that woman you saw last night?" your
response is that she has a nice personality then yes, people will assume she
is homely. If you were excited about her looks, your answer (it's assumed)
would've been about how attractive she is. Maybe you meant to describe her
personality irrespective of her looks, but that's not how people will
interpret your message.
Communicating is about talking to people in a way that they understand you. So
you could sit there cross-armed and insistent that you are not insinuating
anything against her looks, as there is no logical interpretation of your
statement which requires that conclusion. But, then, you would probably be the
person this post is most for.
------
rayiner
> In time I found being called intelligent didn’t help me in business.
Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Beyond a certain level of intelligence (which varies depending on your
industry--it can be very high in some fields) what helps you in business is
empathy: being able to assess what someone wants and being able to use the
analytical skills you do have to give them that.
~~~
eshvk
> Also won't help you get a date. The reasons are not uncorrelated.
Depends on the girl. Depends on you also. The label "Intelligent" as it
applies to tech is slightly correlated with other traits like social
awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked in a room looking at fast
moving flashing objects, inability to talk about anything else than those
things. Be interesting. Highlight decorrelation. Acquire dates.
> what helps you in business is empathy: being able to assess what someone
> wants and being able to use the analytical skills you do have to give them
> that.
Oh for sure, this is true even in Academia. I was supposed to go do my PhD
with a guy who was at the top of his field. Incredible mathematician/engineer.
Guy was an asshole. My research advisor at that time told me straight out that
he thought that would be a bad idea. Much later, I found out that every one of
his students left one year after. So he spends most of his days studentless,
publishing papers alone. This leads to lack of tenure: scaling of paper
publishing requires additional resources.
~~~
kazagistar
> The label "Intelligent" as it applies to tech is slightly correlated with
> other traits like social awkwardness, spending 8 hours of your room locked
> in a room looking at fast moving flashing objects, inability to talk about
> anything else than those things.
Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes
practice, and there are only so many hours in a day. There is a meme among
some circles of nerds that goes like "while they were drinking and partying in
high school and college, we were studying and acquiring skills". This is
totally wrong-minded: the people partying were acquiring skills too.
The important point for the awkward and unsociable to remember is that those
skills really are just skills, like any other; some people might be more or
less "talented", but no matter what you are still going to need practice. If
you spent your life exclusively acquiring abstract problem solving skills,
perhaps it is time to step back, and round out your skill set.
~~~
eshvk
> Because intelligence takes practice, and being interesting and social takes
> practice, and there are only so many hours in a day.
That is not an excuse for anything though. No one has enough time. Everyone
makes do. Heinlein's quote on what human beings should do is relevant here.
------
parfe
Do stats exist on the reasons YC start-ups failed? From my casual reading of
news.yc it seems most start-ups in general fail due to social shortcomings,
not failures from inability to solve technical issues.
The tech world in general has some bias against what it takes to be a social
person. See talks about meritocracy and engineers running the planet. There is
definitely a lack of respect for the effort and ability it takes to actually
deal with people, which is what most of life involves.
~~~
6ren
One seemingly unhelpful answer is that the only way a startup ever fails is by
the founders giving up.
But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling
politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give
up; never fail.
~~~
johnchristopher
> One seemingly unhelpful answer is that the only way a startup ever fails is
> by the founders giving up.
> But when you consider startups like AirBnB, who at one time were selling
> politician-themed breakfast cereal, maybe it is the simple truth. Never give
> up; never fail.
This is magical thinking.
------
OldSchool
I tend to agree; I wouldn't start a business at least solely with my most
intelligent acquaintances. I'd start a business with people who are
intelligent _enough_ , social, motivated, and perhaps slightly dysfunctional
and have something to prove. If you're a HN reader type, you don't need
another you in order to start a successful business, you need a !you.
~~~
gadders
There is definitely a law of diminishing returns in a lot of cases with
intelligence. People who are just that tiny bit too bright are, not to put to
fine a point on it, a bit strange.
99% of anything you want to achieve in business or life you need to work
through people to achieve, so people skills are just as important.
------
pnathan
This seems more of a rationalization of the fear of smart people. In its own
way, it even seems to celebrate the "jockish" ideal of the sociable but not
very smart person.
~~~
leoedin
I really don't think it does. I think the author rightly points out that while
intelligence (as we measure it - ie an ability to solve abstract problems) is
useful in particular situations (generally involving complicated technical
work), it's not the limiting factor which determines success in other areas. I
think the message to take away from this is that if people describe you as
"intelligent", you shouldn't rest on your laurels. Intelligence is just a
small part of the toolkit required to be successful in business.
The reality is that in the real world you _need_ other skills to succeed in
business. The article linked resonates with my experiences in large,
engineering dominated companies. Those who rise to the top do so not because
of their technical skills but because of their ability to work with people.
Those with poor social skills don't move up the hierarchy. Of course technical
skills remain important even up the chain - a project manager needs to be able
to understand what's happening below him - but there is far less need for the
ability to solve complicated or abstract problems.
Success is measured in a lot of ways, and this is just applied to business. In
other areas (perhaps academia, large companies which value techical work, open
source projects) intelligence correlates more directly with success.
------
riggins
Hmmm ... I'm pretty sure I've seen Elon Musk, Larry Page, Sergey Brin,
Sebastian Thrun, Marissa Mayer referred to as blindingly intelligent. Doesn't
seem to be a handicap.
Edit: upon further reflection, I think the operative statement is 'rocket
scientist'. I suspect that being introduced as a 'rocket scientist' is in fact
a handicap because 'rocket science' has a connotation of being a kind of
useless knowledge (i.e. what can you do with that). Other the other hand,
think about how people react to someone being introduced as a 'computer
genius'? Lots of people will find that very interesting because there are lots
of practical and profitable things you can do if you're a 'computer genius'.
~~~
rayiner
Without getting into the other people, I hear Musk being described as "ballsy"
or "visionary" far more often than I hear him being described as intelligent.
I think everyone assumes he is intelligent, but that's not the primary
characteristic people talk about.
~~~
riggins
[http://www.rankboards.com/](http://www.rankboards.com/)
my unscientific response.
------
sandycheeks
The root of the issue is in the reason that an entrepreneur is perceived of as
smart.
Clients who think you are smart because you provided them an excellent service
for less money than they think its value should be is good. I do data recovery
jobs that work out like this.
Clients who think you are smart because you provide a solution that causes
them to make a lot more money than they paid you is good. I do web
design/promotion jobs that increase conversions which seem to fall into this
category.
These are a completely different perception of smart than the kind generated
from books I wrote or public speaking that I've done. This is my experience as
an entrepreneur who may not be as smart as some people think YMMV.
------
jib
I would be worried if someone felt that "being intelligent" was a primary
ability of yours - not because others think it reflects badly on your other
abilities, but rather because it isn't an important ability in itself and I
expect that a part of being intelligent is realising that intelligence isnt
important in itself, it is just an ability that lets you make better use of
your other abilities, and that can also act as a proxy for some other
abilities (as in - you can use intelligence to simulate other, useful
abilities).
Stereotyping, there is a group of people who are convinced they are
intelligent and that it is important to be intelligent - those guys are
usually not actually that good at abstract problem solving. Someone who truly
is good at it tends to be more laid back about it, and wouldnt consider it a
big deal or important.
------
zhemao
> Not many parts of life need intelligence and those that do tend to be low-
> level areas where people work alone, like science and engineering
I'm sorry, what? Neither science nor engineering is a solo endeavor. You still
need to work with your colleagues if you want to succeed. Just think about it,
how many science or engineering papers have you read which only had one author
listed?
------
gadders
Do we think there is a correlation that works the other way? I.E if you are
very pleasant and socially skilled will people underestimate your
intelligence?
~~~
mumbi
Then there is the question that has to be asked: is it negative to have your
intelligence underestimated or can you use that belief to your benefit?
------
dclowd9901
I definitely don't have this problem, but if I did, I'm pretty sure it would
help me identify the kinda of people I'd want in my life.
------
yfefyf
I think dealing with people is much more harder than dealing with codes. Could
somebody tell me how to learn the social skills?
~~~
gadders
How to Win Friends and Influence People, although 80 years old and a bit corny
in places has a lot of wisdom.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influenc...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Win_Friends_and_Influence_People)
Also, when in a debate or argument with someone, focus on your end goal. Which
is more important - winning the argument (or saving face) or getting your
objective achieved?
~~~
vdaniuk
No, please do not recommend Carnegie. It is a fine specimen of cargo cult.
Much better is to learn psychology, courses are available free on Coursera,
Udacity and EDx.
~~~
gadders
I don't think it's a cargo cult at all. It gives actionable advice on how to
get along with people and not be a douchebag.
You can spend your time doing a psychology course, but I'm not sure that would
make you a more affable person.
------
duinobus
I gave up on this article half-way through. Author's use of grammar is
shocking.
~~~
gnoway
Maybe you just didn't understand it. Evidently the man is a rocket scientist,
after all.
------
mrcactu5
what about the risks of being called stupid??
------
michaelochurch
I agree. There are three issues here, all somewhat related.
First, there's flattery. An investor or boss who puffs you up with "you're
_so_ smart" is often trying to create a context where you feel embarrassed by
anything but a 120% effort. It works like a charm on the clueless, talented
young people that VCs love.
Second, there's validation as a show of power. When someone says of you, "this
guy is smart", what he might be saying is, " _I_ have the power to validate or
invalidate a person around here, and you're my guy-- if you keep in line."
Third, it can be a way of damning with faint praise. "He's smart" often means,
"he has so much _potential_ ", which always comes with an implicit "but". It's
much more effective to sabotage someone's reputation with continuing faint
praise than to come out with an obvious attack, which just makes you (if
you're the attacker) look like a bitter asshole. If you really want to ruin
someone's reputation, you always make it look like you're defending that
person (against negative social proof that comes "from the ether" because you
just made it up). It's like spreading a rumor by denying something. "He
clearly has issues with women but I doubt he's a rapist."
Then again, most of the time people are just saying what they think at face
value and there aren't any hidden motivations. I wouldn't read too much into
being called "smart". Often it means just that.
Still, it is a hard campaign to get out of the Smart Kid mentality (with all
the risk-averse mediocrity and approval-seeking that entails) and get more
toward a Maker mentality. It's taken me 30 years, and I still have to summon
the courage to, e.g., put something in open source. Ultimately, though, every
ex-"wunderkind" must learn that a Smart Kid is still just a kid. It's not
something to make a career out of.
------
mumbi
Just because you're smart or talented doesn't mean you're not naive. Investors
like naivety, just like record labels like naivety.
| {
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World’s First Carbon Fiber 3D Printer Announced - willwill100
http://3dprint.com/worlds-first-carbon-fiber-3d-printer-announced-the-mark-one
======
542458
Count me as skeptical. The strength of high-quality carbon fibre comes from
having many pieces of fibre woven together over the surface omnidirectionally
(Okay, I'm mostly wrong here - see below). This machine seems to simply lay it
down in a (more or less) continuous strand, which means that the fibres will
be cohesive rather than woven together. You can do this without a special
printer - all you need is some carbon fibre/pla filament [1]. My bet would be
that polycarbonate 3d printed parts [2] will be stronger that these pseudo
carbon-fibre parts in most situations.
For a pretty freaking cool view of how high-quality carbon fibre parts are
made check out this youtube link:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DLr8qHliI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4DLr8qHliI)
[1]: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375236253/proto-
pasta-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375236253/proto-pasta-
gourmet-food-for-your-3d-printer)
[2]: [http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/2-2lb-1kg-1-75mm-clear-
po...](http://www.makerfarm.com/index.php/2-2lb-1kg-1-75mm-clear-
polycarbonate-filament.html)
~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _The strength of high-quality carbon fibre comes from having many pieces of
> fibre woven together over the surface omnidirectionally._
No, not at all.
The strength of CFRP (carbon fiber reinforced polymer) comes from having very
long strands of carbon fiber, ideally as long as the whole piece, held
together by some polymer matrix such as epoxy resin. It also comes from having
a very high fiber-to-epoxy ratio in the final product, which is usually
achieved by squeezing out all the extra epoxy using vacuum while curing.
The length of the fibers, and the minimal amount of epoxy, is what makes CF
strong. Short fibers, and having too much epoxy matrix, weakens the composite.
There is a kind of extruded CF where short CF fibers are mixed with epoxy
matrix and extruded in the desired shape. This is strong compared to ordinary
plastic, but not as strong as long-fiber CF.
What you're describing is woven CF, and it's not the strongest there is. The
strongest CF pieces are made of unidirectional CF, where all fibers are
oriented in the direction of the main effort. E.g., CF tubes are strongest
when they are made of unidirectional CF, with fibers as long as the whole
tube.
Woven CF is a good compromise in that it's reasonably strong in several
directions in the plane of the CF cloth. Also, for CF tubes, an outer layer of
woven CF gives it a bit more resistance to splintering.
Another way to achieve multi-directional strength is by laying unidirectional
cloth alternatively in different directions. The piece will gain strength from
each unidirectional layer in a specific direction.
Most people recognize the classic "CF look" only when the top layer is woven.
Unidirectional CF cloth has a different look. This is why many CF items are
made of unidirectional cloth, with a single woven layer on top.
If this CF 3D printer can lay long-fiber CF, and can achieve a very high
fiber-to-epoxy ratio in the final product, then chances are the pieces
produced this way will be strong.
~~~
Timmmmbob
> The strongest CF pieces are made of unidirectional CF, where all fibers are
> oriented in the direction of the main effort.
You're confusing issues even further! To anyone who wants to actually
understand this:
Carbon fibre doesn't have a single "strength" value since it is virtually
always anisotropic - its strength varies massively depending on which
direction you stress it in.
GP is correct in that the carbon fibre weave with the best _minimum_ strength
is the 3D woven stuff which is very fancy and difficult to make, and not what
this printer makes.
The most common carbon fibre is 2D woven cloth which is laminated together
like plywood. It is strong in the directions of the fibres but can very easily
delaminate (the layers become unstuck). It's a pretty big problem for things
like the Boeing Dreamliner because the delaminations can be under the surface
and impossible to see.
CFRP tubes are often made with the fibres all running along the axis of the
tube, but it is then extremely weak in the circumferential direction and will
tend to split like bamboo.
~~~
marvin
Delaminated Dreamliner sounds like a maintenance person's worst nightmare.
Wouldn't you have to replace the entire part? Where "part" is wing, rudder or
fuselage.
~~~
a-priori
Replacing a defective part is no big deal, just incorporate an inspection of
the part into a regular maintenance window every X cycles (a 'cycle' is
usually one flight) and model its cost as an amortized per-cycle cost based on
its mean time to failure.
The problem is when it's difficult to know whether a part is defective.
Something like subsurface delamination might cause visible bubbling or
warping, but if it's deep enough then it may only be apparent on an ultrasound
or X-ray scan. That sort of scan might be more expensive than just replacing
the part regularly, and shipping it off to a factory to be inspected and
refurbished.
_That_ is a maintenance technician's worst nightmare: an expensive and bulky
part that fails in invisible ways, requiring either regular replacement or
time-consuming inspection with expensive equipment.
------
kyrra
The allure of carbon fiber in industry has to do with the properties of the
material that can be produced. Home made carbon fiber won't be all that great
of a material compared to what people see out in the world (on race cars,
planes, etc...). Production lines for producing commercial carbon fiber is
super expensive ($100 million+). Zoltek has a basic rundown of the process
[0].
[0] [http://www.zoltek.com/carbonfiber/how-is-it-
made/](http://www.zoltek.com/carbonfiber/how-is-it-made/)
~~~
scottdw2
That's the whole point.
It's disruptive technology: not as good, way more accessible.
~~~
fudged71
Yes exactly
[http://www.bhorowitz.com/can_do_vs_cant_do_cultures](http://www.bhorowitz.com/can_do_vs_cant_do_cultures)
------
lowglow
I was thinking about 3D printed supercars, (or cars for that matter) because
why not. I have a friend that works for Buell that informed me the industry
has been 3D printing porototypes for a while now. Rapid prototyping has been
something driving this field. He sent me this link:
[https://localmotors.com/press/releases/vehicle-design-
innova...](https://localmotors.com/press/releases/vehicle-design-innovator-
local-motors-signs-crada-with-ornl-to-enable-the-rapid-design-and-
manufacturing-of-vehicles-through-direct-digital-
manufacturing/?utm_source=Local%20Motors%20Community%20Newsletter&utm_campaign=0f58a4105f-Local_Mototrs_Community_Newsletter%3A%20June%2012&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_4c67861f15-0f58a4105f-294349853)
I've also been giving some thought in starting the worlds first 3D printed
furniture store.
------
return0
Please wait while your new bike is being printed.
~~~
lamby
You jest, but I'd be rather intrigued by aftermarket carbon farings for wheels
or to hide brakes from the wind.
~~~
mitchty
There is a lot of cool things you could do with something that prints out 20%
stronger than aluminum parts.
~~~
return0
Is it truly so? how does this process compare to carbon part manufacturing? (i
understand it involves some press/heating).
------
adamwong246
I'm holding out for 3d printed graphene.
~~~
moocowduckquack
get a lightscribe drive and some graphite oxide
~~~
adamwong246
I hypothesize that that technique will not work. Graphene molecules are flat,
only 1 atom thick. So while they are strong in 2 dimensions, once you start
stacking graphene vertically, it's just like a stack of paper. The layers
won't be nearly as strongly bonded vertically as they would be along the plane
of graphene. I think you would end up with a product the cleaves easily along
the layers of graphene. I'm pretty sure you going to need a 3 dimensional
arrangement of atoms.
~~~
moocowduckquack
I suspect it might if you doped the graphite oxide with something to muck up
the sheets a little and allow vertical bonds, perhaps a bit of boron.
------
buro9
This is the link you're looking for:
[http://markforged.com/](http://markforged.com/)
Product site, video, tech specs, pre-order, etc.
------
Glyptodon
With all the questions about epoxy content/ratio, I wonder if it might be
possible to take a page from the metal clay playbook and use a binder that
evaporates as it cures. Or maybe use one that's foam-like or frothy.
------
jaydub
Are there health risks associated with extruding carbon fibers? I was under
the impression that working with carbon fiber can be potentially harmful to
your health.
~~~
morcheeba
There are two types of risks:
\- epoxy sensitivity. Work with it too long (years) and you can become
allergic. I can't tell if this system uses epoxy as a binder; it doesn't seem
to because it would be messy.
\- inhaling carbon fiber dust. This dust is made when you cut it, not when you
lay it out. A 3d printer should put it in the right shape, so less cutting
would be required. You'll want to avoid breathing it in, but it's not
cancerous like asbestos:
[http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/inhaled_particle...](http://annhyg.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/inhaled_particles_VII/769.abstract)
------
beedogs
apropos of nothing, that floating social media bar in the middle of the page
on this site is _infuriating_.
------
abjorn
You had me at carbon fiber.
------
lhgaghl
It looks like a mac.
| {
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Mongoose - embeddable 40KB web server written in ANSI C - valyala
http://code.google.com/p/mongoose/
======
alperakgun
a tribute to d ritchie, the inventor of C and unix along with others.
| {
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Fast request routing using regular expressions - nikic
http://nikic.github.io/2014/02/18/Fast-request-routing-using-regular-expressions.html
======
sjtgraham
Are regular expressions are good choice for routing? A trie seems like a
better choice than a sequence of regexps. O(n) vs O(log n).
~~~
skj
Or, O(n^2) vs O(n log n).
~~~
skj
Now that I read the article, seems like they're merging all the regexps into
one, which really could be O(n). However, the trie will not be O(log n). You
have to at least look at every character in the input, so there's a hard O(n)
lower bound.
~~~
sjtgraham
You're confusing n size of route set, with k length of the path to be matched.
With a trie the worst case running time to match a route grows O(log n) with
an array of regexps it's O(n). The length of a path string to be matched is
independent of how many routes are in the route set.
~~~
amalcon
In theory, the combined regex could be O(1) in the size of the route set.
Of course, in practice it's not. PCRE is backtracking-based rather than
automaton-based, so increasing the complexity of the regex does have an effect
on runtime.
~~~
jerf
Which probably means we should be using a NFA-based engine for routing, rather
than PCRE, because I don't think "don't backtrack" is a very serious
restriction for routing. (Yes, of the hundreds of developers who may read
this, one of them may have used backtracking in a routing expression. But in
general I don't think it's that serious a restriction.)
------
joosters
It's a shame that the regex API doesn't seem to provide a way to indicate
which part of a (?:foo|bar|...) matched. The underlying regex code must know
this. A large part of the article is coming up with workarounds to solve this
problem.
~~~
JadeNB
> It's a shame that the regex API doesn't seem to provide a way to indicate
> which part of a (?:foo|bar|...) matched. The underlying regex code must know
> this.
As lmm points out (I think), one can get a big advantage precisely by _not_
requiring the regex code to know this. (Regexes are 'really' DFAs, and a DFA
that makes it to its start state not just _does_ not but _can_ not know how it
got there.) The more power one gives regexes, the less, well, regular they
are, and the slower they become to match.
~~~
_delirium
A DFA can give you more than just a yes/no decision, though sometimes they're
narrowly defined as only machines that give yes/no decisions. But if you have
multiple accept states and number or label the states, a DFA can report not
only 'accept' but 'accept' plus the label of the accepting state (this could
be seen as a special case of a Moore machine, in which you only care about the
last output).
You'd have to compile the DFA differently, of course. A really simple version
would just compile each alternation into its own DFA separately, and then
chain them together with "try each in sequence". That's still a DFA, so it's
not a matter of a different class of computations, though it's often slower by
a constant factor (due to not being able to share any information between the
alternations when matching them).
~~~
JadeNB
Good point: a DFA can do _exactly_ what joosters asked, namely, distinguish
between "matched regex '(a|b)' to input 'a'" and "matched regex '(a|b)' to
input 'b'". However, it may be worth noting—as I'm sure you know, but others
may not—that there is no way for even a juiced-up DFA to say, for example, how
many a's were actually in the input when the regex is 'a * ' (spaces to fool
the Markdown processor).
P.S. I might as well mention that I obviously meant to refer to a DFA reaching
its end, rather than start, state.
------
lmm
Fast until you hit the catastrophic backtracking problem, and then your
routing code spins indefinitely. I've hit a production issue of this form.
For this kind of problem you need to use actual regular expressions, not
Perl's bastardization of the concept. Or produce your own DFA - it's not as
hard as it looks, and gives you a much better idea what's going on.
~~~
nikic
You won't hit catastrophic backtracking problems with the types of regular
expressions you need for routing.
Even if you do use some very weird expression, the worst that can happen is
that you hit the backtracking limit and a route fails to match because of
that. There won't be any code spinning indefinitely.
------
jheriko
its interesting to see this. i don't often use regular expressions but for the
most general case of this problem they are a good fit - however the specific
example given, and most real world cases i imagine can be optimised further by
doing away with regex altogether and using more traditional lookup and
transformation approaches.
the example given can determine the route required by everything following
/user/ \- in the case that the 7th character of the string is a digit then we
have the last case - all that remains to distinguish the other two is to count
the number of slashes - if you want to distinguish bad matches then validating
the extracted values will be necessary too. of course this kind of logic fails
to scale to the general case - but for real world optimisation i can imagine
it being much more fruitful (possibly you could do a match like i described
faster than the regex function will parse its own input string before doing
any matching at all!)
there is the smell of a very classical problem here though - "guess
optimising". optimisation should be driven by measurement - identify the slow
part then optimise it. timings that show the performance of the solutions
overall are interesting and prove the point - but what would be more
interesting imo would be 'this was the hot spot (point at timing), therefore i
was right (point at new timing)'.
------
adamtj
ctrl+f tree
No results.
The chunking seems like a missed opportunity. It still uses a loop, so it's
still O(n) in the number of routes. That is, 200 routes will take twice as
long. 1000 routes will take 10 times as long. But maybe 100 routes is all we
ever see in reality?
Regardless, it's a small leap from that to using a tree. I would like to have
seen timings for that, and for larger numbers of routes.
Building a trie from a list of strings is trivial. Building one from a list of
regexes is not. But you don't need the complexity of inspecting or
interpreting the regexes.
With a regular binary tree, you'll need to compile multiple regexes. The root
is a regex with all urls in only two groups: (a|b|c|d)|(e|f|g|h). If the first
group is non-empty, then you move to the next node: (a|b)|(c|d). If the second
group is non-empty, then you try (c)|(d). If the first group of that is non-
empty, then the url was c. That should be O(k * log n) where k is the length
of the url and n in the number of urls.
The grouping method requires 10 regex matches for 100 routes. 2^10 == 1024, so
the tree method can do 10 times more routes in about the same amount of work.
A million routes with a tree is only twice as hard as a thousand, or twice as
hard as a hundred with chunking. A million routes with chunking in 10,000
times harder than a hundred.
On the other hand, the tree requires O(n * log n) memory, where n chunks of
constant size requires only O(n) memory. Perhaps that's significant.
edit: misplaced asterisks triggered italics.
edit2: Actually, you don't even need to add or check groups. At each node you
only need to combine half the regexes into one with no outer group. For
example, the top node regex from above could be just a|b|c|d. If it matches,
go to the left node (which is just a|b). If it doesn't match, go to the right
node (which is just e|f). As an edge case, the right-most tip node will all
need to have a regex to distinguish between it and non-matching urls. This
also makes it easier to dynamically add routes without recompiling the whole
tree. Just add the route to the right side of each node, which requires no
work until you get to the rightmost tip. Occasionally rebalance. Is
dynamically modifying the routes something that people do?
~~~
adamtj
Or how about this: a single regex, but with groups that you can walk like a
tree:
(((a)|(b))|((c)|(d))) | (((e)|(f))|((g)|(h)))
The number of groups will be O(n * log n). So 10-20 times the number of urls
at most. It's certainly not quadratic.
The groups will in depth-first order. It's slightly complicated by the fact
that the regexes contain capturing groups themselves, but you can precompute
an offset table that accounts for them.
Or give each tree-group a name:
(?<0>(?<00>(?<000>a)|(?<001>b))|(?<01>(?<010>c)|(?<011>d))) |
(?<1>(?<10>(?<100>e)|(?<101>f))|(?<11>(?<110>g)|(?<111>h)))
If you use names like that, walking the tree is easy. Just concatenate "0" or
"1" to the current node node to find the child nodes. Also, the final matching
group name is a binary number corresponding to matching route's index into the
list of routes. For example, url "e" has the name "100". That's a binary 4,
which is url "e"'s position in the list.
------
jeremymcanally
I built a router like this for Rails back in the 2.3 era. It was ridiculously
fast for small route sets, but as the sets grew, the standard approach was
actually faster. If your route set is small and routing is a bottleneck,
though, this approach might work for you. :)
(I don't know how it would stand up against Journey, the Rails 4 router
business. I imagine it's only gotten faster so there may be next to no gain)
~~~
nikic
Did you read on to the end? I also had the problem that performance degraded
with large route sets, but resolved it by matching in chunks of ten routes.
------
tlarkworthy
Oh that is so neat how you bundle the whole thing up and then extract which
one was hit! Bravo at exploiting the significant regex compiling technology to
the max. That's one trick that I will remember.
------
zimpenfish
That's a nice clear exposition of the thought process which most of us would
go through to (eventually) get a decent solution.
------
adnam
This ... is insane
~~~
rjbond3rd
Why?
~~~
adnam
Because it would be a nightmare to maintain.
~~~
nikic
It's not like you're writing the regular expressions and lookup tables per
hand. You write the routes in whatever format you deem nice and it's
automatically translated from there ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What To Do With Failed Startup IP? - terpua
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/05/06/what-to-do-with-failed-startup-ip/
======
wheels
This is something that I've debated a lot personally. I've thought of setting
up an arrangement similar in spirit to the FreeQt agreement between KDE e.V.
and Trolltech (<http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php>). On the
one hand, it gives customers some assurance that in the case of integrating
with your product and it going belly-up that they've still got a means of
using the technology; on the other it means that some of your own customers
would be rooting for you to fail.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
All Your Tomcat Are Belong to Bad Guys? - SanderMak
http://www.symantec.com/connect/blogs/all-your-tomcat-are-belong-bad-guys
======
bediger4000
Another clickbait title. All the article describes is a JSP with a backdoor,
and maybe some worm-like features.
I think all the "X is a Brand New Malware!" type articles, especially those
from vendors with skin in the game, are just propaganda. "Yes, you Linux
people need to run Symantec, too!" I suppose that's true for Windows malware,
but it's a lot more out in the open for Linux malware.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Memento: Adding time to the web - coderintherye
http://www.mementoweb.org/
======
lucasjung
If widely adopted, this could be very useful for holding politicians,
corporations, government agencies, or other powerful/influential/public
individuals/groups accountable for their statements. It is common practice for
such entities to change their websites and then act like their new positions
or opinions were the ones they had held all along. We already have tools (e.g.
Google's cache) catching weasely acts like this, but a tool like this would
make the job a whole lot easier.
Unfortunately, it looks like it only works if the website's owner implements
the framework, and the weasels have very little incentive to do so.
~~~
nowarninglabel
Well there is always the internet archive as well, check it out:
<http://www.archive.org/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GIMP development - What’s the point? - unwind
https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-developer-list/2016-September/msg00019.html
======
pmoriarty
People whining about GIMP not being as good as PS don't appreciate what life
was like on Linux before GIMP existed, or how primitive GIMP was when it first
came out.
GIMP has advanced leaps and bound over what it once was.
I remember for ages PS fans were complaining about how GIMP had a multiple
window layout, and how unnecessarily complex that was, and they wanted a
single window layout. So the _volunteers_ who work on GIMP eventually came out
with a single window layout.
I'm not a PS user, but I heard that around that time PS changed to a multi-
window layout. Whether that's true or not, now I hear complaints from some
users that GIMP is not any good because it doesn't have a multi-window layout
(not realizing that changing it to multi-window layout is as simple as
unchecking "Single-window mode" under the "Windows" menu). Give me a break!
Some people will never be satisfied and will never appreciate the hundreds or
thousands of man hours of _free_ work that GIMP developers have poured in to
this product.
Could it be improved? Of course! Anything can. Should they strive to make it
better? Yes. Feature requests and help are great. But indignant insults coming
from people who didn't pay for the development of the product, who don't
contribute any of their own time to make it better, and who clearly don't
appreciate the massive achievement that GIMP is just take the cake. GIMP
developers must have skins of steel to put up with this crap year in and year
out.
~~~
tomtomtom777
For professional use, how _does_ modern GIMP compare to modern PS?
~~~
aikah
It can't. If you work in the industry you'll be expected to use a specific
format (.psd). I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest
version of Photoshop in Gimp. The graphic design industry is one of these
industries that have been completely monopolized by a single vendor.
I liked Macromedia approach with Fireworks, which didn't require the software
in order to preview what a project looked like since it used PNG format. All
Macromedia tools have since then been flushed down the toilets by Adobe. There
is something Macromedia achieve with the notion of "community" that Adobe was
never able to do.
~~~
lucb1e
> I'm pretty sure you can't open a file created with the latest version of
> Photoshop in Gimp.
I'm pretty sure you can, and you can see all the layers and stuff. Editing
though, if I remember correctly, is either extremely limited or non-existent.
Still, when someone gave me a psd I had little hope of opening it at all, yet
GIMP displayed it perfectly. That exceeded expectations already, just too bad
that I couldn't edit. But then again, it's better than buying an expensive
product line just to view a file.
> The graphic design industry is one of these industries that have been
> completely monopolized by a single vendor.
Exactly, which is one which is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of GIMP and
Paint.NET for when people simply don't need photoshop. They often don't, but
ask for it anyway, get used to it and then want to keep using it. This is
about adults as well as teens who are still in high school and who might later
go on to work as designers, and then can only work with photoshop.
------
WhitneyLand
Sorry to say I don't think GIMP is the best example of a great FLOSS project.
Many other projects are very competitive (or better) than commercial options
but GIMP is not even close.
They just released support for 16bit/32bit/c color last year which is needed
for so many scenarios.
The unified transform tool mentioned as a highlight is really a pretty simple
thing to code.
They are 5-10 years behind what you get in PS for $10/month. It's a killer for
any professional have tools that far behind their peers.
The UX has always been poor and unnecessarily complicated. I resent the
implication it's the user's fault for not taking time to learn. There are many
examples of complex professional systems that prove a decent UX is still
possible.
~~~
6DM
Edit: [Deleted]
I'm sorry, but I don't find the tool intuitive. I ran into issues using it. I
installed fresh copy and tried steps commenters suggested and it worked well.
However this was not my experience a mere two days ago.
~~~
pmoriarty
Cropping is a "HUGE pain"? Are you kidding me?
1\. Rectangle select.
2\. Image -> Crop to selection.
How much simpler can you get?
~~~
MildlySerious
Exactly. I found myself using GIMP for exactly those "quick" scenarios because
PS, especially before CS6, was just bulky and overcomplicated.
GIMP: Roughly select something, zoom in to make it pixel-perfect, see the size
of the selection in the bottom left, and just drag until it fits your need.
PS? Roughly select something. Figure out the size of the selection. Zoom in.
Dig into the menu.. Transform selection? Adjust. What's the size now? .. Nope,
thanks. I am done 5 times over in GIMP by the time I did that.
I get that GIMP is not perfect, but some people treat like the PHP of graphics
software.
~~~
reitanqild
Complaining about php is like complaining about an axe:
Yes, it might hurt incompetent people but the people who master it have a
truly nifty tool at their disposal.
~~~
FatalBaboon
Complaining about PHP is sanity of someone who learned more than one language.
~~~
reitanqild
As someone who has coded in c, java, javascript (before it was cool), perl,
python, visual basic I still see a clear niche for php even though I don't use
it anymore.
~~~
rbanffy
Indeed. It's just that it's not a good language (like Visual Basic).
------
newscracker
Before reading that email, I had a different thought about the title "GIMP
development, what's the point?" In a time before touchscreen mobile devices
and apps came into the picture, people who were somewhat serious about image
editing would use GIMP or a pirated copy of Photoshop. There were also a few
other applications, free and paid, with a much more limited set of features
(but have improved over time).
With touchscreen devices and apps, image editing, or rather, photo editing,
has become more about using different apps for different specific use cases,
and using filters and other "preset" tweaks along with additional adjustments
if at all necessary. This is nowhere close to the power that GIMP offers for
someone who knows how to use it and what can be done with it. But it is
adequate for most people and is easy to use. In this respect, the title
question could become more widespread as people hear less about GIMP.
After reading the mail and the comments here, another thing that occurred to
me about the title is that projects like GIMP, LibreOffice, etc., (and even
Linux, GNOME, KDE, etc.) show themselves as phenomenal highlights of what
truly free and open source software can be and serve as a great inspiration
for others to embark on such really complex and multi-decade work in other
areas. _A GIMP developer is contributing to much more than GIMP alone if you
look at side effects. It 's a world that couldn't have been imagined several
decades ago._
I believe the developers who have contributed to these projects and continue
to do so should be extremely proud of their commitment to FLOSS and the amount
of work they have put in. Yes, some FLOSS applications may have deficiencies
in features, stability, performance and other areas (which many commercial
applications do too). But questioning the dedication of developers or asking
for the justification of efforts spent by developers who're working with the
FLOSS principles is completely missing the point in the overall scheme of
things, and worse, missing the benefits enjoyed by and made available to
humankind as a whole.
------
finchisko
I use GIMP exclusively. Last time it allowed me to turn SVG animation into
GIF. It literally took few seconds to complete. Many people bitch about GIMP,
but like in arcticle, they just trying to hide their laziness to learn new
things. I've nothing against them, but one thing, most of them in my circles
are using pirate copy of Photoshop instead free GIMP. Some of them arguing
about RBG/CMYK missing in GIMP, but most of them does not even know that.
~~~
louhike
Gimp is great if you're not a designer or exclusively a web designer.
Otherwise, CMYK is a huge deal as it is the only way to go if you want to
print something at a professional printer (not sure about the term).
~~~
the_af
Is there a way to add decent CMYK support to GIMP? Is it technically
unfeasible, or is it something the main devs are simply uninterested in?
~~~
dagw
[http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-
desktop-...](http://www.gimp.org/docs/userfaq.html#i-do-a-lot-of-desktop-
publishing-related-work-will-you-ever-support-cmyk)
there is however some cmyk support currently if you need it:
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GIMP/CMYK_support)
~~~
enobrev
Thanks for this. I was very happy to read that they're making non-destructive
editing a priority.
> Things like non-destructive editing are required by pretty much all users —
> photographers, designers, desktop publishing engineers, and even scientists.
> At the same time, CMYK is required only by a small subset of our user base.
> We prioritize our work accordingly.
------
hitekker
Stories about an eloquent, suave believer enlightening a misguided, clearly-
in-the-wrong naysayer may sometimes be true, but never very convincing.
> In this case, I opted to give the fireworks/show. My weapons of choice this
> time included the unified transform tool, the handle-transform tool, and the
> warp transform tool
Which prompts the leering, misinformed troglodyte to consider the error of his
ways, to "imagine the possibilities". Ahh, man.
Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in my
view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e., your
product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers.
~~~
sjellis
> Having used GIMP and Photoshop, the practical point of GIMP development, in
> my view, is to provide a baseline for other graphic editing software: i.e.
> your product's quality cannot drop below what GIMP offers.
I think that this is one of the important things that Open Source software
does, generally - it provides a steadily rising baseline of functionality that
is freely available to everyone.
LibreOffice is another product that's often considered not as good as the
leading proprietary product, but as long as it exists and gets better with
every release, it will benefit everybody, including Microsoft Office users.
~~~
Nihilartikel
I like that perspective. They're the 'Public Option' that keeps the commercial
offerings on their toes :)
------
enobrev
I appreciate GIMP for what it is, and use it on the occasion that I can't
quickly do what i need with ImageMagick or pixlr. But I'd gladly pay for
Photoshop and other Adobe tools if they compiled natively on linux.
One problem with the characterization implied in [a,b] is that it ignores the
impossibility of opening a file correctly and completely that was originally
compiled in a tool that's been the industry standard for well beyond my own
years (I got started on Photoshop 4 in 1996 - the first Windows release, and
before then, Paint Shop Pro).
Literally not a single designer I've worked with in the last 15 years as a
professional has ever even considered using GIMP (most don't know it exists).
So if they want to send me their "source", it's in a PSD. And said source is
going to be huge with layer effects / cropping / transitions, and all sorts of
advanced Photoshop-specific things applied.
And I'll open that file in GIMP - I try at least once a year - and it will
show maybe 5-10% of the layers and will look nothing like the original. And
then I'll fire up Windows in a VM and actually get work done.
As for starting my own projects in GIMP, I fall squarely into group "a", and I
feel no shame for it.
a) User has tried GIMP, but didn't take time to learn enough to get past things that aren't obvious.
b) User has heard that GIMP is hard to use, and is not an adequate tool for professionals.
~~~
davexunit
You blame GIMP for not opening PSDs correctly, but note that it's _not_ an
open format and it's not a standard. GIMP developers can do nothing but try to
reverse engineer support for it.
~~~
yoklov
You can go through a convoluted process to get the documentation for the
standard from Adobe (Someone where I used to work did this so we could add
support for PSD to a game engine). I'll concede that that's unpalatable, and
that it's probably something you need to do regularly as PSD does get updates.
I'll also concede that its considerably easier to open a pdf for display vs
for editing, and maybe all the info for the latter isn't there in the docs.
Its also not a fun format to work with as its grown organically over many,
many years.
All that said, GIMP usually bungs up the colors which makes it pretty
unsuitable even for opening a psd for view. This shouldn't be acceptable at
all.
(Sorry, I haven't had enough coffee yet to make this into a coherent point
instead of a few random thoughts...)
~~~
Someone
_" You can go through a convoluted process to get the documentation for the
standard from Adobe"_
I doesn't look complete to me (there's lots of things just marked 'obsolete'
that, I guess, one will encounter in the wild, and things like "Macintosh
printer record" that I fear you'll have to dig up tech notes from the '80s
for), but it seems that has improved a bit, as there is information available
for free at adobe.com now, whereas you needed to sign an NDA to get the SDK
before: [https://www.adobe.com/devnet-
apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml...](https://www.adobe.com/devnet-
apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/) (via
[http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop.html](http://www.adobe.com/devnet/photoshop.html))
------
C-Rogers
Hey, I'm C.Rogers, the original poster of this thankyou note that's got
everyone bashing GIMP against Photoshop... which entirely misses the point of
it. People seem hell-bent on comparing GIMP to Photoshop, saying they don't
compare. Well, it's easy to say that isn't it? I came from 13+ years of
Photoshop experience, with about 7 of those used in the professional world.
I've since packed on another near decade using GIMP (at first in conjunction
with Photoshop), I have since replaced Photoshop entirely in my professional
work, and I use it every day. The biggest thing stopping professionals from
using GIMP is the erroneous notion that it can't be used for the same
professional tasks as Photoshop. I'm half tempted to start a YouTube channel
called GIMP SUCKS, and fill it with screencaptures of my graphics work done
entirely in GIMP. That's not just magazine adverts, that's billboards, that's
convention booths, it's over 100 new products of my own design, and nearly
20,000 product photos. So please, if you have something specific to complain
about, go post a bug report, or a wishlist item like a decent human being.
Repeating over and over that GIMP can't replace Photoshop for professional
work doesn't make it any more true. Here's some eye-candy for the nay-sayers:
[https://goo.gl/UwxEGp](https://goo.gl/UwxEGp)
------
qwertyuiop924
What's the point?
It's a helpful question for narrowing your focus, but at the end of the day,
there isn't always one, and it needn't be a lofty philosophical goal.
Did the MDL team need a point to develop Zork? Did Thompson need a business
reason to write UNIX? Did the AI lab ever justify extending TECO far beyond
its original intent, into the first version of EMACS?
Sometimes, although not all the time, "because I can" is reason enough.
~~~
the_af
"Because I can" is of course a valid reason, but having a better goal is more
motivating, especially if it's a team instead of a single person.
I believe GIMP does have a better goal than "just because", and in my mind it
is achieving it. I'm not a graphics designer and therefore I have the luxury
of not being locked-in with Photoshop's advanced features; therefore all my
image manipulations are done using GIMP, Krita and/or Inkscape. I congratulate
all those teams on a job well done.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Oh, of course. It's just that I don't think that "what's the point?" is as
significant a question as many believe it is.
------
pjc50
Surely the 'point' of GIMP development is that the market leading tool
(Photoshop) is closed source, not available on Linux, and relies on its
dominant market share to make people pay monthly for it?
------
sontek
I _LOVE_ GIMP!
GIMP is a great competitor to photoshop. It misses a lot of the shortcuts that
photoshop has introduced to make editing easier/quicker but I've always been
able to do everything I needed to do even if it takes more steps.
What the opensource community is missing is a sketch alternative. Application
developers have moved to it for rapid design and photoshop has taken the
backseat.
GIMP is not comparable to sketch. Sketch has changed the way the design world
thinks / works.
------
bobajeff
Gimp is wonderful software. It's really amazing all of the work that's been
done with it.
I fully respect all of the work developers have put into open source art
creation tools/libraries. Blender, Gimp, InkScape, Krita, G'MIC etc. are
incredible pieces of software and if more people spent time to explore,
celebrate and contribute to these efforts there is no way any commercial
product could keep up.
------
omouse
There's an excellent book published by No Starch Press that's full of ways to
use GIMP. It's excellent because it is as comprehensive as the older Adobe
Photoshop books that people used to buy.
~~~
clishem
Here's a link for convenience:
[https://www.nostarch.com/gimp](https://www.nostarch.com/gimp)
------
typetypetype
There is a great lesson in this. The temptation to upgrade, improve, add, and
tweak is very strong, but putting those things through the "what's the point"
test could really help focus on what's important.
------
ravenstine
GIMP is wonderful and I've gotten away without using Photoshop because of it
for over 10 years. Sure, I'm not a graphics designer, but GIMP really isn't
made for professional graphic designers. I just wish that the plugin community
around GIMP didn't slow down so much, and that GEGL would eventually be 100%
implemented(meaning actual CMYK, non-destructive filters, etc). I know that
GEGL is kinda there, but it's not fully there still after over 6 years. What
may give GIMP a huge edge over Photoshop one day is if it can be ported to the
browser with Emscripten.
------
hiphopyo
I prefer Photoshop for the UI, but boy are those Elsamuko plugins something.
------
weerd
A big thanks to the GIMP devs for providing us with a powerful image editor!
It's one of my favorite tools on Linux. I'm currently using it for gradient
generation and texture editing for a game. Obviously PS is king in this
domain, but the "point" is that many people don't need the full corporate lab
when the garage workshop will do.
------
billconan
I would like to give another try of GIMP later today.
I remember the first time I tried GIMP. The user experience wasn't good. After
knowing you had to double click a button to toggle it, I immediately dropped
GIMP.
I also had bad experience with gdk as a developer. I remember it didn't have
an installer on windows, and it needed so many dependencies. Getting all the
required dlls was a huge pain. Whereas Qt is always nice and easy with good
documents.
gdk didn't seem to have a native mac backend. It needs XQuartz, which I don't
like. I don't want to install X windows on mac, doesn't make sense. The fact
that gimp is under gnome worried me.
Doing image processing software is difficult, but making the ui of it should
be relatively easier. GIMP might be strong at processing images, but its ui
was really messed up I think.
But I will try again to see if there is any improvement.
------
unixhero
I am a Krita fan. It's taken the throne of all my graphics creation and
modification needs. [https://krita.org/en/download/krita-
desktop/](https://krita.org/en/download/krita-desktop/)
------
Annatar
Long time GIMP user here. I use GIMP because my Solaris 10 install came with
it, and for no other reason (I also used it on IRIX). Some software is just so
bad, that it cannot even be given away for free; GIMP is one such example, as
the interface is horrible.
------
nadezhda18
I am surprised nobody talked about Text tool and action recording.
I also use Photoshop CS2 (which Abobe started giving away about 3-4 years
ago), and oh boy is its Text tool much more advanced. CS2 was released in 2005
and the latest version of Gimp (2.8.10) still cannot compare :( From my point
of view, working with text is a pain in Gimp :(
Also, action recording - I think it is a highly valuable feature for anyone
who processes at least 1 photo a week. It seems now so inefficient to repeat
the same 4-5 steps again and again and again.
------
equivocates
the point of developing gimp is to eventually change its name.
------
hyperion2010
I've used gimp for years and only recently did I discover that Script-Fu is
actually an embedded Scheme. Happy day for automation.
~~~
Grue3
Yeah, people blab about how Photoshop is better, but can it be programmed in
Lisp? Yeah, didn't think so.
------
jasonkostempski
"because I know such comments usually come from one of two places"
I would expect such comments to usually come from c) User feels the industry
uses Adobe and, even if GIMP matched up feature for feature, it's pointless to
learn it. I don't like to think that way myself but I've certainly felt that
way at times.
~~~
throwanem
Or possibly from d) User has actually attempted to use GIMP in a professional
context and found it severely lacking. But that's not something a just-so
story can easily answer, so I'm not surprised to see it excluded here.
------
gilrain
To be honest, the name is really embarrassing and immature. I've always felt
weird when I used it, and I don't like mentioning it in conversation as a
result. Krita has momentum and many other advantages, not least of which is an
appealing name.
------
nnain
Lot of very fancy photographers use GIMP exclusively. It's more about the
workflow (and marketing). If you're used to GIMP, you won't find Photoshop all
that easy and vice versa.
------
MicroBerto
Not sure what he's talking about (Warp stuff) since I'm a GIMP amateur, but he
should make a YouTube video of his finest 3-minute GIMP presentation then.
------
jkot
Gimp source code is pretty old. Adding stuff like 16/32 bit support is not
easy.
On other side Krita is newer, uses QT, is developing faster etc..
------
noja
I'd like to see these features demonstrated too, without meeting a gimp
developer. Maybe they could do a better job of that.
~~~
pmoriarty
These are brand new features of the new, unstable, development version of
GIMP. There hasn't been a lot of time to make tutorials on them yet. I still
found a video tutorial one warp transform tool[1], but it's in German. It
looks simple enough not to even need a tutorial, though.
The GIMP team could always use some help in developing tutorials. So if you
want to volunteer, I'm sure your help would be appreciated.
[1] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHWft62sj44)
------
llvihearsevil
GIMP does suffer from a Pied Piper issue. The developer shouldn't have to
teach a user how to use his program.
------
mixmastamyk
gimp has handled all my image processing needs for a two? decade(s) and done
it easily, thanks.
------
bitwize
The GIMP team doesn't seem interested in working with professional designers,
and professional designers are too content with Photoshop to work with the
GIMP team.
Just use Photoshop. Cowboy up and buy the fucking software.
------
_pmf_
> In such cases I have to push down my annoyance with the tone
Don't. This would have deserved a rude answer.
------
CletusTSJY
Maybe if he could sit down with every potential user of GIMP I could
sympathize. But the truth is when I sit down to do anything in GIMP, my
frustration grows and grows. I've spent dozens of hours using it and it still
leaves me in agony every time.
------
imaginenore
After all these years GIMP still sucks. They waste time on developing features
of low importance, while critical ones are still not solved.
Prime case: opening RAW files. The current suggested workflow is to use a 3rd
party plugin UFRaw. Would you like to see the process of installing it on
Windows?
[http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html](http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Install.html)
(Ctlr+F for "MS-Windows for geeks")
And then I see arrogant posts like that, claiming that GIMP is perfectly
capable. It absolutely is not. GIMP will become popular when GIMP developers
start thinking about the modern photographer's workflow. Till then people will
keep pirating Photoshop.
~~~
vidarh
What is critical to you is not to me, and vice versa. E.g. I have never in my
life needed to work with RAW files. I have also never in my life needed to
manipulate graphics on Windows.
I understand that is frustrating, but this is one of the challenges of open
source - the contributors can make choices without caring about attracting
customers.
~~~
pwinnski
Which is absolutely their right--but then they don't get to post smug messages
about how people are just too dumb to understand how great their project is.
I see a lot of messages justifying _why_ GIMP meets the needs of so very few,
but none of that changes the fact that GIMP seems to meet the needs of very
few.
------
CyberDildonics
I haven't used a direct image editor in a very long time and I don't think I'm
missing anything.
Digital Fusion is free. Houdini Indie is $200. Nuke is available for linux.
These are all node based work flows that don't destroy anything. You don't
have to undo because you create a graph of operations without changing your
source directly. They aren't useful for painting directly with a tablet, but
anything else they do very well at.
~~~
technomalogical
Did you mean Design Fusion, from Blackmagic?
~~~
CyberDildonics
It used to be Digital Fusion before Blackmagic bought it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hard Problems – The Road to the World's Toughest Math Contest (2006) [video] - jimsojim
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvroykxedDw
======
heinrichf
Here is the website of the movie for background information
[http://www.hardproblemsmovie.com/](http://www.hardproblemsmovie.com/).
------
xyz09
Funny how most guys in that video are in the bay area currently (stanford phd,
or bay area tech company)
~~~
heinrichf
What I find most interesting is to see where math PhDs from top universities
and IMO medalists end up 10 years later.
The blog post [http://andrewgelman.com/2015/03/17/1980-math-olympiad-
progra...](http://andrewgelman.com/2015/03/17/1980-math-olympiad-program-now/)
does that for the 1980 american IMO team (among which Noam Elkies): academia,
finance, software engineering...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I've used Amazon's text-to-speech API to create voice-over for my video - rayalez
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGx-IVI3Cg8
======
rayalez
I have trouble speaking, I don't really like my voice and accent, so I decided
to try using Amazon Polly and see if it helps me to create a watchable video.
It ended up working surprisingly well. I have used reveal.js to generate
slides, and PhantomJS to automatically render them into images. Then I've
edited them together using Kdenlive. The entire process of turning my article
into a video took a couple of hours.
I think it turned out pretty cool and I figured I'd share it with you guys.
It's imperfect, but it's really impressive how far text-to-speech engines have
come.
At this point it still probably makes more sense to spend $10-$20 on fiverr to
create a professional voiceover, but I can totally see how in the near future
it would be possible to automatically generate high quality videos.
I think I'm onto something here, maybe I'll make a SaaS tool out of this. Very
cool stuff.
~~~
ineedasername
Fascinating. Is the api simply text-in to audio-out, or can the text be marked
up for composable with something like SSML? The ability to insert appropriate
paused for pacing, change intonation, etc would be very useful.
~~~
ineedasername
Oh wow, they go further than SSML, with visemes and their phoneme maps as
well. [0] It's a shame there doesn't seem to be a quality IDE for such things.
[0]
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/speechmarks.html](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/polly/latest/dg/speechmarks.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Responsive Dashboard - tilt
http://ehesp.github.io/Responsive-Dashboard/
======
marco1
Compare this to any admin template from WrapBootstrap and you know why this is
at the top.
If you look at a WrapBootstrap template, it generally looks nice -- but as
soon as you look at the code, your opinion will change. They literally include
any popular JavaScript library that exists, just to show off what's possible.
And the code is not well-written, either. 70 HTTP requests and 5MB resources
to load is the new normal there.
This one here, in contrast, is clean, polished, and shines due to its
simplicity.
~~~
aliasell
Thanks! That was the idea.
------
cessor
I like it, it looks really great!
However, the html offers a couple of great chances to use angular directives
or some databinding. Especially the custom directives offer a great way to
show the semantics or the intent of what the page is all about, so that in the
end the dashboard could read somthing like:
<overview>
<users></users>
<servers></servers>
<documents></documents>
<tickets></tickets>
</overview>
<server-list></server-list>
<user-list></user-list>
<extras></extras>
<...></...>
Something like that; you get the idea.
Keep up the great work!
~~~
aliasell
Hey, I'm the author of this and never knew this was posted on here.
I'm really a backend developer so my knowledge of Angular really isn't that
great. I'll look into what you suggested, however I didn't want it to be too
complex; quick and simple way to get up and running was the idea.
~~~
Gepsens
Hey aliasell, I'm actually developing a similar dashboard at my company. I'm a
full stack developer, feel free to PM me github.com/Igosuki
------
Bahamut
This looks nice, but I do have some quibbles of a different nature.
[https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-
Dashboard/blob/master/js...](https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-
Dashboard/blob/master/js/angular/bootstrap.js#L59) \- this is an expensive
operation. It would be better to use window.matchMedia and do a
$scope.$apply() only precisely when needed.
[https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-
Dashboard/blob/master/js...](https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-
Dashboard/blob/master/js/angular/bootstrap.js#L25) is also expensive too,
since getWidth is a function.
My other criticism is that it should avoid adding ngCookies as a requirement,
as it is a not so great portion of angular.
I think some of the people criticizing this miss the point of something like
this. It is a theme that is geared specifically towards people who use Angular
& don't want to use jQuery. If you don't use Angular/want to use Angular, this
isn't for you - or you can fork it and port it over.
~~~
aliasell
Hey, thanks for the suggestions appreciated. I'll dig into the width and apply
areas, my JS isn't my strongest area so the implementation came from a "what
works" situation.
------
aliasell
Thought I'd leave this here. I'm Elliot (owner of the repo).
The dashboard isn't intended to be driven by Angular, it's more of a basis of
getting going on a project without messing about with the initial setup -
however have a 'clean' boilerplate to work with without the masses of plugins
all of these premium dashboards come with.
I'm also not a pro coder, and do it for a hobby so comments on improving are
much appreciated. It's free, open source, I'm massively open to people
improving my code so if you can please do. I'm currently learning Angular so
appreciate it may not be coded to a specific standard I don't know about.
------
cpursley
I for one have starred this. Instead of being assholes, create some PRs. The
notification right at the top says:
"Feel free to create pull requests to improve the dashboard!"
------
IbJacked
Here's the project's home on Github: [https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-
Dashboard](https://github.com/Ehesp/Responsive-Dashboard)
------
kaared
If you want a quick overview of what this looks like on various devices:
[http://ami.responsivedesign.is/?url=http://ehesp.github.io/R...](http://ami.responsivedesign.is/?url=http://ehesp.github.io/Responsive-
Dashboard/)
~~~
mobiplayer
Funnily enough that site looks terrible on an iPhone...!
------
honr
Awesome dashboard and project! Bookmarked to come back to it and use it :-)
P.S.: Wish the title was not so poorly chosen. Remember that title really does
matter when submitting anything to Hacker News.
------
lelandriordan
While this looks good aesthetically, this is a prime example of needlessly
using JavaScript for the hell of it. This is like an anti best practice. It
loads 4 extra resources (Angular, Angular Cookie, Angular UI Bootstrap and the
custom bootstrap.js) for no legitimate reason. And the CSS is inexplicably
written using selectors like the following: "#page-wrapper:not(.active)". Why
not target "#page-wrapper" and then "#page-wrapper.active" instead?
~~~
tomasien
Your CSS quibble is a matter of taste, you have a legitimate complaint about
the JS so I wouldn't muddy it with a taste based comment about CSS verbosity.
------
pan69
Where's the Angular part? None of the links seem to work..
~~~
bottled_poe
Or the responsive part for that matter. Nothing is working for me on Firefox
31.
~~~
IbJacked
It's responsive for me in FF 31 (OS X) and in Chrome. When the window size is
reduced, the content boxes reflow from multi-column to single-column, and the
navigation on the left goes from text+icon to icon only.
------
conradfr
Not to criticize this project specifically but I was task some weeks ago to
implement a design with a unfoldable menu like that.
Clueless manager loved it (yeah animation !) but it's not great. In practice
you never want to unfold it because it doesn't give you anything other than
labels. So then you are asked to display labels on mouse hover when it's
folded.
And then you must add submenu ...
~~~
aliasell
Not at all. I know what you mean, however a tooltip is easy to add to the
labels - issue is this won't solve the issue for mobile devices.
As for sub-menus, I never needed it for my project so never added it... and
honestly didn't expect anyone else to see this. Will have a tinker with it
though, see if I can make it look decent.
------
nikon
Not really much AngularJS code?
~~~
Wintamute
Yeah. There's really no reason to put Angular in the title at all.
------
asdfologist
Hey this is a dumb question, but what exactly does "responsive" mean here? Is
this a technical HTML/Javascript term? Or does it mean simply "fast"?
~~~
valar_m
Not a dumb question. Responsive design is a modern web development technique
for building sites that adapt to the screen on which they are being viewed.
The idea is to provide a good user experience on mobile, desktop, and tablet
with only a single web site (as opposed to detecting mobile/tablet devices and
redirecting to a mobile-only version).
To see it in action, go to the link in the OP and just resize your browser
window down to tablet size, and then down to mobile.
This is accomplished primarily through CSS3 media queries and fluid layouts
(using percentages for element widths instead of fixed widths). You can read
about CSS3 media queries here:
[https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Media...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/Guide/CSS/Media_queries)
Perhaps the best resource for implementing responsive design is the Bootstrap
framework:
[http://getbootstrap.com/](http://getbootstrap.com/)
------
Gepsens
This looks EXACTLY like the Dashboard I've been building at my company fot the
past 6 month, wtf ?
~~~
aliasell
No idea :p
------
kmfrk
God, these comments are why people hate Hacker News.
If you want to post an awesome project like this one, better do it somewhere
else, if you want to be encouraged to keep working on it.
The design is absolutely gorgeous, for what it's worth.
~~~
bshimmin
I agree it looks fine (though it's not exactly April Zero...), but I think the
comments below legitimately address some of the issues with the JavaScript (60
or so poorly formatted lines, using Angular for no reason at all) and the CSS
- and probably people are confused as to why this frankly somewhat amateurish
project is currently at the top of HN.
From the title, I think you'd expect something that's cleverly using Angular
to pull in data dynamically from disparate sources and plotting pretty charts
from it, rather than just some static HTML and CSS.
~~~
jnbiche
>people are confused as to why this frankly somewhat amateurish project is
currently at the top of HN.
Probably the GP's irritation comes from the same place as mine: needlessly
abrasive remarks instead of encouragement and constructive criticism that a
community like this should provide.
And why do people care so much that this is at the top of HN, as opposed to
the bottom?
>I think you'd expect something that's cleverly using Angular to pull in data
dynamically from disparate sources and plotting pretty charts from it,
That part is relatively easy to add, given the nice template this provides.
Really, for me, creating this kind of layout is the time-consuming part.
Pulling in data from some REST api is a relatively quick task.
~~~
bshimmin
> And why do people care so much that this is at the top of HN, as opposed to
> the bottom?
Well, there are only so many hours in the day, and it's nice to see exciting
and innovative projects (and articles) gravitate towards the top - that is,
surely, how HN is supposed to work.
~~~
lewi
Well it is at the top. It's obvious that this is representative of the
interests of HN, otherwise it wouldn't be there. Sorry it doesn't meet your
standards.
You mention it being amateurish. A constructive response would be to take it,
pull in some REST data and show everyone whats possible. Or you could just
complain.
------
itsbits
its crap...whatz so angular in this? 45 points for this..really..!!!
~~~
sehr
There really isn't anything at all special about this, the jQuery equivalent
wouldn't have made it to 5.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017) - Dowwie
https://arxiv.org/abs/1703.00045##
======
hobofan
I would say that this has been known for quite some time in philosophy, but I
guess it's good to have some real-life verification for it. This article on
Belief Merging and Judgement Aggregation[0] is a good entry point for the
field, for anybody that is interested.
[0]: [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief-
merging/](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief-merging/)
~~~
watersb
Off-topic, but I love the logo at the upper-left corner of the
plato.stanford.edu web pages.
Stanford has an amazing collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin, including
his iconic "The Thinker". If you have business or just visiting the Silicon
Valley area, it's worth exploring the Stanford campus and its Rodin museum.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Rodin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Rodin)
------
ajuc
Am I correct that they asked the same people the same questions 3 times?
It's no surprise that the 3rd time the answers were the best. I'd expect this
to happen even if there was no debate (if not to the same degree).
> Each participant was provided with pen and an answer sheet linked to their
> seat number. The event’s speaker (author M.S.) conducted the crowd from the
> stage (Fig. 1A). In the first stage of the experiment, the speaker asked
> eight questions (Supplementary Table 1) and gave participants 20 seconds to
> respond to each of them (stage i1, left panel in Fig. 1A). Then,
> participants were instructed to organize in to groups of five based on a
> numerical code in their answer sheet (see Methods). The speaker repeated
> four of the eight questions and gave each group one minute to reach a
> consensus (stage c, middle panel in Fig. 1A ). Finally, the eight questions
> were presented again from stage and participants had 20 seconds to write
> down their individual estimate, which gave them a chance to revise their
> opinions and change their minds (stage i2, right panel in Fig. 1A).
> Participants also reported their confidence in their individual responses in
> a scale from 0 to 10.
~~~
thenaturalist
I can’t follow your reasoning. How does asking you the exact same question
twice improve your accuracy? If you don’t know how high the Eiffel Tower is,
why would you know it the second time? Conversely, you likely created a mental
anchor when giving an estimate the first time and would be hard pressed to
provide an answer contradicting your first estimate - even if it might be more
accurate.
There were no answers provided between asking the questions as far as I
understand this excerpt.
In the group only 4/8 questions were asked and here a difference in accuracy
can be made. Maybe you’re mixed with travelers who recently visited Paris,
historians or people who due to other circumstances or pure luck provide more
accurate estimates, effectively influencing the anchor of your first estimate.
~~~
ajuc
Given more time I can remember something, or I can notice that the last
question gives some hints or even unrelated associations that help to answer
the first question.
I don't think "if you don't know the answer in 20 seconds you won't ever know
it" is true.
~~~
thenaturalist
As far as I understand it, these were not simple right/ wrong questions, but
questions about estimating a continuous measure (height, age, percentages). I
have no reason to believe that questions were related or would give hints.
Such a correlation would destroy the power of the experiment.
As far as I understand it, this paper is not about "Do you know what is true
or false in 20 seconds" but "what is a value you confidently estimate within
20 seconds". This is a field much studied in psychology and when you look into
Kahnemann and associated research I would be surprised to find any scientific
evidence that time improves your estimate. I'm not saying it's impossible, I
am confident that - on average - it simply does not happen.
Kahnemann showed we're full of biases and this research shows that calibrating
ourselves with others is a much higher predictor of improving accuracy of
estimations than time.
~~~
kortilla
Wow, that’s a terrible way of conducting an experiment. Having more than 20
seconds to reason through an estimation will produce a much better result if
you are any kind of systematic thinker.
In 20 seconds for the Eiffel Tower I’ll just pull a number out of my ass. In 5
minutes I will think through the comparison charts it shows up next to on
other high rises. I’ll remember the half scale one in Las Vegas and its
relative height to the Bellagio across the strip (about the same) and that the
Bellagio was about 40 stories. Given 40 stories at 13 feet per floor, you get
520 ft * 2 = 1040 ft for the Eiffel Tower.
------
amelius
Perhaps we can save democracy by replacing the voting mechanism by placing
people in groups of 10, and letting them reach consensus before making a vote.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
That was how the US Senate originally operated. You would elect your state
legislature (where your vote is _much_ less diluted than at the federal level)
and they would elect your Senator.
Early 20th century populism took that away. It also meant that the states now
have no representation in the federal legislature, which led to an almost
immediate federal takeover of basically everything.
~~~
axiak
That amendment really screwed democracy in the US. Not only does it remove
room for debate, but it has IMHO been a major factoring in lessoning voter
interest in the state legislature. This has far reaching consequences, such as
making it harder to make new amendments and checks against gerrymandering.
------
ivanmaeder
I've only read the summary but Philip Tetlock comes to this conclusion based
on his work with "The Good Judgment Project" (described in his book
"Superforecasting").
The GJP is a kind of experiment he's been running for a few years in an
attempt to learn how to improve predictions.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Judgment_Project)
From what I remember: overall, teams did better than individuals and wisdom of
the crowds because they were able to feed off and combine each other's points
of view and separate knowledge.
However! It's important for teams to not let groupthink dominate—individuals
within teams needed to challenge each other.
------
hkt
Deliberative democracy is great. Put people in enriched decisionmaking
environments for better outcomes, _and then_ get greater democratic legitimacy
from doing so than even some representatives? Win win.
This is the opposite of populism too: when we voted Brexit in the UK, it was
an uncontrolled, information-scarce (and falsehood-rich) environment. A room
where people were organised and where they asked for their own experts and
talked to one another would never have delivered that result.
~~~
sbhn
People in the uk voted brexit, because it was just after the uk us and france
were dropping bombs in lybia and syria, arab spring they called it, the
destruction of infrastructure created millions of refugees, the bbc amplyied
the importance and strength of isis, and flashed images of thousands of the
refugees in calais tripping over each other trying to illegally cross the
channel into the uk. The good souls of england thought they were under attack,
bless em.
------
sytelus
You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large
crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have
better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
~~~
mtgx
That would be _direct democracy_. No "democracy" on Earth is actually a direct
democracy, but a representative democracy, which seems more in line to what
this study proposes, no? A small group of elected officials to "debate"
issues.
~~~
Askolein
Switzerland is close to a direct democracy with a model based on:
representative democracy by default but direct as soon and anytime the people
feels the subject should be handled so. That system has proven very stable.
~~~
hobofan
> That system has proven very stable.
Caveat: with a small, well-educated population. Try and apply the same system
elsewhere and your mileage may vary.
~~~
GarvielLoken
Then the obvious solution is to divide nation states down to small, well-
educated populations no?
~~~
arethuza
Say about 6 million people? On average?
[I'm a Scot - though that's not where I got the number from]
------
denzil_correa
We intuitively do know this and mankind has used different variations of this
concept throughout human civilization. Sortition has been used for more than
2000 years to come up with fair representation of the population in governance
[0]. A more contemporary example would be the jury system in the US. But, nice
to have experimental results on this concept.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)
------
notahacker
There's a big unanswered question about whether "debate" is quite so useful at
improving accuracy of answers when it consists of an audience with strong
priors listening to motivated reasoning rather than people deferring to the
people who are most confident they have a decent grasp of the subject of a
neutral trivia question. I think it's conceivable the opposite effect might
occur if the experiment were be to repeated using polarising political issues,
even if the questions themselves were fact-based (economic growth rates, crime
rates, immigration figures, global temperature changes etc).
~~~
patcon
In the same experiment (but still unpublished) they actually find evidence
that a similar CONSENSUS effect is observed in polarized issues with no clear
"best" choice.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_and_dan_ariely_how_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_and_dan_ariely_how_can_groups_make_good_decisions/transcript?language=en)
The most interesting bit to me is the fact that a rare middle position
stakeholder, a "high confident gray", allows groups to reach consensus more
often. This potentially has huge applications in system design of the
processes of democracy imho
------
baud147258
It reminds me of that assertion that the IQ of a crowd is the lowest IQ
divided by the number of people in the crowd. Seems the study validate this
with that smaller groups performs better
~~~
prewett
Except that the previous study refuted that idea: the average answer was
better than individual answers, which is definitely not IQ_crowd = IQ_min / n.
------
patcon
This TED video tuned me into this research earlier in 2018, and while not
rigorously tested, there are some even more interesting hypotheses that are
being sussed out of the experiment:
[https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_and_dan_ariely_how_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/mariano_sigman_and_dan_ariely_how_can_groups_make_good_decisions/transcript?language=en)
------
sova
The line to know: "Remarkably, combining as few as four consensus choices
outperformed the wisdom of thousands of individuals." Confer away!
------
sharemywin
The aggregation of many independent estimates can outperform the most accurate
individual judgment. This centenarian finding, popularly known as the wisdom
of crowds, has been applied to problems ranging from the diagnosis of cancer
to financial forecasting. It is widely believed that social influence
undermines collective wisdom by reducing the diversity of opinions within the
crowd. Here, we show that if a large crowd is structured in small independent
groups, deliberation and social influence within groups improve the crowd's
collective accuracy. We asked a live crowd (N=5180) to respond to general-
knowledge questions (e.g., what is the height of the Eiffel Tower?).
Participants first answered individually, then deliberated and made consensus
decisions in groups of five, and finally provided revised individual
estimates. We found that averaging consensus decisions was substantially more
accurate than aggregating the initial independent opinions. Remarkably,
combining as few as four consensus choices outperformed the wisdom of
thousands of individuals.
~~~
sharemywin
wonder how that would compare to people providing a confidence to their guess
and using a weighted average.
------
ebetica0
I wonder how much statistical independence has to play in this. e.g. the large
crowd can be biased when they influence each other in a way that the small
debates cannot. What happens when you have small independent debates versus
large independent crowds?
------
PaulHoule
We had poker planning introduced to my team and within two months or so we got
to the point where most of the time we all get the same number or get
something like 8-13-21.
------
theontheone
I think attributing the accuracy to debates is a rather hasty conclusion. I
would love to see an experiment where the individual participants rated their
confidence from 1 to 10, and only the highest confidence answer in each group
was taken. My hunch is this would perform just as well (if not better) than
post-discussion.
------
reggieband
Whenever I come across such ideas it makes me want to more deeply investigate
the Communicative Rationality [1] of Jurgen Habermas. Despite modern trends
towards a conservative stoicism (e.g. Jordan Peterson) I actually think Social
Critical Theory feels to be moving in the more-correct direction. However, the
current negative association with moral-relativism and postmodernism is a new
McCarthyism. The bridge should be pragmatism but even that is too closely
associated with socialism.
Too many isms but the ones that are scaring me most now are authoritarianism,
fascism and totalitarianism. Ideas like communicative rationality feel to me
like the most reasonable solutions.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_rationality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communicative_rationality)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: How do you handle locking in your app? - edw519
A simple scenario:<p>At 1:00, Jane pulls a record into her browser: Lakeside High School, 123 Main St., 555-1111.<p>At 1:05, Fred pulls the same record into his browser.<p>At 1:06, Fred changes the address to 123 Oak St.<p>At 1:08, Mary changes the phone number to 555-2222.<p>Questions:<p>How to you handle the database locking?<p>- Pessimistic, lock the row at 1:00 and don't let Fred have it?<p>- Optimistic, let everyone take anything they want, but don't let Mary update?<p>- Column level locking?<p>- Special processing in you app?<p>How do you maintain state?<p>- Using sessions?<p>- Keeping a "before image" of the row? In the client? On the server? As a separate data base record?<p>I realize there is not one correct answer. Just curious how other YC'ers handle situations like this.
======
fauigerzigerk
I usually use optimistic row level locking for typical structured data in a
3NF data model. If there is so much contention for a particular record that
pessimistic or column level locking is necessary there might be a problem with
the design of the data model or workflow. There are of course rare situations
where pessimistic locking is justified. The canonical one is multi hop flight
reservations.
Handling semi structured data (documents of some sort) is way trickier and
depends a great deal on the particular data format and patterns of use.
Merging is desirable but very hard to achieve in many cases.
One other thing that is worth thinking about is how the locking strategy
scales. The most popular idea these days is to seperate read and write
operations so all writes go to one DBMS server and the reads are distributed
to replicas. That's ugly to integrate after the fact, so if you expect your
app to grow fast you should probably design it like that from the start.
------
chaostheory
someone can correct me but most of the time optimistic locking is ideal (since
for most apps, the same data typically has a low chance of being updated by
different people). Anyways we use that in addition to transactions
pessimistic locking in general is really tricky
[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0603...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/techjournal/0603_ilechko/0603_ilechko.html)
I forgot to add that if you're using a good framework, it typically already
has a built-in mechanism for optimistic locking
------
mynameishere
Here's your answer:
[http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/I_Think_I_0x27_ll_Call_...](http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/I_Think_I_0x27_ll_Call_Them__0x26_quot_0x3b_Transactions_0x26_quot_0x3b_.aspx)
------
izak30
Currently I compare the changed values, and if mary and fred have the same
permissions, I let mary see the changes that fred made that she did not, and
say 'would you just like to change this row (phone)'. I'm working with a small
data set, and also I keep history, but I change the value of a hidden form
element (mine is a web app) when <input name="phone" onChange="THIS()"> THIS
is invoked, for example. and if mary never changed address, but the value in
address is different than the value that she passes in, it gives an error
condition and lets Mary figure it out.
------
jey
In this particular case, you could store a version in the record. When Mary
submits her edit, your backend will note that Mary submitted an edit to
revision "5" but the current revision is "6", and ask Mary to confirm her
changes. You'd just use a database transaction to atomically increment the
version number when a new revision is created. I think this is analogous to
what Wikipedia does.
------
jojoleflaire
I know databases aren't fashionable around here, but this is _exactly_ what
they are for. Seriously.
~~~
paulgb
How does a database solve this? They provide a way to apply a lock, but it
comes down to the programmer to choose the type of locking to use.
~~~
jojoleflaire
I guess I read a few things into the question. My experience is that a
"record" is more often than not a series of rows in different tables, and the
tricky question in these scenarios is making sure that updates either work or
don't work in their entirety. This is what I was meant by the "this is what
databases are for" line.
It is practically impossible to maintain a useful, enforceable lock on a
record in a web application, given the lack of a persistent connection between
the client (browser) and the back end. So you are usually left with two
choices:
1\. Last one in wins: given that the two users presumably have good reasons
for modifying the record in question, let them figure it out if there is a
conflict. As long as updates are atomic, consistent, blah, blah this works
best.
2\. Versioning: Every record has a version number associated with it and the
database rejects updates with a version != to what is in there.
The real trick is to set yourself up so that you have a single-writer for any
given piece of data in the common case and defer whatever locking is necessary
optimistically to the database.
~~~
edw519
"lack of a persistent connection"
IMO, this is the heart of the problem because it renders pessimistic (what
we've used in the enterprise for years) virtually useless.
Fortunately, there are techniques to get around them. Several interesting
lines of thought are presented in this thread. Thanks to all who posted them.
You gave me quite a bit to think about.
------
mdkersey
I try to establish
1) when Mary got the record,
2) whether she got the same record as Jane and Fred, and finally
3) whether Mary = Jane or not!8-))
[Hint: the example was not properly stated.]
~~~
edw519
Oops. Mary = Jane. Sorry. I guess I should have used pessimistic locking on
brain synapse 7E8B32.
------
digito
Why would you keep a before image on the client? Isn't this dangerous?
~~~
brlewis
The client sends the before/after values, and you only update the ones that
have changed. If people are changing different fields there's no conflict.
Yes, the client could fake it, but such faking would not open up new
capabilities that the client didn't already have.
~~~
some
Using Javascript, the client could as well only send the fields that have
changed.
~~~
brlewis
That's true. However, depending on the needs of the application, you might
want to take things a step farther and engage the client in a dialogue about
values changed by others. For that purpose it helps to tell the server what
the values were when the client loaded the form.
------
jkush
I tend to like history-like approaches.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Illuminating Geometry of Viruses (2017) - devy
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-illuminating-geometry-of-viruses-20170719/
======
blueboo
High-brow pop science can be so precious.
> Mathematical insights into how RNA helps viruses pull together their protein
> shells could guide future studies of viral behavior and function.
Insights into virus behavior could guide studies of...virus behaviour. A
dizzying thesis!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Learn Perl? - eCa
http://perlhacks.com/2016/01/why-learn-perl/
======
dozzie
From my experience, companies that want Perl programmers are mostly big ones
with plenty of inertia, that have some legacy build code slapped together
years ago by a clueless guy that thought he can write Perl (though he really
couldn't), then extended by Java-only or C++-only programmers, so it now
stinks heavily and can't be replaced or rewritten (because of inertia).
Sad thing, given that I do like Perl. But it may be just my surroundings.
~~~
zimpenfish
Or there's legacy code slapped together years ago that's gone through a whole
bunch of "my personal methodology" contractors, each of which has added
another layer of nonsense and NIH madness, until you're left with a huge and
brutally complex system that almost no-one understands, is a brain-melting
nightmare to follow, and is impossible to change without constant failure.
(Why, yes, I am currently working on a Perl codebase.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nexo - Free and Easy Online Groups - gibsonf1
http://www.nexo.com/
======
papersmith
Looks like this site has an edge over meetup.com, considering that meetup
charges $19 per month and this one is free.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tips for Alternative Funding (by Sean Murphy) - dennykmiu
http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2009/10/19/8-tips-for-evaluating-funding-alternatives/
======
dennykmiu
Short and sweet article.
Bottomline is that entrepreneurs must bootstrap their companies through the
R&D phase by forgoing salaries. By recruiting a small number of like-mind co-
Founders to fill out the initial team, and convincing each to not take
salaries, you are essentially making your own "pre-tax" investment, leveraging
many-to-one. Since you don't need to put money in anyone's pocket (including
your own), you don't need to raise lots of VC money. You might need a few tens
of thousands of dollars. But no one needs a few millions or tens of millions
to build a company anymore. My own experience is that if you can bootstrap
your company to the point where your are generating sustainable profits, then
you are in a seller's market. VC's will be kicking down your doors wanting to
buy shares from the founding team, taking money off the table but yet allowing
the company to continue to grow.
~~~
skmurphy
Thanks for posting this. I don't disagree with your comment but the HN
"alternative funding" title has a different connotation than the post's actual
title "8 Tips for Evaluating Funding Alternatives."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why So Many Millennials Experience Imposter Syndrome - jrs235
http://www.forbes.com/sites/christinecarter/2016/11/01/why-so-many-millennials-experience-imposter-syndrome/#54cb7c663d40
======
DrScump
It's bad enough that HuffPost can't spell "impostor" correctly, but _Forbes_?
_Nine times?!_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Department Of Homeland Security Is Now Bitching At Me On My Blog - achalkley
http://uncrunched.com/2013/02/23/the-department-of-homeland-security-is-now-bitching-at-me-on-my-blog/
======
lutusp
I love it when government representatives, who in principle have the right to
shoot you on the spot if you break their rules, pose as innocent victims of
ordinary citizens who never volunteered to go through their bureaucratic
procedures.
I suspect the DHS person who posted hisreply to Arrington's original post will
receive at minimum a dressing-down once the managerial class realize what he's
done. It's considered very bad form to argue with mere civilians -- it sends a
signal of weakness.
~~~
rtpg
> It's considered very bad form to argue with mere civilians -- it sends a
> signal of weakness.
Apart from the fact that the opposite of government worker is not "civilian",
you could probably think of the more obvious reason (the same reason that
employees are usually berated for talking about ongoing situation): random
gov't employees are not supposed to play spokespeople.
~~~
lutusp
> Apart from the fact that the opposite of government worker is not "civilian"
I could have said "citizen" but that coinage sounded a bit too Orwellian.
> random gov't employees are not supposed to play spokespeople.
Yes, true, and in some places like the military, this is very clearly spelled
out by ordinance -- military personnel must avoid engaging in political
advocacy while in uniform.
~~~
jeremysmyth
_I could have said "citizen" but that coinage sounded a bit too Orwellian._
Hey, if the cap fits.
------
dmschulman
The DHS agent should be thanking Mr Rich Guy. You pay his salary with your
taxes after all
------
betelnut
I dislike TSA as much as the next casual traveller, but why are they such a
bugbear for HN?
~~~
pg
<http://paulgraham.com/gba.html>
------
RawData
You've got your boat back, now sue them for defamation or something.
------
deeqkah
"And third, for fuck’s sake, you are the Department of Homeland Security. What
happens to me the next time I got through TSA at the airport, or try to cross
the border into Canada? Do you think I may perhaps be on a “list” and have
some difficulties?"
Nice FUD, bro. With what DHS has to do on a day to day basis, your fucking
boat isn't making any impressions outside of one office's circle of employees.
If that office failed to serve for whatever reason, and you called them out
then congrats on being a good citizen. But suggesting something as big as what
you just did is more than a little fear mongering.
But yeah, sorry to hear about your bad day.
~~~
smosher
Yeah, think of all those blogs they have to comment on. There's a _lot_ of
blogs out there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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