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Bill Gates: Allowing piracy in China was a great decision - byrneseyeview http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100134488/index.htm ====== twism does apple do this? if not, they should consider doing the same thing	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Using Pseudo-URIs with Microservices - pcalcado http://philcalcado.com/2017/03/22/pattern_using_seudo-uris_with_microservices.html ====== jamiethompson What's wrong with using UUIDs for microservice architectures? ~~~ kuschku As mentioned in the article, they make it hard to identify the type of resource. ~~~ AdieuToLogic URN's[0] can support resource categorization so long as the Namespace Identifier (NID) does not collide with the reserved ones (and I'd throw in those which are well-known in the industry as well). So, for example, a URN which uses UUID's to satisfy uniqueness yet still allows for categorization could look like: urn:some-company:resource-type:abcdef012-3456-... For complete technical conformance, the "some-company" NID would need to be requested/registered from the IETF. In practice, my opinion is that the registration step is largely not required if the URN's are used strictly as an implementation detail within a system. However, those publicized and/or having a reasonable chance of being persisted by an external actor should have a sufficiently unique NID such that it can be registered and, more importantly, does not have a coincidental collision with other systems generating URN's. 0 - [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2648](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2648) ~~~ bpicolo Imo, this is a great combination of strategies when you want to keep people away from iterating. It also gives you the basis for a decent ACL system. Yeah, you use a few more bytes per item, but modern DBs can handle that. Probably worth having a autoincrementing ID on tables using uuids as well, though. Not 100% sure on that, but I've definitely hit batch jobs that need to run / frameworks that require autoincrementing integer IDs, and getting stuck is a pain. (Adding an autoincrementing key after the fact is doable, but at least on postgres involves a rewrite the the entire table, so you kill the heck out of replication) ~~~ AdieuToLogic Probably worth having a autoincrementing ID on tables using uuids as well, though. Quite true, IMHO. I usually define both an auto-incrementing integral primary key (PK) as well as a unique string column for the URN. The PK is used for deletes/updates/joins/referential integrity and is never exposed beyond the server processes. ------ bpicolo > What you need is to provide a set of functions able to map between these > formats and whatever optimal way you want to store them in One important thing to remember with taking this approach is that you can work yourself into a huge bind if you store the mapped-versions in logs/other persistent storage and end up needing to change formats later. Say the original mapping version is based on 32 bit integers, or is cryptographically signed and your keys get exposed. If rolling the functions means you can no longer identify objects from logs / in databases, that's a huge problem. That means things like access logs will no longer map to their respective current versions unless you keep around two separate encoder/decoders and are able to guess which version you need all the time. It can become a big, unfun problem pretty fast. ~~~ pcalcado That's a great point, thanks. ------ NathanKP Personally I've always favored a JSON HATEOS approach with my API's, where the JSON response contains the actual URL's of the resources referenced, not just URN. Example from one API that I maintain: [https://changelogs.md/api/recently- crawled/](https://changelogs.md/api/recently-crawled/) One major advantage of this is that it allows clients to be built which have no hardcoded URL's at all (other than perhaps the top level URI that gives them the list of URL's that the API exposes). This allows the API maintainer to adjust resource paths retroactively, in addition to just exposing an API that is easy to explore. ------ DorothySim > As we iterated on our approach, we have decided to follow more recent > recommendations and not limit our identifiers to the deprecated concept of > URN. I was not aware URN was deprecated... Is there a reference somewhere to these recommendations? ~~~ dragonwriter The use of the _name_ URN in the broad sense of "a URI that specifies a name" is deprecated in favor of the general term URI (similar to the way that the term URL is deprecated in the same source) per RFC 3986. The use of URN for a specific URI scheme that provides names, for which there is a global registry of namespaces to ensure uniqueness, etc.—which is what the article discusses—is in now way deprecated. The author seems to be ill- informed on the point which apparently is the only stated reason for not using the internet standard that directly applies to the use case. ~~~ dragonwriter It occurs to me that there is another possible interpretation: the reference to URN being deprecated may have been a distorted reference to the fact that IETF has identified a number of issues with the URN spec and some existing registrations and other related issues and has an active workgroup and working draft on an updated spec. It's hard to tell if that's what was intended, though, since the dismissal was so terse; if so, a discussion of the issues with existing URN spec that are specifically problematic for the use in question would be nice, as would more description of why you aren't using _actual_ URIs with a custom scheme rather than pseudo-URIs (since real URIs, whether URNs are not, mean that tools supporting the standards can be used, rather than building custom tooling and libraries for your almost-but-not- quite-URI setup.) Whatever the URN reference is intended to mean, this seems to be custom-over- standard with less clear justification than I would want for that choice. ~~~ pcalcado Author here. The deprecation comment refers to this: [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-1.1.3](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986#section-1.1.3) we had been using URNs and URLs the old way. But in any case the fact that we're having this conversation I had had to dig up some RFC from 2005 reflects the _actual_ reason for not following any specific standard: I perceive them and their specifications to be confusing and full of historical context that has changed over time. Assuming that there are no other benefits to using the URN scheme specifically (maybe there are and I am not aware of them?) I'd rather use a simplified URI and custom schemes. ------ awelynant Curious if tag URI was considered [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_URI_scheme](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_URI_scheme) ~~~ DorothySim Is there a benefit of using tag URI instead of a regular old URL? E.g. tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-555 vs [https://blogger.com/1999/blog-555](https://blogger.com/1999/blog-555) The only difference I see is that URL should point to something (can be referenced in a browser) which may or may not be an additional benefit. ~~~ pacaro I worked on a project that used "regular old URL" just like you suggest, for contract and service identifiers, which needed to be human read/write/generatable Tag URIs would have been better because: a) not everyone owns a domain, but tags allow email address as authority b) it's confusing to many people to overload http URIs this way c) as a contract identifier the URI doesn't need to point to anything, but this creates cognitive dissonance — this is probably part of b) d) too damn long — tag URIs might suffer from this too. We were using these all over the place and there's no good way to truncate them ~~~ DorothySim a) is particularly interesting to me. I thought about giving people ability to create their own namespaces and used [https://user.example.com](https://user.example.com) or [https://example.com/user](https://example.com/user) as a namespace but tag URI looks cleaner. By the way why did you need human readable IDs? I'm asking out of curiosity because there is certain charm to just using UUIDs everywhere (and urn:uuid). ~~~ pacaro There were some places, where only machines would interact with them, that we used urn:uuid. But we had UI, code, and log files etc, where developers needed to interact with them too	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Grid.js – Advanced table library that works everywhere - afshinmeh https://gridjs.io/?hn ====== afshinmeh Hello folks :wave: I’m Afshin, the creator of Grid.js. Grid.js is an open-source table library written in TypeScript and published under MIT license. My goal is to develop a framework agnostic table library that: \- Works everywhere. You don’t need a specific framework to use Grid.js \- Lightweight and easy to use \- Fully documented and tested \- Developer friendly. Grid.js is written in TypeScript! Supports all modern web browsers Please take a look at the examples ([https://gridjs.io/docs/examples/hello- world](https://gridjs.io/docs/examples/hello-world)) section and let us know if you have any suggestions. Although Grid.js is currently designed to work with web-browsers, I’m actively thinking and working on adding other integrations like React Native (see [https://gridjs.io/docs/philosophy](https://gridjs.io/docs/philosophy)) Please let me know if you have any suggestions or comments. Happy hacking! :computer: ~~~ simonw I'm playing around with it in an Observable notebook here: [https://observablehq.com/@simonw/grid-js-with- datasette](https://observablehq.com/@simonw/grid-js-with-datasette) Any idea why the columns aren't displaying correctly for wider tables? Take a look at this example: [https://observablehq.com/@simonw/grid-js-with- datasette?url=...](https://observablehq.com/@simonw/grid-js-with- datasette?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffivethirtyeight.datasettes.com%2Ffivethirtyeight%2Fbiopics%252Fbiopics.json) ~~~ afshinmeh Oh great! I guess the columns are not properly rendered because there are a lot of columns. That looks like a bug to me. I just created two issues and will release a bug fix soon. Thanks! ~~~ robertlagrant > Oh great! The correct response :-) ------ Bishonen88 Good effort! I'm not sure how 'advanced' it is though. I'd even go as far as call it 'simple'? E.g. the following features would be required to make it advanced (list not complete): \- Export data (csv) \- Align columns based on their content \- Tree data (parent/child rows) \- Total rows \- Formatting applied based on data type (currency, numerical etc.) \- Reordering columns \- Resizing columns \- Hiding columns \- Optional filter field for every column \- Conditional formatting \- Tripple Sorting & Multiple sorting (sort by more than 1 column at a time) \- ... more In the react world, I found this to be a good foundation for an 'advanced' table. Since it's rather inconsistently developed, I ended up forking it for myself and working on my own copy, removing unneeded elements and enhancing with everything else I do need. [https://material-table.com/](https://material-table.com/) ~~~ afshinmeh Thanks for your feedback. I agree that Grid.js is not a full-featured plugin _yet_ and it's still missing essential features, like those that you mentioned but please bear in mind that: \- I have only released the first version of the library. \- I have been focusing on fundamental blocks of a lightweight _data processing_ library (see: [https://github.com/grid- js/gridjs/tree/master/src/pipeline](https://github.com/grid- js/gridjs/tree/master/src/pipeline)). That's what took most of my time. \- Grid.js is framework agnostic which is a bit different compared to other libs The pipeline is very easy to extend and I'm confident that most of those features will be added soon. ~~~ Bishonen88 I don't doubt that you can and possibly will make this a great library. It seems like a nice and clean foundation for one. I just commented on the word 'advanced' in the title. You admitted yourself that it's missing essential features, so advanced might be an adjective you'd want to use for release 2.0 ;) ------ bubbab How accessible is Grid.js? The main differentiator between table libraries for me these days is accessibility. Many libraries and frameworks out there do it poorly. The better ones are often tied to company-specific frameworks. From playing around a bit, I've at least noticed that sortable headers have no focus indicator, the "sort column ascending" text gets included in the column's accessible name, and un-sortable column headers are read as clickable by screen readers. I would LOVE a framework-agnostic table library that's both lightweight and fully accessible. If there's a chance for Grid.js to take this in its philosophy, I would be all in! ~~~ nohuhu > The better ones are often tied to company-specific frameworks. That is because to implement accessibility in a grid/tree widget to a meaningful level, you need _a lot_ of underlying code. Even in modern browsers. Source: implemented accessibility in Ext JS framework. One of the most often asked questions from users of Ext JS was: hey, can we have the Grid widget without all the bloat? Sure, and ~95% of the framework exists so that the Grid can have its features and work reliably across all the browsers. You can probably do without the rest 5%, no biggie. ------ danseagrave Has anyone tried Tabulator[1]? [1] [http://www.tabulator.info/](http://www.tabulator.info/) ~~~ btzll I have, it's amazing. The only thing it's missing is drag and drop to outside divs. Other than that, it's feature rich, very customizable and the best from all other js grids I tried. ~~~ olifolkerd That feature will be coming soon :) ------ Eduard I'd say the claim "works everywhere" does not consider small screens. I had a look at the examples with Android Chrome in portrait viewport, and cell content gets either cut off with ellipses on overflow, or breaks long words such as email addresses unintelligibly over several lines. In my opinion, scrollable-by-touch tables such as Bootstrap 's "responsive tables" fix these issues. Add "scroll for more" shadows for even better UX. ------ rootcage Out of curiosity how is this better than current Grid/Table implementations? ~~~ afshinmeh \- Grid.js is a data-processing pipeline (see [https://github.com/grid- js/gridjs/tree/master/src/pipeline](https://github.com/grid- js/gridjs/tree/master/src/pipeline)) which enables you to easily extend the library \- It's framework agnostic! \- It is written in TypeScript \- Fully tested and documented Also please take a look at [https://gridjs.io/docs/philosophy](https://gridjs.io/docs/philosophy). ------ boromi A similar product is [https://datatables.net/](https://datatables.net/) ~~~ joaodlf datatables uses jquery, though. ~~~ ies7 From user point of view, datatables can do much more than Grid.js ~~~ werdnapk I've found datatables to be my only real solution when dealing with lots of server side data. It has it's quirks for sure, but there really isn't anything I haven't been able to accomplish with it so far (although making it do what you want sometimes can involve some head scratching). Edit: I see [http://www.tabulator.info/](http://www.tabulator.info/) mentioned in the comments. This looks pretty full featured... time to do some research. ------ triceratops Does anyone know why HTML tables can't natively support a lot of common table functionality? Lazy rendering, fixed column headers, sorting and so on? Are there any proposals to add all this natively? ~~~ orange8 I think a bit part of HTMLs success is not being too opinionated about more advanced/specific UI components. Think of it more of as a low level GUI toolkit constructor, one to builg actual GUI toolkit on top of, for example material-ui and bootstrap. ~~~ Zecc That doesn't really answer the question though. It's up to the browser implementers how they do tables, and they certainly could go ahead and cater to common cases in this area. As user agents, it's the browsers' job to be helpful to the user regardless of what the HTML looks like. For example, nothing in HTML talks about having a search prompt appear on Ctrl+F, yet everyone does it. ~~~ orange8 HTML does not have a table component because it is a markup language, and that kind of interactivity (sorting, filtering, pagination etc) is really beyond its scope. The exception to this are basic user input fields (buttons, check- boxes etc). This is by design, browser vendors are focused on implementing low level APIs and functionality, leaving the higher level component development stuff up-to web developers and designers. Use a combination of JS, CSS and HTML to create advanced components from scratch, or use one of the thousands of open-source libraries available. The library linked to in this post is a good example of that. > It's up to the browser implementers how they do tables, and they certainly > could go ahead and cater to common cases in this area. They already have, via the <table> tag ([https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn/HTML/Tables/A...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Learn/HTML/Tables/Advanced)). ------ rkagerer This looks really cool although I find it disheartening that we need to resort to JavaScript simply to construct a decent table. ~~~ huhtenberg You are trolling, mate. Obviously nobody NEEDS to resort to that. However there's a difference between ... simply to construct a decent table. and ... to construct a decent table simply. which is what this lib is for. ~~~ rkagerer Nice distinction! Although I'm not sure "trolling" is a fair dig. My comment was genuine. When I wrote my first HTML page you could make them out of basic <TABLE> tags and nobody would beat you over the head with a styleguide for doing it wrong. I found them approachable if you followed some basics like avoiding nesting, and with care, dynamic sizing went a long way. But I understand some people are zealously against them (for good reason). CSS addressed several of the shortcomings but introduced new complexity and gotchas. My frustration is that instead of evolving to simple, elegant and approachable syntax, we landed in a place that calls for a library to patch in those attributes on top. (And now I'm greeted with bank statements that dynamically add content as you scroll, making it impossible to cut and paste the data from a spreadsheet). None of that takes away my admiration for the author's work, I'd just prefer a world where the hole filled by this library didn't exist in the first place :-). ------ hendry [https://codemadness.org/datatable- example.html](https://codemadness.org/datatable-example.html) is the lightest version of sortable table in JS i've seen. [https://git.codemadness.org/jscancer/files.html](https://git.codemadness.org/jscancer/files.html) for more goodness ------ sliptype This looks nice but much less configurable than ag-grid. I've worked on projects that had very intense excel-level requirements for their data grids and ag-grid was a dream. ~~~ afshinmeh Agreed. This is the first version of the library though. I will definitely add more core plugins and configurations soon. Stay tuned! ------ guggle Good, I like framework agnostic components. I've been playing with two other libraries recently: Dropzone js and Sortable js. Grid js looks useful too. ------ silviogutierrez Looks great! Any plans to support SSR in say, the React use case? useEffect won't run on the server and obviously you don't have the DOM. I'd love to use this for the table to come rendered from the server then hydrate on the frontend and enable AJAX pagination, etc. Completely understand if you can't, after all, you'd likely need to more tightly integrate with ReactDOMServer. ~~~ afshinmeh That makes sense. SSR should be possibly and relatively easy to achieve. I will create a ticket. ------ byteshock Looks awesome. We just tested vue-tables-2 yesterday but the lack of customization is making it hard to implement. This looks very promising, I’ll be taking a look again tomorrow! Do you plan on releasing special themes or options for css frameworks like bootstrap 4? I had a quick look on my phone so I apologize if this is already available. ------ mason55 One of the issues we find is that as the number of rows/columns in a table grows, the performance of native browser tables just craters and you have to fallback to your own rendering engine using <canvas> elements. Have you pushed the rendering performance at all to see how far you can get without scrolling getting painful or seeing tearing artifacts? ~~~ mstade How many columns/rows can you realistically fit in screen? Isn’t this practically solved for most use cases by just having as many as needed for rendering and replacing contents as necessary? I’ve worked in financial institutions for going on a decade at this points and there are grids everywhere. I’ve learned a thing or two about them in these years and that’s: \- everyone wants to implement their own, for reasons \- they’ll mostly do a decent but not quite good job at it, because it’s complicated and oh hey let’s just all forget about accessibility (traders love keyboard navigation!) \- performance is always a problem till someone reinvents virtualized row rendering \- excel beats your thing anyway and everyone knows it so if you just have decent excel import or even just good paste handling you’ll do fine \- 99% of grids people actually use never show more than two dozen rows or so, and then implements pagination and just like with google no one ever goes to page 2 of the results If you have a pressing need to handle thousands/millions of rows, it’s likely not for display but for editing, in which case: 1\. Just use excel 2\. Virtualized rows still has your back, ain’t no screen showing more than maybe a hundred rows or so anyway, and even if it did no one reads that far Grids really feel to me like a rite of passage for front end developers, along with a basic charting library and mildly interesting application framework. Incidentally, this is also how I’ve landed most of my jobs, so maybe I’m biased. EDIT: This is by no means a dig at the author and I’m sorry if it may come across as such! This library looks like a fine piece and I wish you every success! ~~~ at-fates-hands >> Grids really feel to me like a rite of passage for front end developers, Agreed! The last two jobs I interviewed for the code challenge was a) hit this API endpoint, b) pull the data and put into a table and c) make said table responsive and accessible. The majority of front-end work these days is either forms or tables. Get good at both and you'll have steady work forever. ~~~ mstade You’re right, I forgot about forms – good shout! ------ fedd Hey, nice grid. Please consider multiple column sort / grouping. It will suddenly make it like analytics tool... And if add some statistical functions... Maybe too much for client side, but who knows ------ ggmartins I like [https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-data-table- component](https://www.npmjs.com/package/react-data-table-component) but this one looks cool too. Maybe a dense mode? ------ OJFord FYI on my small mobile screen (iPhone SE) the demo: \- ellipsis (good there is one) breaks between second and third dot. I think the easiest fix for that is to use an actual ellipsis character. \- break between page '3' and 'next' ------ yingw787 I am so glad I put off making the frontend for my project. It's literally all tables, and I didn't like how DataTables functioned. So glad you made this and looking forward to trying it out!! ------ rafaelturk Congrats! Curious why you haven't considered [https://react- table.js.org/](https://react-table.js.org/) ------ guruparan18 I am trying to use linking in one of the columns. Looks like using links breaks the table. Any idea if linking column data is supported out of box? ------ ng12 Do the cell values have to be primitives? Embedding pure JS inside a React app is easy but using React inside pure JS is usually where the trouble is. ~~~ afshinmeh They don't have to be. I will definitely test this particular case. ------ codegladiator What's the "Advanced" part in this ? Vue/quasar tables already provide extensive functionality and I am sure there are react and angular alternatives. I don't think there is a need for a library to work across vue/react/angular at the same time because no single person is going to use those in a single project. I appreciate the project since I am frequently looking for js grid implementations but what the differentiator here ? Is it performance or styling or flexibility or just variety of frameworks ? ~~~ spiderfarmer There absolutely are advantages to libraries that work independent from, or across multiple frameworks. Most webdevs have experience with multiple frameworks. It’s nice knowing you can use a library in whatever project you’re working on. ~~~ afshinmeh ^^ ------ babaganoosh89 I'd suggest doing the up/down arrows in css instead of images, the images look a bit blurry on retina screens ~~~ afshinmeh Good point. I will definitely change that part. ------ wnevets On a related note, I glad to see unpkg.com offically supported. Being able to avoid npm install is just nice sometimes. ~~~ afshinmeh Awesome! ------ JSavageOne How does this compare to competitors like Ag-Grid? One simple feature I see lacking in the ability is the ability to resize columns ------ LukaszWiktor Good job! Looks great. What about performance? Have you tested how many rows can Gird.js handle without a noticable lag? ~~~ afshinmeh Thank you! With Grid.js you will be able to sort, search or process data in a separate thread (Web Worker) and then pass the results to the main thread to render. I'm also thinking about lazy-loading the table rows. Both the Web Worker bit and lazy-loading will be added in a week or two. ------ kangaroozach Anyone have thoughts on how to support the following in ReactJS -Sortable columns -Multi-select filters in columns -expandable rows ~~~ joaodlf Tabulator should support pretty much all those things, it really is a fantastic library. ------ huhtenberg This doesn't render well (it's a malformed input, but still) - const grid = new Grid({ columns: ['A', 'B', 'C'], data: [ ['1', '2', null, '(353) 01 222 3333'] ] }); ------ moralestapia Does anyone know of something like this but with editable cells? ~~~ chensformers jqGrid, DataTables, ag-Grid, jQuerygrid, ... a lot. How many grid libraries do we need? ~~~ olifolkerd Tabulator, has most of the features of AG grid and is totally free [http://tabulator.info/](http://tabulator.info/) ------ Phrodo_00 Tried to run in my atari 800XL - didn't work :P ------ seastonATccs What benefits does it have over mat-table? ------ colesantiago I disabled JavaScript and it doesn't load the table. ~~~ boromi I unplugged my toaster, but it doesn't work? ~~~ colesantiago Sure, except the major point is this, Progressive Enhancement [0]. This table is useless if it doesn't load without JS, especially if it is a table that claims to work _everywhere_. [0] [https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using- progressi...](https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/technology/using-progressive- enhancement#do-not-assume-users-turn-off-css-or-javascript) ~~~ jerrysievert it looks like it can: [https://gridjs.io/docs/examples/from](https://gridjs.io/docs/examples/from) specifically, data rendered as an html table that is then "transformed" in javascript. if I'm reading the example correctly, then this is how to have progressive enhancement with this module. ------ docuru Are we just buy a domain for a library now? ------ beprogrammed I like to turn JavaScript off for these sites ------ Sembiance I thought this was about CSS Grid, but nope, nothing at all to do with that. ~~~ shmelvin512 Maybe read the welcome message again: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html) It could help you construct a more thoughtful comment next time. It's the most important principle and really simple to pursue.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Intel anounces OpenVINO, a deep learning framework - RealityVoid https://www.forbes.com/sites/moorinsights/2018/05/22/intel-openvino-funny-name-great-strategy/#5ba8a8cc6301 ====== mindcrime A quick perusal of the OpenVINO site ([https://software.intel.com/en- us/openvino-toolkit](https://software.intel.com/en-us/openvino-toolkit)) didn't turn up much evidence that there's anything particularly "open" about this. :-(	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The robots are coming for your job, too - Kaibeezy https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/08/24/politics/economy-us-workforce-automation/index.html ====== webdva High level programming languages automated assembly language programming, by the way. Generally speaking. For instance, with the use of a high level programming language like Python or JavaScript, the operator or user does not need to be concerned with the management of computer memory or processor registers (notwithstanding the fact that such low level abstractions differ between processor architectures as I'm speaking generally). So even software development is susceptible to the phenomenon of automation. Anyone got any examples of other kinds of automation? ~~~ forgotmypw3 Custom-written number crunching software ==> Spreadsheets ------ Kaibeezy Keynes, 1930: _" To those who sweat for their daily bread leisure is a longed- for sweet -- until they get it,"_ Later adding: _" man will be faced with his real, his permanent problem -- how to use his freedom from pressing economic cares, how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him, to live wisely and agreeably and well."_	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Parsing a DICOM file for fun and profit - malloc47 http://www.alsonkemp.com/turbinado/parsing-a-dicom-file-for-fun-and-profit/ ====== car54whereareu And the profit? Very cool though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Flurry of Copycats on PubMed - beefman http://blog.thegrandlocus.com/2014/10/a-flurry-of-copycats-on-pubmed ====== jldugger A friend of mine reached out to me via LinkedIn several months ago, stating he could probably use Tableau and some public datasets to DDoS the medical peer review system and earn tenure at the same time: low impact factor * a million is still going to be a lot better than the alternative. Sadly, I didn't hear anything terribly insightful when I asked him about spurious correlations and data mining as a perjorative term, so I left that one alone, and I assume he doesn't have the balls to go through with it since you know, there are actual people in the tenure committee who have to review your CV. One angle that isn't quite clear to me from the article; if you build a system to harvest datasets, find correlations, and push them through a set of templates with conditional subtemplates based on saliency, with correct citations of source data to produce a single article, is it wrong to put your name on it? And if you do 30 of them? Obviously selling your naming rights to papers harms both the community who might wish follow up with the authors on scholarship, and those who use peer reviewed publications as a filter. But I think the real lesson here might just be that abusing the university administration's institutional data analysis platform to game your tenure case seems like a waste of time in comparison to selling one weak article a day for 10,000 bucks. ------ nn3 Good example of Cambell's law. Doesn't seem much worse than the senior professor in western departments who automatically gets co-authorship on everything his department produces. Publication indexes are just very sick metrics. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive) ------ jrapdx3 Though I use PubMed frequently, can't say I've encountered "copycat" articles. It's disheartening to find out what has been happening, but perhaps not a huge surprise to the extent publication becomes merely a commodity to accumulate in order to further an academic career. It does prompt me to keep an eye out for such occurrence. But I'm pretty sure not every researcher goes about things that way. Maybe it depends on the field of research. The topics of interest to me could simply be too obscure to attract that kind of attention. Sure seems if anything can be done with computing technology, it will be done. What sort of future awaits us? We humans always seem to do until we overdo then redo it all over again, it doesn't ever end.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Blockchain Believers Believe They Can Change the World , After Industry Implodes - Erlangolem https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/16/17130532/blockchain-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-scams-fraud-sec-sxsw-2018 ====== bitxbitxbitcoin >>Is it actually worth $850 million, she asked. “I don’t know,” he responded. “I didn’t do due diligence.”	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SoftBank to invest over $1B in German payment company Wirecard - PaulMartin123 https://world-news-monitor.com/top-news/2019/04/24/softbank-to-invest-over-1-bln-usd-in-german-payment-company-wirecard/ ====== pavlov Ah, Wirecard, the company that's trying to get two Financial Times journalists prosecuted for exposing their fraudulent accounting: [https://aboutus.ft.com/en-gb/announcements/ft-statement- on-w...](https://aboutus.ft.com/en-gb/announcements/ft-statement-on-wirecard- reporting/) ~~~ wolfi1 According to this article [https://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/bafin- verdaechtigt-ft-j...](https://www.faz.net/aktuell/finanzen/bafin-verdaechtigt- ft-journalisten-im-fall-wirecard-16144310.html) there is an investigation in insider trading related to the Ft-article series (naked short selling allegedly rose before the publication of the articles) ~~~ OldManAndTheCpp Wait, naked short selling is unrelated to insider trading. Insider trading is illegally profiting on information that was given to you in trust, while naked short selling is short selling without a documented ability to deliver the stock. As far as I can gather from english language articles, the regulator has banned short selling in response to an article alleging fraud at wirecard. Bloomberg describes this as "unprecedented". [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-18/bafin- ban...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-18/bafin-bans-new- wirecard-net-short-positions-and-increases) ~~~ olivermarks today's FT front page headline 'Wirecard relied on three opaque partners for almost all its profit' 'Dubai-based unit of German payments group was not audited' 'Al Alam Solutions, a Dubai-based payments processor with skeletal operations in the Emirate, is the largest of the three “partner” entities. Wirecard refers clients to Al Alam in return for a share of any processing fees as commission. A former Al Alam employee said the business had six or seven staff in total and “the boss” was Oliver Bellenhaus, a Wirecard executive. The other partners are PayEasy Solutions, a Philippine payments group that shares an office with a Manila bus company, and Singapore-based Senjo. ' [https://www.ft.com/content/a7b43142-6675-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a...](https://www.ft.com/content/a7b43142-6675-11e9-9adc-98bf1d35a056) ------ phyalow I have a feeling SoftBank in 10 years time will firmly be placed in the annals of history as being the very definition of dumb money. ~~~ Traster Between the breadth of their investments and the favorable terms they can get due to their size and positioning it seems very unlikely they'll significantly under perform the market in the long term. Quite literally, they're so diversified it seems very unlikely that they can completely burn the money. It seems unlikely for them to outperform, but I don't think it's likely that they'll be notably underperforming. ~~~ hodder Define "the market". They are diversified across the "new tech" sphere, which on average produces mostly losers and a few big winners. Diversified tech funds or VC funds as a category, which mostly ignore the large cap and mega cap sphere, have historically underperformed the market except for a group of elite VCs. What this means for Softbank remains to be seen, but the very act of dumping this much money indiscriminately into new tech cos may have juiced valuations to the point of hindering future returns on the basket. ------ fabiandesimone I recently tried to integrate to Wirecard for one of my projects and it was a nightmare. Documentation sucked and once we spent 7 days connecting they told us that the API was being deprecated and we have to migrate to a new one which turn out to be 30 days of more integration. Fun time. ~~~ paganel We had a similar experience with Vantiv, whose parent company (Worldpay) was recently bought with about $50 billion. I just can't understand how business works sometimes. ~~~ tgraham Out of interest, did you guys give up, plod on or pick someone else?! If so, who? ~~~ paganel We somehow managed to make it work, can’t exactly remember the details but I think at some point it involved us sending them desperate emails (or maybe phone calls, can’t remember exactly) asking them to please change some settings on their side of things so that we would be able to test as close as possible to “live”, it took them at least two or three days if not more to make the change, which created unwanted dead time for us. To say nothing of the fact that at some point we spent at least two days practically hitting a wall over and over again: we were sending the requests exactly as their not-so-great docs were telling us to do but the response was totally different from what we were expecting. In desperation we somehow managed to contact them (meaning my boss sitting on a phone call with them) to realize that the dev instance they had provided us with still needed some small change on their side of things. Totally non-transparent framework and it all seemed as fickle as a castle made out of sand. For comparison we had the best experience implementing Stripe, it was like night and day compared to Vantiv. Unfortunately at the end of the day you need to implement what the stakeholders want. ------ matt4077 The linked source seems to be down. And, judging by this and its URL, it would seem to be a rather sketchy outfit, anyway. Bloomberg on this: [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/softbank-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/softbank- is-said-to-consider-acquiring-5-stake-in-wirecard) Note that this does not seem to be one of Softbank’s _Myopic Vision Fund_ investments, but rather a standard strategic investment including an actual working relationship going forward. ------ mtw I think SoftBank has too much money either don't know how to do with it, or don't know how to do money management. ~~~ swarnie_ I think its a sign of the late economic cycle, nothing is cheap and titans have already been established in the last 11 years. I'd be inclined to hold my money and see what shakes out of the next inevitable market shake up. But then i'm not running softbank for good reasons.... ~~~ charlesdm It likely is, but I do wonder how much QE has played into permanently raising the prices of assets. I won't make that bet, but it could very well be years before something major happens. ~~~ rapsey So many companies doing IPOs lately, seems to me we are reaching a top. Private money running out, lets go for public. ~~~ charlesdm For tech, yes. But does that mean the whole economy or tech sector goes into a recession? I.e. will the fact that Uber tanks after IPO have an effect on Apple? ~~~ rapsey 2008 was a housing bubble and it cut everyone at the knees. ~~~ T-A Housing is a huge component of the US economy. Total value in 2018: $33.3 trillion [1], 1.6x GDP (20.9 trillion) [2]. Tech is about 5% of GDP [3]. [1] [https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47847-us-housing- market...](https://www.housingwire.com/articles/47847-us-housing-market-value- climbs-to-333-trillion-in-2018) [2] [https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-gdp-5-latest-statistics- and-h...](https://www.thebalance.com/u-s-gdp-5-latest-statistics-and-how-to- use-them-3306041) [3] [http://www.ianhathaway.org/blog/2017/5/31/how-big-is-the- tec...](http://www.ianhathaway.org/blog/2017/5/31/how-big-is-the-tech-sector) ~~~ opportune You're comparing the total value of all housing to GDP vs. an actual percent of GDP. That's not an apples to apples comparison. A quick lookup tells me construction is about 4% of GDP. And financing/ancillary services for that construction, if I had to estimate, might make up another 2% at most. Which is pretty close to tech ~~~ T-A Yes, but what happened in 2008, and caused the crisis referred to by rapsey, was that housing lost a large fraction of its _value_. It was not a drop in construction, financing etc that tanked the economy; it was the loss of value, which left a giant hole in balance sheets. The apples-to-oranges comparison was introduced by rapsey, I merely provided the numbers. ------ jamisteven Seriously need to launch already so I can hitup softbank for some green. ------ Fnoord Wirecard? Together with 3V they released pay2d as debit card here in The Netherlands, after which 3V was discontinued. Unfortunately they added ridiculous fees (which their competitor Neteller doesn't have). So I went with them instead. ------ m3nu In other news: SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son Lost $130 Million on Bitcoin ~~~ goobynight A whole half percent of his net worth. Some people lose more, relatively, by getting a cat/dog.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Python 8 will be the next major Python version - echion https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2016-March/143603.html ====== PeCaN Later in that thread: > Does it combine the base of Python 2 with the power of Python 3? ------ mjevans April 1st; training everyone to take everything with a grain of salt... sometimes with a mine of salt. ------ andremendes That was the funniest april fools joke I've read since I've arrived at work today. ~~~ sshasan seconded! ------ stared Why not just Python 4 - just with for loops requiring a bracket and leaving '+' only for float addition (for integer addition there will be '++'). With no new benefits, but 10% worse performance. Oh, wait - it would an old-joke recycling. ------ RandomBK Oh god, this is triggering my PTSD already! On the other hand, a language- enforced style guide might not be such a bad idea... ~~~ chrisdotcode Go does this with go fmt. I hear it works quite nicely. ------ djsumdog I like how it's more than obviously an April 1st thing. But it's also kinda meh and not all that funny. ------ outworlder Refusing to import files with PEP8 violations would actually be a good thing - had it always been that way. ------ sdegutis To quote Uncle Albert and Bert: > I always say, there's nothing like a good joke. > No, and that was nothing like a good joke. ------ DonHopkins When will Python catch up to where C++ was exactly 18 years ago? [1] [1] [http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf](http://www.stroustrup.com/whitespace98.pdf) ------ smnrchrds I wish the part about renaming PyPI back to Cheeseshop were true. ------ stared And when Node jumped from 0.x to 4.x it was not a joke. ------ shogun21 This really bytes. ~~~ comex It's the latest in a string of terrible April Fool's jokes. ~~~ wittekm A unique ode to the biggest changes between 2->3 ~~~ notdonspaulding They're just trying not to leave behind a remainder of the already-divided community.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are the greatest modern space-opera style sci-fi books? - andrewstuart I'm interested in stuff written in the past twenty years where the setting is in space or other worlds.<p>My favorite is probably Excession, which also has an outstandingly good audio book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excession ====== cjslep I randomly picked up Peter F. Hamilton's Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained when they were first published in the mid 2000's, and was pleasantly entertained. I was a very upset teenager when I got to the end of Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained hadn't been published yet. It is not "hard" sci-fi in the classic sense, but has larger-than-life characters, mysteries, politics, criminals, and a good sense of humor. The tone between those two books is different, but enjoyable. ------ detaro As you are probably aware, there are more works of Banks to read, both in and outside the Culture universe, and my favorites are somewhere in there, I can't pin it down to one exactly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
3 Tenets for Implementing a REST API - anm8tr http://www.notmessenger.com/rest/3-tenets-for-implementing-a-rest-api/ ====== timrobinson > _But just like I don’t use custom HTTP headers because of concern that > proxies may strip them off_ Is this an actual problem? HTTP headers are normally significant in REST APIs (well, in HTTP generally), so it seems unreasonable that a proxy would alter them.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Interview with Alan Kay - gits1225 http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442# ====== bcantrill Alan Kay is a brilliant guy, but I really wish he could open his mouth without shooting it off. In particular -- to speak to my own domain -- he bleats about "feature creep" in an operating system with absolutely no demonstrated understanding for a modern OS. Is KVM "feature creep"? Is ZFS? Is DTrace? He shows not so much as an ounce of understanding for why these things exist or empathy with those for whom they were created. I have great reverence for history (and Kay and I share an intense love for the B5000[1]), but I also think it's a mistake to romanticize the past. Viz., when he wistfully recalls the Unix kernel having "1,000 lines of code", he can only be talking about Sixth Edition: even by Seventh Edition (circa 1979!), the kernel had (conservatively) over ten times that amount.[2] And this is still a system that lacked a VM system and TCP/IP stack -- and tossed if you created the 151st process![3] If he wants to criticize the path that history has taken, fine -- but when he is so ignorant of the specifics of that path, it's very hard to treat him as anything but a crank, albeit an eminent one. [1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4010407> [2] <http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi-bin/utree.pl?file=V7> [3] newproc() in [http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/sys/sys/...](http://minnie.tuhs.org/cgi- bin/utree.pl?file=V7/usr/sys/sys/slp.c) ~~~ ehsanu1 Cranks don't really put their money where there mouth is. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm sure you'll enjoy looking at the STEPS project: <http://www.vpri.org/html/writings.php> In summary, the goal is a user-facing system in 25k SLOC, from kernel to GUI apps, including all the code for compilers for the custom languages they made. They call the languages "runnable maths", or "active maths", where they think of a minimal notation to specify how a system should behave, and then implement a compiler to run that notation as code. They manage this through a compiler-writing language, ometa. For example, to implement TCP/IP, they parse the ASCII tables from the RFCs as code. Seriously, they just take it as is, and have a compiler to run it as code. The implementation is supposed to be around 200 LOC (includes the code written in Ometa for their compiler). There's also a graphic subsystem, apparently with all the functionality of Cairo (which is 20k LOC) in about 800 LOC. Crucially, all this code is supposed to be very readable. Not line noise like APL. The expressiveness comes from having custom languages. ~~~ aaronblohowiak This style seems amazing, but I haven't seen any tutorials for people interested in learning how to do this themselves.. do you know of any such resources? ~~~ pmb They are doing the real deal thing - for each problem, designing a language in which to express the solution, and then writing the solution. Part of the point is that the building such solutions isn't really teachable in the context of a tutorial. If a tutorial can teach it, then it's probably a pretty shallow skill, and shallow skills should get designed away into a solution- oriented programming language, and any tutorials for THAT language, etc etc... The language they use to do that (O-Meta) is then a language-defining language, and designing THAT means balancing on a level of abstractions that is at least three levels deep, and each of those abstraction levels is hard and necessary. They achieve great simplicity by thinking damn hard. On the other hand, the mailing list (as noted by the other respondent) is a pretty interesting place with few flamewars. ~~~ eterps I think this tutorial does a pretty good job: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4230995> ~~~ aaronblohowiak This is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks. ------ noonespecial _"A lot of people go into computing just because they are uncomfortable with other people. So it is no mean task to put together five different kinds of Asperger's syndrome and get them to cooperate. American business is completely fucked up because it is all about competition. Our world was built for the good from cooperation."_ So much insight, so few words. ~~~ wyclif Kay may think that "American business is completely fucked up", but it's also undeniable that American business has been the greatest engine for technological progress the world has ever seen. Kay's anti-capitalism is showing, and it isn't particularly glorious to behold. ~~~ fchollet I would be curious to know what makes you think that technological progress is happening _because_ of competition. It might as well be _despite_ competition, I see no rational way of telling for sure, as there are too many interdependent factors at work. But I will say this: the academic world as I've been witnessing it is a world built on _cooperation_ , and it seems to me to be the real driver of strong innovation. Another lucrative social website is _not_ "strong innovation", but a new research algorithm that pushes the boundaries of what we can do, is. One is driven by profit, the other by curiosity. One happens because of competition, the other because of cooperation. ~~~ paulsutter Academia is rife with competition. As they say, the battles are so fierce because the stakes are so small. The open source community and Wikipedia are great examples of cooperation. The biggest advances in business are usually by people who are completely focused on customer needs and ignore competition (google up until their google+ fascination, Elon musk, apple prior to android's success. Note how google hasn't made any advances from their competition with Facebook, and how Apple hasnt advanced the iPhone much since they started competing with Android). ------ keithpeter "A side note: Re-creating Kay's answers to interview questions was particularly difficult. Rather than the linear explanation in response to an interview question, his answers were more of a cavalcade of topics, tangents, and tales threaded together, sometimes quite loosely — always rich, and frequently punctuated by strong opinions. The text that follows attempts to create somewhat more linearity to the content. — ALB" Audio would be ace. ------ staunch It seems like he's still stuck thinking about computers the way he was many years ago. Wikipedia _isn't_ amazing because it doesn't have a WYSIWYG editor and can't run code on the (very few) pages where that's even applicable? He doesn't seem to get that what makes the web amazing is the data and people connected to it. That's generally far more interesting to users than novel interfaces or whiz-bang features. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, etc aren't _technically_ all that interesting or innovative. They're infinitely more transformative than nearly all software that came before them though. ~~~ david927 _It seems like he's still stuck thinking about computers the way he was many years ago._ _Google, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yelp, etc. ... infinitely more transformative than nearly all software that came before_ Ah, pop culture, you make me laugh... you make me cry... ~~~ chris_wot Why so? ~~~ ehsanu1 Not the GP, but the quote gives undue importance to a number of websites that have been successful. You have to consider whether some early software (say Unix and the C compiler) was more instrumental to the transformative effects of software on humanity, or say the software written Xerox PARC, or the original TCP/IP work. ~~~ chris_wot It depends on your measure. It could be argued that it's not undue weight as these sites have impacted on such a massive proportion of the world's society. For instance, gcc and unix didn't allow for the sort of direct communication that twitter caused - look at the Arab Spring for example. That the technologies you mention enabled the websites mentioned is not in doubt, but without the websites and related technologies would things like TCP/IP and Unix have had such an impact? ~~~ chris_wot Seems that my comment is controversial as someone has voted me down. I'm curious to hear from opposing views - I love technologies like TCP/IP, gcc, Unix, C, etc. - but I think they wouldn't be much use unless they were used to enable applications like Twitter, Google, Nethack and Wikipedia. I do want to clarify that I'm not saying that the underlying technologies aren't amazing. ~~~ sp332 I think the debate is whether TCP/IP would be useful without Google, or Wikipedia would have happened without TCP/IP. Personally I would say that IP changed the way people think about information, which made Wikipedia seem plausible. ------ pjmlp I fully agree with him. The web was designed for reading documents not to try to shoehorn an operating system into the browser. Thankfully the mobile world is bringing back the desktop applications concept, while using the network for communication protocols as it is supposed to be. ~~~ dan-k That's the exact opposite position from what Kay said: "...what you definitely don't want in a Web browser is any features.... You want to get those from the objects. You want it to be a mini-operating system..." Essentially he's saying that the way we think of browsers is holding the web back. We could have collaborative WYSIWYG editing of Wikipedia or blogs, for example, but instead we're stuck with just reading documents. Perhaps it would be correct to say that the web was designed for reading documents, but it shouldn't have been (at least according to Kay). ------ anigbrowl Excellent interview - Kay has some hard truths to tell and calls out a lot of BS. ~~~ paganel Totally agree with you, but looking at the comments above it seems like we've been imprisoned for so long in this glorious cave called the World Wide Web that we've forgot how we could have transformed the real outside world. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_Cave>) ~~~ filipncs I think I can guess the answer, but do you think that perhaps there could be any other reason, just any at all, that people don't see it your way? Once you've started explaining away why people disagree you with that kind of rhetoric, it's really hard to learn anything from them. ~~~ paganel > but do you think that perhaps there could be any other reason, just any at > all, that people don't see it your way? Of course that I'm aware of that, I'm not that self-centered :) > Once you've started explaining away why people disagree you with that kind > of rhetoric, it's really hard to learn anything from them. English is not my primary language, so I'm not 100% sure I understand what you're saying, but in case you're suggesting that I'm full of what will turn out to be empty rhetoric then of course that you have the right to your opinion. Anyway, I find it crazy that a guy like me (I think I'm in HN's bottom bracket when it comes to programming- or CS-ability) somehow sort of "defends" a guy like Alan Kay. I'm only doing it for the energy, the passion, the whatever- you-want-to-call-it that always gets to me when I'm reading Alan Kay's interviews. I agree it's something subjective. ------ limist There's a compelling quote within the first page: _But the thing that traumatized me occurred a couple years later, when I found an old copy of Life magazine that had the Margaret Bourke-White photos from Buchenwald. This was in the 1940s — no TV, living on a farm. That's when I realized that adults were dangerous. Like, really dangerous. I forgot about those pictures for a few years, but I had nightmares. But I had forgotten where the images came from. Seven or eight years later, I started getting memories back in snatches, and I went back and found the magazine. That probably was the turning point that changed my entire attitude toward life. It was responsible for getting me interested in education. My interest in education is unglamorous. I don't have an enormous desire to help children, but I have an enormous desire to create better adults._ Here's a link to the photos (some unpublished) that he refers to: [http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke- white...](http://life.time.com/history/behind-the-picture-bourke-white-and- the-liberation-of-buchenwald/#1) ------ gits1225 Why is the title of the post renamed? Should the titles be boring and dry instead of being informative one line summary of the article that people may find interesting enough to read it? Look what happened to the previous submission of the same article here on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4224966>. Such a good article went unnoticed because the title was plain unattractive. Can we have a little bit of 'submitters freedom' here? P.S: Original title was: "Internet by Brilliant minds, Web by Amateurs, Browser a lament" ~~~ chris_wot I actually think it was a good rename. He said a lot more than that, and sensational titles aren't really needed on HN. ~~~ gits1225 I do agree on 'cheap' sensational titles, but I don't think mine was. I think it was a better title more in-line to what Alan Kay _emphasized_ in the article, giving it a bit of context to interest someone to read a great interview, instead of just a generic 'Click Here' like the previous submitter's, leading people to think it was not worth 'clicking through'. ~~~ chris_wot Fair comment - on further reflection I agree, the title was reasonable as it highlighted the emphasis placed by Alan Kay. It wasn't the title that was sensational, it what Alan Kay said in the interview. Apologies for suggesting otherwise! ------ jorangreef Browsers were built around the idea of web pages, not web apps. The security model works for web pages but precludes powerful web apps. There needs to be a way for a user to grant UDP, TCP or POSIX power to a web app, because WebSockets are not TCP, and IndexedDB is not POSIX and never can be. Just UDP, TCP and POSIX and we're done. Let the community build everything better and faster on top. ------ nl _If they reinvented what Engelbart, did we'd be way ahead of where we are now._ I give you <http://www.dougengelbart.org/about/hyperscope.html>, implemented in 2006 on that horrible web thing Kay complains about. So there is that... ------ ryanhuff If the web had proper time to incubate without the pressures of the dotcom craze, I suspect it would have developed in a much more controlled, and systematic way. As we know, development was very chaotic and competitive. I do think we will get to a better place eventually. After all, the web is still a relatively new medium, especially when compared to the "Internet". ------ chris_wot "You can't go to heaven unless you're baptized." Actually, no. Perhaps if you are Roman Catholic (and even then that's questionable); Evangelical Christians either believe that you don't do anything to get to heaven and Jesus saves you, or you choose to believe that Jesus Christ died as one perfect sacrifice for the forgiveness of those who follow Jesus. You may not agree, but I'm pointing out that the statement by Kay is pretty inaccruate. ~~~ jorangreef There are many interpretations of what it means to follow Christ. The rational interpretation is Christ's own interpretation, the historical gospel story, from the beginning of the Old Testament right through to the end of the New Testament. The Scriptures are historical, they provide the facts of the events. Thankfully they are also theological and interpret the meaning of the events. Did it happen? What does it mean? ~~~ sp332 Fundamentalist radical literalist Christian here :) It's simple: when Jesus and two thieves were being crucified together, he told one of them that he would see him in paradise that day. Ergo, baptism is not a necessary requirement of getting to heaven. [https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2023&v...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke%2023&version=HCSB) (I would start around verse 32) ------ chris_wot Is this how he really said it, or was the author paraphrasing? ------ haberman I haven't read too much Alan Kay before, but this interview made me realize that he's not really the inventor of object-orientation as we currently think of it. He says as much directly in the interview: "And that's true of most of the things that are called object-oriented systems today. None of them are object-oriented systems according to my definition. Objects were a radical idea, then they got retrograded." It sounds like his conception of "objects" is a more user-facing thing; an object is something you see on your screen and can interact with and manipulate by programming. This view blurs the line between users and programmers. I'm not sure this is a terribly realistic model for how normal people want to interact with computers. For all his disdain for the web, it has succeeded in bring content to over 2B people worldwide, most of whom wouldn't have the first idea what to do with a Smalltalk environment. ~~~ eterps _I haven't read too much Alan Kay before, but this interview made me realize that he's not really the inventor of object-orientation as we currently think of it._ Alan Kay is really the inventor of object-orientation. But when the concept of "type bound procedures" was added to compiled languages like C (making it C++), they called it object-orientation, even though type bound procedures are a different thing than object-orientation. Real object orientation is about sending messages between objects, those messages do not have to be predefined, they are not dependent of type hierarchies, they can be arbitrary, they can be relayed, ignored, broadcasted etc. You do not need classes or types at all to be object-oriented by Kay's definition. ~~~ haberman Nothing you said contradicts my comment at all. I said "he's not really the inventor of object-orientation _as we currently think of it_." What we currently think of as object-orientation is not what he invented. I don't see what's controversial about this, since he said exactly this in the interview, and I'm not understanding the downvotes to -3. The second part of my comment was expressing basically the same sentiment as this comment, which was not downvoted into oblivion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4229788> ~~~ Ralith You also said > It sounds like his conception of "objects" is a more user-facing thing; an > object is something you see on your screen and can interact with and > manipulate by programming. This view blurs the line between users and > programmers. I'm not sure this is a terribly realistic model for how normal > people want to interact with computers. Which misrepresents his contribution rather badly. ~~~ haberman From the interview: KAY: We didn't use an operating system at PARC. We didn't have applications either. BINSTOCK: So it was just an object loader? KAY: An object exchanger, really. The user interface's job was to ask objects to show themselves and to composite those views with other ones. BINSTOCK: You really radicalized the idea of objects by making everything in the system an object. KAY: No, I didn't. I mean, I made up the term "objects." Since we did objects first, there weren't any objects to radicalize. We started off with that view of objects, which is exactly the same as the view we had of what the Internet had to be, except in software. I realize that objects in Smalltalk were not all graphical, but this concept of objects as graphical entities seems to be near and dear to his heart. ~~~ Ralith The interview does not discuss Kay's contributions in any depth. You have misunderstood them as a result of making weak inferences and not doing any further research. ~~~ haberman You're right that I don't know his work that well and probably extrapolated too much from this interview. I just get a little irritated at people (even smart, famous people) who criticize successful projects like the Web or Wikipedia for not being good enough, or inferior to their own work, without acknowledging that their success in the marketplace shows that they must have done _something_ right. I'm glad he's working on STEPS; I'm eager to see him push the boundaries of what is possible, and if it succeeds, it will validate his ideas. But Smalltalk and Squeak have been around for decades, and yet the Web and Wikipedia are orders of magnitude more popular. So why does he have to bash their creators as "amateurs" or "lacking imagination" when their ideas have caught hold in a way that his work has not? What does he have to back up this criticism? Sure, a lot of the ideas from Smalltalk and his early work on object-oriented design have influenced other programming languages, but he himself says that the way in which object-oriented design evolved runs counter to his vision, not in support of it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hit testing for arbitrary paths on the iPhone - baroova http://www.dragozov.com/2009/10/hit-testing-for-arbitrary-paths-on.html ====== ajg1977 This approach seems really dumb to me. 1) Testing rectangles against paths is an easy thing to solve on the CPU. 2) On the first iPhone models if you're doing anything graphics related the bottleneck is likely to be the GPU, so why give it more work? 3) Having the GPU rasterize into a user surface (which by definition must be available immediately) is going to cause an ugly stall as you wait for the drawing pipeline to be flushed. (no lock semantics in core graphics). 4) Having the CPU block on results from the GPU mid-frame is one of the worst things you can do in architectures that feature graphics acceleration.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NNSA/U.S Air Force complete test of non-nuclear B61-12 nuclear gravity bomb - shaaaaawn http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/b61-b61-12-lep-life-extension-program-snl-lanl-sandia-national-laboratory ====== acjohnson55 I ran into this article as well, but don't understand. What does this mean exactly?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Where even Walmart won't go: how Dollar General took over rural America - devy https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/13/dollar-general-walmart-buhler-haven-kansas ====== sj4nz Just walked through a Dollar General store today while waiting for lunch. They make Big Lots stores feel like Nordstrom. If you are struggling I can see the appeal of the "low prices" but the value of what you can get there isn't so great. ~~~ Fjolsvith True, also the packaging is slightly smaller than in regular stores. E.g.: 7 oz cans instead of 8 oz cans. But the price is just enough less than the 8 oz size price to make the consumer feel they are getting a good deal. ------ Waterluvian Is rural America declining, or simply not improving the way the rest of America is in the last 100 or so years? ~~~ sj4nz America is developing in exactly the way the systems we like to use dictate they should grow. Here it is a transportation issue--in the opposite way you might think. Older towns in the mid-west are spaced apart roughly 6-miles because you would only be able to travel by horse about 20-miles in a day. Naturally, you would want to be able to do "things" in the next town so you don't travel the entire day just to turn around and go back home. So, towns spread out about 6-miles and slowly grow. Bigger towns grew faster and smaller towns stayed the way they are. Bring in interstates and railroads and suddenly some towns, if they had nothing "going for them" never grow again or shrink--they're completely bypassed. People leave town for the opportunities, so opportunities have little need for these towns except for the occasional externality: e.g. a massive chicken processing or pet-food rendering plant no one wants to live near. Dollar General has found a dirt-easy strategy and picks up this easy money because this is essentially a structural problem with people who have tied themselves too closely to the land and governments that can't solve their problems. ~~~ Fjolsvith Its only a problem for the low income to welfare range of folk. People who have a better income usually have transportation and use it to shop in bigger cities where the savings pays for the trip. Also, the trip doubles as a social outing, where the folk eat out, go to a movie, etc.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Asset tracking API with BLE mesh - jimiasty http://blog.estimote.com/post/165720366660/estimote-introducing-low-power-asset-tracking-api ====== jimiasty Hi HN, This is Jakub, founder of Estimote. We just launched a new Asset Tracking API. Bluetooth beacons attached to walls can now scan and locate smaller beacons attached to objects and pass that location data to the Cloud via low-power mesh network they create. Via API it is possible to access quasi-real-time location of these assets on the floorplan. If you have any questions we are around.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Attributes of a successful Open Source project? - Sean-Der I have a small Open Source project https://github.com/Sean-Der/fail2web and would love to see it succeed. For me that means the code is clean, users are not frustrated and contributors can easily improve it.<p>What are some things that you like to see in an Open Source either as user or contributor? On that same note what are the things that instantly make you avoid a project? I have also thought about<p>* A official IRC channel on Freenode, for support and people can ask me questions directly.<p>* Buy a domain and give some basic documentation and images (gh-pages)<p>* A public mailing list so I can have release announcements<p>I am getting to the point where the code is mature enough for me, so I want to assure that the project doesn't stagnate. Perhaps I am trying to artificially give the project more life than it warrants?<p>thanks ====== webmaven Buying a domain may be overkill for most projects. Simply using a subdomain somewhere (such as a projectname.github.io or projectname.readthedocs.com) is likely sufficient. By far the greatest determinant of success for a project are productive and engaged developer and user communities, and open lines of communication between these groups (where they are different). _Which_ communications channels are most important for _your_ project(s) is something that can't be reduced to simple advice, and will change over time in any case. Try one at a time, invest more into the ones that have the most engagement, and smooth the speed-bumps wherever you can. ------ higherpurpose 1) A forum (you can use this: [http://www.discourse.org/](http://www.discourse.org/)) or subreddit where users can complain about issues or suggest features. Or both. 2) You could try UserVoice for feature request voting, too. I've been following an open source project myself as a user. They use all 3 of these suggestions, and I've been keeping up to date on them. Probably not as necessary, but if you think it can work for you, you can do a blog, too, for bigger version announcements or longer posts and so on. ------ gprasanth My Favorite.. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar#Le...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar#Lessons_for_creating_good_open_source_software)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
MongoDB removed from RHEL 8 beta due to license - vbezhenar https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8-beta/html/8.0_beta_release_notes/new-features#web_servers_databases_dynamic_languages_2 ====== giancarlostoro It seems[0] the new MongoDB license is basically non-free and it would make no sense to include it in RHEL8. I hope Debian and other distros follow suit as a result if they come in agreement. It's sad that the license change all resorts to greed basically, as if Oracle took over MongoDB. If I were to ever use a NoSQL database for a new project I'd aim for MIT / 2-clause BSD based projects instead. PostgreSQL has no issue being BSD-like licensed (all this time I thought it was BSD or MIT, turns out it's a similar license instead). It saddens me RethinkDB couldn't compete more with MongoDB. [0]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18919728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18919728) ~~~ merlynn Michael from MongoDB here... Greed? You realize that anyone can still view, download, use, develop, modify and do everything they could do prior to the change - right? The only difference is that if they decide to offer the licensed software as a public service they must release the other components of the service under the same license. ~~~ jayofdoom Honestly, from my perspective the problem is more the timing. If MongoDB had always been licensed this way, companies could make informed decisions about what product to use. Instead, you pulled a license bait and switch -- attracted people with a free-as-in-freedom license, then switched it for one that was less free after adoption picked up. That's not behavior I'd personally support as someone who has a career because of free software, and I wouldn't support it professionally because of the immense risk a company takes on when adopting a piece of software for long-term use -- like a DB. ~~~ karmakaze As you may know there are different senses of 'free' at work here. How you're using it is as 'freedom to use'. The other is 'freedom of the source code information' which is to say that derivative works must also be released into the open. Open-source now has these two competing views. I would complain if software that was MIT licensed switched to a GPL one as it's switching camps. I would complain less if a GPL one switched to AGPL. I agree that it's best to choose the license that matches your beliefs from the start. We must also accept that a change in license is a distinct possibility and that we are free to fork. ------ hannob Anyone surprised? Of course you can choose a non-free license for your code, but it comes with consequences. One of them is that Linux distributions that value free licenses will no longer act as your distributor. ~~~ viach This comment sounds like RHEL's license is more 'free' than Mongo's, which is not the case, imho. ~~~ ergo14 Really? It's so non-free that you have CentOS. ~~~ bubblethink Yes, but as a customer of RH, you are not allowed to distribute RH's binaries, or they will terminate your contract. That is also against the spirit of the GPL, although not necessarily the letter. You can take the source, remove the branding, recompile, and redistribute, which is similar to what CentOS does/used to. However, the GPL allows the former too. i.e., You can straight up distribute the binaries under GPL. ~~~ timdierks This is simply not true: it's explicitly not the intent of the GPL, and furthermore the GPL is clearly a contract which explicitly spells out its intent, not a vague document whose spirit needs to be interpreted. ~~~ bubblethink It is explicit in the freedoms it grants you, one of which being the freedom to distribute copies. The intent is pretty clear. The RH workaround to that is that if you exercise this freedom, they will not do business with you in the future. You got to exercise your freedom, but only once. The GPL doesn't have recourse for that. ~~~ Frondo You _can_ redistribute the source, and that's what really matters. No one ever made any claims to redistributing binaries, and that's neither the letter nor the spirit of th GPL. The GPL is about user freedom, which relies on source code. The whole thing came about because Richard only had access to binaries for that printer. And it makes sense that RedHat wouldn't want you to distribute their binaries...who's to say you didn't backdoor them? That's their name on the line, too. ~~~ bubblethink >You can redistribute the source, and that's what really matters. No one ever made any claims to redistributing binaries From [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html): "Freedom to distribute (freedoms 2 and 3) means you are free to redistribute copies, either with or without modifications, either gratis or charging a fee for distribution, to anyone anywhere. Being free to do these things means (among other things) that you do not have to ask or pay for permission to do so. ..... The freedom to redistribute copies must include binary or executable forms of the program, as well as source code, for both modified and unmodified versions. " ------ preinheimer This seems like a non-issue to me...? The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list. I'm a debian user, but their redhat installation instructions are similar: [https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb- on-...](https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-red-hat/) I guess it will be a small speed bump for people experimenting their first time, but I've never had any concerns about using a vendor provided source for packages (third party provided ones are a different story.) ~~~ pilif _> The installation instructions I've always followed for MongoDB start with importing a key, and adding their official repo to my source list._ Going with the maintainer's repo means that you trust the maintainer with providing security updates for the version you have installed or you trust them with providing a useable upgrade path. If you go with a distro package, you will get both the benefits of security updates for the lifetime of the OS itself and the benefits of the underlying software not changing. Of course it also means that you don't get new features for the lifetime of the OS. So depending on your target usage of MongoDB, you either would want to go with the OS packages (if MongoDB is just a dependency of a dependency and you don't really care about its functionality aside of it being there) or with the vendor packages (if you're directly depending on MongoDB and you're willing to keep up to date with feature releases). But even then, sometimes a vendor's official response to a security problem is "run apt-get upgrade to update to the latest major release" at a time when you really don't have the time to read the release notes and adopt your software to the changes in the new version. Other vendors still provide maintenance for older releases, so it really depends on the vendor, whereas if you go with the OS packages, none of this matters. Also, in this particular case, there's also the licensing issue to consider. I don't know whether it's safe for a company offering some service and/or application over the web to use current versions of MongoDB without paying for a license. ~~~ iqy >Going with the maintainer's repo means that you trust the maintainer with providing security updates for the version you have installed or you trust them with providing a useable upgrade path. Why should that be a problem if you use the official repo, handled by MongoDB themselves? ~~~ pilif Because as I said later in my post, sometimes a vendor's response to a security issue is "please update to the latest major release". Let's say you're using version 1.1 of some software and you're hit by a remotely exploitable unauthenticated RCE. You want to patch it, but the vendor says that the only fix is to update to 2.0. How quickly can you adjust your software to work with that major release that might contain non-backwards compatible changes? Are you going to be quicker than the time it takes malware authors to write bots to hit that RCE? There's also a second example which is automated updates: Our infrastructure automatically applies OS package updates via `apt-get`. Thanks to Debian only ever updating packages for security reasons and only very rarely shipping new bugs, this is an actually workable practice. But once you start adding 3rd party vendors who, for example, believe that once puppet 4 is released it's totally safe to just publish puppet 4 as a replacement of puppet 3 previously in the 3rd party repo, this becomes a very dangerous practice. ~~~ chrisseaton How does this work? How are RedHat able to reach into any of the thousands of projects in their repository and fix bugs and vulnerabilities? How do they have people on staff who understand all those codebases and algorithms? Do RedHat support engineers get tickets like 'bug in the energy minimisation algorithm of GraphViz - go in, learn that field of computer science, and fix it'? ~~~ quantummkv It is the upstream vendor that issues fixes. What RedHat does is that it takes the commits that fix the bug and merge them into their forks and release. ~~~ chrisseaton > It is the upstream vendor that issues fixes. So if you have a bug in a RedHat package, and you're paying $100k a year RedHat support contract, all they really do is open a GH issue with the upstream to ask them to fix it? And then you just wait hoping they fix it so RedHat can cherry pick it? ~~~ myWindoonn We don't know. I'm going to tell you a short story, though. Rumor has it that KMS[1] was developed entirely because a deep-pocketed RH customer was annoyed that their workstations showed a fraction of a second of the boot/init log, and wanted a more seamlessly-graphical boot. This feature was not universally welcomed by the kernel community. It excluded BSD cousins and frustrated nVidia and AMD/ATI. I remember standing next to the DRM/KMS maintainer while Linus yelled at us. RH absolutely will interact with upstream on behalf of their customers. They don't just "open a GH issue"; they present designs, code, rationale, and evidence to upstream. I wonder whether this is something that Oracle does, but it doesn't sound like it. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager#Kerne...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Rendering_Manager#Kernel_Mode_Setting) ------ amenod I am really torn about this news. On one hand MongoDB's change of license is a clear attempt to discriminate against a set of users, so it is clearly non- free. On the other hand I know it is really difficult to make a sustainable business by developing an opensource product, especially since there are companies (like Amazon) who will take successful opensource projects and offer them as a service, or simply offer a compatible service (which is what Amazon did now). Discriminating against such uses doesn't seem wrong to me since they clearly harm the creators and maintainers in their effort to actually make some income from the project. There is a really limited set of options for opensource companies and I have yet to see an opensource product that would bring their creators enough money to sustain it on aything else than their goodwill. RedHat doesn't count, because they packaged other people's opensource and sold the package to enterprise. They did contribute back and even started and maintained some of the projects (which makes them "good guys" in my eyes), but any other opensource project will have difficulties replicating that success. EDIT: I would really appreciate discussion instead of (down)votes. ~~~ kstrauser PostgreSQL is used much more widely than MongoDB, and has a much freer license. Lots of people make money developing and supporting PostgreSQL. I also content that MongoDB built their project on top of a mountain of Free Software. It rings a little hollow to me when they complain that others are making money from using their software, when the MongoDB team is also making money from using others' software. Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim, or... ~~~ threeseed > Last I checked, they weren't a major contributor to the Linux kernel, or > GNU, or GCC, or Emacs/Vim MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling on Linux. On OSX and Windows it uses other toolchains. And your point goes against the entire spirit of open source. No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be criticised by the community. ~~~ kstrauser > MongoDB only needs the Linux kernel/GNU/GCC when it's running or compiling > on Linux. Good call. They should also be contributing back to those toolchains. > No one should be forced to contribute back to open source less they be > criticised by the community. That right there is what we call irony. This is precisely what Mongo is trying to do. ~~~ bb611 That's not really what they're trying to do. What they're trying to do is make it so challenging to host MongoDB as a service that cloud providers can't do it. They implemented it with an absurd requirement forcing contributions to open source, but the intent is not to improve open source, it's to end regain market control. ~~~ kstrauser I totally agree. I’m convinced of it. The license shenanigans are just the means to that end. ------ hardwaresofton Somewhat orthogonal but I wonder if this is one of those times where people in forums like these can see further ahead than the usual stock market actors can? $MDB seems to be unaffected by this news (and the DocumentDB news as well). Maybe I've overestimating, but this looks like it will be a blow to accessibility of Mongo -- or maybe it will only be RHEL since they're focused on commercial applications? [EDIT] - I was incorrect/didn't look closely enough, the DocumentDB annoucement seems to be correlated with a 20%+ dip around January 8th. ~~~ cmsj If RHEL is dropping something for license reasons, you can be pretty sure that others will too: [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=915537#15) ------ ehayes It's a little ironic because Red Hat invested in MongoDB several times: [https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/red- hat/investments/...](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/red- hat/investments/investments_list) ------ sascha_sl MongoDB is the reason I don't contribute (outside of work) to any copyleft project that asks for copyright assignment anymore. ~~~ kemitchell [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why- assign.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-assign.en.html) ~~~ sascha_sl This is not why most projects do copyright assignment. I'd trust very few entities to have pure intentions when asking for this. ~~~ kemitchell Companies that unify intellectual property in projects under their stewardship typically take contributor license agreements, rather than assignments. For more on that: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/01/06/CLAs-Are-Not-a- Sha...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/01/06/CLAs-Are-Not-a-Sham.html) ------ zachruss92 I'm not super surprised that RHEL removed Mongo because of the licensing change. I don't completely understand why people getting upset about the licensing, however. As far as I know, MongoDB is still open source. If you are a hosting provider offering "MongoDB as a Service" the provider then needs to pay a licensing fee to Mongo. This seems ok to me, with the logic that MongoDB is a business that needs to make money. I am not an expert in licensing, but how is this any different than paying for a license of RHEL vs using CentOS? I'm genuinely curious as to how this is against open source beliefs. ~~~ e1ven It is not generally considered Open Source. The new license was rejected by the OSI, which is generally regarded as the defacto arbitrator of if something is OSS or not. It was also rejected by Red Hat and Debian as being not open source. There are various issues with the license, including the scope of what they considered tainted. You could read the mailing list archives on the subject, or there appears to be a summary at [https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523](https://opensource.stackexchange.com/a/7523) The newly submitted v2 of the license hasn't resolved (m)any of the problems that the OSI has raised, and isn't expected to be approved either. ~~~ kemitchell OSI has not rejected SSPL, v1 or v2. Mongo substituted for v2 in review, and v2 is still in debate. To my knowledge, OSI has never affirmatively rejected a license. A proposal to change its process to include rejection, which came up during SSPL review, remains pending. ------ karolist MongoDB is a strange company. I've downloaded their Compass software to visualise some throwaway JSON I had loaded in Mongo, gave my real email and here's the emails I was sent before I blocked their marketing account (allegedly someone named Alena) day 0 "Regarding your interest in MongoDB" day +1 "Alena with MongoDB in reply to your interest" day +3 "Alena with MongoDB making sure you're all set" day +7 "Alena from MongoDB reaching out" day +10 "Checking in from MongoDB" At which point I was completely speechless about this dumb spammy marketing attempt and just blocked the sender. Really guys? "I want to touch base with you again to see if we could provide you with additional information regarding our enterprise edition of MongoDB that you downloaded. Are you available to set up a call to learn more?" What the hell is that I never downloaded "enterprise MongoDB", it was Compass. I will never use anything from MongoDB, thanks Alena. ~~~ stingraycharles This is a common practice, it's called "Drip Marketing", "Nurturing" or a few more other variations. It's completely automated, and it sounds like some template / tagging gone wrong. Lots of companies do it, and it's fairly effective. ------ nnq ...why would almost anyone using MongoDB _care at all_ if it's included in a distro's set of default packages?! Don't we all _always_ install software from repositories hosted by third parties? As long as the Mongo devs keep supporting RHEL, I'd see no problem for actual _direct users_ of it. And SSPL sounds like a pretty good and sensible thing. ~~~ nolok It may or may not matter for Ubuntu or Debian or most other distros, but the kind of users/companies/customers that insist on using RHEL very much care about it. The whole point of using RHEL is that it has full support, why pay the premium for it if you then include non supported gears into it anyway. ------ zzzcpan MongoDB, Redis, CockroachDB and anyone else interested should join efforts with Kyle and adopt his similar to SSPL, but neutral and cleaner copyleft Shared Component License [1]. This should help clear up any confusion people have and avoid providing excuses for removing packages due to the license. [1] [https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component- license](https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component-license) ~~~ yarrel That's not a free software license though. ~~~ kemitchell I'm not sure what reason you have in mind. FSF and OSI are split on "private changes": whether a copyleft license can _require_ distribution of changes. OSI approved Plan 9, RPL, and Open Watcom, all of which require this in at least some scenarios. FSF rejects those license. I don't understand why FSF takes that position. More on that: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/09/17/Private- Changes.ht...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2018/09/17/Private-Changes.html) ------ pytyper2 Good, Mongo is rarely the right database. ~~~ TimMurnaghan Absolutely. My characterization of Mongo is that it's the back end choice of front end developers. The only possible justification for it could be time to MVP (and that's being kind). It's bad for all of the reasons that back-end people make back-end choices - non-functional requirements like operability, clustering, etc. Hopefully this is the start of it being removed from any infrastructure uses. I spun up an openstack instance the other day and was horrified to find Mongo in there. ~~~ threeseed Actually the NFRs are one of the best parts of MongoDB. It is by far one of the easiest databases to administer, clustering is orders of magnitude easer than say PostgreSQL and it can be the fastest database by far for certain use cases e.g. cell level updates. Can you be more specific about what in particular is deficient ? And if you look at their customers most of them aren't using it for front end work. Likewise I find it to be quite popular in the Data Analytics/Science space as a store of analytical features and for 360 entity views. ~~~ tracker1 Agreed to an extent. It does have its' place and is definitely very easy to use if you have a limited number of collections, mostly distinct in use and have deeply structured objects. The ease of clustering is pretty nice for either replica sets or basic sharding, but sharding + redundancy isn't great, and if you happen to have a majority of nodes offline it may never catch/sync up right again which may require bringing on/off new nodes or the whole thing down and restoring from backup. About 4-5 years ago when a bulk of Azure went down, I experienced this, and it wasn't fun to say the least. Fortunately it was mainly a replica of primary data source for search/display for mostly-read scenarios and was easier to re- replicate the records from SQL in the end. If I were to do it again, I'd probably reach for Elastic first. It can be very good for some use cases and less than good for others. The clustering is absolutely easier than anything but RethinkDB (in the box) and SQL Server (break out your checkbook) in my opinion. ------ rjkennedy98 Doesn't Red Hat have a huge financial stake in MongoDB? Seems weird to do this if that's the case. ------ kemitchell I recently published a sketch of a plain-language license generalizing the SSPL approach. Feedback of all kinds welcome! [https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component- license](https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component-license) At a minimum, I think my language can make the issues clearer. Folks don't want to wade 12 sections deep into AGPLv3, much less a path to AGPLv3. I can't blame them. ------ crb002 MDB stock is tanking. Hilarious knowing that some of the institutional investors are forcing MDB down the throats of their IT staff. [https://fintel.io/so/us/mdb](https://fintel.io/so/us/mdb) ------ avar It looks like it is, but is there any official word that the SSPL is proprietary? As far as I know MongoDB claims it isn't, and it hasn't been reviewed officially by either the FSF or the OSI. Is it in license purgatory? ~~~ dankohn1 Bruce Perens feels “it manifests a lot of ignorance about Open Source and utter contempt for our community.” [https://opensource.org/LicenseReview122018](https://opensource.org/LicenseReview122018) ~~~ latk That Perens quote refers specifically to Sunil Deshpande's article about the SSPL and Open Source, not to the SSPL itself. But it's not far off either way… The reaction on the OSI's license-review list is more varied. Lawrence Rosen and Ken Mitchell argue that the license should be approved. Everyone else is criticizing that it clearly violates the spirit of Open Source software (no discrimination against fields of endeavour!), and that the license is too broad and too vague in the critical section (Rosen agrees with the latter part). Carlo Piana points out that the goal of the license seems to be to create so much legal uncertainty that any serious user would be forced to buy a proprietary license from MongoDB. ~~~ kemitchell I also criticize the way SSPL was drafted. The legal talent they have can do far better. The choice to patch AGPL cuffed them. Here's me announcing an attempt at a plain-language, SSPL-style license from scratch: [https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/01/12/Shared- Component-L...](https://writing.kemitchell.com/2019/01/12/Shared-Component- License.html) The latest license text is at: [https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component- license](https://github.com/kemitchell/shared-component-license) ------ manishsharan Is any OSS project working on MongoDB API layer for FoundationDB ? ~~~ jsty The document layer offers this: [https://www.foundationdb.org/blog/announcing- document-layer/](https://www.foundationdb.org/blog/announcing-document-layer/) ------ gandutraveler Off topic . But since we are talking about DBs. What's the default go-to choice of DB now a days? ------ tracker1 Redis is still there, didn't they do something similar? ~~~ dvirsky No, just a few modules changes license (and were removed from distros). Redis itself remains BSD. ------ nwmcsween This is rich coming from Redhat that does shady things with subscription license agreements and open-source software. ~~~ jhall1468 Nothing Redhat does is shady. There's nothing wrong with license agreements for closed source software, or even license-agreements that support open source software. The latter is how open source companies make money. ~~~ nwmcsween The license agreements restrict use of the work on top of the GPL, same as mongo does.. ~~~ jhall1468 No, the Mongo license explicitly forbids cloud providers from using the software without open sourcing the entire stack. Unless you have an example of Red Hat doing the same, I'd retract the statement. ~~~ nwmcsween And the Redhat service license restricts redistribution of the binaries and modifications or you get blacklisted and cannot get any updates	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Crowdfunding Pack - andreyvit http://crowdfundingpack.org/# ====== joshdotsmith Pretty nice collection of discounts. How did you manage to coordinate all these? ~~~ teelaunch networking over time ------ rjvir I wonder how they select the winners. ~~~ teelaunch randomly ~~~ rjvir How randomly? Is there a lottery system? Would be awesome to see what hashing algorithm is used to determine the winner. The NBA draft has a "random" selection process with lottery balls, yet every year people think it's rigged.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Problem With Posterous - OoTheNigerian http://oonwoye.com/2011/01/31/the-problem-with-posterous/ ====== joelg87 I think you make a great point here. The thing I find interesting is that looking back it feels to me as though they did indeed get their first traction by carving a niche and being the best at _one thing_. In my mind, Posterous _were_ the best at blogging via email. In my mind, they were the blogging platform for people new to blogging. I personally introduced a few people to Posterous simply as a way to blog without using anything they didn't already know. It was simple: the headline is the email subject, and the body is the content of the post. They chose to steer away from that being a USP, I am assuming for good reasons. You're right about it being hard to focus, however perhaps there is a strategy amongst it all. If they try and do a number of things maybe they can find one thing which people like the way they do or which Posterous find they are particularly suited to delivering a potential "best at" solution for. Then they could focus. It is almost like instead of systematically pivoting from idea to idea, they are doing all the pivots at once. This could, of course, be a complete misreading of their strategy. ------ LeonW Oo, I agree 100% with your view. The exact same thing happened to me when using posterous. It's really cool to start with, but I feel I am not really in control thereafter anymore. So I switched to WP, which I think is the best blogging platform available for your metnioned reasons. The wealth of plugins is simply awesome. Only recently I started using Tumblr and you are right, the design is outstanding. Community seems to be far easier to build as well. I can only say, I won't go back to posterous if there is not a big change in what they are doing. Oh and nice last sentence ;). ------ lhnz <http://posterous.com/switch/> Huge copy saying "Switch your site to the simplest publishing platform on the planet" but just look below at the cluttered long-winded over-complicated advertising below, does it feel like you're on a 'simple' site?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Condoleeza Rice joins Dropbox board - malditojavi http://www.cnet.com/news/dropbox-grows-leadership-team-with-condoleezza-rice/ ====== bilalhusain She's been on company boards before. Is this (politicians on board) common in US? ~~~ cleverjake Its quite common for politicians to be business people as wel. I wouldn't say that many "pure politicians" sit on boards, though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
D.E.A. Says Hondurans Opened Fire During a Drug Raid. Video Suggests Otherwise - JumpCrisscross https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/world/americas/drug-enforcement-agency-dea-honduras.html ====== nkingsy Strange that they got a quote from the lady that operated the victim boat, but couldn't get her to explain why they practically rammed the DEA boat. Maybe they just didn't see the other boat because it was dark? ~~~ robotbikes "The passengers and pilot on the civilian boat would later say they were terrified by the helicopters and did not intend to steer toward the canoe containing the law enforcement agents." Sounds like they made a mistake and it sounds like the DEA agents mistakingly killed them for it and then claimed to have been shot at to cover up the civilian death toll. Obviously none of us were there and even if we were it is unlikely that our recollection would be more accurate than a video recording.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is dropbox still down for you? - nodesocket I still cannot connect to Dropbox with clients, and logging into Dropbox.com results in a 500 error. Anybody else seeing this? ====== nodesocket It appears the Germans are pissed as well: [https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=110230](https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=110230) ------ emiunet me too :( Error (500) Something went wrong. Don't worry, your files are still safe and the Dropboxers have been notified. Check out our Help Center and forums for help, or head back to home.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Startup founders throughout the Midwest are doing something new: staying - prostoalex https://story.californiasunday.com/indianapolis-tech ====== wpietri To me this is heartening in a variety of ways. One is that we're finally making good on the promise of the Internet. The hype was that it made location irrelevant. And it did for a lot of things. But somehow VC-backed web and companies were immune to that, even though money and software are both digital. Two is that this is great news for founders everywhere. Before they often had to choose between family and success. Now they can have both. (That didn't matter to me much when I was 25, but now it's easier to see costs of that.) Three, I think this is great for customers and users. A frequent and frequently valid critique of Silicon Valley startups is that many only make sense in our hothouse atmosphere. E.g., Juicero. There are real-world needs out there that we're missing because we don't see and spend time with the people who have those needs. Four, I believe that this is good news for both our cities and our startup community. The flood of money has driven up prices just like it did during the gold rush era. That's certainly a problem for people outside of tech. But I think it's also bad for entrepreneurs: it keeps getting more expensive to build a team and a company here. Turning down the heat a little will make it easier for us all to succeed without having to take gobs of money. ~~~ jt2190 > The hype was that [the internet] made location irrelevant. And it did for a > lot of things. But somehow VC-backed web and companies were immune to that, > even though money and software are both digital. montrose did a good job of summarizing a recent Wall Street Journal article ("Why Cities Boom While Towns Struggle", March 13, 2018) about this very phenomenon: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611042](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611042) To summarize his summary: > [R]emote exchanges of ideas are no substitute for the elemental human > process of face-to-face communication. Innovators don’t do their work in > isolation; they stimulate one another. -- Enrico Moretti edit: Here's a link to a non-paywalled interview with Mr. Moretti about his book, "The New Geography of Jobs" (2012): [https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/enrico-moretti- geograp...](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/enrico-moretti-geography- jobs) ~~~ aaron-lebo _[R]emote exchanges of ideas are no substitute for the elemental human process of face-to-face communication. Innovators don’t do their work in isolation; they stimulate one another._ Historically, many have. And today, when you can ping almost anyone in the world, it's not an obstacle. Not to mention, most big cities have a research university (if not multiple). Nobody is lacking for input. The claim about "elemental" processes isn't based on anything concrete. I work in multiple remote teams and it's never been an issue. We get more work done than if we had to see each other every day. That's hardly an endorsement for SV alone unless SV has all the talent in the world (it doesn't). I think your post and some of the other posts advocating for SV have knowingly or not accepted a belief about how things work, but they are essentially mythologies. Some work as loners, some work in groups. The biggest mythology of all is that it takes hundreds of millions in funding and unethical behavior to build cool stuff - it doesn't. That seems to be the SV way, many of us don't want that. ~~~ bobthepanda Those historical loner inventors were inventing much simpler things than we work on today. Every city with a university has a baseline amount of research, sure, but at some point a critical mass is more useful. Agreed on capital - all that VC money slushing around is more akin to chasing the next big thing rather than fixing real world problems. It's just that tech's reliance on unconventional methods of funding makes SV startups more prominent than startups in other industries. ~~~ aaron-lebo Were they? Individuals are more than capable of learning linear algebra, web frameworks, or any given hot tech in SV. Those historical loners had the massive disadvantage of not having reams of material detailing it and in some cases didn't have modern science because they invented it. There's almost nothing going on in SV that actually requires large teams or funding, that's just how things are done. Even if individuals have disadvantages v groups, those disadvantages aren't obvious when the phds and top of the class people at Google are building incompatible chat apps (what do they have, 4?) and those at Facebook are forgetting to renew security certs so that VR headsets don't stop working. There's a massive amount of inefficiency there, and at times mediocrity, and that's possible when everyone can pass the buck. It's not nuclear fusion. Surely the people at those companies as individuals are capable of producing much more than that? ~~~ wpietri You seem to be ignoring the gap between "large teams" and individuals. The sweet spot for a lot of tech innovation is single, modestly-sized teams. Individuals working alone, though, are very rarely successful. There are just too many skills for one person to have, and a solo founder loses the advantage of different perspectives clashing and collaborating. Unsurprisingly, investors are very reluctant to fund both solo founders and large teams. Seed money to support innovative work ends up mostly going to groups of 2-5 people. ~~~ aaron-lebo I agree with you, but we just weren't discussing it. My main point is it is possible for individuals to do great things. The gap between that and 75,000 person companies is not just huge, it's massive. Honestly, what investors will or won't fund isn't that interesting to me because it seems to be root of lots of short sightedness. Investors have concerns antithetical (in many cases) to building great stuff. My belief is the market's reliance on investors has biased what is or isn't possible. If so many people weren't concerned about what they would fund, we'd probably see more solo founders and we'd probably see more success there. With investor money around, there's less reason to do that, unless you are a masochist. But yeah, most projects aren't single person, and groups have advantages even if they can be. ------ aidenn0 I graduated from Purdue in '04 and the job market in-state was _terrible_. The best offer I received in Indiana was a one year contract @ $35k in Fort Wayne. Several talented people I knew took software jobs at $40k or under to stay close to family. I didn't even have to go to a tech hub to get more than double that $35k job offer. As an aside: I will _never_ work for Caterpillar after seeing the way the recruiters treated students at the job fair. An actually overheard sentence (and whatever tone you are hearing in your head is likely less harsh than what was used): "Our requirements list a minimum 3.5 GPA, why are you wasting my time with a 3.2?" this was not a particularly egregious example either, but rather the typical way they talked to candidates once they found a reason to throw away their resumé. ~~~ froindt While I was in school from 2011-2015 I noticed the GPA requirements seemed to drop significantly! Cat, John Deere, and Boeing all had 3.5+ requirements when I started. Last I heard, John Deere was at 2.8, and the others dropped as well. ~~~ aidenn0 At the time Cat really knew they were the belle of the ball. They were local and they hired from pretty much all majors in the College of Engineering. IIRC they weren't particularly interested in entry-level software people at the time despite listing it as an opening. ------ yesimahuman The headline is clickbaity. The point isn't that Silicon Valley isn't a major force in tech or that other parts of the US will "beat" it. Rather, it's that you can build valuable tech companies outside of it, and that the Midwest in particular is ripe for more tech companies. I know first hand, I'm building my VC-backed (including coastal $) startup in Madison, and we've stayed put. I realized the pressures we felt to move early on were our own insecurities and the bias of tech/investor media (which I've noticed has changed recently, we're not seen as so crazy!) I'm glad we stayed put, especially as we've started to focus on real revenue and scaling, and less on trying to be hot for the purposes of raising a big early round. I feel like the market for engineers around here is becoming an advantage for us, and we're not having to fight the same talent wars as those on the coasts. That matters. ~~~ seawlf Having just moved to SF from Madison, I have to say that the engineering competence of teams there is disappointing in comparison to the Bay Area. Not only that, but Madison companies really do not pay well at all. You can't expect to keep talent if you aren't paying for it. ~~~ yesimahuman So far it’s working out and we’re excited about growing here. Our data says we’re competitive on compensation and I’m proud of our retention. I’m very happy about the level of our engineering talent and this team is building a successful product used around the world right here in Madison. I’m sorry you didn’t have a great experience with your last team. ~~~ electricEmu I'm glad your happy with your company's engineering output. As an engineer, I would head for Chicago or Minneapolis. Madison doesn't have "the next job". When that time comes, I wouldn't want to uproot my family. I'm glad your rention is stellar. I would expect increased retention due to lack of alternatives. Most companies believe their compensation is competitive. A lot of them are wrong. The Midwest might be a place where companies can skirt those two things fairly easy. ~~~ ryandrake Is there any company out there who actually says “our compensation is NOT competitive?” That’s pretty much the lowest bar. When I hear “competitive salary” it means the company can’t think of a more positive word to describe it that is also truthful. ~~~ yesimahuman I'm really not sure what your point is. If you're losing candidates based on compensation being too low, then you're not competitive. ~~~ ryandrake Everyone at least says their compensation is competitive—-it’s not a way for an employer to differentiate. As a candidate, when I see the word “competitive” that tells me it’s lower than “generous,” “excellent,” “top of market,” basically lower than any other description of compensation out there. ------ danschumann I live in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. We used to make kids clothes, now we make trucks(military trucks). I've been writing animation software for the past 2 years. I work 3 hours a day freelancing to pay the bills ( my rent is 540 / month for a 2 bedroom ). When the software is done, it could be a multi million dollar thing, but for now I'm living on beans and rice. It's quite a hard thing, quite giant project for one person to do. Hopefully I think it was all worth it, if and when I get through it. ~~~ drb91 Wow that rent though, a great place to live frugally. How is your health insurance (if you don’t mind my asking)? ~~~ pnutjam In my experience, health insurance is no cheaper in the midwest, but you have lower quality care in many areas. Care can be especially difficult in rural areas. For comparison, I pay about $600 / month for a High deductible plan that pays nothing until I pay $6k. This is through a company with about 300 employees. I'm in an urban area (Indy). ------ aaavl2821 The abundance of startup jobs and VCs in Silicon Valley is not matched anywhere else, and this makes quitting a stable job and working for a startup / starting a company a far less risky proposition than if you lived in an area where there were maybe 1-2 startups big enough to hire reliably. In those places people just don't make careers of working in startups because there aren't enough jobs / funding That said, there are a lot of complicated industries where domain expertise trumps tech ability (healthcare is a prime example). Most successful health tech companies are not in CA (epic in Madison and cerner in Kansas City as two big examples). As more people learn to code I think there will be a growth in startups with relatively simple tech that is just well suited for the problem it addresses. Solutions that don't scale to millions of users / are not optimally performant but are designed by users can win in a lot of sectors ------ twblalock I suspect that when Silicon Valley loses its dominance it will be to China, not to other parts of the United States. ~~~ gowld Does China export consumer webtech? The unique "Chinese characteristics" as they call it would seem to make it hard to export consumer services. ~~~ gaius No one knows if Chinese consumer sites/apps like Weibo, Tencent etc can compete in an open market. Maybe they can but if so, why hide behind the Great Firewall? ~~~ varjag And the few Web companies from China that took off globally all seem to specialize in selling physical goods originating from China. ------ PhilipA As a Danish company who a year ago moved to Minneapolis, I can tell you that there is hidden gold in the mid west. Especially in Minneapolis there are tons of universities and cost of of living is much lower than the west coast. It makes it a lot easier to keep your employees once they want to start a family, something far too many companies neglect. ~~~ dsfyu404ed Unless you want a bunch of people from CA to show up and ruin it you should stop bragging about how great it is. Sincerely, Denver ~~~ twblalock Yeah, that's the irony of other cities trying to compete with Silicon Valley. If a city succeeds at this and a lot of well-paid engineers move there, that city will end up a lot like Silicon Valley, including the high housing prices and the traffic. ~~~ tjr225 The worlds population has gone from 1 billion in 1800 to 7.6 billion in 2017. This will keep happening. This is not California's fault. ~~~ doctorless Except that most of the places in the world that were responsible for that population boom have vastly decreased in children per family as of late. ------ EADGBE _But she was hesitant to move. She’d grown up in Northern Indiana and studied communications at DePauw University. She and her husband, a commercial real estate developer, had built a life for themselves and their two kids near the capital city._ This is an important aspect that I can't assume is only important to the Midwest, but something that I come across myself here, also in the Midwest. Occasionally an over-enthusiastic recruiter will reach out about a relocation opportunity. I sometimes can't help but reply "No. I love it here." Much to what I assume is confusion. We can still move fast and break things out here in Fly Over Country. And our salaries can afford us better opportunities in comparison. I think a lot of 'Coasters have a hard time even rationalizing that. No technology I've encountered is locked down to a location. ~~~ tjr225 I dunno...I make a lot more out here on the coast...I graduated from school at the end of 2014 and I make 2.75x more than my first job offer out of school back in my home state of MI. The weather is a lot more mild and pleasant. There are also things on the coast that you simply can't get in flyover country- mountains, ocean, vast empty national parks, for instance...I swear it feels like I'm on vacation every other weekend. OTOH I don't really want to buy a house out here just because it's a daunting prospect but there are pros and cons to living and working in each area. ~~~ closeparen >mountains, ocean, vast empty national parks None of which are relevant if San Francisco's transportation policy is effective and you go car-free. ~~~ tjr225 Good luck going car free anywhere in the Midwest outside of Chicago- and I mean at all, period. Even if you do, you still don't have the opportunity to experience the other- say, if you have friends with cars...which sounds pretty plausible to me(SF or otherwise)...if you think public transportation in the Bay Area is bad...every single city in the Midwest(outside of Chicago) is shockingly bad. You can commute 5-20 miles round trip by bicycle if you want if you feel like having your life threatened by motorists on an almost weekly basis(I speak from experience). ~~~ EADGBE FWIW, my confrontations on public transportation haven't been any worse than confrontations on the road (rare occurrences; current 60-mile commute, 24 years driving). A car is very much a rite-of-passage here still, sure. For those that can afford it (that is the bad part about it), it's the most freeing, invigorating thing you can own at 16. Being car-free seems completely asinine here; you're going to need it for something. That's the lifestyle here. No worse than a bicycle. And one day, when we can go emission-free; it really won't be. ------ cirgue Silicon Valley has a radically different viewpoint and set of priorities than the rest of the world. This discrepancy still has not been exploited to anywhere near its full potential. Edit: To clarify, I think SV is increasingly insular, and there is untapped innovative potential outside the bubble. ~~~ IAmEveryone The singular success of SV might point to some of its values being linked to its success. “Correlation is not causation” doesn’t even apply, because regardless of causality (a->b, b->a, or even x->a && b) it would seem that it’s difficult to have one without the other. It’s also important to note that the high reaches of other creative industries espouse values very similar to those of The Valley. ~~~ jerf Times change. The "SV values" of 40 years ago are noticeably different than the ones of today. Heck there's been a pretty noticeable shift even in the past 5 years. If SV did have the right values for success 20 years ago, I'd at least put out the suggestion that that opens the possibility that it doesn't have the success values today. ------ chaostheory > She was running into the same issue that Case had observed in other cities. > It had been easy enough to scrounge up seed money and desk space in > Indianapolis, but the venture capital she’d need to bring her company to > scale was much harder to find locally. > Case acknowledged that the investment culture of Silicon Valley is unique. > It “encourages fearlessness,” he said, “and that’s something to be admired.” > It can also be difficult to replicate elsewhere. This is one of the many things that keeps SV dominant. Unless this changes in the MidWest, things will stay the same. It will still be more beneficial for your company to move to California than stay if you need money. Investors in other parts of the country (and the world) are just less risk tolerant than California. ------ arthurcolle Apologies for the tangent - I have never been to the bay area, but I am frequently reminded many times when I meet a “pure tech company” ala google, msft, amzn, fb software engineer (I’m only 3 years out of school, studied CS) of this self-righteous and condescending narcissism that I haven’t seen repeated across other workers in other industries and a kind of deep sense of self-congratulatory entitlement. It is a little bit akin to what you see with Ivy League students -> Banks/Mgmt Consulting, but infinitely more detestable given how flippant toward the rest of the world the tech attitudes can be. Silicon valley is obviously the new wall street in terms of attracting the big brains and bringing a focused collection of hard working or brilliant individuals - yeah, we need the infrastructure to make the world spin faster but it can really bring out the worst and most myopic visions even from the “best and brightest”. I like automation and disruption, purely for its own sake, because we can. But the hyperaccumulation of wealth driven entirely by advertising is absurd and is effectively non-productive and I hope more people refuse to take classical VC funding and instead opt for organic growth and/or pure public raises. The only reason a web app development company (basically all these startups) that is 6 months old needs 5 million bucks is to create a legal fiction that from its inception is designed to create liquidation events that make VCs extremely wealthy, done in a way that gives the impression of “risk taking” without any real risk being taken because of the ability to create unicorns from deliberate successive raises - all of these entities exist within the same monoculture, with huge overlap in board of directors and investor groups. I think that ICO related innovations can help in potentially mitigating the development and solidication of this monoculture as we have seen in Wall Street, but unfortunately the criminality of some of the newer players in this field is staggering and equally disappointing Tech almost certainly doesn’t need Silicon Valley and a decoupling of peoples thinking in those terms will be very useful step in the right direction ~~~ aaron-lebo There's a lot of truth to what you say, but you are preaching to the wrong audience. ~~~ sneak It is very difficult to get a person to understand something when their salary depends on them not understanding it, or so the quote goes. ~~~ arthurcolle is this directed at me? not seeing applicability of the quote in this context ~~~ Zarath I think parent was agreeing with what you said, in that OP is preaching to the wrong audience because their salary depends on ignoring this information ------ arca_vorago I think this conversation is missing a big piece of what made SV in the first place. Namely, the military industrial congressional complex. I can't remember the author but he gave a good Google talk on the origins of SV from war engineering. I think since the type of warfare of the future is largely informational, and governments are increasingly neo-fuedal and authoritarian, in the future SV will be seen as a base of operations of the enemy of tech. Not only does tech not need SV, but they are going to largely be at odds. SV will probably still have the highest concentration of VC to IPO cycles but the problem is so many of them aren't solving problems with products or services and are generally focused on how to turn customer data into an advertiser money pit while they angle for the IPO boom and exit (betraying users more and more the closer the exit is) I'll tell you what tech does need though... non SV big money representation on the hill. That said, there some good things in SV like the EFF, and I don't have much knowledge of the area other than riding my Harley up 1 to visit a friend a few times. I do know Pelosi is a a horrible authoritarian in democratic clothing and it surprises me SF hasn't gotten rid of her yet. ~~~ pfarrell Was it Steve Blank's "The Secret History of Silicon Valley"? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo) ~~~ arca_vorago Indeed it is. Thank you. One thing I forgot to mention is how bad, constitutionally speaking, NSL's and other pressures from the government are. We just don't know how prevalent it has become, perhaps the government is NSL strong-arming companies left and right at the moment... Which is why the legislation that enabled NSLs is unconstitutional imho. ------ TulliusCicero > Poring over the available data, Case discovered that plenty of Midwestern > and Southwestern cities were leveraging tax incentives to stanch local brain > drain, and a few, such as Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, were cultivating > their own robust startup scenes. Tax incentives means competing on price, which is a loser in the long run. Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money invested in the society itself. > “We have a lot of quality-of-life advantages: not a lot of congestion, good > restaurants, low home prices,” he said. “It’s a place where a young family > won’t bankrupt themselves buying a house with a yard.” * Not a lot of congestion just means they have car-dominant sprawl that hasn't hit a huge economic boom yet. That's a downside to me. * Somehow I really doubt their restaurants are significantly better than the bay area, NYC, or Boston. * Home prices aren't so much a quality of life advantage as a cost of living advantage. ~~~ briandear > Lower taxes sounds good until you consider the implications: less money > invested in the society itself Or, perhaps the Laffer Curve? Maybe revenue actually increases? Look at Texas: huge budget surpluses and lower taxes and public schools ranked higher than California. I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state. A poorer state does correlate: such as Mississippi for example, but low tax “rich” states do just fine. ~~~ TulliusCicero Yes, but look at what usually happens. For example, most of the top 10 GDP per capita states are blue (and the ones that aren't are tiny petro states), while most of the bottom 10 GDP per capita states are red. This directly contradicts the conservative mantra of "low taxes spurs economic growth", if anything it looks like the opposite is true. > I am not trying to debate which state is better, but I am trying to make the > point that lower taxes does not correlate to a lower quality state. Well, "quality" is a pretty subjective word, but it does seem to _generally_ lead to certain things being worse, like social safety nets, education, etc. For example, in the case of Texas, it also has an insanely high maternal mortality rate, and while public schools there may outrank California's, California has an extremely strong public university system. ------ jdhn As someone who went to school in the Midwest, moved away, and then moved back, I think it's good that this is happening. That being said, I plan on moving away from the Midwest for good later this year, as there are better opportunities (and weather) elsewhere. ------ jonathankoren sure Silicon Valley sucks from a housing stand point, and you’d think that you can fire up an AWS instance from anywhere, and you can. However SV has one thing no place else has, a density of talent and capital unrivaled in the world. That’s why it continues to exist. Compare it to Hollywood. Sure you can make movies anywhere, but you don’t. [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-silicon- valle...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-silicon-valleys- success-is-so-hard-to-replicate/) ~~~ wpietri Hollywood's not a great example. Their centrality to the movie industry has been declining for decades. E.g.: [https://www.thewrap.com/louisiana- california-movie-making-ca...](https://www.thewrap.com/louisiana-california- movie-making-capital-world-2013/) Or an article from this year listing LA as the 3rd-best place, after Atlanta and Vancouver, for moviemakers to live: [https://www.moviemaker.com/archives/best_of/best-places- to-l...](https://www.moviemaker.com/archives/best_of/best-places-to-live-and- work-as-a-moviemaker-2018-big-cities/) One important factor at work here is the Internet. Effects companies, for example, are all over the place, including London, New Zealand, Vancouver, LA, and even here in San Francisco. Big movies will often use multiple companies, something that would have been very challenging 30 years ago. Silicon Valley does have capital and talent. But it's not like that capital is in doubloons in a vault. It's purely digital. A big reason it's not more mobile is that VCs wouldn't deign to stop in a flyover state. Talent isn't quite as mobile, but a) advances in technology mean talent is less necessary, and b) the rise in remote work means the location of talent is less and less meaningful. ~~~ mixmastamyk Much of this is due to unfair tax credits in various areas. And instead of competing, the geniuses in Cal/LA have been raising taxes. ~~~ majormajor Actually tax credits for staying local have been increasing, e.g. [http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-amazon- sn...](http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-amazon-sneaky-pete- tax-credit-20180319-story.html) today ~~~ mixmastamyk Nice, a new program. However the total tax burden is still high, e.g. there is a "freelancer" tax in Los Angeles with onerous reporting rules. ~~~ sedachv > However the total tax burden is still high, e.g. there is a "freelancer" tax > in Los Angeles with onerous reporting rules. BS. The online form literally takes 5 minutes to fill out. "Creative artists" earning under $300,000 are exempt from paying city taxes, as are small businesses grossing under $100,000. ~~~ mixmastamyk You have a strange idea of not high and onerous if you think taxes in LA are attracting work rather than repelling it, as the top of this thread explains clearly. Take 30 seconds to search and you can find stories of folks who got shafted for thousands because they didn't even know such a thing existed and needs to be reported early even if you do. The fact you most get an exemption is another example of big brother showing who's boss for no gain to the city. ~~~ sedachv > Take 30 seconds to search How about you stop being a libertarian keyboard jockey and actually try to get involved in running a business or two in Los Angeles, like I am doing? Everything you have posted is bullshit. My wife happens to be a "creative artist" who does a lot of work in the film industry here. She is also the type of person who did not do basic research into starting a business and did not bother to find out what taxes she was supposed to be paying. I don't know why you think that being an airhead is the city's fault. The fine was not "thousands of dollars," it came out to $80-something for two years of unreported city taxes. It was literally a letter and a couple of phone calls to settle that. ~~~ mixmastamyk Yeah, I'm a former VFX developer and now freelance developer in LA. This is site mostly for programmers if you hadn't noticed. [http://www.laweekly.com/news/did-you-just- get-a-500-freelanc...](http://www.laweekly.com/news/did-you-just- get-a-500-freelance-assignment-the-city-might-bill-you-30-000-6040715) [http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-horowitz-taxes- ta...](http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-horowitz-taxes-tax-day- freelancers-gig-economy-20170418-story.html) [https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LA-Freelancers- Get-...](https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/LA-Freelancers-Get--Tax- Bill.html) Not to mention the links from the grandparent making the case of the declining industry: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16621760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16621760) Oh, and the recent hidden trash tax, 35 million a year: [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-trash-bills- los-...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-trash-bills-los- angeles-20170820-story.html) (Rent went up $100 in an already soaring rent environment.) Paid shill from the city government? Sure sounds that way. It's obvious you've never lived in sane tax environment like New Zealand where you file in about thirty minutes a year on their website. That's what you're competing with. ~~~ mixmastamyk Forgot to mention the newly raise CA gas tax. ------ lowpro I grew up in Fishers, and currently go to Purdue (an hour north). I can say from what I've seen that tech really _is_ coming here, it isn't trying anymore. I know there is a lot of 'Silicon Valley of X', but I don't think Indy is trying to be the next Silicon Valley. It feels like the people here are content at solving problems big and small, and not as focused on capital and business. Personally I think this a good thing, and prefer it. And of course as the article states, a little Midwest politeness pervades the area. Salaries are also way higher in the area then they used to be (expect maybe $50,000-60,000 in the area, at least for new grads in the area for larger name companies). It's not SV wages, but it's not city living either, and the area is great. To follow some of the people in the area, I'd look at @DonWettrick [0] on twitter, he's an educator in the area and a lot of his students are a part of Launch Fishers and are coming into the local start up scene. If you care about the next generation, definitely a class to keep up with! [0] [https://twitter.com/DonWettrick](https://twitter.com/DonWettrick) ~~~ lotsofpulp In my experience, if you like working and you're top 10%, you will do well in a big city. By the time you're 26 to 28, and you have an MBA/JD/MD, I see my friends making $200k+ easy. If you're in this group, then you're household income is $400k+ easy, but the big difference is the connections you're making which can enable you to go up to 7 and 8 figures or more. Really depends what you want to gamble on, but if you're top of the class and want to make money I would definitely try out a major city. ------ hokumguru I live in Lincoln, Nebraska and this has been clear to us for years. We've a few startups and agencies of decent size and reputation that have made their home here. Quite interestingly, it's not been that terribly difficult to find tech jobs paying 80-110k here where one might find a good rental for 600-700/m (I should add home ownership in Nebraska is quite large). I quite like the idea of the west-coast salary in a midwest cost of living. Hoping it stays that way :) If interested you could check out [http://siliconprairienews.com/](http://siliconprairienews.com/) ~~~ Tempest1981 I see 2 companies with looking for software developers on your Jobs page: D3 Banking, and Proxibid. Is that typical? ~~~ tortasaur If you're asking if it's typical of the area, no. It appears that job board only has two companies posting to it. Indeed or LinkedIn are better indicators of the market. ------ swanson If you happen to be an Indianapolis-based (or surrounding area) developer reading these comments, please tweet me @_swanson and I'd be happy to get you invited to our local Slack instance. ------ lettergram As a startup founder who moved to the Bay area and moved back. I can see why, literally I own a house, with better internet, 5 minutes from a store, with no traffic, no distractions, and can communicate with anyone online... Honestly, location matters to an extent, but it's really what you make of it. I know people across the country, they intro me to others. Many I never meet in person, yet we all help one another. I think it's more than possible to grow connections in the absence of presents, just harder. ------ omot Kind of an irrelevant tangent, but I think the reason why Snapchat is suffering is that HQ is in LA. I noticed that you have to pay great developers/designers more to relocate away from the Bay Area. You also get slower iteration on new hires since they have to fly to/from SF/LA for interviews. It's great that these founders could stay in the Midwest, but if they're ever to compete against the giant companies, they'd probably have to relocate to the Bay Area or Seattle. ------ uptownfunk The internet I would contend didn’t make location completely irrelevant. I think the existing gap lies in access to capital. And while we do not have crypto done anywhere near correctly, the true democratization of capital will do a lot more for the redistribution of wealth displacing the SF VC CF that currently exists today. ------ _bxg1 Hopefully this will reduce some of the techno-elitism that's been on such a sharp rise for the past decade. It's heartening to see an intersection of the progressiveness of tech with the groundedness of people outside The Valley. ------ tschellenbach Boulder is actually getting quite close to SF in terms of engineering salaries. This is article is a bit late with spotting the trend. ~~~ whalesalad Does Boulder count as the Midwest? Plus... Colorado/Denver/Boulder has a lot more sex appeal than Des Moines IA or Columbus OH so I’m not surprised it isn’t facing the same salary challenges as the actual Midwest. ~~~ shagie Colorado is in the West - Mountain region in the Census ( [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Census_Regions_and_D...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Census_Regions_and_Division_of_the_United_States.svg) ). It isn't part of the breadbasket / midlands culture ( [https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/w...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/11/08/which- of-the-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/) ) It doesn't have the midwest linkages in Facebook ( [https://petewarden.com/2010/02/06/how-to-split-up-the- us/](https://petewarden.com/2010/02/06/how-to-split-up-the-us/) ). It isn't part of the hopelessly midwestern culture ( [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3B9iu3QAwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3B9iu3QAwM) ). So nope... Colorado isn't midwestern. ~~~ matthewwiese Love that last link. As a kid who grew up in the Midwest with a soybean field outside the kitchen window, the song put a wide smile on my face. ------ influx What would Microsoft and Amazon have been without Silicon Valley? ~~~ irrational Do you mean because they are located in Seattle instead of Cali? ~~~ aaavl2821 They also raised very little venture capital (Amazon did one round led by KPCB I think, Microsoft took only like $1M in venture money) ------ Erlangolem Silicon Valley needs tech, not the other way around. Tech needs investment though, and often flocks to where the money is. Right a lot of people are throwing a lot of money around Silicon Valley, so a lot of tech (or bullshit masquerading as tech) lives there. ------ carrja99 No. ~~~ munk-a Seconded. ------ rdiddly Betting now that Peter Thiel's recent "move" is mentioned. Now off to read the article. EDIT: Well I lost that one. It's about the Midwest. They did mention Thiel though, just not in that way. EDIT 2: And now the title has been changed (an improvement), making me look like (more of) an EEEDIOT!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fluid Dynamics in Javascript with Canvas - ck2 http://tholman.com/series/flash-forward/ports/multiphase-flow/02/ ====== bradleyland Can someone share some insight on why Flash is so much more performant at these types of operations? I recall not too long ago when the Javascript + Canvas demos of this type weren't even possible with a couple hundred particles, and this one does an outstanding job, but if you click on the Flash version, you can fill it so full of particles that the physics break, and there's little or no lag (on my system). Why is that, and can we ever expect Javascript + Canvas (or similar tools) to catch up to Flash? ~~~ wlievens I think (but have not verified this) it's mostly the rendering that makes the Canvas/JS so slow. If you'd turn off the rendernig in both versions you'd probably get similar rates.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Funny SQL Server bug, that MS calls a “feature” - jitbit http://www.jitbit.com/alexblog/239-sql-server-bug-ms-calls-a-feature/ ====== geophile Why is this a bug? There are no guarantees (beyond not going backward). You can't count on dense ids anyway. What if you have concurrent transactions that get ids and some of them abort? It's your application that's buggy if you are relying on dense ids. Definitely not a bug, and unclear why it's a feature. It just is. ------ fasteo A feature that you don't like is still a feature	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lifespan depends on month of birth (2000) - Petiver http://www.pnas.org/content/98/5/2934.full ====== reasonattlm Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova are a good resource for this sort of demography and epidemiology of aging. [1] In particular they have a lot of material on season of birth effects. [2] Tangentially related to the seasonal effects is data suggesting that solar cycles also influence longevity, possibly through quite indirect responses to levels of UV exposure in pregnant women. [3] You can see how this might be relevant to season as well, but it is only one of a number of mechanistic theories on the subject. This sort of thing ties back in to application of reliability theory to aging [4], wherein to make the models fit the observed data individuals have to be born with a preexisting non-zero damage load. [1]: [http://longevity-science.org/](http://longevity-science.org/) [2]: [http://longevity-science.org/Season-of-Birth.pdf](http://longevity- science.org/Season-of-Birth.pdf) [3]: [http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/2014...](http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/282/1801/20142032) [4]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reliability_theory_of_aging_and_longevity) ~~~ ekianjo But the data in the post does not seem to be super correlated to seasons. You can see that the decrease in life expectancy occurs way before spring (as soon as February) which is still supposed to be a winter month. So the season link is weak. ~~~ vlasev I'm thinking it has to do with the continuous day/night cycle. It'll be interesting to see if there are any changes with latitude, in particular, what happens in countries closer to the equator. ~~~ ekianjo But is there any rationale behind that anyway ? Do we see people born during summer being usually in poorer health than people born during November- December, let's say ? ------ joe_the_user The correlation is in terms of fractions of a year so they add up to an average of plus-or-minus a few month over a lifetime. The three curves don't seem to have a very close relationship to each other though there are some similarities. I assume that if they are getting a meaningful correlation, it is over a large amount of data. It seems logical that at large scale, date born would correlate with a variety of things in various areas - social class and wealth come to mind. I think it's a matter of taste whether one says "wow, throw enough data together you find unexpected correlations" or "garbage in, garbage out". A life insurance company could eek out a bit of profit changing its price structure on this data - if it didn't have far more to lose if the use of such tactics became public. I bet someone can use this to claim astrology has validity too. ~~~ mbq Also this is only about three countries selected a priori, so not a really good sample, even if the number of individuals is huge... ------ awjr Would be interesting to look at the 'stresses' that occur within schools. My 11 year old daughter was born on the 30th of August. Ergo she is the youngest in the year at school. She is studying with people that have a year of development on her. She is doing fantastically well but works hard to achieve that result. My hypothesis is that the age cut off in schools, unduly puts stress on the younger children in a class, that long term, impact on health in later years. In effect which month you are born in affects the stress you will feel during your school years as it will be inherently 'harder' for you. ~~~ beaumartinez I'd think the opposite. Since she is used to having to work hard from a young age, she will be more successful in life. Others who coasted through—whom were used to everything being relatively easier—will not have the experience she has already accrued when faced with a harder challenge. ~~~ awjr Not sure that makes sense. She potentially experiences 12 years of increased stress compared to her peers. I'm not implying that later in life, she will have better tools for work, but that her body would have spent most of her formative years under more stress. This would then reflect in a shorter lifespan. Note however that this concept she would gain the tools for hard working in itself is flawed. Studies have shown that those born in the Summer months have statistically lower exam scores. ~~~ theklub If stress from school caused people to die earlier I think we'd know by now. ~~~ awjr This is very hard to measure as you would be looking at teaching practices in the 1920-1940s to determine the effects on life expectancy. I think potentially, nationally, this would be possible as most nations have been quite consistent on their school starting times. I do think having a breakdown by month, not just quarter could be even more insightful. ------ EGreg It could also have something to do with their development in school. After all the school year is the same for all. Some kids are up to 11 months younger! ~~~ danielbarla This is an area which I've personally experienced, having spent the first half of my school years in Europe, and being a few days shy of the cut-off point for being held back another year, I was always the youngest in my class (I guess on a large enough population, it would mean that similar kids are the smallest as well, on average). Later on I switched to a southern-hemisphere school, which was out of phase by 6 months, and I was all of a sudden roughly average age in class. Not that it had a huge impact on me, but it was noticeable, which probably means it has some effect on average. ------ jcampbell1 This is interesting. They seem to think it is in utero effect. Maybe Vitamin D? I wondered if they considered if the cause is age when starting school. I know that birth month has pretty powerful effects for educational attainment. ~~~ sillysaurus3 What month should I conceive my child to maximize their educational attainment? I'm only half joking. ~~~ jcampbell1 Depends on the rules which vary by location, but you want your kid to be the oldest in the class. Your older kid is going to believe she is very bright in 1st grade, and have a lifetime of confidence to achieve great things. The real reason she was such a good student in 1st grade is because she was just older. ~~~ desdiv I know this sub-thread started in half-jest, but your response got me thinking: 1\. Month of birth directly determines a child's age compared to their classmates. 2\. An older child among younger peers performs better academically. 3\. Academic aptitude is correlated with income. 4\. Income is correlated with longevity. Admittedly, hypothesis #2 is iffy. And the good old "correlation is not causation" adage applies for #3 and #4. ~~~ saraid216 > And the good old "correlation is not causation" adage applies for #3 and #4. It does, but it's not hard to come up with plausible causes for the correlation to support in those cases. It is probably more accurate to say "Academic aptitutde correlates with job stability which correlates with lower overall stress levels which is part of the definition for better health which correlates with longevity." ------ arjie Very curious. Information about people in the tropics would be interesting since climate doesn't vary as much there. I know in Madras, India it was hot pretty much all of the time, except when it rained. ------ dmichulke I didn't fully read it but doesn't it look like there is potentially a big survivorship bias in the data? They touch the subject with their 3rd hypothesis but in general it's possible that you still have a higher life expectancy being born from April-June in the Northern Hemisphere because you have increased chances of reaching 50. So why this limit of 50 years? What is the expected lifespan for newborns depending on their month of birth? ------ randyrand Or maybe death on the month? ~~~ amelius Indeed. If most deaths occur during mid-summer, then people born in autumn live slightly longer on average than people born in spring. ------ shele "The differences in lifespan are independent of the seasonal distribution of deaths" That's important of course. ------ FranOntanaya I would think people conceived in warm weather are more likely to be from less stable relationships...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wall Street Thinks Facebook Will Grow 29 Times Faster Than Apple - npguy http://statspotting.com/2013/01/wall-street-thinks-facebook-will-grow-29-times-faster-than-apple/ ====== jfb What we have here is the "rational markets" analogy falling over. The sum of a bignum of irrational decisions does not, _pace_ Friedman, necessarily converge on a rational one. ~~~ npguy Funny thing is, we are talking (hundreds of) billions of dollars here. ~~~ jfb There's probably a policy lesson in there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Medieval Wellness Tips - pepys https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/medieval-wellness-tips ====== DanAndersen We should keep in mind that these tips are specifically chosen because of their unusual and laughable nature, and so should refrain from attempting to generalize about the nature of medieval medicine from a biased dataset. ~~~ BugsJustFindMe Except that any historian of medicine will tell you that pharmaceuticals well into the 18th century were dominated by ideas of "potency" where surely things would have beneficial effect because they have powerful smells or whatever. Uses of animal excrement are exceedingly common in early-modern remedy guides. ~~~ yobuko I remember learning from a historian that the use of animal excrement was used for all kinds of things; for example "curing" warts. The effectiveness was of course questionable, but that didn't stop people buying in to the hype of the day. Someone else recently posted about the Templar diet[1], and I thought that was actually quite ahead of it's time. What I find most interesting is how they could have been so ahead of the times in terms of diet and hygiene compared to the "average Joe". [1] [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-the-templar- knigh...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-the-templar-knights-ate) ~~~ BugsJustFindMe In defense of at least that wart remedy, a wart will turn green/black pretty much right away and then fall off relatively quickly if you keep it saturated with vinegar for a few hours here and there. I am willing to believe that some excreted waste materials could have a similar effect. ------ justtopost I wonder if anyone is going through these old texts to discover things. Perhaps rabbit bile contains something unique. Always makes you wonder... thats all for now, got a warm bed waiting for me. ~~~ gowld 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine was for an ancient Chinese medicine. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou) ------ blauditore > If you doubt this’ll work, test it on a dog which is completely red. This really confuses me. Why does the dog need to be red? Also, if someone ever tested it, it should be obvious to not work... ~~~ gnulinux Maybe an old phrase meaning "rabid dog" or "raged dog". Rabies was probably orders of magnitude more common of an occurrence back then (which is non- existent in most Western countries right now). ~~~ LyndsySimon Rabies isn't _that_ uncommon in the US - uncommon in domestic animals, sure, but I shot a likely rabid skunk a couple of weeks ago. It was out during the day, was walking at an angle, and was aggressive toward me. ~~~ gnulinux That's actually completely correct, I don't know how I missed that when I wrote my comment. I've never seen a rabid animal, but I know that in the US, squirrels and bats are still a significant vector of rabies virus. It's probably not a good idea to play around with wild mammals. EDIT: From Wikipedia: > In wild animals, bats were the most frequently reported rabid species (30.9% > of cases during 2015), followed by raccoons (29.4%), skunks (24.8%), and > foxes (5.9%)[29]. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_rabies#USA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevalence_of_rabies#USA) ~~~ gowld Radiolab on a modern rabies case: [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/312245-rodney-versus- death](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/312245-rodney-versus-death) ------ suprfnk They don't seem to be able to handle the HN traffic. Here's an internet archive link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20180925110025/https://www.lapha...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180925110025/https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/roundtable/medieval- wellness-tips) ------ starpilot I still use many of these in my day to day life. ------ chrisjack >For a man who’s been painfully beaten >Take cudweed and boil it in fine ale, and drink it first thing in the morning and last thing at night; and make the patient a bed in a pile of steaming horse dung, and lay him in it. Sleeping in a pile of horse sh*t... I don't see any hygenic problem with that, let alone the smell... ~~~ NeedMoreTea London, and other towns and cities, had a bit of a shit problem in the 1300s. Streets full of horse and human shit, households throwing their waste into the streets and/or river or if lucky selling it to a nearby cloth dyer, water dangerous to drink so best stick to beer or wine, the serious health risk from floors covered in rushes. OK, if you were posh enough there was a chute from the privvy straight into the moat or river. Oh and the river was where the leftovers from the slaughter houses went. I think it's fair to say that smell and hygiene expectation was a little different in the middle ages. Cured, if wealthy enough, with a pomander - a ball full of nicely smelly herbs and oils that you carried as portable gas mask. ~~~ Tor3 Compared to all the rest, horse manure would be almost nice. It's not that far from just grass, anyway. ~~~ jpindar Unlike that of most other animals, I don't think horse manure is an intrinsically unpleasant smell. It doesn't bother me. ------ mscasts > For to be invysybell Someone should try it. It is proven! But the issue is, those who proved it are long dead so we need some new evidence. ~~~ rebuilder The recipe requires you to put frog bones in a stream and pick out the bone that moves against the stream... You might run out of frogs before finding such a bone! ------ edmanet Seems to be a lot of horse dung involved. ~~~ pcmaffey Humans are one of the only animals that don’t eat poop. The benefits of poo exposure is an increased diversity of gut bacteria and biome, which we are just starting to understand the benefits of. This is one big benefit of having a dog. ~~~ SmellyGeekBoy > This is one big benefit of having a dog. You get to eat its poop? ~~~ shadofx It eats it's own poop and then licks your mouth, or your fingers which you then eat with. ------ markatkinson Not dissimilar to a couple modern wellness tips I have come across... ~~~ castlecrasher2 Sometimes I'll be reading a blog with what I think is decent health advice then suddenly that stupid feet-to-body-parts diagram appears and I have to actively forget what I just read. ------ AdmiralAsshat Can Sleeping in Horse Shit Cure Your Bruises? The Answer May Surprise You! ~~~ SmellyGeekBoy Medieval Housewife Discovers One Weird Trick For Curing Bruises - Grooms Hate Her! ~~~ dkersten I'd probably click on that. ------ spicymaki Mark my words, these tips will be on the Goop website by the end of the year. ------ m23khan This is awesome - the invisible trick really works! Try it for yourself - you will see people staring at you but you will know you are invisible! ~~~ sandworm101 I suspect that some context has been lost. 'Invisible' probably doesn't mean literally transparent. It may mean invisible to God, a free pass for sin. That would dovetail with the other powers of this device.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Lean on Me to offer anonymous venue for student support - darksigma http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N2/leanonme.html ====== darksigma We've spent the last several months building this service for MIT. Check us out at [http://lean0n.me](http://lean0n.me) We think all universities could use a peer support network like this, and we'd love to hear what you think :) ~~~ dang Great work. You might get more feedback if you post it as a Show HN instead, linking to your site, then add the background (including a link to the news article) as a first comment in the thread. Email [email protected] if you need any guidance about how to do that. Good luck! If you do repost it, email us a link at the same address, so we can make sure it doesn't get flagged.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GUI Architectures (2006) - ignoramous http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/uiArchs.html ====== BerislavLopac I've lately been building a lot of Javascript-based GUIs, and the persistent thought in my mind has been how all those frameworks must be reinventing the wheel that was doubtless invented years ago for desktop GUI development. MVC seems to be all the rage, and this article looks like a comprehensive overview of various alternatives. Looking forward to reading it thoroughly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SHA-1 collider: Make your own colliding PDFs - ascorbic https://alf.nu/SHA1 ====== xiphias I think the coolest proof was that the Bitcoin SHA1 collision bounty was claimed: [https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293382.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=293382.0) The OP_2DUP OP_EQUAL OP_NOT OP_VERIFY OP_SHA1 OP_SWAP OP_SHA1 OP_EQUAL script was making sure that only a person who finds 2 SHA1 colliders and publishes it can get the 2.5 BTC bounty. ~~~ j_s HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714987) ------ Deregibus This was a good explanation of what's happening here from a previous thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13715761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13715761) The key is that essentially all of the data for both images are in both PDFs, so the PDFs are almost identical except for a ~128 byte block that "selects" the image and provides the necessary bytes to cause a collision. Here's an diff of the 2 PDFs from when I tried it earlier: [https://imgur.com/a/8O58Q](https://imgur.com/a/8O58Q) Not to say that there isn't still something exploitable here, but I don't think it means that you can just create collisions from arbitrary PDFs. edit: Here's a diff of shattered-1.pdf released by Google vs. one of the PDFs from this tool. The first ~550 bytes are identical. [https://imgur.com/a/vVrrQ](https://imgur.com/a/vVrrQ) ~~~ niftich I didn't get a chance to make this point in that other thread, because the thread [1] of its follow-ups quickly morphed from promising [2] to meandering, but the combination of lax formats (PDF and JPEG in this instance) makes this style of collision particularly reductive, and in a sense, a cheapshot, if still devastatingly damaging given both PDF's and JPEG's ubiquity -- both separately and together -- in document storage and archival. This shows the importance of techniques like canonicalization and determinism, which ensure that given a particular knowledge set, that result could only have been arrived at given exactly one input. For general-purpose programming languages like PostScript, of which PDF is a subset, this is essentially an unfulfillable requirement, as any number of input "source code" can produce observationally "same" results. Constrained formats, and formats where the set of 'essential information' can be canonicalized into a particular representation should be the norm, rather than the exotic exception, especially in situations where minute inessential differences can be cascaded to drastically alter the result. [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13715761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13715761) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13718772) ~~~ smallnamespace > Constrained formats, and formats where the set of 'essential information' > can be canonicalized into a particular representation should be the norm, > rather than the exotic exception, especially in situations where minute > inessential differences can be cascaded to drastically alter the result. That might be very challenging in practice, because a more expressive language directly allows a more compressed/efficient encoding of the same information, but at the cost of being more difficult (or impossible) to create a canonical representation. Also, data formats that are purposefully redundant for error tolerance all basically have the property that readers should be tolerant of non-canonical forms. If we want to redundantly represent some bytes redundantly in case of data loss, then there _must_ be multiple representations of those bytes that are all acceptable for the reader for this to work. Video and image formats use multiple encodings to give encoders the room to make time-space trade-offs. ~~~ acqq I agree, for anything that a human is supposed to see with the eyes, there are always different representations that look the "same" enough to be indistinguishable. People should be aware of it, not believe in a non-existing world where it isn't so. ------ nneonneo Shameless plug: I built my own version of this to collide arbitrary PDFs: [https://github.com/nneonneo/sha1collider](https://github.com/nneonneo/sha1collider) My version is similar to this, but removes the 64kb JPEG limit and allows for colliding multi-page PDFs. ~~~ versteegen Excellent! This ought to be the top comment; have you submitted it separately? I was considering implemented the same thing, since there wasn't any reason for those limitations. The Google researchers purposely designed this collision to be highly reusable, probably to encourage everyone to generate lots of fun examples which will be spread widely and break systems everywhere :) I'm surprised that some PDF renderers have problems with JPEG streams that contain comments and restarts. Actually, glancing at the JPEG spec, I didn't even realise that restarts would be needed, I thought this was just done with comments. Is this really "bending" the spec, or is GhostScript buggy, or is the problem that it's assuming that restarts don't occur inside comments without escaping? ~~~ nneonneo I did submit it, but I don't think anyone saw it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13729920](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13729920). I was trying to finish it in time to catch daytime folks but work got in the way :) Comments are limited to 65536 bytes, and the JPEG spec doesn't offer any way to break an image stream up except for progressive mode or restart intervals (otherwise, the image stream must be a single intact entity). The trouble is that it's probably not _technically_ legal to stick comments before restart interval markers (putting comments _after_ the markers just breaks all the readers since presumably they are expecting image data). So, GhostScript's JPEG reader gets confused when it fails to see a restart marker immediately following an image data chunk, and aborts decoding. ------ TorKlingberg Wow, it works! I thought this was supposed to require Google-level resources and months on processing time. Did the initial collision somehow enable more similar ones? ~~~ kiallmacinnes yea, this.. wow. Is this the first hash function which went from "secure" to collision-as-a- service in a matter of days? Was sha1 particularly weak, or the published research particularly strong? or maybe something else? ~~~ schoen As other people explained, and just to summarize, this service is a way of reusing Google's specific collision (as a prefix to new collisions), and isn't a way of making arbitrary colliding files or file formats. You can't, for example, use this to make something other than PDFs that collide; for that, you'll have to redo a computation on the scale of Google's! ~~~ orblivion I thought I heard that some file formats have "headers" that go at the end of the file. I think a demo of this was a file that was both a zip and a PNG or something. If I remembered right, you should be able to make a similar hack here. ~~~ schoen If the _only_ headers are at the end, then yes, that's a really neat idea. I'm not sure of the constraints for zip files. Maybe it would be interesting to brainstorm with some people with a lot of file format knowledge to find additional such formats. But if the formats have any constraints at all on the first few hundred bytes, those generally won't be satisfied by the prefix here. ------ michaf I just constructed a little POC for bittorrent: [https://github.com/michaf/shattered-torrent- poc](https://github.com/michaf/shattered-torrent-poc) Installer.py and Installer-evil.py are both valid seed data for Installer.torrent ... ~~~ Buge Nice, you're able to line it up so the colliding data starts right at the beginning of one of the torrent blocks. ------ lxe According to [the Shattered paper]([http://shattered.io/static/shattered.pdf](http://shattered.io/static/shattered.pdf)), the reason why the proof-of-concepts are PDFs is because we are looking at a > identical-prefix collision attack, where a given prefix P is extended with > two distinct near-collision block pairs such that they collide for any > suffix S They have already precomputed the prefix (the PDF header) and the blocks (which I'm guessing is the part that tells the PDF reader to show one image or the other), and all you have to do is to populate the rest of the suffix with identical data (both images) ~~~ danielweber Yep. With any hash function that takes input as blocks, if you were to ever get two messages to generate the same _EDIT_ internal state, you could add the same arbitrary data to both and get those new messages to have the same hash. ------ fivesigma Is this length extending [1] the already existing Google attack? [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_extension_attack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Length_extension_attack) Edit: yes, looks like it is. As sp332 and JoachimSchipper mentioned, the novelty here is that it contains specially crafted code in order to conditionally display either picture based on previous data (the diff). I can't grok PDF so I still can't find the condition though. Can PDFs reference byte offsets? This is really clever. Edit #2: I misunderstood the original Google attack. This is just an extension of it. ~~~ TorKlingberg It seems so. I can add the same arbitrary data at the end of two pdfs generated by this tool, and they are still a collision. I didn't know SHA-1 is so susceptible to length extension. Is there no internal state in the algorithm that would be different even if the hash output is identical? ~~~ danielweber If you were to somehow get two messages with the same SHA-3 hash, you could keep on appending the same data to both and they would keep the same SHA-3. But SHA-3 is explicitly not vulnerable to length extension attacks. ~~~ fivesigma No they wouldn't, since its internal state is different than the output. Same goes for SHA-224 and SHA-384. ~~~ danielweber Damn, right, you have to get them with the same _internal state_. ------ averagewall I just tested Backblaze and found that its deduplication is broken by this. If you let it backup the two files generated by this tool, then restore them, it gives you back two identical files instead of two different ones. ~~~ lokedhs I have never been particularly comfortable with the idea that you can simply assume that if the hashes are the same, then the data must be the same. The fact that collisions happen so rarely (and sometimes only after the a hash function has become compromised) makes this even more dangerous. It's like a couple of decades of strong hash functions has made people forget what hashing actually is. ------ neo2006 I don't understand the whole collision thing. I mean a sha1 is 160bits so if you are hashing information longer then that collision is a fact, being able to forge a piece of information with constraints is the challenge and even that with enough power you end up being able to try all the combinations. What I understand from that collision reported is that they use PDF format which can have as many data inserted to it as comment /junk as you want so all you need is enough processing power to find the right padding/junk to insert to get the collision. Am I missing something here ? ------ grandalf I would imagine that a lot of old data is secured by SHA1, which may be available for attack. Does anyone have any idea about a broad risk-assessment of systems worldwide that might be vulnerable as SHA1 becomes easier and easier to beat? ~~~ danielweber If by "secured by SHA1" you mean "someone generated a hash using SHA-1 and we use the validity of that hash to guarantee we have the right document," that's still okay. We're a long way from being able to make documents with a given SHA-1. (Edit: Any _newly_ signed documents, or documents signed recently, are not safe, because an nasty person could have made two, one to get signed by the system, another to do evil with.) SHA-1 is officially deprecated for certificates, because of the example that OP shows. You can create two certificates, have the decent one get signed by a CA, and then use the evil one to intercept traffic. ~~~ grandalf Thanks for the info. Good point, I suppose anyone relying on SHA1 in 2017 has had ample warning about its weaknesses. It seems that there is also a very strong incentive for anyone receiving anything whose authenticity is verified by SHA1 to request an improved hashing algorithm. ------ reiichiroh Practical question: does this generate a "harmful" (harmful to a repo system like SVN) PDF if the flaw in the hashing is enough to crash/corrupt the system? ~~~ reiichiroh To answer my own question looks like Gmail has flagged PDFs generated with _this_ specific hash as harmful. ------ Grue3 Doesn't work for me. One of PDFs always says "Insufficient data for an image" (sometimes for the same image that worked before). ~~~ averagewall I found that you have to reload the page if there's an error or it'll stick. In my case it was too big of a file. ------ Globz Damn that didn't take long to go from $100K to carry out this attack to a single day to offer a website for SHA1 collision as a service... ~~~ daenz Just wait until you get the invoice ~~~ kalleboo Is the invoice in a PDF? What's the SHA-1 hash of it? ------ odbol_ What's the smallest file you can make collide? Could you make two files collide that are actually smaller than their hashes? ------ FabHK Question: What does git use to hash blobs? Is it SHA-1? Would that be a problem? Ramifications are unclear to me. ~~~ FabHK Ah, note that apparently it is SHA-1, and this question was common enough that Linus himself has addressed it: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13733481](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13733481) ------ b1gtuna Just tried it and it really got me the same sha1... damn... ------ ythn I wanted to try this tool, but the upload requirements were so stringent (must be jpeg, must be same aspect ratio, must be less than 64KB) that I gave up. Would be nice if sample jpegs were provided on the page. ~~~ lsh ... are you joking? ~~~ lucb1e (not OP) I understand why the requirements are strict so I can see why s/he was being downvoted, but I do agree that samples would be nice. Like, do I have to go search for some images with these requirements just to see if it really works (since it was supposed to take $100k)? By now someone mentioned it works in the comments though, so I guess I'll trust them. ~~~ shaymcrasherson Is it really that hard to take a screenshot of a couple windows on your desktop and run: $ convert screenshot.png -resize '500x500!' bar.jpg or $ sips -s format jpeg -Z 500x500 screenshot.png --out bar.jpg Generating some workable source images is trivial. You're not interested in making a 'perfect hack pdf' for some nefarious purpose, just seeing if the service does what it says it does. ~~~ ythn > Generating some workable source images is trivial Everything is trivial if you know how to do it off the top of your head. Generating white noise samples is trivial. UV-mapping a texture to a mesh is trivial. Soldering resisters to a PCB is trivial. Generating an ARM toolchain with Yocto Project is trivial. Is it a crime that I didn't feel like researching a bunch of CLI tools I've never heard of to try to use an app I was only mildly curious about? ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel This overstates the difficulty of creating a JPEG. If you have an image editor on hand that isn't MS Paint (or you're using macOS, which has Preview), you merely need to export a JPEG and choose a low quality setting. For a Windows user with no decent image editor or viewer installed, though, it could certainly be a hassle. ~~~ ythn None of the things I listed are difficult. They just require the right tool and know how. For someone like me with Xubuntu, I had neither the tools nor know how for creating small jpegs. I didn't fell like wasting 30 minutes researching and I didn't feel like walking over to a different computer that has MSPaint.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The first real successful attempt to reimagine the daily newspaper for tablets? - thierryd http://talkingnewmedia.blogspot.ca/2013/04/quebecs-daily-newspaper-la-presse.html ====== k__ Tablets + GIF-revival = harry potter newspapers!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Rap Stats: Breaking Down The Words in Rap Lyrics Over Time - jsomers http://news.rapgenius.com/Sameoldshawn-rap-stats-breaking-down-the-words-in-rap-lyrics-over-time-lyrics ====== madsushi I have always been a big fan of rap vocabulary, and I've already lost an hour poring over different results. What would be amazing would be a cross- reference to the Google Trends results for the same words. You could try to see the difference between cultural events (global) and specific events in the rap community (local) that caused certain words to spike or ebb. ------ dmix Regarding the NBA chart: "Jordan, Kobe and Lebron": > Rap and professional sports have always gone hand in hand, and we can see > the evolution of rappers’ favorite basketball players: "Jordan" keyword for example would more often be used in reference for Nike shoes, so not a direct representation of the sports players popularity. /pedantic rant ~~~ golergka > not a direct representation of the sports players popularity And how exactly did these shoes got their name? ~~~ joenathan How did the Teddy bear get its name? The popularity of plush bears doesn't much reflect the popularity of Theodore Roosevelt. ~~~ rhlahuja Not really the same thing. Those bears weren't named after Roosevelt and thus don't reflect his popularity whereas Jordans were clearly named after MJ himself. ~~~ bostonpete > Those bears weren't named after Roosevelt [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear#History](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teddy_bear#History) ------ ChrisNorstrom I never liked rap and I can finally explain my reason: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=woman%2C%20women%2C%20girl%2...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=woman%2C%20women%2C%20girl%2C%20ho%2C%20hoes%2C%20bitch) And I've heard a lot of rap. My highschool bus driver always played rap on the bus's radio every time we had him as a driver. Honestly, I went to school angry every morning. Similar to how you feel when you try to listen to Glen Beck or Rush Limbaugh. ~~~ eulerphi Hahaha, what an awful reason. Keep white knighting and see how your life turns out. ~~~ PhasmaFelis "White knighting"? Fuck off, troll. ~~~ eulerphi Not trolling, you're assuming that all those words are used in a derogatory manner and discarding the actual content of the music so you can "defend" women. You're a pathetic white knight. ~~~ PhasmaFelis Bahaha. I don't care about rap one way or the other, and neither do you. "White knighting" is just as made up as "fake geek girls" and the Tooth Fairy, and we both know it. Therefore: fuck off, troll. ~~~ eulerphi I do care about hip hop. White knighting is as made up a word, as any words are. You have the mentality that if you bend over to defend women, it will somehow make you more righteous of an individual. Women don't need defending. And those terms can refer to men as well. Let's just put this in perspective Robert. You're a KFC nerd who plays video games, knows a little programming from modding them, you don't shave your neck, hang out with your cat, and defend women's social justice with respect to rap, through some poor analysis of word frequency on supposedly derogatory "demeaning" words on women. Somehow, hoping this ill-formed sickness of a view, helps women recognize your sentimental romance toward their engendered cause. Ain't gonna happen Jack. Be a man and stop playing internet politics. And lay off the Hollandaise sauce. ~~~ PhasmaFelis Interesting! But far from accurate, I'm afraid. For example, my neck is as smooth as a baby's ass. But let's do put things in perspective. Don't you have better things to do than try to dox people who disagree with you on Hacker News? I'd like to think we have a higher quality of discourse than that. ~~~ eulerphi You're right, let's stop rapping and pull out the trombones. ------ skipchris well, i guess that settles it: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=emacs%2Cvim](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=emacs%2Cvim) ~~~ byoung2 Sadly, vim matches a lot of Portuguese lyrics: [http://rapgenius.com/search?q=vim](http://rapgenius.com/search?q=vim) ------ cing I'd like to see a more thorough analysis of "big words" in rap songs. I started manually compiling examples in a blog a while back, [http://rapwords.tumblr.com/](http://rapwords.tumblr.com/) ~~~ emiljbs Check out the lyrics of Death Grips. ------ Jach Anyone found another word that peaks past 0.53%? [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch) ~~~ dangerlibrary "get" is over .65, and "up" peaks above .7: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%20get) [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=nigga%2C%20yo%2C%20bitch%2C%20up) ------ danso Wow, rappers were surprisingly prescient in predicting the fall of newspapers and the rise of the Internet: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Newspaper%2C%20internet](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Newspaper%2C%20internet) ~~~ christoph Traditional media still rules though: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=radio,tv,internet](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=radio,tv,internet) ------ hawkharris Gangsta rap is like PHP: I enjoy it because I grew up with it, but it's getting hard to defend intellectually. ~~~ Larrikin Rap is extremely diverse, but why do you even need to defend it? Can't a song just be fun to listen to? ~~~ hawkharris Haha. I agree that rap diverse, and I was just having some fun comparing the genre to programming. Setting aside jokes, I've listened to many different types of rap, but I don't like rap that's intellectual. I prefer the mainstream songs about drugs and partying (e.g. Rick Ross and Lil' Wayne) to the songs that try to start a dialogue about social issues (e.g. Common). I'm open to hearing about intellectual issues when I read articles or listen to talk radio, but I really don't like music that tries to make a point because I associate music with entertainment. Interesting how the medium can affect the message on a person to person basis. ~~~ eulerphi Doesn't have to be an issue about social issues to not be plain retarded in terms of linguistics. Point in case: Big L. Gangsta rap that had flow and cleverness. Lil Wayne and Rick Ross don't really cut that, but I do love that song 8 Ball by Rick Ross, he's just plain fun to listen to. ~~~ hawkharris Big L does have an amazing flow. I put Big Pun in the same category: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiwvPmRTv6M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiwvPmRTv6M) Sometimes when I'm stuck in traffic I'll say to myself, "Dead in the middle of little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middle man who didn't do diddly." Girlfriend: "What was that?" Me: "Oh...uhhh..nothing." ------ muratmutlu If anyones interested - we made [http://www.tuner.io](http://www.tuner.io) at a hackday in SF last year. It reorders the Billboard top 100 based on lyrics, so top 5 songs with the most profanity etc. After the hackday the API access to the services expired, but check it out anyway! ~~~ nathancahill API access expired? What kind of hackday is that? ------ ZanderEarth32 Love this. I had a similar idea a few months ago except I wanted to map the number of times certain popular phrases were mentioned in different rap songs. For example, how many rap songs have the lyric "if it don't make dollars it don't make sense (or cents)" ------ yesbabyyes This is great! We actually built something very similar to this for the 2011 Node Knockout, we called it Rapminder (as a nod to Gapminder, and serendipity had it that I met Hans Rosling just outside our office the day before the hackathon). We mined the lyrics from OHHLA [1], matched the metadata from Discogs [2], built a word structure in Redis and drew the graphs with D3. We built it with an eye to Rap Genius, but sadly we haven't kept it online after the Knockout. I'll look into setting it up again. [1] [http://ohhla.com/](http://ohhla.com/) [2] [http://discogs.com/](http://discogs.com/) ------ zalew > Lil Wayne wasn't being hyperbolic -- money really is over bitches: But Biggie apparently was wrong [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=money%2Cproblems](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=money%2Cproblems) ------ beloch Money and bitches dwarfs pretty much every other thing I've tried, and both are trending upwards. It's nice to see that rap is becoming a deeper, more intelligent genre. ~~~ flycaliguy Don't pretend that other genres of popular music would reveal anything more "intelligent". ~~~ zebra Rock and metal aren't that shallow. ~~~ flycaliguy I think for this argument to be sound we have to define what artists would be included. Is it a survey of popular music? All music? There is a lot of intelligent hip hop out there. There is a lot of shallow rock out there. Generalizing about any genre is pointless. Edit: And I put intelligent in quotes because who is to say that using the word money or (less so) bitch even means there is not an intelligent point being made. ~~~ beloch I admit I was trolling, but the amount of rap out there that plays into the macho-gangster-materialist-misogynist stereotype is _obscene_. Decent rap does exist, but gangstacrap still dominates the genre. Other genres of music have their own dominant stereotypes that are equally vapid, but seldom as scummy. ~~~ dasil003 You're conflating stupidity with poor taste, but they're clearly independent. Consider the Wu-Tang Clan's lyrics which are more intelligent and have a level of wordplay that is non-existent in rock music, but at the same time can be the most offensive thing you've ever heard. ------ dangerlibrary I guess it never really took off... [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=smash%2C%20bang%2C%20smang](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=smash%2C%20bang%2C%20smang) ~~~ dopamean I came here hoping someone searched for smang. Thank you. ------ zjgreen Democract vs. Republican Who. Will. Win. [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=democrat%2C%20republican](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=democrat%2C%20republican) ------ kin I wish the lyrics distinguish between the word la and the abbreviation L.A. Then I can accurately compare New York vs. L.A. mentions, 'cause no rapper says Los Angeles. ------ zmitri This is great work. Would be cool to see some songs that contribute to each data point. Eg. I would love to know how much [http://rapgenius.com/Migos-versace- lyrics](http://rapgenius.com/Migos-versace-lyrics) and variations contributed to this [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=versace](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=versace) ------ dcre Reminds me of Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg's talk at Eyeo Festival. They visualized use of body part words across different genres. [http://hint.fm/projects/listen/](http://hint.fm/projects/listen/) And here's their talk: [http://vimeo.com/69497902](http://vimeo.com/69497902) ------ cgdangelo Very cool. I think an interesting feature would be to plot songs along the graph as nodes you could hover over. You could see the artists' and songs' information, maybe the word frequency in those songs. I suppose you could look for radical changes in slope to figure out where to place each node, too. ------ jaredandrews Is there a way to see what song the word is used in? I'm interested in knowing what hip hop artist was rapping about eBay[0] all the way back in '94. [0] [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ebay](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ebay) ~~~ ptmx I'm also dying to know who was rapping about web development from ~2003-2009: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=html%2C%20javascript](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=html%2C%20javascript) ~~~ pinwale Just throw the terms in the RapGenius search bar: [http://rapgenius.com/search?hide_unexplained_songs=false&q=h...](http://rapgenius.com/search?hide_unexplained_songs=false&q=html%2C+javascript) Javascript is mentioned in "White & Nerdy" by Weird Al Yankovic. Also, looks like there are non-songs that are being counted into the rap stats. ------ RaSoJo Money over bitches..but "The Bitch" over Money!!! O_O [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=bitch%2C%20bitches%2C%20mone...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=bitch%2C%20bitches%2C%20money) ------ aestra What rappers think about video game consoles: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Nintendo%2C%20Xbox%2C%20Play...](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Nintendo%2C%20Xbox%2C%20PlayStation%2C%20Wii%2C%20Sega) ~~~ concernedctzn That can't be right, xbox didn't come out until 2001. Might be matching something else? ~~~ jlgreco I have to suspect that "Sega" is matching something else too. It is such a thing of the past that I wouldn't have even thought to include it. Searching a little on their site doesn't turn up any obvious alternative usage though... maybe Sega is just easier to rhythm with. ~~~ aestra Recent songs that mention Sega: [http://rapgenius.com/The-cool-kids-a-little-bit-cooler- lyric...](http://rapgenius.com/The-cool-kids-a-little-bit-cooler-lyrics) [http://rapgenius.com/Snow-tha-product-cookie-cutter- bitches-...](http://rapgenius.com/Snow-tha-product-cookie-cutter-bitches- lyrics) [http://rapgenius.com/Logic-30000-lyrics](http://rapgenius.com/Logic-30000-lyrics) ------ davydka I think they mean watch as MySpace holds on for dear life, not Twitter. ------ yardie How did facebook get a bump before 2005? Also, you might want to add blackplanet, migente, and asianavenue to the Social networks graph. I know a few southern rappers were namechecking them before 2005. ~~~ eCa Facebooks existed before facebook: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book) ~~~ yardie First time I've heard of this. Then again I went to a land grant university of 25000 undergrads. I'm assuming these are more common at smaller colleges. ~~~ ameoba Facebook started at Harvard, a 20k student school. It might be more of a tradition at the old East Coast institutions - growing up on the West Coast, I've never heard any reference to anything of the like. ------ muratmutlu Spotify & Napster [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=napster%2C%20spotify](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=napster%2C%20spotify) ------ bdon Nice! What data source are you guys using for song years? ~~~ jsomers It's crowdsourced by our users, and vetted/edited by our moderators (also part of the community). ------ DotSauce Will it ever end? [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Turn%20Up](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=Turn%20Up) ------ dmak Wow, this is really fast. Anyone have insight on how they can provide stats like this so fast? Is it precalculated? ------ thehigherlife Are you guys using Splunk for the data crunching and graph builds? ------ emhart Nice to see them getting back to their roots. :) ------ BrianEatWorld Where is the chart for "ugh"s (sp?)? ~~~ Fishkins If you're talking about the footwear: [http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugg,uggs](http://rapgenius.com/rapstats?q=ugg,uggs) ------ api The money vs. bitches graph made me LOL.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Did China steal Japan's high-speed train? - w1ntermute http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/04/15/china-japan/ ====== DigitalSea The quote by Li Daokui in the article: "Don't worry too much about Chinese companies imitating you, they are creating value for you down the road" is probably the best way of putting this. The world needs to invest into bullet train technology, the world is expanding and becoming more connected and yet trains have remained basically the same for the last 100 or so years. You take the risk of having your IP stolen by any country (China just so happen to be quite good at it). If any one country can take a new technology or method of doing something and ramp it up to benefit everyone, China is probably the country best suited to the task.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why can't we stop hurricanes? - aashaykumar92 I googled this and see theories as to how to stop hurricanes -- decrease water temperature under eye of storm, send supersonic jets in to revolve and cause hot air to rise, lasers, etc. -- anyone have a simple reason why these haven't been tried or are absolutely crazy?<p>A follow up: so how can we stop hurricanes? ====== SAI_Peregrinus [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_$energy$) The energy needed to evaporate the water Harvey dumped on land (33 trillion gallons) is roughly: 40.65 kJ/mol (Latent heat of vaporization of water) * 210 mol/gal * 33x10^12 gal = 2.8x10^20 J. That's over half the entire world's energy consumption (not just electricity, also fuel for transportation and such) as of 2010. In about a week. And ignoring the energy in the wind. They're simply really, really, big. Causing substantial change to them once they've formed is effectively impossible. Stopping the formation is effectively impossible because weather is chaotic, so small changes in one place can cause large changes elsewhere. You might stop one hurricane forming only to create a different one. The real solution is to kill all the damn butterflies. /s ~~~ irongeek We are working on it. [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say- decline...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Scientists-say-decline-in- monarch-butterflies-12181328.php) ------ exabrial I've wondered the same thing about tornados in Kansas, yet we still wrecklessly mix our warm moist air and cooler dry air with disregard. ------ spc476 This [1] is the NHC report for Hurricane Andrew just prior to landfall in August of 1992. Andrew was small as hurricanes go, and even then, you are talking about hurricane winds (72 MPH/116 KPH at the _low_ end, Andrew was 140 MPH/225 KPH sustained winds) extending outward from the eye (typical eye diameter is 20 miles/32 km) 30 miles/45 km. So you are talking about disrupting a cylinder of wind and rain some 50 miles/80 km across and what? 4 miles/6 km high? That's a _lot_ of energy to disrupt. And that's for Andrew, a _small_ hurricane. Irma has hurricane speed winds out to 75 miles/120 km from the eye, which itself is 23 miles/37 km across. Good luck. [1] [http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl19...](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/archive/storm_wallets/atlantic/atl1992/andrew/public/paal0492.031) ------ Hasknewbie I think it's one of those things where people have difficulties realizing the _scale_ of things. For example hurricane Irma is the size of Texas or France. If it hits Florida, people won't need to evacuate Miami, they'll need to evacuate _Florida_. Think of the logistics it takes to evacuate a whole state basically overnight, and the _size_ of a threat causing such event: if we barely have the know-how to _run away_ in time, do you think we would have any know-how to block something of that magnitude? ------ patrick_haply Should we stop hurricanes, even if we can? Yes, hurricanes are destructive, especially to human settlements, but I'd be surprised if there aren't massive ecological benefits to hurricanes in spite of (or possibly because of) the destruction. Forest fires, for example, have well-documented, long-term ecological benefits. Unfortunately it looks like hurricanes aren't studied as much as forest fires. Just doing some cursory researching online [1] [2], it looks like they basically act as dramatic "flushing" mechanisms: \- end droughts \- distribute heat from the equator towards the poles \- seed dispersal \- redistribute soil/sediments along coastlines and inlane [1] [https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane- landfall...](https://weather.com/storms/hurricane/news/hurricane-landfall- benefits-2016) [2] [http://sciencing.com/positive-effects- hurricane-4462.html](http://sciencing.com/positive-effects- hurricane-4462.html) ~~~ gremlinsinc All these things could have beneficial ecological purposes...IN moderation... but what happens when they go to extremes ala Climate Change.. when we have 15 cat 5 hurricanes per year..or burn 10 million acres of forest per year...etc.. How much of our current excelling weather patterns are a result of global warming? All interesting questions... ------ dagske How can we stop hurricanes? First, accept that climate change is real. Second, act on it. Year after year the global temperature increases and year after year the hurricanes get stronger. All real climate scientists will tell you there's a correlation. ~~~ oldandtired Where do I start with this? I have no issue with climate change being real. Anyone with a modicum of sense can make those observations? However, your second point requires you to believe in the "dogma" of only anthropogenic causes for this climate change. At this point in time, we have no clue (and I mean no clue, irrespective of what any "real" climate scientist might pontificate) about the extent of actual causes of this climate change. There may be (and I'm willing to give a small level anthropogenic causal effect) some changes that mankind can do to mitigate possible effects of climate change. They are limited and more in the line of defensive than anything else. And before you ask, No I am not a climate scientist. But my experience with them is that when presented with specific questions related to the energy requirements of their predictions, they refuse to not only answer the raised questions, they will not dispute the energy calculations provided as a basis to the questions. I have done a series of calculations, in which you can do the same, based on simple mandatory energy requirements that make the predictions of their models simply laughable. My basic view today is that if a "real" climate scientist says anything, I will take that it that you had better check the silver draw to make sure the cutlery is still there. At this point in time, I consider it to be more pseudo-scientific than phrenology and I don't give that any regard at all. And that is a pity, because we need some verifiable climate model will give level of predictability. We have none at this time. ~~~ Vanit Check out oldandtireds infallible series of calculations at realclimatechange.geocities.com ~~~ oldandtired Funny, ha ha. If you actually took the time, about 2 to 3 hours of work and research, you would quickly see that the various scenarios proposed by these "real" climate scientists are a load of codswallop. As they say here at times, "Are you smarter than a fifth grader?" Well a fifth grader can do the calculations with but a little bit of help. If climate scientists were willing to call out their colleagues over the various "unreasonable" scenario results then as a group, I might be more inclined to give them a pass. But they don't, so no. But so far, I have only had one person on the "anthropogenic" climate change bandwagon who was willing to give it a go. To his merit and credit, he even tried to provide a number of research studies to back his claim (he was not a climate scientist and the papers he referenced are well worth reading). In the end we agreed to disagree on our interpretations of the data presented. He was much more clear and critical thinking than the various "real" climate scientists that I have communicated with over the last two decades. I have, over the course of nearly forty years, dealt with quite different computer simulations and models and it is so easy to get them wrong, to the extent that for some models, no matter what you put in, you appear to get a reasonable answer out. They're the scary ones, people assume they are right when in fact they are a load of rubbish. If you were to actually try to do the energy equations, you would see this for yourself. But obviously, you more interested in believing the anthropogenic climate change dogma without at least some level of fact checking to test the veracity of the claims. But that is up to you. We can compare notes after you do your own calculations. Let me know when you have done them. I am willing to give them a pass (or least a provisional move ahead) if they can clearly show that the basic energy calculations I have made that are required for their scenario outcomes are wrong in any significant way. That is, the calculations are wrong by say 15 orders of magnitude or more. Average worldwide temperature rises of a couple of degrees (Celsius or Fahrenheit) do not appear to be able to supply enough energy to drive the energy requirements. If they were, then these "real" climate scientists would have been able to demonstrate this long before now. There would be an energy process and pathway available to demonstrate this to all who wanted to see it. As a number of people here have already shown, the amounts of energy required for some of the existing events are just extraordinary. However, the energy required to drive them is many orders of magnitude short of the energy required to drive the scenario outcomes from the climate change models. This is a problem. Climate is a multivariate function of a very large number of interacting processes. From the variations of solar output, the orbital position of the planet around the sun, the axial tilt of the planet, position of the moon, cloud cover, global land mass and water distributions, wind processes, storms (from little rainbursts up to the likes of Irma), volcanoes (land based, ocean based, ice based), forest fires (which you are getting right now), ground cover or lack of it, flooding, oceanic algae distribution to a myriad of other interacting effects and variables. To attribute climate change to anthropogenic effects as the main driver is, well, unreasonable without extraordinary evidence. Computer models that don't give reasonable, verifiable predictions are not evidence, no matter how distinguished the climate scientist may be. ~~~ cholantesh Quite a lot of anecdota and question begging. Ho-hum. ~~~ oldandtired I suppose there is a bit of anecdote, but then I generally find that anthropogenic climate change believers won't take up the energy equation challenge and so show that they are not willing to actually put any effort into the discussion. Climate change deniers and anthropogenic climate change believers don't appear to have any inclination to do any sort of serious thinking about the subject. Both appear to take a very simplistic political view about the matter and just react along party lines. Just as your comment shows little effort to even engage in dialogue. ~~~ cholantesh Your original comment has nothing meaningful to discuss. You don't present your data or analysis thereof, so we cannot discuss that. Here you call for 'serious thinking about the subject', but you engage in aggressive strawmanning (believe in the "dogma" of only anthropogenic causes for this climate change) and repeat the party line that climate models are all unreliable (this is a long-debunked falsehood). These are non-starters for meaningful dialogue. ------ bruceboughton You Americans, thinking you can control everything... ------ api The energy requirements to influence a hurricane are on the order of the entire output of the US power grid... At a minimum. ~~~ donjoe Why not just harvest a hurricane's energy to weaken it? ~~~ SAI_Peregrinus The small ones output on the order of magnitude of the annual power consumption of the US in a matter of days. Where would you store the energy? How? Even if you could get wind turbines that could survive it... ~~~ donjoe Just been an overall question. There might be a solution no one ever thought about. Why wind turbines? Kites could work as well. There might be a better product not yet invented to solve the problem. It might be even better to start at an earlier point by extracting heat from the oceans to lower temperature and therefore avoid the formation of tropical storms at all. Just some brainstorming ideas :) ------ learn_more How about coating the sea surface with a very thin layer of oil to reduce evaporation? ------ nyxtom Stop pumping excess heat energy into the atmosphere. EDIT: While this won't stop them from happening, this is definitely not helping things. ~~~ KGIII That's not going to stop hurricanes. ~~~ nyxtom It for sure won't, but it definitely isn't helping ~~~ KGIII Interestingly, newer models are suggesting that hurricane activity will decrease with global warming. Basically, as the temperature rises, the colder regions will increase in temperature the most - thus raising the global averages. Because of this lack of heat disparity, less transfer of usable energy, there will be fewer hurricanes and they think they will be weaker in general. I'm on a tablet, but I can dig out the study (I think), if you want. Google will guide you, otherwise. I was just reading this a month or so back. From a physics viewpoint, it makes sense. Then again, I'm a mathematician and not a climate scientist. ------ tomglynch They're absolutely crazy. ~~~ tomglynch Decrease water temperature over a huge area that's constantly moving? How many supersonic jets are we talking? 50,000? Lasers or magnets might work though... ~~~ candiodari > Lasers or magnets might work though... Actually if you can merely slightly resist the heat exchange that will kill these storms just fine. 0.1% difference in heat exchange ? They're weakened to the point of irrelevance. What would happen if we caused an oil spill on purpose ? We would need to create a circular oil spill where the air is going up (around the eye), in a way that would slightly decrease (slightly is more than enough) the heat exchange and thus the flow of air towards the eye. So an oil spill surrounding the eye of the storm should kill the storm. Of course the earlier you do this, the more effect it would have. You'd effectively have to do it constantly to avoid having to do it for massive storms. Alternatively, you could nuke the air above the storm, or otherwise heat it up. That would kill the reason for the funnel to exist (cold air relatively low in the athmosphere on top of warmer water). The advantage I guess is that you could decide to do this and it might kill the funnel in a matter of minutes. We have nearly fallout free nukes nowadays (fallout measured in grams, which when spread out over 1000 sq. km isn't going to do anything). Of course, this would be climate engineering. If we were willing to do that, we could easily have solved global warming by now. The issue is, what if it goes wrong ? Who will seriously risk doing this, and therefore carrying the responsibility afterwards ... Because we all know, nobody gets blamed for doing nothing, and if you do something and fuck it up ... wow. ------ smegel How about a really, really big fan? ------ iamshyam Coz there is no such thing as a hurricane. ------ clumsysmurf Trump's wall can keep out those hurricanes ... ~~~ sctb Could you please comment civilly and substantively, like the guidelines ask, or not at all? [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Opening up some details of OpenSolaris under Oracle - bensummers http://ptribble.blogspot.com/2010/02/opening-up-some-details-of-opensolaris.html ====== ax0n I know I'm probably one of like 5 HNers who gives a shit about OpenSolaris, but it looked pretty dicey there for a bit, and I'm glad Peter Tribble posted this and that there seems to be some movement and support from Oracle.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Were you saved by a teacher? - mathgladiator In thinking about a recent comment I made ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2059752 ), i was wondering how many of us have been given second chances by teachers.<p>It seems to me, being entrepreneurial or a hacker requires dealing with a massive amount of daily failure. Yet, the school system is very poor at enabling this (which is probably why we can't teach entrepreneurial/hacking).<p>So, I'm wondering how many of us were saved by a fair or progressive teacher (as opposed to a crazy pedantic person)? ====== elliottcarlson When I first moved to the states and started high school I was really bored since everything we were learning was way behind the education I received back in Europe. I chose to be a teachers aide in the language lab, conveniently during a period there were no classes there simply so I could work on the computers (already ancient mac classics and a single IIGS) where I got to play around with Hypercard and attempt to make programs... I think that teacher let me get away with a lot - and it was a huge learning experience since all I had at home was a Compaq 8086. On the other side of things, I worked for Seton Hall Prep school for a while when I moved to the east coast - managing the network and maintaining various systems including the community machines as well as the classroom machines. While the machines were locked down quite well, and we even used a desktop replacement, one of the students had figured that running Help from MS Word, gave them access to MS Access (not generally something they had access to) and the student was writing a pretty basic VBA application with forms etc on top of Access. I managed to figure out which student it was and made sure he knew not to do anything bad with it and I would be more than happy to help him out and pointed him in the direction of learning more advanced stuff. I do wonder if he is a programmer now :) ------ ericmsimons Yeah, I was saved by a teacher. It's been pretty amazing actually because we ended up becoming good friends and co-founders!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
C-source to deal with OS X Finder aliases - McUsr https://github.com/McUsr/isalis I hope those it concerns enjoy it. That is, those that wants their shell tools to work or play along with Finder Aliases.<p>The source is provided in the form of a shell-tool that lists aliases and broken aliases.<p>Enjoy! ====== McUsr Hello. I just want to make a point of the fact the code doesn't use Carbon, so it should work with the next releases of OS X.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Cisco copied Slack called it Spark - talsnet http://venturebeat.com/2016/09/06/cisco-doesnt-want-spark-to-be-like-slack-heres-why/ ====== jflowers45 I like this article but I think your version of the headline on HN "Cisco copied Slack called it Spark" is too clickbaity and VB's original "Cisco doesn’t want Spark to be like Slack. Here’s why" is more appropriate. ~~~ laveur I agree. The original is much less clickbaity. Disclosure: I work on Cisco Spark. ------ gjolund Let's all pretend that Slack is unique and innovative for a moment. I question the motives of OP in regards to the title change, sounds like someone has a bias.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Justin.TV pwns king content - pg http://lucidmedia.cirne.com/index.php/2007/04/01/justintv-p0wns-eisner/ ====== RyanGWU82 Wow, a huge above-the-fold piece on the Chronicle front page, in their second week of operations, that's _amazing_ placement. Does anyone know if Justin has professional PR assistance, or if they're generating all the media buzz themselves? ~~~ nostrademons They tell a compelling story that's interesting & new and fits in with the zeitgeist. That's really all that PR is. Right after I graduated high school, I worked for an all-teenage dot com. We were a dozen or so high schoolers, ages ranging from 15 through 19, building a "teen content" site with indirect venture funding (we were a wholly-owned subsidiary of a venture-funded startup). This was the summer of 2000, at the height of the dot-com boom. The NASDAQ had just peaked, but nobody knew it yet. We got picked up first by the local community newspapers, then the Boston Herald, then the local TV news. Then we ran out of funding, but we continued getting press inquiries for several months after we were technically out of business. We had a $20k PR budget (which we inflated to $50k whenever we talked to people), but we never spent any of it. Instead, our (18 year old) PR guy would just cold call newspaper editors with "Hi, this is Trip Guray, I'm at an all- teenage startup called inAsphere.com, and we have a story you might be interested in." If they weren't interested, fine, we'd say thanks for your time and try someone else. If they were, we'd send them a press release over e-mail or arrange for an interview. Press coverage tends to snowball: if you get a story published in a community newspaper, you're much more likely to get picked up by a major metropolitan newspaper. If you get picked up by a major newspaper, other major newspapers will go after you. If a bunch of newspapers are interested, TV will soon be too. ------ ced Good for them, but I agree with Eisner. Justin.TV is content, and content is still king, whether or not it includes audience participation. The web is a revolution in distribution, and in lowering the barrier to entry for content creation.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wireless charging startup uBeam accused of being the next Theranos - jacquesm http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/11/charged/ ====== dang The story reported here (blog by ex-exec) had two major discussions at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11672270](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11672270) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11693184](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11693184) ~~~ illumen Please delete my account. ------ wiredfool There's a big difference between a venture backed tech product that doesn't work at the desired scale because of the laws of physics and a medical product that doesn't work because of phlebotomic reasons (also, procedural and calibration). And that difference is who gets hurt. uBeam is going to hurt the VCs, Theranos hurt everyone who relied on the results of their tests. ~~~ easytiger To be fair uBeam might also cause cancer, we just don't know. See another power related investment scam: Steorn: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steorn) ~~~ scandox I had a hilarious experience being brought into a meeting at Steorn, designed to explain to potential investors and commentators the technology and the origins behind it. I'm not going to make any comment on the intentions of the founders or even on the technology itself. The presentation itself however was comically childlike and questions were answered with a circularity that was amazing to witness. What I noticed, though, was that if you ask penetrating questions and if someone calmly and persistently fails to address the core of your question then other people eventually accept that your question has been answered! ~~~ easytiger They are still going strong orbo.com You can buy a phone that has a battery that will never run out, apparently. However it seems a lot of faults are found: [http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/](http://dispatchesfromthefuture.com/) ------ davidgerard There was a Tumblr blogger su3su2u1, a physicist, who was all over these guys: > I reached out to an investor in impossible startup I had talked about > previously. Had a long phone call today, in which he explained to me he > didn’t invest because he thought they’d ever be a viable business. He > invested because he thought between their pitch/charisma and the names of > the investors backing them they’d be able to get several rounds of funding, > and he’d be able to cash out. That is: for VCs in the present climate, "find a greater fool" counts as a business plan. It's about now that front-end web devs who are good with JavaScript should be stocking up on tinned food. (He's since deleted his Tumblr, but the text is still in my reply to him: [http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/129387704618/conversation...](http://reddragdiva.tumblr.com/post/129387704618/conversation- with-an-investor) ) ~~~ geomark I think this right here is why some VC's are so rabid about criticism of startups they've invested in. For a while now it's looked like a lot of pump- and-dump behavior. ------ raverbashing Funny thing is that Marc Andressen had some mean comments on @pmarca about how HN reacted after first news appeared here and commentators showed it was technically impossible (or at least not what most people expect) ~~~ swang did the same thing when initial theranos reports came out. ~~~ geomark You mean those "Hater News" comments? Yeah, if you don't support the VC's narrative you're a hater. Doesn't matter if you've got legit concerns related to physical laws. ------ jwr "uBeam could be vaporware" You don't say? Seriously — uBeam's claims were always ridiculous. Anybody with any kind of engineering background should be able to feel it instinctively, and be convinced after spending a couple of minutes with pen and paper. ~~~ petra I'm not deeply into the details, but doesn't it depend on how focused the ultrasonic beam is if you can fully protect the beam from hitting people by some smart and rapid sensing ? ~~~ daxorid If you have to develop 100% accurate human detection and avoidance systems in order to avoid catastrophic tissue damage for users of a mild convenience, maybe you should pack it in. Some things are worth the risk. Spaceflight, experimental cancer research, assassination of despots, hazardous waste storage technologies. Sometimes you really do need to crack a few eggs to advance humanity. But the 'advance' we're talking about here is the trivial convenience of not plugging in your phone. ~~~ benologist This technology _starts_ with phone charging, where it ends may be quite a distance from there. We've also quite literally _had_ to develop as close as we can get to 100% safe ways of pretty much everything complicated we do, from surgery to driving to toasting bread. ------ gizmo Are they being called the next Theranos simply because they're also a tech startup without a working product that has a woman founder/CEO? Sure looks that way. uBeam is just a dumb idea that can't work. Squandering a few million of VC money in pursuit of a dumb idea happens all the time. This article seems really meanspirited. ~~~ pyrale Maybe it's time to roll out a pitchfork-as-a-service startup ? ~~~ ojii Already exists, it's called reddit. ------ hathym "uBeam has refused to publicly show a demo because the technology doesn’t work." in this case it's the VCs to blame for blindly throwing their money. ~~~ janekm Well... I gather uBeam's stick was to give a demo of an impractical ultrasonic power transfer system (off-the-shelf transducers transmitting a small amount of power over an insignificant distance) and claim that they just needed to scale it up by improving on the existing technology. Which presumably sounded reasonable to VCs who didn't bother doing some back-of-the-envelope maths on the physics... ~~~ teekert Or asking someone who does know his physics to do it for them. ~~~ tmptmp The VCs might have wanted to "save" money on this, but of course they would/will spend millions (if not billions) on shitty consultancy firms. ------ ucaetano Not exactly like Theranos. uBeam isn't selling the product, it's still in development phase. In other words, it's vaporware. It won't be the first nor the last vaporware. Theranos was outright fraud in a regulated market. ------ fennecfoxen Better the next Theranos than the next Therac. ~~~ glup [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25) (I didn't know about this... interesting case study, thanks!) ~~~ jacquesm Interesting is too mild a word. Devastating is probably more accurate. ~~~ brians We could have learned that lesson in many other ways. I am glad we have the opportunity when it was pointed at one person at a time—that could have been a subway or aircraft controller. Now, the hard part is ensuring we really do learn the lessons Therac can teach us. ~~~ stickfigure I was about to post "...or could have been a Toyota ECU?" But doing a little obligatory pre-mouth-opening-due-diligence, I discovered that the Toyota ECU I remember so much bad press about apparently wasn't at fault. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–11_Toyota_vehicle_recalls](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009–11_Toyota_vehicle_recalls) ------ PhasmaFelis The blog that the article was sourced from ([http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/](http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/)) currently has a biting post about how Theranos' failures are endemic in the tech industry: "Companies in the new tech area tend to be a little lax when it comes to doing things carefully - Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Facebook, tells us all to "Move fast and break things", which I have to agree is a great way to innovate and learn _when your product does nothing of actual importance at all._ It doesn't matter if you don't get your silly cat videos, or can't post pictures of your holidays, because your business payroll doesn't run on it, your medication isn't delivered by it, nor is your aircraft navigation based on it. Real consequences of a Facebook blackout are near zero." "[...] In both these industries [generator manufacturing and medical ultrasound] the mentality was "we must make sure this is safe" and the idea of reducing or skipping safety is never considered, but I do not see the same thinking in many of these tech companies. I have literally heard "what's the minimum we have to do?", "we don't have proof it's a risk", "that sounds time- consuming and expensive. We should do <pointless but fast/cheap thing> instead", and "well if it goes to court our lawyers say they have good arguments"." ------ gakada uBeam isn't like Theranos because uBeam isn't defrauding anybody. They have honestly described how the product works. The product just happens to be a horrifying deafness ray. Some VCs will fund that. ~~~ raverbashing So they'll be looking at selling it to the military? Just like Theranos wanted? ------ zxcvvcxz uBeam is most likely vaporware that violates the laws of physics - at least in what they propose on a product level - but that doesn't mean that they shouldn't be funded to try working on a really hard problem. Maybe in their R&D they fall short by a large margin on the product side, but still make some meaningful contribution. I think where everyone loses their cool is when the company purposely gets massive amounts of PR to glamorize themselves (and their founder) as if it's already a success [1]. IMO these guys should be keeping a low profile, like the people working on Jetpacks and similar things. Make some noise when you have a demo. [1] - e.g. "Top 30 under 30". Seriously? Prove yourself first. [http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45eldh/meredith-perry- foun...](http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mef45eldh/meredith-perry-founder- ubeam-22/) ------ secstate Pretty sure Forbes was on this same blog post more than two weeks ago. [https://is.gd/5xJ4QY](https://is.gd/5xJ4QY) [EDIT] Additionally, they accurately point out that, apart from the VP's rant, uBeam is actually persuing something more akin to cordless charging, within a few meters of a charging station. That's still something of a pipe dream given the inverse law of power distribution. But rather than hitting the target perfectly to wirelessly charge my S7 it'd be nice to just set it anywhere on the counter. Not sure that's disruptive, but it's more possible than ubiquitous, in-home charging. ------ esbspd Is this a issue specific to uBeam or wireless charging in general? There is also a YC company working on the same thing : [http://www.madebysupply.com](http://www.madebysupply.com) Are there similarities/differences between the two? ~~~ dagw uBeam claims to be using ultrasound to transmit power, while the other companies (inluding the one you mentioned) in this field are using radio waves. Electricity over radio waves is well understood and basically works. The problems there are ones of engineering a system that is sufficiently energy efficient and reliable in a reasonably compact package rather than any fundamental scientific problems. ------ pkaye I'm kind of surprised at their list of investors. I mean Mark Cuban is generally a skeptical guy at investing from what I see on Shark Tank. Then there is some major investors (Andreessen Horowitz, Founders Fund, Shawn Fanning...) Can't these people afford a technologist/scientific consultant to bounce thughts on the feasibility of ideas before investing in them? I guess for them spending a $1M here or there is pocket change. ~~~ CyberDildonics Mark Cuban is a lottery winner and reality TV star. He made his own money by selling a company to yahoo for billions that they shut down shortly after taking a giant loss. Who knows about all of these guys though. It makes you wonder if they are taking unresearched scattershot approaches to winning carnival games in the hopes of walking home with a few big prizes. ------ kriro """uBeam CEO Meredith Perry tricked co-founder Nora Dweck into an 80/20 split of the company instead of a 50/50 split, according to court documents. Dweck sued Perry, who “settled out of court with Dweck rumored to get 20% of the company""" I'm assuming this means an additional 20%? If not that's a pretty great settlement for the sued party :P ------ return0 I think it's becoming a meme. Failed startups is nothing new. Failed healthcare startups is different, because healthcare has created a vast regulatory and auditing network to specifically prevent the creation of startups that will fail. ~~~ petra Not really - the regulatory framework prevents giving bad medical services to people. But many healthcare startups have failed. Just in the area of non- invasive glucose testing there we're probably tens of them. No shame in failing, assuming you gave an honest effort. ------ williamscales This reminds me of the idea of having a Tesla coil in every room for power delivery. ------ 20andup Seems like in SF you just need a ridiculous idea to get funding. No working product, nothing. Funny but also quite sad. ~~~ nikanj They invest in the story and the founders, so you need a great story (Zenefits etc), a Zuckerberg lookalike (Clinkle etc) or something similar. ~~~ Snowdax The three usual metrics that are used are "Team", "Market" and "Product" with investors focusing more on one or the other. I'm fairly certain that investors who focus on team and market over the product metric are the ones who will continue to get burned by this sort of scenario. This isn't the last company that will try to peddle vaporware and get away with it for an extended period of time. ------ beachstartup i think the naivete of my thinking there was any kind of rhyme or reason to which companies get funded and press coverage is completely gone. it's clear to me that this entire system is just one giant crazystorm. ~~~ CyberDildonics There is certainly a method to the madness, but if you are hoping for an answer that includes technical progress or sound long term business plans you may be very disappointed. ------ transfire TIL Americans just can't pass up a good which hunt. ------ vonklaus theranos is almost a decade and a half old. i'll just come right out and say that the FDA is a sham and I honestly wouldn't care if they Theranos didn't pay extra to have some peer reviewed paper published or adhere to the laws proposed, written, ammended and passed by people without degrees in the field. It is a shame Theranos did some questionanable, unethical & likely illegal things. I wont hold them up as the Unicorn's gift of Zeus here, but I really could care less about red tape. 23andme had an injuction against them by these clowns(fda) so unless soneone here can say in 2008ish 5 years after Theranos was founded, you knew it was going to implode, then I would say would you still not want another company in the space to get funded? Nobody gets points for standing infront of Yahoo right now and sayibg they are in bad shape, shits obvious. However there are many companies succeeding where Theranos failed. As for uBeam, I assumed this would fail. I just looked at it like a privately funded research project. Regardless, it seems like this space is actually succeeding (just not uBeam wireless inplementation) so I am excited about that. tl;dr it's really easy to be negative with a decade or more of hindsight. sure these were collosol failures & that money could have been spent elsewhere, if nothing else these high profile companies likely inspired some competitors and interest in the space and many of them aren't doing something physically inpossible	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you recognize a good bug fix from a bad one? - julienreszka ====== croo Minimal amount of code change required to fix the problem is generally a good sign. A simple fix is always better than a convoluted one. A fix that deletes code instead of adding more sounds fantastic. If the fix contains the tests that reproduced the problem it's marvellous, I am in tears. Is there a documentation about the bug, how did it surface, what were the impacts and what was the fix? Superb.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Loop Unrolling - bpatelcse https://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2001/cmsc411/proj01/proja/loop.html ====== barrkel I had an amusing time optimizing a byte-scanning loop in Java a few months back. The initial loop was a lot slower than a naive byte-by-byte, non-unrolled version in C. I implemented an approximate version of Duffs device, and did the unrolling by hand, improving it by a good 50%. But it was still much slower than C. On a whim, I went back to a naive loop, but simplified the core. This was strictly speaking algorithmically more costly, but it hit a JVM optimization code path specifically tailored for searches through byte arrays. Suddenly my code was about 40% faster than naive C (still run through gcc -O3)! A peek at the disassembly showed the JVM had done all the relevant loop unrolling itself. A key part, IIRC, was something to do with the loop bounds check; it was simple enough to be proven to always be less than the array length. But it did feel a bit like stumbling around looking for a magic incantation. Tools like manual loop unrolling, while they help, still incur relatively heavy costs in array bounds checking that you can't easily escape. If I ever have to write a loop like that in the future in Java, I'll start out with the simplest loop, measured in a micro-benchmark, and try and iteratively modify that loop to the final implementation without losing the sweet spot of JVM optimization. Doing it from this direction is much easier than the reverse. ~~~ vardump Can you show your byte scanning code in both Java and C? ------ vardump Loop unrolling is mostly unnecessary on modern pipelined out-of-order execution CPUs. It can even slow down execution due to heavier pressure on L1C cache. ~~~ gnufx It still seems a good first guess for Fortran code, at least, e.g. worth ~10% compiling reference BLAS and the double precision linpack benchmark with gfortran on Sandybridge.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GPS III - bookofjoe https://www.cbsnews.com/news/global-positioning-system-preparing-the-next-generation-of-gps/ ====== toomuchtodo Some details on new features: Laser reflectors for improved ranging and ephemeris calculation (NASA request): [https://www.gpsworld.com/expert-advice-laser-reflectors- to-r...](https://www.gpsworld.com/expert-advice-laser-reflectors-to-ride-on- board-gps-iii/) Regional Military Protection: Amplified on-demand M-Code signal power in a targeted region—allowing receivers to operate more than 10 times closer to a jammer than with the military signals operational today: [https://insidegnss.com/gps-iii-the-next-big-step-in-gps- mode...](https://insidegnss.com/gps-iii-the-next-big-step-in-gps- modernization/) Colocated Search and Rescue (SAR) repeater payload: [https://spacenews.com/mda-to-build-search-and-rescue- repeate...](https://spacenews.com/mda-to-build-search-and-rescue-repeaters- for-gps-3f-satellites/) (Galileo GNSS has this as well onboard, and also supports a return link to ack the distress call on the device, GPS does not unfortunately) ------ sparker72678 Additional reading: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_Block_III)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How 3-D Printing Is Revolutionizing the Display of Big Data - ca98am79 http://www.technologyreview.com/view/531596/how-3-d-printing-is-revolutionizing-the-display-of-big-data/ ====== Wogef I used to volunteer teaching English to Chinese kids from migrant families (displaced within China). One of the ways I illustrated the value of English was to print several objects of differing size. Those sizes each represented the average salary of a given profession in China. Then I had a piece which would nest on top of that object that showed the value of English- the additional salary an English speaking Chinese professional in that field could expect. The physical, tactile experience- objects of very different sizes with variables they could manipulate with their hands really got the point across in a way to those kids that graphs never did. ------ chton An interesting idea, but it may be short-lived. They're essentially using a 3D printer as a poor man's 3D hologram system. Very nice application of the technology, but once we commercialize actual holograms it'll be obsolete - in much the same way slides were replaced with monitors. ~~~ carb I think it's more likely that AR or VR will be used for this purpose. It's already pretty trivial because they've already created the 3D model representing the data, all they have to do is throw it into a game engine. ~~~ chton AR and VR still aren't quite as convenient as a real 3D model you can walk around and point at. The technology isn't there yet. But it's true, once it reaches that point it might be used for this and would replace the 3D-printed models even faster. ~~~ ObviousScience But AR and VR get you one more dimension (time) than a 3D model and are much, much, MUCH easier to produce a large display from. ------ placeybordeaux I completely fail to see how big data comes into play at all. All they mention is that the use geo tagged twitter that that is specific to MIT. I don't that visualizing a well defined subset of data on a 3D space was really related to the problems presented by 'big data'.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ignoring the Wiggles - loyalelectron http://themacro.com/articles/2016/02/ignoring-the-wiggles/ ====== trjordan I'm sitting at SaaStr Annual, a conference with predominantly SaaS founders, sales & marketing types, and VCs. There's a lot of talk about the recent motion, especially among VCs. One of the things I'm struck by is not that the wiggles actually matter, but sentiment matters. Because it's a frequent topic of conversation, it's an easy thing to bring up, and without some knowledge and context, it's a strike against you. Does that matter to your business or your clients? No. Does it matter to the person you're talking to right then? A little. And if you're trying to get them as a customer or advisor or mentor or whatever, you're a bit more in the hole, because you chose to ignore the fact they're thinking about the wiggle. It's not important to you, but it's important to them. So don't focus on the wiggle, but don't ignore it. Internalize what has changed, respond appropriately, and know that you can move past it. ------ minimaxir The difference between long-term investors and startup founders is that no sane long-term investor puts all their money and resources into one asset. Startup founders do not have diversification or a fallback, and it's humanly fair for them to be concerned when things are on a serious downtrend with tech stocks. ~~~ ISL A young Warren Buffett had 75% of his allocation in GEICO. If you're _certain_ something is going to go up in the long term, it makes sense to buy as much of it as you can. You must be certain, and you'd better be right about being certain. A Buffett-favored aphorism: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful." If your goal is substantially different performance from a market average, a concentrated position is the ticket. But, unless you're really good, the best you'll do, on average, is average, in which case you'd do better by buying an index. ~~~ tyre His GEICO investment was about more than just him believing in GEICO. It was much more brilliant than that. Insurance companies are wonderful to own because you get access to their capital. They have tons of floating capital that's held in reserves, from premiums, until it needs to be paid out for claims. GEICO was a perfect investment for a young Buffet because he exchanged cash (liquidity) for _even more liquidity_. ~~~ dripton Young Buffett didn't buy GEICO, the company. He just bought some of its stock. So he didn't get any extra liquidity. Older Buffett bought the company. ------ ratfacemcgee i was hoping this would be about the kids band - I've been ignoring them my whole life	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft's forthcoming Minecraft Education Edition is written in C++ - ingve http://www.zdnet.com/article/minecrafts-new-education-edition-written-in-c-will-outrun-the-java-version/ ====== sheepdestroyer Micro optimized by John Carmack himself who volunteered (he was like a free consultant for while) for the task because he believed that's the best that could be done to help VR. He first had to personally persuade both hierarchy at FB & MS. So bold. From : [http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/24/how-john-carmack- pestered-...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/24/how-john-carmack-pestered- microsoft-to-let-him-make-minecraft-for-gear-vr/) : “I was willing to do just about anything,” he said. “On the phone I said that if this doesn’t happen, I’m going to cry. This will just be so terrible. This will be the best thing that we can do for the platform. But there are some problems that compilers can’t solve.” It turns out that the solution was to get the top executives from Facebook and Microsoft together. “Mark [Zuckerberg] and Satya [Nadella] were able to sit down and make sure that the deal happened,” said Carmack. ~~~ Almaviva I think he may be the best refutation against people who don't believe in 10x engineers. Imagine you want to create a VR prototype and get to hire 100 average programmers with some experience in the industry, and you're up against Carmack with a month until your demo... ~~~ untog I don't think people disbelieve that 10x engineers exist. Just that 98% of those who claim to be one are wrong. ~~~ espadrine I disbelieve. That said, I don't contend that some people are not at some point 10 times more productive than others. I contend that anyone can be just as productive, and often are, were or will be, although the manner in which they should be productive is absolutely not clear-cut. Society as a whole shapes how we act. Diversity in its composition allows what we rely upon. For instance, I would not be as productive at work if I had to take care of a few children on my own. Similarly, I am extremely unproductive while gardening, and don't intend to spend the time to improve. ~~~ eloff You're practically coming out and saying that all humans are equal and the only productivity differences can be attributed to other factors. That's a ridiculous position to take. ~~~ adventured And _extremely_ easy to disprove at this point with brain scans vs capabilities. We know enough about the brain now to understand that some people are born with advantages (or disadvantages), whether that's in memory or social skills. ------ ChuckMcM I chuckled at this: _" In schools and colleges that use Office 365, students will be able to log on to Minecraft using their Office credentials."_ Because everyone things "how can I log into this game? Oh yeah, with my _office_ credentials." :-) That aaid, one of the more interesting debates I participated in at Sun was Bill Joy's insistence that interpreted Java would be "faster than C++." From what I recall of his argument, it was that understanding the semantics of the program and just in time compilation would allow the JVM to run only the code that was needed in a smaller resident set with fewer context switches. At the time I was arguing against that, saying that a compiled version of Java could be a useful systems language but the interpreted version would not. And even with some really really amazing hotspot technology on the JIT compiler, I don't think Java was ever faster outside of a few synthetic test cases that did no useful work. So it really doesn't surprise me that a C++ version of minecraft would out perform a Java version, but it would be much more interesting if they included a JVM for the mods, so that the core was fast and the mods were portable. ~~~ pnathan To be honest, a lot of people have slammed the Minecraft codebase, claiming it's badly written and kind of a slow mess. I can't recall the citations, but based on the discussions when I read those aspects, I wouldn't put aspersions on Java alone in this case. ~~~ Macha It was a one-man hobby project turned into one of the biggest video games. I doubt many codebases would work well after growing so far past their original aspirations. ~~~ TazeTSchnitzel It was never well-written, though. It was good enough to work, but it was never good code. ~~~ JustSomeNobody But it got the job done. That means way more than whether he used a factory or not. ------ jdmichal As other people have pointed out: "Modding" in Minecraft is literally replacing the original Java bytecode with your own. This is why the idea of a Minecraft launcher took off; replacing binaries with modified versions is very dirty and very difficult to do if multiple things are touching the same file. I hope that this C++ version is the impetus needed for the forever-promised- never-delivered modding API to finally take shape. Then I don't even care what the underlying technology is. ~~~ madaxe_again One would hope so - I predict however that many end users will be slow to adopt as modders will probably start by rioting, and then replatform (if indeed there is an API) - but there will be a substantial time lag. There's a potential for a vicious underadoption cycle there, however, and bifurcation of the community into "classic" minecraft and "new" minecraft. ~~~ kuschku Oh, don’t worry, we are already rioting. Mojang already announced that "deep modding" won’t be supported. They’ll extend the stuff current resource packs can do, but they want to avoid modders replacing or extending any game mechanics directly. For example, modifying the rendering pipeline will be impossible. What modders expect: Minecraft as a whole engine, similar to the API Unity presents to developers. What Mojang is willing to deliver: A modding API that’s glorified command blocks. ~~~ Lawtonfogle >Oh, don’t worry, we are already rioting. Any chance of modders swapping to an opensource minecraft clone? ~~~ Teckla Minetest is very good, and can be modded with Lua. ------ ergothus Assuming MC does move to a C++ main version: I wonder if anyone is studying this and drawing parallels to the Python 3 or Perl 6 efforts. There seems to be a lot of similarities. * Existing product is great, but limitations are being encountered * Decision is made (or reality admitted, depending on your view) that you have to make a dramatic change * Community is split, progress is slow * ??? I'm a huge Minecraft fan (it's about the only computer game I regularly play), and while the community has lots of grump people, it's also fairly adaptable. This would be a huge shock though, and I'm more interested in what happens over, say, 6-12 months than I am in initial reactions. ~~~ detaro On the other hand, this potentially could unite XBox, mobile and PC versions of Minecraft, which would make quite a few people happy. As most of this thread discusses, mods are going to be a critical point, even though it is surprising how much people manage to do with command blocks, ressource packs and other vanilla tools. ------ madengr As a frustrated parent, Minecraft itself isn't compatible with it's own mods. The whole ecosystem is a frustrating mess, or at least my having to perform tech support for my 7 year old. ~~~ ganeumann Words I dread hearing when I arrive home from work: "daddy, can you install a mod for me?" Usually the first half hour is getting rid of all the crapware they were tricked into installing as they tried to get the mod themselves. ~~~ Lawtonfogle Tekkit client, Curse client, and FTB client. If the mod isn't on one of those, they aren't getting it. I use to do custom installs of mods and even a little bit of patching to make mods play nice together (namely recipe conflicts), but the time it takes just isn't worth it when you can grab a Direwolf20 or Tekkit pack and play right away. I do kinda wish Mo Creatures was still included in packs because my little sis loved the horse breeding to get endgame horses. ~~~ mjevans You forgot about the atlauncher. It has some interesting packs like TechNodeFirmacraft (a TerraFirmacraft based mod pack) that actually somewhat educate users about rising up from caveman to industrial era technology (real metallurgy names and semi-believable progression; at least until the end game where you make fantasy alloys to move blocks of non-finite water and lava about). ------ xd1936 Sad for the modding community. The entire ecosystem is based on recompiling and editing/inserting Java. ~~~ tshannon And for any platform that isn't windows. ~~~ cptskippy Ah yes, the dread C++ lock-in to Windows. ~~~ thescriptkiddie There might as well be if you don't have the source code. ~~~ Sanddancer People are already making mods to the C++ versions even without source code, doing the same thing that was done to make mods with the java version. [https://github.com/byteandahalf/MCPE- NativeMods/wiki/1:-Maki...](https://github.com/byteandahalf/MCPE- NativeMods/wiki/1:-Making-native-mods-for-Minecraft-Pocket-Edition) ~~~ thescriptkiddie Disassembling and patching a binary is a completely different thing from porting software to a different OS without access to the source code. ~~~ cptskippy Yes, it is very different. I'm not sure what that has to do with Minecraft though since it's source isn't freely available. ~~~ thescriptkiddie The Java binary can be run on any system for which a JVM exists. If Microsoft ports the entire thing to a native language like C++, we are at their mercy to provide binaries for non-windows systems. ------ symlinkk Worth mentioning to everyone who is complaining about the lack of mod support: there has been an open source C++ clone of Minecraft for a while now called "minetest", looks like their website is down right now but here's the Github repo: [https://github.com/minetest/minetest](https://github.com/minetest/minetest) ~~~ ghostDancer And the fork called Voxelands: [http://www.voxelands.com/about.html](http://www.voxelands.com/about.html) ------ ww520 A rewrite is usually faster than the original, especially one without backward compatibility constraint. I bet a rewrite in Java will be faster than the original, too. ~~~ kevincox Yeah, but it is more work and you end up with a Java version :P ~~~ ww520 Why would it be more work? You've already learned what work and what don't work in the first version. You can reuse a lot of the original code. A lot of the experiment and exploratory code can be thrown out. Ending up with a Java version can be a good thing. ------ nitrogen Will this C++ version run everywhere Minecraft already runs (Linux/Mac/Windows/mobile/etc.)? Can it connect to Java servers? ~~~ Narishma The mobile version, as well as all other non-desktop versions, are already written in C++. ------ ryanhuff My 11 year old son is an avid Mincraft player. His favorite aspect is playing team games on multiplayer servers. When I told him that Microsoft bought Mincraft, he was quite upset, and was confident that Microsoft would ruin it. Change was bound to happen. Hearing their plans to go c++ makes me wonder how it will impact the server ecosystem. Also, the "Windows 10" messaging in the article does sound like a case of a big company trying to bend a community to its own will (get people on Windows). In my son's case, if things go south, he is going to end up hating Microsoft for ruining his favorite game. ------ mavhc On one hand I'll be happy to not have to keep Java on the school machines, with its terrible installer, and minecraftedu, which wants to write to the install dir (same problem with kerbaledu, but that also has the additional crapness of being licenced per machine based on mac addresses, requiring delicensing, and internet access to check licence). On the other per year per user fees for software is a terrible trend, especially for schools. And I'd rather run my own server, and the kids love the mods. ------ Lawtonfogle Well, I was wrong. I was fully expecting the rewrite to be in C# to get the Java people to switch to C#, not in C++. ~~~ leetNightshade Switching from Java to C# doesn't offer any HUGE advantages to the end user. Switching to C++ does, granted with some drawbacks depending on how mods are handled, if they're going to be portable or not. If Microsoft is only making a Windows version of Minecraft, then they don't have to worry about the portability of mods, which would be a shame. ~~~ Lawtonfogle >Switching from Java to C# doesn't offer any HUGE advantages to the end user. I know C# doesn't offer much in terms of optimization. I was thinking they would do a C# rewrite because getting modders to switch from Java to C# is easier and it would give them a chance to show support for C# on non-Windows systems. I also think it would reduce the chance for a community split where modders continue modding the last Java versions. I'm probably biased in favor of modding. I remember Notch mentioning most sales came from systems where modding wasn't even possible, even though I personally think modding is the greatest thing about Minecraft. That has likely biased my view on the issue. ------ Kequc If anything needed a re-write Minecraft needed one. With the resources Microsoft has at its disposal I'm surprised to see it looks like a 1:1 remake. They didn't update the visuals or anything. This was an opportunity to release a slightly upgraded version of the product. It isn't backwards compatible so why keep for example all of the redstone bugs and so on, in it? This product could have been greatly refined. Maybe that's only coming in Minecraft 2. In true Microsoft fashion, there will now be Minecraft, Minecraft EE, and Minecraft 2. Instead of just two major products. ------ Ezhik I still don't really get what exactly Minecraft offers for education. ~~~ TranquilMarmot Redstone can be a great way to introduce people to logic and circuits, but that's about all I can think of. ------ balls187 How do mods work on the console versions? ~~~ jerf "What are mods?", same as every other console game. ------ deepinthefall Noooo.. How can I run it on my old SUN SPARC server if it's not in Java? ------ outworlder That's cool and all, Minecraft has always been a pig. That said, no mod compatibility is going to kill the game. Just check youtube, it is difficult to find something about "vanilla minecraft". ------ hathym I hope this ends the Java vs C++ performance debate. ------ Animats C++, not C#. Why isn't Microsoft using its own language? It seems late to be doing new starts in C++. ~~~ pjmlp C++ support has always been quite strong in the games and OS divisions. I would go so far as to bet it was the political C++ / .NET divide that caused the Longhorn failure. Also the Windows Vista victory that lead to the "Going Native" speechs, sponsoring C++ conferences, support for C++ on the kernel, AOT compilation to native of .NET code to mobile and the store and bringing back COM+ 2.0 renamed as WinRT. ------ roghummal Down the memory hole it goes. ~~~ halayli I am not sure you are aware of C++11's memory management features. ------ kelvin0 Wonder how Markus feels about that ... I would be honored! ------ osullivj Have they published the source? On github? ~~~ sheepdestroyer No, as an outsider, the source is only accessible if your name is literally JC ~~~ sbd01 Jesus Christ or John Carmack? ~~~ flebron Yes. ------ BeowulfCluster Why didn't they re-write it in C#? ~~~ varjag Probably the same reason: (lack of) performance. ~~~ BeowulfCluster C# is _much more performant_ than Java. ~~~ namelezz Link please. ------ benlower 10 PRINT "Knock, knock." 20 PRINT "Who's there?" 30 PAUSE 10000 40 PRINT "Java" 50 END ------ exabrial Ok literally a flamebait title... Carmack is involved in the rewrite. Let's face if, if M$ rewrote it, it'd be in .net and only run on their platform. Then support would be dropped in the next windows release ~~~ nickpeterson I feel like MS will probably do well on this, it's essentially a developer tool (for all ages), and MS makes plenty of those just fine. They clearly have good people involved and are using C++ so you know it's a performance oriented mindset (since Java vs C# is certainly close enough to make a C# version passable). I wouldn't be surprised if this is a success. ~~~ rasz_pl reading [https://randomascii.wordpress.com](https://randomascii.wordpress.com) Im not so sure. Microsoft has a habit of shipping unoptimized buggy crap in every niche, including dev tools.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Jiggy – an AI powered app that makes people in your photos dance - talhof8 https://apps.apple.com/app/jiggy-magical-dance-gif-maker/id1482608709 ====== talhof8 Made by some friends. Also available on the Play Store ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.botika.jig...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.botika.jiggy)). Would love to your feedback! ~~~ mjurczyk Sounds very nice, but no video preview? ------ chedine Very cool execution. Loved the idea.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
People don’t want to see workers replaced by a robot–themselves excepted - lordnacho https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/08/people-dont-want-to-see-workers-replaced-by-a-robot-themselves-excepted/ ====== close04 The title is a bit misleading. It's not that people _want_ to see their own job replaced by a robot. Rather that if they are going to be replaced anyway, they'd rather hand the job over to a robot than to a human. Possibly because it's easier to have negative feelings towards a human taking your job.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
ESNC2041217 Critical Security Vulnerability in PwC ACE Software for SAP Security - based2 https://www.esnc.de/security-advisories/vulnerability-in-pwc-ace-for-sap-security/index.html ====== based2 [https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5i6jag/pwc_sends_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/5i6jag/pwc_sends_legal_threats_to_security_researchers/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
On creating a user driven social media 'safe space' - TheMightyLlama https://gist.github.com/TheMightyLlama/bb77a05d3dde4da2511426e34279e7d6 ====== TheMightyLlama OP here, and first timer. This post was off the back of some thinking I've been doing about the arbitrary nature of community guidelines enforcement we've seen on some platforms recently. A comment by mr__y was the catalyst for me posting my thoughts so far. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21461013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21461013) The idea was to provide a solution which would separate the administration of the platform and the administration of the content. The former would be done by the company and the latter by the users with minimal oversight by employees of the company. This certainly needs more work, but at least I've offered up a solution for criticism.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Google faces $15 million lawsuit for releasing blogger information in model row - kqr2 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/6081473/Google-faces-15-million-lawsuit-for-releasing-blogger-information-in-model-row.html ====== run4yourlives Can a company actually be sued for following a court order? Is US culture _that_ sue happy? They refused to give up any information until a court ruled that they must, at which point they complied as expected. Does the lawyer in question really intend to make it the company's responsibility to determine which court orders are unconstitutional and which are not? Is that really the precedent he/she want's to set? My oh my. ~~~ zngtk4 You can actually be sued for _anything_. Whether or not you can win is another matter, and it's difficult to recover legal costs for a frivolous lawsuit. The lawyer is probably just hoping for a settlement. ~~~ run4yourlives Is there not some office that at least validates the merits of the suit though? Otherwise, the legal system can pretty much be used as a tool for extortion no? (I'm Canadian here, so excuse my ignorance) ~~~ mikeryan No. The closest you'll get is that very few lawyers will take your case if it completely sucks. And it can get thrown out pretty much off the bat from the the judge Criminal cases do have grand juries which weigh the merits of a case before going to trial. ~~~ run4yourlives So theoretically, an organization with large enough pockets could literally destroy a competing organization with lawsuits designed only to ensure the victim expends large amounts of cash on legal fees, correct? I'm wondering if this method of "business" has ever been attempted? ~~~ PotatoEngineer When the Golden Gate Bridge was being built, the ferry companies (who would be put out of business by the bridge) tried to sue the bridge to death with something like 2000 trivial lawsuits. While each of these was easily defeated, the only thing that stopped the ferry companies was that the local populace boycotted the ferries until they stopped the lawsuits. So yes, it's been done before, is probably being done now, and will happen again. You can counter-sue trivial lawsuits to make the plaintiff go away (and stop filing suits against you), but it takes some work and laying out some money to lawyers. ~~~ run4yourlives Thanks for the background. This whole thing strikes me as a horrible loophole in the legal system. I'd imagine the same is true in most western countries. ~~~ electromagnetic Sadly it is the same in most western countries, however if you sue me because I wore a pink hat (frivolous lawsuit) I have the right to counter-sue you (which would be a non-frivolous lawsuit). Yours would be thrown-out and cost you money and probably a lot to get a lawyer to take it on, mine however would likely be taken on on a no-win-no-fee basis by basically any lawyer because it would be so easy to win. So your suit would cost you money, and mine would likely cost me nothing or make me money. So yes the loophole is there, but the loophole itself is kind of self destructive for anyone dumb enough to try it. ~~~ run4yourlives Yet the example you gave would have been successful had it not been for outraged civilians mounting a boycott. How many issues are being exploited that don't warrant such public outrage? My guess is more than a few. ------ dschobel Do people really have an expectation of a right to privacy when posting things to the biggest and most public of forums known to man? Bizarre. ~~~ wmf Google allows you to mark some parts of your profile private, so that sounds like an expectation of privacy to me.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If Facebook is Worth $50B, Apple is Worth $1.4T - macco http://blog.vuru.co/post/2632452622/if-facebook-is-worth-50b-apple-is-worth-1-4t ====== andreaja Is it just me or are people blowing that "$50b" valuation of facebook out of proportion? And applying P/E * Profit to other companies doesn't really seem like an interesting metric, especially when comparing it to well-established companies. Buying Facebook shares right now at 100 P/E seems like a long bet that absolute profit will improve within the next N years (where N is some acceptable length of time for the investment). That's all. The $50b valuation is _obviously_ (to me anyway) not based on current numbers, but expected future numbers. The amount of indignant disbelief going on is amazing. I would understand this if the OP's money was being invested against his will, but when GS and others are making this bet with their own (or their trusting clients's) money, where's the problem? Are people angry at FB for being popular? ~~~ yoseph Hi andreaja, Thanks for the response. I'm the author of the article (Macco, thanks for submitting it!). You're right that the $50B valuation isn't based on current numbers. It's based on what Facebook _might_ be able to do in the future. Imagine you were buying a house. It's a great house, has a solid foundation, beautiful interiors, and is in an excellent neighbourhood that is constantly appreciating. Would you pay what it _might_ be worth in 3 years, today? I understand the argument about growth, but even from that end, it doesn't completely stand up. If we were to use the PEG Ratio (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEG_ratio>), for Facebook to be fairly valued at $50B, it has to grow its Net Income by 100% annually, on average over the next five years. It's possible Facebook might be able to do that next year, but then it'll have 1 billion users. That's 14% of the world's population. That's huge. Being generous though, let's extend that 100% growth into the year after. Then, Facebook would have 2 billion users, 28% of the world's population, and assuming current margins, they would only be eeking out $2 billion in profit. Will it be worth $200 billion then? I would say no and I would say Facebook's not worth $50 billion now. ~~~ semanticist Facebook's income doesn't need to grow linearly with their number of users. They could, instead, look at ways to make more money per user. Since they've been spending their time until now focussed on getting lots of users, I'd imagine it's safe to say that they could increase their revenue per user well beyond what it's currently at. ~~~ yoseph I hope, for the sake of current investors, they find other ways of monetizing users. But my example is intended to illustrate the overvaluation based on present methods of monetization. Nevertheless, I don't think it's a safe assumption that they could increase their revenue per user well beyond its current level. Generally speaking, it's pretty tough for free services to monetize themselves. The only routes seem to be ads & taking a cut of revenue from apps that run on its platform. Facebook would really have to pull a rabbit out of its hat to increase its revenue per user well beyond its current level. It's certainly not a safe assumption. ------ jboydyhacker This is not an appropriate use of a PE multiple because different companies have different growth rates at various stages. The earlier the life cycle, the higher the PE given potential growth later on is much higher. This post is actually pretty misleading and gives people the wrong idea about how PE multiples should be applied. ~~~ yoseph jboydyhacker, You're right that different companies have different growth rates at various stages. But, to me, it still doesn't add up. From another comment I made below: "I understand the argument about growth, but even from that end, it doesn't completely stand up. If we were to use the PEG Ratio (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEG_ratio>), for Facebook to be fairly valued at $50B, it has to grow its Net Income by 100% annually, on average over the next five years. It's possible Facebook might be able to do that next year, but then it'll have 1 billion users. That's 14% of the world's population. That's huge. Being generous though, let's extend that 100% growth into the year after. Then, Facebook would have 2 billion users, 28% of the world's population, and assuming current margins, they would only be eeking out $2 billion in profit. Will it be worth $200 billion then? I would say no and I would say Facebook's not worth $50 billion now." ------ xiaoma Neither P/E, nor PEG are useful metrics when dealing with a young growth company. Consider this: There was a time when Yahoo! had many potential customers and a substantial business and technological lead over the competition, but no positive earnings. The same was true more recently of Genzyme, currently a multi-billion dollar biotech company. Would it be reasonable to assign zero or negative values to such companies? Of course not. And what happens when a high-tech growth company climbs up from a small negative earnings to a small positive earnings? Suddenly instead of having an undefined P/E, they have a very high P/E. This is reasonable. A solar power company with 500m in sales and 1m in earnings that had 200m in sales and hugely negative earnings in the previous year could very well be worth over a billion. If the market gave it such a valuation, gawking at its P/E of 1000, and then applying the same P/E to an established company like Kraft would just be a waste of breath. ------ rlmw I believe the valuation that Facebook is running on is predicated on an expectation of sustained future growth. Apple is a fast growing company, but I'm not sure that you can expect them to continue to grow at their current rate for as long as you can expect facebook to continue to grow at. The Smartphone market is growing very fast, but Apple have competition in this market now that Android has started to grow. I'm not saying Apple are loosing much marketshare, more than while a year ago it looked like they going to gain marketshare in a market that was growing, while now they are holding their own in a growing market. Facebook doesn't really have any serious competitors - myspace has slowed in terms of growth and is possibly shrinking while linked in are aiming at a different market. The only thing even on the horizon that could undermine them are federated social networks - and its far from proven that they are what consumers want. Its a high valuation and does smell like a bubble, but I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook hit $100 billion when they IPO assuming they can get to a billion users by then. ------ othermaciej Dear stock market, we think you should seriously consider adopting this method of valuation to AAPL, effective immediately. Sincerely, Apple Shareholders ------ steveplace P/E should not be considered in a vacuum. The high valuation probably exists because there is a large expectation of earnings growth. I don't know if we can eyeball a PEG on FBOOK yet as we don't have the proper data but it's probably much different than AAPL (and especially T!), at least in the eyes of the investors. ~~~ yoseph Steve, Thanks for the comment. See my comments above for my discussion of the PEG ratio in this situation. ------ nivertech Some relevant thoughts: * Facebook is effectively a monopoly - when regulators will start limiting its growth? * Chinese market - without it Facebook will need to expand interplanetary by creating colonies on Moon and Mars. * I think with 90% probability, that there will be another opportunity to buy FBOOK shares under $50B valuation after IPO (movements in public stocks are 80% general market sentiment and only 20% company performance). ------ lkrubner It is confusing that such an obvious over-valuation can be taken seriously at the end of such a long and deep recession. The valuation is straight out of 1999, but back then USA was undergoing the longest economic expansion it had ever known. ------ Jabbles Things (shares, companies, objects, currencies, oppurtunities, gold) are worth what people will pay for them. That's it. There is no objective "value" other than that. ~~~ ekidd This isn't always true. A company is worth the expected net present value of all future dividend payments. If a company is both unsexy and well-managed, you may be able to buy its stock at a very good price, and then collect a fat profit of the dividends. ~~~ eru To be a bit more pedantic: You have to include share buybacks and a possible (last) liquidation dividend. ------ broofa Value ^_____________________●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●● \|____________●●●●●●●●● \|_________●●● <\---- Apple \|_______●● \|______● \|_____● \|____● \|____● \|___● \|___● \|___● <\---------- Facebook \|__● +----------------------------> Time ~~~ tybris Nice graph, except there's virtually nothing that's worth more than Apple. ~~~ jambo Interesting. Just went and looked and was surprised to find that only one company is valued more than Apple in the US markets. Exxon Mobil (382B) > Apple (307B). ~~~ goatforce5 Exxon is the only company bigger than Apple anywhere in the world, apparently. Apple recently overtook the former world #2 company, PetroChina: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-05/apple-passes- petroc...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-05/apple-passes-petrochina- as-second-largest-company-in-world-chart-of-day.html) ------ tybris and Exxon Mobil? Investors are offering a price because they expect a good ROI for that price, nothing else.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dead Cells review: the best Castlevania game in years - Tomte https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/6/17655322/dead-cells-review-nintendo-switch-ps4-xbox-castlevania ====== Driky I hadn't played such a good metroidvania since the Castlevania on Gameboy advanced (I haven't played on DS so I might have missed a few good EP).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Superb PBS Frontline program: life on the digital frontier - anigbrowl http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/ ====== anigbrowl Excuse me self-commenting, but frankly I'm surprised and disappointed nobody else posted this - I just happened to catch the program by accident. Well worth the 90 minutes or so of your time it requires...in fact I'd say it's pretty much essential viewing for hackers.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SecureDrop Documentation - saycheese https://docs.securedrop.org/en/stable/ ====== saycheese Documentation contains a lot of operational security recommendations even down to hardware recommendations. PDF of the docs maybe found in the menu; here's a link too: [https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/securedrop/stable/securedr...](https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/securedrop/stable/securedrop.pdf)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Go Team declines the ‘try’ proposal - ngaut https://github.com/golang/go/issues/32437 ====== grepgeek It was discussed here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20454966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20454966)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jason Cohen: How to work out whether advice is helpful to you. - marklittlewood http://blip.tv/file/4933967 ====== marklittlewood Jason Cohen's talk at Business of Software <http://businessofsoftware.org/> How to filter advice from others. Brilliant advice, but don't take it as the absolute truth. ------ Detrus This talk summarizes a big chunk of what people submit to HN. The arguments about bootstrapped vs funded, lifestyle vs selling out, lean vs not, MVP vs GDP, internet celebrity worship - all covered pretty well in an hour. ------ juddlyon I found the Dimensions of Advice particularly useful. It can found at the 45:20 mark. ------ marcamillion Wow....I don't know why, but I always thought Jason was much older. Like 45 - 55. But he looks/sounds much younger in this talk. Btw, interesting presentation! ------ zackattack Great Talk Acid test: can I go out and personally retrieve 30 customers @ $49.95/month? Hm...Do adwords campaigns count? I would love to hear more about this. ~~~ gbelote He wrote about this some on his blog: <http://blog.asmartbear.com/vetting- startup-ideas.html> I don't see why AdWords couldn't work if you built the right experiment. For example, a simple email-capturing landing page with a price tag doesn't touch on it as much as personally talking to people and finding 30 who _will_ (not would, as Jason emphasizes) pay at that price. You can learn a lot from just talking to folks, and an AdWords campaign could help you get in touch with the right people. ------ Valour I wish this were better written and better edited. I gave up after 2.5 min. ~~~ edanm I think you should give it another chance. The first few minutes aren't very interesting, but once the actual talk starts it's great.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Work 10-25h per week, 100% remote on Turtle (React / RN focused now) - vlokshin https://turtle.ai/freelancers ====== itronitron I recommend changing the color on the (x) icons in the pricing table as they look to similar to the checkmark icons. ~~~ vlokshin thanks for your feedback!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
WinUAE 3.5.0 (15.06.2017) released - doener http://www.winuae.net/2017/06/15/winuae-3-5-0/ ====== orionblastar I wonder why nobody makes a Raspberry PI based Amiga computer using UAE to run Amiga software? ~~~ doener There is something similar, but ARM-based: [http://www.armigaproject.com/](http://www.armigaproject.com/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing Ramda: A practical functional library for JavaScript developers - buzzdecafe http://buzzdecafe.github.io/code/2014/05/16/introducing-ramda/ ====== CrossEye As the co-author of Ramda, I'm excited to finally see this thing getting out there. Next up, algebraic data types?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Any useful tips for writing in Emacs? - fjk I'm using org-mode to write outline an essay in Emacs and I was wondering if anyone has nifty tips for writing long-form essays and prose in Emacs ====== phren0logy I bound fly spell to ctrl-; to bring up a list of the misspellings and cycle from the first through the rest for misspelling closest to the cursor. That means if I'm typing and I don't realize the misspelling until the next sentence, I can correct it _WITHOUT moving the cursor_. Once you do this, you can't go back! ~~~ vchimishuk Great idea. Would you like to share the code, please? ~~~ fjk I implemented the suggestion with this code in my .emacs file: (global-set-key (kbd "C-<;>") 'ispell-word) ------ edavis You can move paragraphs around with M-<up> and M-<down>. It also works on headlines/plain lists. Just discovered this yesterday and wish I had known about it earlier. ------ lvryc Do you use org-mode?[1] It's perfect for outlining and managing lots of information. Once you've written your paper, you can easily export it to HTML, PDF (through LaTeX) or plain text to be copied into a Word document, if that's the way you swing. [1] [http://orgmode.org/](http://orgmode.org/) ------ arh68 Auto-fill-mode and follow-mode are useful. If you write Unicode characters (and don't have a mac) C-x 8 <Enter> is useful, too (tab completion!).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Less Talk More Rock - robin_reala http://www.boingboing.net/features/morerock.html ====== pogigroo Also check out the super-brothers video: <http://vimeo.com/3807518>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Uncommon Sense by Derek Sivers. - iworkforthem http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUJir-MTmJY&list=PLBAAC8C0430D64F4D ====== ColinWright Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2859871>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How often do you 'release" your web service to production? - mmohan We just launched our service and have got a lot of feedback from customers, which we are fixing daily.<p>I would like some feedback on the pros / cons of releasing bugs / new features as they happen VS. a preset schedule VS. release dates (V2.0 in April, V2.3 in June, etc.)<p>How often do you release your web application?<p>We are a subscription (paid) service BTW if that makes any difference. ====== CatDancer Let me ask the question this way: if you have a bug fix or new feature ready to go that would be helpful to your paying customers, why would you delay releasing it?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How the Edward Snowden story is overwhelming the NSA story - Libertatea http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/03/how-ed-snowden-became-a-bigger-story-than-nsa-spying-in-two-charts/?tid=rssfeed ====== Semiapies It's the intent.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Playframework: Async, Reactive, Threads, Futures, ExecutionContexts - sadache http://sadache.tumblr.com/post/42351000773/async-reactive-nonblocking-threads-futures-executioncont ====== Irishsteve The more and more issues highlighted with the playframework the better. I find it a great piece of kit to play around with. I've not come across much commentary with regards to 'bad' ideas inside the framework which I should consider when using it. ------ TOGoS So what am I paying for? I wasn't born yesterday; I know what the terms mean. Get to the point because I don't have all day to look at some guy holding his hat on. ~~~ sharms My understanding was that pages which are inherently non blocking could be blocked due to the use of shared threadpools and by default leveraging the same execution contexts. I would love to understand if this is a problem in practice, or if there are other practical implications. ~~~ anorwell It's definitely a real, common problem, but I think the article obscures it a bit. Blocking I/O operations using the Akka dispatcher will block that thread while the command executes. Doing this too often will cause all the akka threads to be blocked, stopping the dispatcher from processing more events. Therefore, one should avoid performing blocking operations on akka threads. In my experience, one of two things will happen in practice: 1) You use an asynchronous library for I/O calls, which will maintain its own threadpool. This is no problem, because the I/O threadpool is independent from the akka theadpool. 2) You want to use a synchronous library that performs I/O operations using the caller's thread. If you must do this, you should use a separate threadpool (ExecutionContext). ------ papsosouid Why do people still continue to push the myth that using event driven style with callbacks and a huge unmaintainable mess is the only alternative to native threads? Userland threading has been around for a very long time. The only difference between using an event driven style and using a userland thread lib is that with userland threading the complexity of managing the state of the various computations is done by the thread lib instead of by you. The sooner people stop promoting the false dichotomy, the sooner people will realize every language should do concurrency as well as haskell, and the sooner that will actually happen. ~~~ xyzzy123 In practical terms what happens is that your clients need to have a real good mental model of what will block and what won't. Also it turns out event driven programming is fine when you do it, but wait 'till you have curl handles and say mysql handles and blah 'andles and foo andles. Fork andles! Threading sucks. Mixing event loops also really sucks. The developer centric way of doing it (e.g. screw performance I just want it to be correct and look nice) is really to flip to message passing and separate "logical processes". That's our unfortunate state of the art. EDIT: I didn't mention that I think all the userland threading libs I know of are crap. Which ones do you think are good? P.S I'm not going to be sarcastic or critical about it, I would really like to have portable, usable LWP in C or C++. ~~~ rdtsc Both suck, but I'll take threading (acutally I'll take Erlang's processes the most) but if I had to choose between the two, I'll take threads. > but wait 'till you have curl handles and say mysql handles and blah 'andles > and foo andles. Fork andles! Yup. If I have an event driven program can I use another library that is not built on the same event driven framework? The answer is usually no. Even if it has the nice internally composible "futures/deferreds" feature. An operation that is non-blocking will return some kind of a future/promise/deferred thingy. Those bubble all the way to the top through the API. It means you need to have 3rd party libraries and support code that knows about them. This is the case with Twisted (which is a nice framework) but it means having to have a parallel universe of libraries for everything (because they have to return deferreds or being able to be passed in deferreds). ~~~ xyzzy123 Thanks. I vigorously agree with you. I really wish I had a better way to explain it to people who haven't been screwed by it yet.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
VMware acquires Socialcast - dwynings http://knowledgeissocial.com/vmware-acquires-socialcast/ ====== jfruh Is it just me or does this post read like an Oscar acceptance speech? I mean, I get that he put in a lot of work and a lot of people helped but -- I just found it kind of off-putting. Like he won an award or something. ------ mgl Interesting. VMware with private clouds and Socialcast to make obsolete and replace Cisco with their IP telephony?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Meet Microsoft's Sharks Cove: A Raspberry Pi-style mini-PC running Windows 8.1 - johannh http://www.pcworld.com/article/2459200/meet-microsofts-sharks-cove-a-raspberry-pi-style-mini-pc-running-windows-8-1.html ====== lovelearning Why such a strange name for a development board? Does "Shark's cove" have any cultural or historical significance?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ignore the competition - vd http://www.nivi.com/blog/article/competition If you want to be #1, ignore the competition. ====== pg He's wrong. You have to pay attention to competitors because (a) so many people will ask why you're better, (b) you may be able to get new ideas from them, and (c) even a lame competitor can motivate you to work harder. Getting new ideas doesn't just mean getting ideas to copy. If the competition is really lame, studying them can be a way to learn what's good about what you're doing. Often you're doing something right unconsciously, and don't even realize it till you see someone not doing it. What you don't want to do is change your direction to do something just because competitors are. ~~~ nivi Hola Paul, who is wrong? Me or the CEO of TellMe? :-) ~~~ akkartik PG and nivi have two ends of the stick. Think about the competition when talking to your customers, not when talking to yourselves. Don't anthropomorphize the problem. Focus on the problem space, not the people that populate it. ------ Zak He's quoting _Netscape_ about the virtues of ignoring the competition. Netscape failed to pay enough attention to what the competition was doing. Where are they now?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HTC launches $100M tech venture fund - thankuz http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2011/04/05/htc-launches-100m-tech-venture-fund.html ====== donnyg107 I had expected for this to be the HTC in Taiwan, but this is also a good development. Now that many tech firms feel more loyal to industries due to the ease of connection on the internet, its nice to see companies showing real productive loyalty to their geographical nests. I'm glad not everyone's leaving the real world behind. But maybe this is just the direction of progress. Its anyone's call, and I'm just glad there are some people with the foresight to advocate a symbiotic internet-reality relationship, in which the reality must also be sustained, and not just a full online lIfestyle.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Approaches to providing affordable housing for non-profit workers - panic http://brewster.kahle.org/2020/06/28/results-of-7-approaches-to-affordable-housing-for-non-profit-workers/ ====== rayiner We are having some important conversations about equality these days, so I think it’s worth bringing up this point. The notion of subsidizing housing for non-profit workers is concerning. While many non-profits deal with problems like homelessness that overwhelmingly victimize people of color, non-profit workers themselves are overwhelmingly white. Much more so than the workforce as a whole: [https://communitywealth.com/the-state-of-diversity-in-the- no...](https://communitywealth.com/the-state-of-diversity-in-the-nonprofit- sector). Moreover a large fraction of revenues (for example, 65% for “human services” non-profits) comes from the government, so it’s taxpayer dollars that are paying for people to live in San Francisco and would be paying to subsidize their housing. This is one reason why people are interested in things like UBI. It seems perverse for the government to use taxpayer dollars to say combat homelessness in San Francisco (the supermajority of whom are black, Hispanic, or multi- racial) only to have much of that money go to paying salaries for mostly white college educated people. Of course, non-profit workers of all ethnic backgrounds can be tremendous value-adds. But when we’re considering whether we want to subsidize housing for those workers, it’s worth stepping back for a moment. There is a lot of money on the line: even excluding universities and hospitals, non-profits spend $750 billion annually, more than the US military. When taxpayers spend money out of a desire to help certain groups of people—especially now that we are becoming more aware of the disproportionate impact of things like homelessness on certain groups—we should strive to make sure that the money helps the people taxpayers think they are helping. ~~~ smileysteve One thing I think about non profits and volunteering, is the jobs displaced by volunteers; For example; Adopt-A-Roads In "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Hardy's dad becomes a street sweeper in the midst of the depression to pay his bills; What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the streets. This line of thinking also applies to the Coronavirus, restaurant + school shutdowns; If only, instead of asking for volunteers, non profits were paid by the state to re-employ restaurants and/or their workers, to make meals for children now without a meal. ~~~ rayiner > What if, instead of volunteering to clean up roads, the city collected > taxes, and paid a living wage with benefits to people cleaning up the > streets. Viewed through the lens of equity concerns, I worry that the result of your hypothetical is a bureaucracy of unionized, mostly white college educated managers overseeing the street cleaners. My hope is that recent events make us think hard about the nature of need in America and how we address it. Over 90% of white people are above the poverty line. The median income of a white household is $70,000, versus $40,000 for a black household. 60% of all homeless people are black or Hispanic. We talk a lot about middle-class "stagnation." But _median_ wealth for white people has more than doubled, after inflation, since 2000. It hasn't budged at all for black people. More than ever, we are recognizing today that a huge part of systematically addressing poverty in America is about addressing race disparities. That’s critical: the black-white income gap (at the median, so forget about Jeff Bezos) is proportionally the same size today in 2020 as it was when George Wallace ran for President in a segregationist platform. Meanwhile, we have spent vast sums on the premise that the best way to remedy racial disparities is through government programs for education and creating “good jobs with benefits.” State and local spending per person has therefore doubled since 1977. But it turns out that much of that spending merely perpetuates those gaps. For example, increased education spending (which has tripled in inflation-adjusted dollars per student since 1970) has overwhelmingly gone to white, college educated teachers and administrators. (Indeed, black people were actively excluded from many of these jobs by unions.) Cities with majority black and Hispanic populations owe hundreds of billions in retirement and health benefits to retired teachers, police, etc., who are overwhelmingly white. Now, that’s not an argument for saying that we should, for example, renege on those obligations. But we certainly shouldn’t perpetuate the disparities. If we are appalled by say homelessness in American cities (and we should be), we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or people likely to suffer homelessness. Not to some government bureaucracy which by its nature is likely to be staffed with people who have various indicators of privilege (white, college educated, from a middle class household—who do you think government agencies tend to hire?) ~~~ HouseOfLard > we should figure out how to efficiently channel money to homeless people or > people likely to suffer homelessness. Governments entail some degree of bureaucracy, much the same way that corporations require some degree of management. It's a question of balancing that overhead with actual results. Civil services need to better align with making a meaningful impact. More focus on the actual impact of civil services, and less on aggregate budget allocation. ------ matchbok Another attempt that doesn't address the real issues: rent is too high and/or wages are too low. In-demand locations are always going to be expensive. The minute you start providing "special" apartments to a certain group of people you introduce tons of other (negative) issues. That person is basically locked into that apartment and can never move. Any issues with quality or landlord disagreements will be tilted towards the owner, because they know the renter will never leave. The whole thing is a mess. ~~~ acomjean Housing is a society issue. income inequality and turning housing into business with rent seekers, seeking high returns. hard to fix piecemeal. One wonders if the current pandemic can cause a change. ~~~ AlexTWithBeard Greedy renters is not the reason here: in the original article the author considered building a house for workers on the company land. But that turned out to be too expensive. Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap. ~~~ maxsilver > Building houses and maintaining them in livable condition is not that cheap I don't really understand this. Building and maintaining houses (especially single-family houses) is really cheap. (We're talking like ~$600/month or so for a large 4-bedroom home). The expense in housing is primarily financial shenanigans and land monopolization, with some property taxes on top. Actually building and maintaining a house (construction + maintenance costs) is way less than 50% of the total cost. ~~~ AlexTWithBeard Please see the original article where the author explicitly complains that cost of building their own house is too high. ------ LatteLazy I've never understood the logic in these programs. People either think they can something for nothing or that they can fool others into believing that. Pay people enough to cover their needs, or accept that we don't want them to do whatever they're doing. Weird systems where you subsidize peoples rent but you won't pay them cash just end up forcing them to spend more on housing than they want. So you spend more than it would cost in cash and they're less happy than if you just paid them. So wtf is the point!? Plus housing gets very sticky. People get very upset if they are required to move just because a program ends or they go part time. If an area gets more expensive, you have to (rapidly) increase the subsidy, if it gets worse you lose all your employees. Making your employees move house every time they want to change jobs is very anticompetitive Programs like this are also opaque and hard to value. I knew a teacher who thought she was getting free rent up to X, but the small print said it was actually 25% of rent up to 25% of X. I actually think this is why providers favour these schemes: they're deceptive. All this so that... We can avoid paying people what they're worth, and being honest about what that number is. ~~~ s1artibartfast You make some good points, but the logic is pretty clear from the employers point of view. It might be helpful to think of it as analogous to supply chain integration. One advantage is decreasing overall costs by cutting out the middle man. If a property owner is making money on your company’s worker, you can save that much by doing it yourself. Another advantage is supply chain security. If The market rent doubles, your won’t go out of business. ------ opportune We should not continue shoveling any money into “affordable” (read: subsidized if you win some lottery system) and instead need to focus on reducing the market rate rents. The whole “affordable” and “subsidized” housing system is a scam to sell $10 for $3 to a few lucky souls without addressing the root cause of the problem Furthermore nobody should feel entitled to live in SF proper. It is easy to commute in from much cheaper areas in Alameda and Contra Costa counties, and it doesn’t make sense to subsidize some small set of people to not make that commute ------ yonran The housing supply has been very inelastic in the Bay Area. And every business and individual who wants to be here starts out life short on housing. So I would group his approaches to staying in the Bay Area into three main categories: #1, #6: Cover the short by hoarding enough of the fixed amount of housing for yourself and taking that out of the market. #2, #3, #4: Help employees cover their short. I think it is smart that of him to try to do so in a targeted way to help new employees with downpayment and loans rather than ratcheting up everyone’s salary. #5: Build more housing. This is the positive sum approach. I wish he elaborated on this because there are many roadblocks to San Francisco’s failure to convert high incomes into more housing (zoning restrictions, slow entitlement process, high fees, high construction labor costs), and it would help for more leaders to be part of the conversation on how to solve these problems for everyone, not just for his own nonprofit. ~~~ AlexTWithBeard Or may be we should face the sad truth: it's only so many people can be accommodated in SF. Granted, we can build taller houses. It will cause huge influx of people, transport collapse, school and health care systems overload. At this point it may be easier to just build another city. ~~~ opportune This makes my head boil. The Bay Area can also build more of those schools and infrastructure as well. There are so many metro areas, probably hundreds, that have done it before. It’s entirely a political problem. I always hear the NIMBYs complaining about these made up problems and _other people_ choosing to live in “shoebox apartments” as if they’re real problems and not simply them imposing restrictions on everyone else ~~~ AlexTWithBeard You are absolutely right: NIMBY. Apparently due to some reasons local people do not want to live in a beehive. Go and build somewhere else. California is a large state with lots of unoccupied land. ~~~ opportune I’m saying the problem needs to be addressed in good faith, because NIMBY people will put up nonsensical arguments like other people living in small apartments or needing to build new schools (to support an expanding tax base...) as problems rather than the actual problems they have motivating them to politically oppose urbanization ~~~ AlexTWithBeard You are solving the wrong problem. No matter how hard we try there's no way to squeeze all the United States in SF. May be instead just make other places livable? ~~~ stellar678 The Bay Area _could_ host the entire population of the United States with ~850 sq ft of land area per person. As it is, we currently allocate ~29,500 sq ft of land area per person. Surely we can find a middle ground somewhere in the name of access to opportunity and in the name resolving our severe housing shortage. ------ justinzollars I was admiring Sutro tower on my morning walk, and realized if we tried to build Sutro tower today it could never happen. We couldn't build another bridge, tunnel, or anything. Imagine the laughs if you proposed another bay crossing. It's been made impossible to change or develop San Francisco. I don't think the future is here anymore. ~~~ jordonwii Not only could we not _build_ it today, we can barely _modify_ it today: [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Co...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Confusion- conspiracy-theories-humor-14963769.php) > But despite not a single resident registering a complaint about the antenna > work — a modern-day miracle! — getting the permit from the city's Planning > Department took two years. Approval came just as special crews arrived to do > the work. > “It was held up for no good reason,” Hyams said, echoing a common gripe > about our city's slow Planning Department, which mirrors the slowness of > just about every department. ~~~ justinzollars We should just close down the planning department or change its mission to mandate very very fast development. ~~~ jordonwii > change its mission to mandate very very fast development While no one's going quite this far yet (alas), the mayor's approach actually isn't too far from this, e.g. for housing: > The new measure would require an approval process of no longer than six > months for projects that meet existing zoning rules...[1] or for SMBs: > the ballot measure would require that permit applications for storefront > uses that are allowed by the current zoning be reviewed within 30 days, > compared to what can sometimes be months of review [2] Unfortunately the first one is postponed indefinitely because COVID made signature collection impossible, but the second will be on the ballot in November. [1] [https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sf- mayor...](https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/san-francisco/sf-mayor- announces-ballot-measure-to-build-more-affordable-homes/2227802/) [2] [https://sfmayor.org/article/mayor-london-breed-introduces- ba...](https://sfmayor.org/article/mayor-london-breed-introduces-ballot- measure-support-san-francisco-small-businesses) ------ chaostheory I feel remote work is the most viable solution that was listed. It works around the problem of limited housing inventory. In addition, it helps the environment. ~~~ nutshell89 When talking about the environment, I think it's useful to think about what remote work would mean at scale. Non-profits in SF often work directly with vulnerable populations, take Larkin Street Youth Services, for example. their mission directly involves interacting with homeless youth on the streets. San Francisco-Marin Food Bank is basically a giant warehouse in SF. Even if you do have no-profit work that can be done over Slack or Zoom, these are still people who'll commute to the beauty parlour, buy groceries at the farmers market, or visit the museum during the weekend - so there are still excess car trips while living in the suburbs versus the Sunset District. ~~~ chaostheory Any reduction in the commute is a net positive for traffic, the environment, and even productivity. > Non-profits in SF often work directly with vulnerable populations, take > Larkin Street Youth Services, for example. their mission directly involves > interacting with homeless youth on the streets. San Francisco-Marin Food > Bank is basically a giant warehouse in SF. Sure, not everyone can work remotely. However, even they will benefit from the reduced traffic and commute times. > Even if you do have no-profit work that can be done over Slack or Zoom, > these are still people who'll commute to the beauty parlour, buy groceries > at the farmers market, or visit the museum during the weekend - so there are > still excess car trips while living in the suburbs versus the Sunset > District. You're not seeing the bigger picture. Not everyone lives in the Bay Area. With remote work becoming an integral part of office culture, this also means not everyone has to work in the Bay Area even when they work for Bay Area companies. ie. They're not going to go to Sunset on weekends; everything is more decentralized. Remote work scales better than just throwing money away when you can't fix the root problem of a limited supply of physical space. If you can't fix available housing inventory, all that happens long term when you give people more money is that housing just keeps getting more expensive. We've already seen this first hand with the large salary increases for Silicon Valley engineers ------ supernova87a I'm sympathetic to this particular cause but not to the solutions a non-profit in SF like them would probably propose. (because generally a story like this is here for the lessons to be taken by others, not for their particular situation to be solved) What we need is _less_ picking and choosing who is to receive specific housing, and setting aside of property or units for them. Because all that picking and choosing by well-intentioned (but bad overall outcome producing) people is exactly what's creating the problem. Everyone who has a special interest in preserving <x> or helping group <y> puts in their request to their San Francisco supervisor, solving their little corner of concern but making it worse for everyone else. One by one all the little barriers (unaware of what the other hands are doing) get erected to make it impossible to do anything productive for housing. We need planning at a city strategy level, that admits that San Francisco cannot stay the way it has for decades, protecting the landlords and people who've lived there for 30 years from any kind of change. The tax situation is a given constraint, and we're not going to change that anytime soon barring a miracle, so the thing that has to be compromised is "neighborhood character" (whatever that means as a cover for not letting people live near you) or housing density and your spoiled view of the bay / Muni wires. Specify what _outcomes_ you want to achieve, and let the rules be updated to make that happen. Otherwise we will continue to be in a world where the external factors flooding in (lack of local leadership, jobs creation without housing creation, corporate money) will be making the decisions for us without us realizing it -- and a lot of unhappy people who want to live here but can't, or have been displaced from their housing. My desired outcomes: \-- Affordable prices of the general rental and house purchase market (not "affordable housing") \-- Owners who actually live in their housing, and are not absentee landlords \-- Renewal of the creative, productive population and not creating of a rich / retired class that occupies all the housing \-- Good transport and home-work districts, and the attraction of small businesses \-- Ability of homeowners (and renters if desired) to easily and cheaply improve their properties and change the look and feel of their neighborhood for better/newer I am _not_ in favor of soft arguments that are disguised attempts to regulate who is allowed to live in a place according to some particular interest's judgment: \-- neighborhood character, density \-- equity-related arguments \-- "I got here first"-related arguments \-- what is "fair" You will find that if you set up reasonable rules, the communities that emerge will be just as interesting, good, and pleasant places to live as before. They may not look the same, and may not be what you thought, and that may make some people unhappy. But it's what's best for a city. ------ MattGaiser > This was the kicker: 30-60% of their income went to rent. Is this much different from people with mortgages, especially when they first purchase a home? ~~~ frockington1 I just bout my first house a year ago. Mortgage is around 22% of take home income. Granted I never asked what mortgage I was approved for and can guarantee you it would have been at least double what I purchased ~~~ nerdface Where did you buy though? Bay Area has incredibly high prices.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Magicians fought over an ultra-secret tracker dedicated to stealing magic tricks - juanito http://www.businessinsider.de/inside-art-of-misdirection-ultra-exclusive-private-torrent-tracker-magical-pirates-invites-2016-11 ====== simonw If I want to know how a classic trick is done I'll look at the Wikipedia page. It often won't reveal the secret directly, but if you check the page history you'll find an edit war between magicians which exposes exactly how it works. ~~~ nyolfen now this is interesting! what exactly is the rationale used by those who would prefer it remain secret? i assume it's for the preservation of their job or hobby, but i doubt that would fly on its own. ~~~ imron A culture of a magician never reveals his secrets. With the secret unknown it's 'magic'. With the secret known it becomes just a simple trick. ------ TillE > The site is a trading post for stolen, pirated and unlawfully copied tricks, > which are covered by copyright, trademarks or other intellectual property in > much the same way that TV shows and films are. A video or whatever may be copyrighted, but it's not really possible to protect a "trick". You can patent a process, but of course this reveals it to the public. Most of the described contents of the tracker are commercially released products. That's really not "stealing tricks" in any way. ~~~ regularfry > A video or whatever may be copyrighted, but it's not really possible to > protect a "trick". Interestingly, this isn't quite true. People are trying to exert copyright over the specific motions under choreography protection. ~~~ clort I wonder how this would go down in a court of law, in that the specific motions they are claiming copyright on were /obfuscated/ or downright /concealed/ from view. I wonder if you can legally be considered to have _copied_ something you have not seen.. ~~~ regularfry I suppose what you'd end up copyrighting is the final effect, not how it's achieved. Which is, I guess, the point. ~~~ manarth Without knowledge of the finer points of copyright law (IANAL), is this (the final effect) even copyrightable? ------ Animats These aren't exactly big secrets. Anyone can get copies of The Linking Ring, the magazine of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, and see ads for many of the tricks that require special props. (There used to be a competing publication, the "Magic-Gram", but it may be defunct.) Realistically, if there's a video of a trick, you can usually figure it out. If there are multiple videos from different angles, it's easier. For that matter, there are explanatory videos for most of the big tricks on YouTube now. I once saw a professional magician having a miserable time performing on the stage on the Santa Cruz beach. He was doing a levitation, and in brilliant sunlight it was embarrassingly obvious how it worked. ~~~ nightcracker There are many videos of hans moretti's cardboard box trick, but I still have no clue how it's done... ------ loup-vaillant This hints at a more general problem: how does one gather a high-quality repository of knowledge on any given subject? How do you get enough stuff? How do you keep the noise down? I believe some subjects make the problem harder than others. Programming for instance is full of hard to check claims. Even established techniques are hard to assess. Say you need to parse stuff. Will you go recursive descent? LALR? Earley? PEG? Might depend on what you want to parse, which environment you're working in, how much time you may invest… Or say you write a compiler. Will you use OCaml/F#/Haskell for the ease of handling recursive data structures? Or do you want C/C++ because of the speed, and you know tricks to avoid recursive data structures anyway? One tempting solution is to start a secret society dedicated to hoard knowledge on the chosen subject. It would be hard to get in, but once there you'd only get quality stuff. (Or you might have gotten into a self-delusional sect…) The idea is, maybe if knowledge was visibly scarce and hard to obtain, instead of merely buried under a mountain of noise, we would treat it with the respect it deserves. ~~~ klenwell Had something like this debate with manager at last job. Came to a head in my annual review. Manager: "As senior developer, you lack sufficient knowledge of our most important application." Me: "Wait. I am the one who wrote most the documentation that is in our knowledge base for that application. I am the one who set up the knowledge base." Manager: "That is not knowledge. Knowledge is what is in your head." Me: _blinks incredulously_ I departed the company shortly after this exchange. But I think you're right. It was certainly the manager's idea that if knowledge was visibly scarce and hard to obtain, his position would be treated (and generally was, among his superiors) with the respect he felt it deserved. But I'd have to assert that this secret society dedicated to hoarding knowledge was a self-delusional sect. That's generally been my experience. ~~~ brazzledazzle That's so bizarre. Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on paper that he had the knowledge and you didn't? Or was he trying to tell you to document less and hide information? ~~~ klenwell > Was he trying to create some kind of official narrative on paper that he had > the knowledge and you didn't? Yes, this. We had actually worked together amicably for several years, he as senior, I as mid-level. Then we both got bumped up. As part of my new responsibilities as senior, I tried to surface issues and confront them transparently. I was mindful not to point fingers or show anyone up but rather identify them as shortcomings in our practices or policies. For cultural reasons, I think he felt threatened by this and assumed it was his responsibility to hide issues and save his own face. It fell apart pretty quickly. It sucked but I've used it as a career lesson. ------ quickben Who's up for starting a comp sci secret society? We'll share the best ways to split a cake. The optimal algorithms on how many kittens to have to improve moods, and, best stats how to not forget important anniversaries while trying to boot up a Vulkan pipeline. :) ~~~ vinchuco The open source secret society ~~~ SEJeff Perhaps we could name it: F Society ------ cyberferret I have been interested in magic for a long time, and have subscriptions or accounts at most major magic retailers in the world. I am not the best at performing magic tricks (mainly because I don't have that story telling personality that is needed to execute most tricks), but I love learning them and practicing them in my spare time. No need to go to the dark net though - 99% of magic tricks are now readily exposed on Youtube public channels, and I am not just talking about the original instructions videos being leaked on there. A myriad of kids stand ready to either perform tricks so badly that they give away the techniques, or else outright show how things are done. Still though, it is like seeing how a commercial airliner is flown. Watching hundreds of hours of video footage is no substitute for formal training and real like practice. Also, one of the biggest draws of magic to me is hearing of the origins of most tricks, and researching guys who came up with these things over a hundred years ago. ------ ipunchghosts Any if this on the darknet? ------ Neliquat Sounds like the music industry.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What realistically changes for a developer when taking a corporate job? - ultrasandwich After years of working freelance and with smaller agencies, I have just been offered a really well paying front-end developer job at a huge multinational tech corporation. Since I've never made this leap, I'm of course suspicious of the corporate structure, and worried that the freedom I've enjoyed outside of it will dry up. Additionally, I'm worried that the constant learning experience of being a freelancer will somehow stop when I'm focused on just one product. Has anyone been through this transition, and gotten through with any kind of insights? I'm trying to stay open minded. ====== nostrademons Depends on the company. At some of the better ones, don't underestimate the opportunity to work with really smart peers. Even some of the not-so-hot ones like IBM or Yahoo have really smart engineers locked up inside them. ------ andymoe The good health insurance can be nice and that 401k matching is powerful. Compound interest is pretty awesome too. It can be nice to work with others and have proper design and product management support and if you can seek out the best managers you can learn a lot from them but all of these things are hit or miss. I sure liked it better than my stint as an IT consultant and Network Engineer years ago but I don't think I'll ever be able to convince myself go back after start my own thing. That said, change can be good for you. ~~~ ultrasandwich > The good health insurance can be nice and that 401k matching is powerful Indeed the 401k matching seems pretty great. But part of me wonders if retirement investment really just comes down to being smarter with setting aside the income I'm currently earning. > It can be nice to work with others and have proper design and product > management support and if you can seek out the best managers you can learn a > lot from them Honestly I've found this to be true with my agency work as a freelancer too. Great project managers and some other devs who are badasses and mentors. Thanks for sharing! ------ icedchai you'll have a lot more time to browse the web and get paid for it. ~~~ ultrasandwich Yikes, this sounds like a personal nightmare. Maybe I can use the time to work on other projects or open source stuff. ~~~ nostrademons It's dangerous - check your IP agreements before you do any outside-work stuff at work. ~~~ aaqureshi Most likely the clause will be there, its usually is included in the contract.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Roast My Startup - eljbutler Hey all.<p>I am posting here because i am about to launch "officially" my new marketplace startup Eirify a creative marketplace and i am looking for opinions, constructive feedback, and any comments, especially with in experience in this field. I am hoping to learn lots from people here.<p>https://eirify.com<p>First of all introducing Eirify: Eirify is a creative marketplace for unique assets home to a wide variety of specialized stores created by individuals and companies to showcase and share their unique products. We want to stand out more from other marketplaces by focusing on the creator themselfs.<p>What Eirify is trying to be: To understand the power of Eirify, imagine an Etsy store built solely for digital creator: a creator who sells awesome stock audio rather than clay pots or thrilling GoPro footage rather than knitted socks. Eirify allows developers, data gurus, photographers, musicians, designers, among some, to sell their digital content online through their very own store. We make the process simple by combining the ease of use of a platform like Etsy with the personalization and eCommerce power of Shopify.<p>Let me know what you think! ====== mtmail [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) is basically for product feedback. "Show HN is for something you've made that other people can play with. HN users can try it out, give you feedback, and ask questions in the thread." ~~~ eljbutler Oh cheers thanks mtmail. I didnt know that was what that was for!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NLP's ImageNet Moment: From Shallow to Deep Pre-Training - stablemap https://thegradient.pub/nlp-imagenet/ ====== narrator I was at a deep learning conference recently. The topic of how AI can improve healthcare came up. One panelist said that a startup they were working with wants to help doctors use AI to use NLP to send claims to insurance companies in a way that won't be rejected. Another panelist said that he was working with another startup that wants to use AI and NLP to help insurance companies reject claims. I think in the future we'll see their AI fighting against our AI in an arms race similar to the spam wars. The one with the most computing power and biggest dataset will win and humans will be at their mercy. ~~~ jahabrewer > One panelist said that a startup they were working with wants to help > doctors use AI to use NLP to send claims to insurance companies in a way > that won't be rejected. Another panelist said that he was working with > another startup that wants to use AI and NLP to help insurance companies > reject claims. Sounds like GAN in meatspace. ~~~ vokep Yep, They compete endlessly, while we enjoy hyper-accurate decisions on these things, leading to greater efficiency of both. ~~~ bigiain Yes. But quite possibly "greater efficiency" according to a fitness function that's not accurately mapped onto "keeping humans alive"... I wonder if this'll end up in an equivalent state to the "tank detection neural net" which learned with 100% accuracy that the researchers/trainers had always taken pictures of tanks on cloudy days and pictures without tanks on sunny days? ( [https://www.jefftk.com/p/detecting- tanks](https://www.jefftk.com/p/detecting-tanks) ) Who'd bet against the doctor/insurer neural net training ending up approving all procedures where, say, the doctor ends up with a kickback from a drug company - instead of optimising for maximum human health benefit? ~~~ Rainymood >But quite possibly "greater efficiency" according to a fitness function that's not accurately mapped onto "keeping humans alive"... Since when was this ever the case? Especially in America? The US healthcare system is NOT built around providing adequate care for everyone, as far as I've read/heard. Full disclosure: West-EU citizen here ------ rusbus For more detail plus working code, lesson 4 of the fast.ai course uses this technique to obtain (what was at time of writing) a state of the art result on the imdb dataset: [http://course.fast.ai/lessons/lesson4.html](http://course.fast.ai/lessons/lesson4.html) By training a language model on the dataset, then using that model to fine tune the sentiment classification task, they were able to achieve 94.5% accuracy ~~~ jph00 Well spotted - this is where I first created the algorithm that became ULMFiT! I wanted to show an example of transfer learning outside of computer vision for the course but couldn't find anything compelling. I was pretty sure a language model would work really well in NLP so tried it out, and was totally shocked when the very first model best the previous state of the art! Sebastian (author of this article) saw the lesson, and was kind enough to complete lots of experiments to test out the approach more carefully, and did a great job of writing up the results in a paper, which was then accepted by the ACL. ------ cs702 The title is a little too click-baity for my taste ("has arrived," huh?), but I think the OP is unto something. It is now possible to grab a pretrained model and start producing state-of- the-art NLP results in a wide range of tasks with relatively little effort. This will likely enable much more tinkering with NLP, all around the world... which will lead to new SOTA results in a range of tasks. ~~~ zawerf Do you have links for these pretrained models? The only one I am aware of is OpenAI's where they fine tuned a Transformer architecture for 1 month on 8 gpus: [https://blog.openai.com/language- unsupervised/](https://blog.openai.com/language-unsupervised/) [https://github.com/openai/finetune-transformer- lm](https://github.com/openai/finetune-transformer-lm) ~~~ sebastianruder You can find ELMo here: [https://github.com/allenai/allennlp/blob/master/tutorials/ho...](https://github.com/allenai/allennlp/blob/master/tutorials/how_to/elmo.md) And ULMFiT here: [http://nlp.fast.ai/category/classification.html](http://nlp.fast.ai/category/classification.html) ~~~ cs702 For those who don't know, Sebastian Ruder is a coauthor of the ULMFiT paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.06146](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.06146) ------ acganesh Pretrained models have enabled so much in CV, excited to see similar shifts in the language world. A great supplement is Sebastian’s NLP progress repo: [https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP- progress](https://github.com/sebastianruder/NLP-progress) ------ neuromantik8086 Not to be too obtuse, but isn't WordNet (you know, the project that inspired the creation of ImageNet) "an ImageNet for language"? It seems kind of weird to bring up ImageNet within the context of NLP and not mention WordNet once. ~~~ sebastianruder WordNet (as you probably know) is a database that groups English words into a set of synonyms. If you consider WordNet as a clustering of high-level classes, then you could argue that ImageNet is the "WordNet for vision", meaning the clustering of object classes. The article uses a different meaning of ImageNet, namely ImageNet as pretraining task that can be used to learn representations that will likely be beneficial for many other tasks in the problem space. In this sense, you could use WordNet as an "ImageNet for language" e.g. by learning word representations based on the WordNet definitions. This is something people have done, but there are a lot more effective approaches. I hope this helped and was not too convoluted. ~~~ neuromantik8086 Does WordNet know that the word "ImageNet" refers to both a database and a pretraining task? :) ~~~ wodenokoto No, it does not know that, or anything else about "ImageNet" [http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?c=8&sub=Change&o2...](http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?c=8&sub=Change&o2=&o0=1&o8=1&o1=1&o7=&o5=&o9=&o6=&o3=&o4=&i=-1&h=&s=imagenet) ------ andreyk TLDR the standard practice of using 'word vectors' (numeric vector representation of words) may soon be superceded by just using entire pretrained neural nets as is standard in CV, and we have both conceptual and empirical reasons to believe language modeling is how it'll happen. Helped edit this piece, think it is spot on - exciting times for NLP. ------ JPKab Definitely excited by this, but wish the article was a bit more detailed. ~~~ jph00 The ULMFiT, ELMO, and OpenAI Transformer papers are all quite readable and linked from the article. Sebastian and I also wrote an introduction to ULMFiT here: [http://nlp.fast.ai/classification/2018/05/15/introducting- ul...](http://nlp.fast.ai/classification/2018/05/15/introducting-ulmfit.html) ~~~ JPKab Thanks! ------ YeGoblynQueenne >> In order to predict the most probable next word in a sentence, a model is required not only to be able to express syntax (the grammatical form of the predicted word must match its modifier or verb) but also model semantics. Even more, the most accurate models must incorporate what could be considered world knowledge or common sense. So, the first sentence in this passage is a huge assumption. For a model to predict the next token (word or character) in a string, all it has to do is to be able to predict the next token in a string. In other words, it needs to model structure. Modelling semantics is not required. Indeed, there exist a wide variety of models that can, indeed, predict the most likely next token in a string. The simplest of those are n-gram models, that can do this task reasonably well. Maybe what that first sentence above is trying to say is that to predict the next token with good accuracy, modelling of semantics is required, but that is still a great, big, huge leap of reasoning. Again- structure is probably sufficient. A very accurate model modelling structure, is still only modelling structure. It's important to consider what we mean when we're talking about modelling language probaiblistically. When humans generate (or recognise) speech, we don't do that stochastically, by choosing the most likely utterance from a distribution. Instead, we -very deterministically- say what we want to say. Unfortunately, it is impossible to observe "what we want to say" (i.e. our motivation for emitting an utterance). We are left with observing -and modelling- only what we actually say. The result is models that can capture the structure of utterances, but are completely incapable of generating new language that makes any sense - i.e. gibberish. It is also worth considering how semantic modelling tasks are evaluated (e.g. machine translation). Basically, a source string is matched to an arbitrary target string meant to capture the source string's intended meaning. "Arbitrary" because there may be an infinite number of strings that carry the same meaning. So what, exactly, are we measuring when we evaluate a model's ability to map between to of those infinite strings chosen just because we like them best? Language inference and comprehension benchmarks like the ones noted in the article are particularly egregious in this regard. They are basically classification tasks, where a mapping must be found between a passage and a multiple-choice spread of "correct" labels, meant to represent its meaning. It's very hard to see how a model that does well in this sort of task is "incorporating world knowledge" let alone "common sense"! Maybe NLP _will_ have its ImageNet moment- but that will only be in terms of benchmarks. Don't expect to see machines understanding language and holding reasonable conversations any time soon. ~~~ DoctorOetker I fully agree and while you probably word it much better than me, I made a somewhat similar argument at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961233](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961233) if you are interested...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bad Character: If Chinese Were Phonetic - bemmu http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/if-chinese-were-phonetic ====== sparky_z Is it just me, or does this essay seem to be missing an introduction, like someone accidentally deleted the first few paragraphs? I initially assumed I had been linked to "page 2" and went looking for a link back to the beginning. Edit: Apparently, this is part of a series where guest authors are invited to choose something to "uninvent" and explains why they think it has had a negative impact on the world. The essay's abrupt beginning makes much more sense in that context. ~~~ Jtsummers [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/uninvent- this](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/uninvent-this) For more of the series. ~~~ tlb This one is great: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/ban- dancing](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/16/ban-dancing) ~~~ pavel_lishin A great read, with awesome quotes, but I wish it had been "ban social pressure to do things you don't enjoy doing." "Come on, just dance for a little bit, you'll like it!" "Rollercoasters are fun, trust me, this one is great!" "Why won't you come eat Ramen with us, we know a great Ramen place! Don't be such a killjoy." ~~~ StavrosK Do people really pressure other people into eating? In my group(s), it's always "I'll come for the company, but I'm not hungry", and that's fine. People don't have to be putting stuff in their face to keep you company. ------ truthexposer I've seen this sentiment a lot in Chinese-Americans that are not educated in linguistics, along with other self-loathing sentiments. First, literacy isn't completely related to the writing system. Look at Spanish speaking countries, where the alphabet is more phonetic than the English alphabet. Second, Chinese characters that are more complex, i.e. consists of more than one radical, are usually composed with a semantic component, giving indication to the character's meaning, and a phonetic component, which gives an indication to the sound of the character. Although this isn't a rule, it helps a lot, and it's not like English doesn't have crazy non-phonetic spellings as well (how tf is "through" supposed to be pronounced for a English learner?) Last, the Chinese language consists of MANY homophones. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and not one out of design, but something that is the result of being one of the oldest language families in the world. It allows for the concise expression of many things using only single syllables. You might say, but what about the crazy amount of ambiguity if the language has a lot of homophones? Well, ambiguity is a huge problem in all languages and our brains seem to manage. Now, even though homophones aren't a big problem in spoken language, because of intonation and prosody giving a clue to how to analyze sentences, written language is a different story, and it would be very hard to make an easier system to handle it. For all you engineers, the fact that Chinese has characters is essentially a performance trade off. More information density for more ambiguity. ~~~ Banthum It's actually a myth that most Chinese characters have a semantic component (indicating meaning). And the phonetic component often doesn't correspond to anything any modern person would know. The problem in both cases is the shift of language through China's long history, and its divergence from the original design of the written characters. The problem with the semantic components is that the meaning is re-used and stretched over and over. E.g. they used to use a 'foot' radical to represent a journey towards a destination. Later that shifted to mean "in a straight line, not veering left or right". Later that took on the meaning of "straight and narrow" or "straight shooter" or "not-deviant". Then it becomes, "not deviating from the right path". So now, the old foot radical typically means "justice" or "correct". And the image shifts over time. This is the old foot radical now: 正 Does it look like a foot to you? The problem is with the phonetics is language shifts. In many cases, in ancient Chinese, the characters do have a phonetic component that hints at pronunciation. but, the pronunciation changed over the last 2000-3000 years, so the pronunciation hint that made perfect sense in the Han dynasty is now meaningless because you're speaking a different language. The result is that in the end the characters end up being arbitrary phonetic symbols with some arbitrary meanings attached. ~~~ truthexposer You're speaking out of your behind. Of course the signs are arbitrary with respect to their signifiers, that's any language, but there are still mappings between signs and their signifiers. English is no difference, am I supposed to know what a 'm' sounds like by looking at it? Look up the Rebus principle, it happens in every language. And with respect to the phonetic shifts, from a linguistic perspective, most changes of the phonetic radical involve one change of the initial sound, i.e. bilabial to interdental, dental to alveolar, voiced to unvoiced. With respect to the phonetic inventory of the language, these shifts are only one feature shifts within an old SPE framework. These small featural differences, whether conscious or not, (usually unconscious because we acquire languages during our infancy) are picked up and used by the speaker of the language to categorize words. ~~~ grzm _You 're speaking out of your behind._ Your detailed and substantive comment works just as well without this uncivil lead-in. ~~~ truthexposer it's a much easier way to say, I significantly doubt your credentials as a person educated in both Mandarin Chinese and linguistics ~~~ grzm HN strongly values substantive and civil discourse. If that requires a little more work on your part, please engage in it to help make HN a productive forum where discussions like this can take place. (That said, I don't see it necessary for the longer version either.) ------ lstyls Color me shocked that somehow the author found the alphabet of his native language to be superior. This article takes as a given some assumptions that I don't understand at all. China being resistant to change? There are few cohesive societies that I can think of that have experienced more change than China since the end of WWII. And it would be an understatement to say that the rise of literacy rates are more strongly correlated with industrialization than adoption of phonetic alphabets. I think it's telling that the author grew up in a Chinese-American community. Expat communities tend to lag their mother cultures in terms of social progress. An experience growing up in a community could explain this "steeped in tradition" characteristic that is attributed to Chinese culture here. Disclaimer: I'm a white American. My wife is Chinese and emigrated herself from China as a young adult; I get a lot of my perspective from her. Would be interested to hear what Chinese members of HN think of the article. ~~~ waqf Here is David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively inferior: [http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html](http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html) ~~~ lstyls Not sure if you're trolling or not, but I'll bite. Did you even read the article you linked to? The author makes so such argument. The point of the article is that it's extremely difficult for non- native speakers to learn written Chinese. ~~~ bsdetector "What I mean is that Chinese is not only hard for us (English speakers), but it's also hard in absolute terms. Which means that Chinese is also hard for them, for Chinese people." Author is saying it's unnecessarily hard for everybody. ~~~ lstyls Point conceded, but it still doesn't take away from the broader point which is that the parent makes a false assertion: > David Moser also arguing that the Chinese writing system is objectively > inferior ~~~ lstyls @waqf my point is that being harder to learn the written language does not mean that the language is _objectively_ inferior as a whole. There is no universal set of objective metrics to judge the value of a language, and such an assertion approaches cultural chauvinism. ------ thedz For context, to forestall some knee jerk reactions I'm seeing: 1\. This essay is part of a series, where guest authors are explicitly asked to "uninvent" something. So there's a level of built-in hot take to this. 2\. The author is Ted Chiang, writer of Story of Your Life (and the work that the movie Arrival was based on). He's explored how language affects how we think before (Story of Your Life/Arrival is explicitly about this). So this kind of falls in line with that. Anyway, I think this is a fascinating thought experiment to work through. What _would_ China be like with a phonetic system? What would change? How much of the culture is derived from the method of language and how much from other factors? ------ Nadya _> I would never have to read or hear any more popular misconceptions about Chinese characters—that they’re like little pictures, that they represent ideas directly, that the Chinese word for “crisis” is “danger” plus “opportunity.” That, at least, would be a relief._ But... they are? They're ideograms and there is at least _some_ reasoning to many of them. Things written with a part of "fire" tend to have a relation to..well...fire and heat. 火, 烧炊. You might see the relation 秋 shares with fire. But don't fall into the trap that it is 100% consistent because you'd be wrong about 約. And the last statement isn't even (technically) _wrong_. I'm not sure if the Chinese word is the same [0] but for Japanese it is 危機. With individual readings of "danger" and "opportunity" although a more reasonable 1-to-1 equation would be "danger" and "occasion". A crisis _is_ a dangerous occasion. 機 happens to have several meanings and one of those is "opportunity". It is probably intentionally misleading but not incorrect to say it is danger + occasion. You can't have your cake and eat it too. For most compound words the individual meanings of the hanzi/kanji are very relevant - maybe not _always_ relevant but more often than not. [0] Google Translate tells me it is, so my confidence is >0% but not by much. ~~~ gizmo686 Most of the time (In Japanese, at least), the Kanji do not map to meaning per- se, but to roots. For example, in English, we have words like "lap-top", "uni- cycle", "roof-top", "blue-berry", that clearly have multiple semantic components within them. In these cases, in Japanese, the words would be written with the kanji for their roots. In more linguistic terms, the kanjis often refer to morphemes, not ideas. There are some exceptions. For example, in Japanese, today (kyou) is written as "今日”, even though it is a single morpheme. In cases such as this the kanji are used for their meanings. In cases such as this, is is not clear how much the kanji actually help, because the sementic information provided is precisly the information that you would get from knowing the roots, and you (or rather a native speaker) does not have to be taught roots (or at least those roots that still have semantic meaning). ~~~ Nadya I'm not sure what you mean by separating "meaning" from "roots". To myself they are one in the same (the root word or a meaning of the root "word", there is no difference in my opinion). Could you provide some examples of what you mean? Maybe I'm thinking too literally or you meant "root" (as in radicals) different from "root" (as in root word). 「自転車」, 「図書館」, 「作家」, 「日光」,「棋士」. You even have witty ones like 「親子丼」. Just have to be careful about ones like 「多少」. The reason I would say not to rely on such literal meanings to define words is because some require some stretch of the imagination like「子宮」 and my rule of thumb is if it it requires a stretch of the imagination it's because it doesn't actually mean that. But literal translations can still be useful as mnemonics to learn new words/kanji. Like a pair of training wheels that eventually get removed. ------ phillryu One of my favorite Ted Chiang short stories also explores how much is shaped by our language: [http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of...](http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/fall_2013/the_truth_of_fact_the_truth_of_feeling_by_ted_chiang) ------ mdturnerphys For those unaware, Ted Chiang wrote the short story that the 2016 film Arrival was based on. ------ gumby >Imagine a world in which written English had changed so little that works of “Beowulf”’s era remained continuously readable for the past twelve hundred years. This works with an alphabetic system: in Iceland kids read the sagas in school. ~~~ waqf And in fact, written English has changed very little in the past five hundred years or so: it's easy to read Shakespeare and not too hard to read Chaucer, although their pronunciation would have been considerably different. Before that period there was a much greater rate of change in the written language. ~~~ douche Aside from the spelling, Chaucer really is not too bad. I must have had to read a really, really abysmal treatment in school, because I did not remember the Canterbury Tales rhyming at all... [http://www.librarius.com/canttran/gptrfs.htm](http://www.librarius.com/canttran/gptrfs.htm) ------ failrate It is the intense educational requirements of the Chinese character system that led to the development of Hangul-am, the Korean character system. You still end up with a similar block structure, but it is phonetic and has about the same number of components as there are letters in the English alphabet. ~~~ smilekzs That might be true, but an (perhaps more) important reason is literally the first 8 (chinese) characters in Hunminjeongeum [1], translated as follows: > Because the speech of this country is different from that of China, it [the > spoken language] does not match the [Chinese] letters. [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunminjeongeum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunminjeongeum) ~~~ failrate Yes, nationalism is an important consideration. I did not consider that in my opinion. I will now freely admit that there are probably other good reasons I have not considered. Thank you for the reference. ------ kmicklas Some linguists (mostly Western) have advocated transitioning to a mixed system of characters and pinyin. I don't think that will ever happen because an uglier and less harmonious writing system could not possibly be devised. Chinese would be much better off with something syllabic and square, like Hangul. With some amount of fiddling I think it could be made to work for most of the different Chinese languages and potentially even elucidate cognates between them, retaining one of the main benefits of characters. ------ yongjik FWIW, I like Jared Diamond's thesis better, which is that the geography of China (a big habitable landmass with no sizable peninsulas or isolated areas) made a single political entity inevitable. It probably explains why the Chinese culture has more emphasis on tradition (if that is true, I mean): you can more easily identify yourself with your ancestors from 500 BC, because they are all Chinese. A Spaniard would have a harder time identifying with Celts, Romans, or Moors. ~~~ mbroncano I mostly agree: 500 BC might be a tad too remote in time, but while risking being pedantic, Spaniards do identify themselves with Moors [1] or Romans [2] often, in most traditions. [1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moros_y_cristianos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moros_y_cristianos) [2] [http://www.spain.info/en_US/que- quieres/agenda/fiestas/murci...](http://www.spain.info/en_US/que- quieres/agenda/fiestas/murcia/fiestas_de_carthagineses_y_romanos.html) ------ divbit I think in a software startup mindset it could be easy to think that more efficient => better, but a point not mentioned in the essay is that written Chinese is simply beautiful compared to e.g., the simple 26 character alphabet, which is quicker to learn. This also applies to some of the other alphabets such as Hindi, Arabic, etc. But Chinese has so many characters, it really shines. ------ wsxcde As someone who knows a bunch of different scripts (Perso-Arabic/Urdu, Brahmi- based scripts like Devanagari, Kannada, Tamil, Bengali and obviously the Roman script), scripts do make a difference. Yes, a lousy script isn't a fatal impediment. You can produce beautiful literature even with a poorly-designed script. And I suspect script complexity is only weakly correlated to literacy. Learning to read involves a lot more than recognizing characters and words. But a bad script definitely adds a layer of confusion that is completely unnecessary and ends up creating an elitist and cumbersome language. The standard counterpoint to complaints about scripts is some form of whataboutism involving English. Yes, English is not remotely phonetic, but the modern form of the Roman script for English is actually pretty decent. It has a lot of visual differentiation between different letters. Compare this to Persian and Arabic where the placement of a dot or three makes all the difference between wildly different sounds. The Roman script also has relatively few letters. This comes at the cost of ambiguity, and we need to make up sequences for certain sounds (th, sh, ch), but also means the learning curve is a lot less steep. Persian and Arabic have the huge mess involving initial, medial, final and standalone forms of a letter -- it serves no purpose really. Brahmi-based scripts are all abugidas which means vowels are folded into adjoining consonants and so you need to learn about 4X as many symbols as English. You do have to guess what a letter sounds like in English (g,j,k,c). But this is also pretty common. Tamil doesn't distinguish between voiced and unvoiced consonants. This is an unnecessary annoyance. A much worse example is of Persian, Arabic and Urdu where the script allows one to drop a lot of vowels. This is especially bad for Urdu. For example, the Hindustani words for here (idhar) and there (udhar) are written identically in Urdu, so you need to "backtrack" to fill-in vowels appropriately based on the rest of the sentence. Yes, English isn't phonetic, and is unstructured and unsystematic. But it is still a pretty decent script compared to some of the others out there. From an Indian perspective, I wish we could move to one script -- perhaps some variant of Devanagari for all our languages. There's really little purpose in differentiating between Gurmukhi and Devanagari. And we should just forget about Urdu all together. It made sense when the goal was to teach people one script that gave them access to both Hindustani and the official court languages of Persian/Arabic. But for today, Devanagari is vastly superior for writing any dialect of Hindustani. Similarly, Kannada has an almost bijective mapping to Devanagari, but each symbol in Kannada is just so much more elaborate and a pain to write. Life would be much better with one script. Bring up changing scripts though and people -- and this appears to be a global phenomenon -- just go nuts! People need to realize that changing scripts isn't a terrible thing and has occurred many times for many languages. We're not going to forget our languages/culture just because we choose to change the symbols we use in writing. ~~~ xenadu02 Perhaps someone with a linguistics background can chime in but my (layperson) understanding is that many writing systems start out pictographic and evolved over time, become syllabaries, then eventually alphabets. The Chinese writing system represents an incomplete transition. Egyptian represents a mixed but mostly complete transition, as by the late third period their writing system was mostly based on the sounds of the symbols, not the literal concepts they originally meant (e.g.: using a snake symbol for the "s" sound). Middle period writings are often a mix of all three: some symbols used for their literal meaning, some symbols used to represent syllables, and some for their sound. Sometimes (but not always) there were markings next to the symbols to indicate what "mode" you should read them in. All YMMV of course, I'm not an expert. I try to avoid being too euro-centric as it is easy for me to claim alphabets are superior because that's what I know, but it does seem like memorizing abstract rules and a small set of letters is easier than memorizing thousands of characters. It is certainly easier to deal with by machine (whether that be a typewriter, a terminal, or designing a modern OpenType font). ------ warlox > smartphones are impossible to use if you’re restricted to Chinese characters This isn't actually true. Handwriting recognition is much more popular than any other means of text input in Hong Kong.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Busy Beaver Game - mathgenius https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2016/05/21/the-busy-beaver-game/ ====== pohl _Edit: whoa, they really buried the lede: the upper bound for the knowable values may be as low as BB(1919) as of May 15!_ I'm confused by the winning TM given for BB(2). It has 3 non-halt states, but N==2 should be a TM with 2, shouldn't it? Did they merely put the illustration for BB(3) in the wrong place? _Edit: yeah, looks like they just put the illustration for BB(3) in the wrong place:_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#/media/File:Sta...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#/media/File:State_diagram_3_state_busy_beaver_2B.svg) ~~~ 9911o9w8191 The author has the first name "John Carlos". Why not take an educated guess and use ( _gasp_ ) gendered pronouns? ~~~ pohl Because the byline wasn't easy to find on the device I read it on, and the possibility that someone might be offended by gender neutrality seemed far- fetched at the time. ------ millstone The article says "if the usual axioms of set theory are consistent, we can never use them to determine the value of BB(7910)." But why does this imply that BB(7910) is uncomputable? Perhaps another axiomatic system could compute its value? ~~~ wolfgke > Perhaps another axiomatic system could compute its value? Of course another axiomatic system could. If you could tell us such an axiomatic system for which you can prove that it can determine the value of BB(7910) and have strong arguments why it is probably consistent (by Gödel one will not be able to prove this property if it is able to express basic arithmetic) mathematicians would love to get to know it, since they really have no idea how such a system might look like. ~~~ ikeboy It's easy to specify such a system that's more powerful than ZFC and has strong arguments for its consistency: ZFC+con(ZFC), which is consistent iff ZFC is consistent. And it's easy to go one level up, I.e that system plus it's own consistency. These systems will be stronger than ZFC, and will prove the machine in question halts. Of course, the lowest unknowable from ZFC BB number is probably around BB(15), so likely none of those systems get that high, but they do probably give us more than just ZFC does. See also [http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=697](http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=697) for some limitations on this. Also, there are large cardinal axioms which imply the consistency of ZFC and are believed to be consistent, but I'm not so familiar with them. I think mathematicians would consider those axioms as "what such a system would look like". ------ rrobukef They created a Turing machine that may run forever. However we can't prove that. It could stop the next second, or tomorrow, or the day after. They also proved however that you'll never see it halt. Because that would be a proof of consistency. Wait. What? ~~~ zodiac If you're refering to Yedidia and Aaronson's machine, the machine searches for counterexamples in ZFC. We believe, but cannot prove, that ZFC is consistent. Also, we can prove that assuming ZFC is consistent, ZFC cannot prove that ZFC is consistent. Hence, since we believe ZFC is consistent, we believe that the machine will not halt, but we can't prove it. This implies that BB(7910) cannot be computed. ~~~ ikeboy BB 7910 can be computed: it's just a finite number. What you mean is that the value can't be proven correct in ZFC. ~~~ zodiac If you write down a value for BB 7910 but can't prove that it is correct, I wouldn't say that you "computed it". ~~~ ikeboy But ZFC isn't the only system in town. It's possible (although highly unlikely) that we could prove its value in another system that we can see to be just as valid as ZFC. (Like adding consistency axioms and so on.) ~~~ zodiac Yeah, sure, if we agree to do math in the system ZFC+Con(ZFC) we can prove that Yedidia's machine does not halt. But then we can just construct another machine (call it M', a n'-state turing machine) that searches for contradictions in ZFC+Con(ZFC), and now we believe that M' does not halt, but we can't prove it; and now, BB(n') can't be computed. ~~~ ikeboy Sure, but that n' will be larger. ~~~ zodiac Sure, but no matter what model of math we choose to work in, I can come up with some n such that I can say "...hence, BB(n) cannot be computed", and you cannot reply "BB(n) can be computed; it's just a finite number. What you mean is the value can't be proven correct..." ~~~ ikeboy It can always be computed. If you're choosing a specific model of math, you need to specify that in your statement. It will still be computable within that model, just not provably so within that model. Computable has a very specific meaning in computability theory, and any finite number is computable. The _function_ BB(n) is not computable, but this was known for decades, it has nothing to do with the recent result. ~~~ zodiac > If you're choosing a specific model of math, you need to specify that in > your statement. I mean, in my most recent statement I quantified over all consistent models... > It will still be computable within that model, just not provably so within > that model. OK, now I'm confused; what is the specific definition of "computable number" you're using? Also, informally speaking, say we're both working in ZFC. You claim that BB(7910) is computable. What does that mean? Does it mean you can write down its value as a normal decimal number? ~~~ ikeboy >I mean, in my most recent statement I quantified over all consistent models... Not quite, as I pointed out in [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11753020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11753020). You can easily have a consistent system that proves the value of all BB numbers, it just won't be computable. If you restrict us to computable consistent systems, then for any given model there will be some value of BB it doesn't prove, but also for any given value of BB there will be some consistent model that proves it. There's nothing in particular added about knowability by Aaronson's et al result, only about provability. >OK, now I'm confused; what is the specific definition of "computable number" you're using? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computable_number) Any finite number is computable, we just can't prove that a specific machine _is_ the one that computes BB(N). We can prove that some machine in a finite set (all TMs of size N we haven't seen to halt or proven nonhalting) computes it, but we can't pin down which one, within that model. >Also, informally speaking, say we're both working in ZFC. You claim that BB(7910) is computable. What does that mean? Does it mean you can write down its value as a normal decimal number? Lol nope. We can't even write down anything above BB(6). BB(7) has more digits than atoms in the observable universe. My claim that BB(7910) is computable means there's a Turing machine that computes it. That's easy to prove, as any finite integer can be computed by a Turing machine. There's no Turing machine that computes every BB number sequentially, though. ------ shmageggy I'm trying to get an intuition about why this whole game can even be played, and it's proving (ha) rather tricky. I'm ok with the idea that things sometimes cross into the realm of the impossible when transitioning from discrete/finite to continuous/infinite, or maybe from countably to uncountably infinite, but the notion that there's some _constant threshold_ seems so counterintuitive. The link at the end of the article is pretty good [1] as is wikipedia [2], but I'm clearly missing some intuition here. Help! [1] [https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the- complexi...](https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/the-complexity- barrier/) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Chaitin....](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity#Chaitin.27s_incompleteness_theorem) ~~~ ikeboy You can't solve the halting problem. Therefore, if you take a program that takes a Turing machine as input, searches for a proof in ZFC (or your favorite alternative) that the program halts or that it doesn't, and if it doesn't find a proof either way then it runs forever, your program is not a halting solver. Therefore, there are some Turing machines which can't be proven to halt or run forever in any given consistent system that can be computed. (Because if every TM had a proof, then the program above would solve the unsolvable halting problem). Therefore, there is a smallest such program that's independent of ZFC. Does that help? ~~~ shmageggy Yeah a bit. This part > searches for a proof in ZFC (or your favorite alternative) is tripping me up though. It's not obvious to me that you can do this in an automated fashion. I assume this is a standard tool for theorists though? How does such a program work? ~~~ shmageggy It's not letting me reply any deeper, but that makes sense, thanks! ~~~ wging I think it's that you can't reply to posts that are too new. ~~~ tomjakubowski You can, you just have to click on the timestamp to visit the comment's item page first, something like [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11750351) ------ quantumtremor I made a small implementation of the Busy Beaver game in React a while ago: [http://rajk.me/static/busybeaver.html](http://rajk.me/static/busybeaver.html). (Click the rules to toggle them). Start with 1-state, and 2-state is a decent challenge. Not sure if 3-state is possible by hand. ------ pkrumins I wrote an interesting article a while ago with graphs of how the beaver walks across the tape, and other interesting info. [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/busy-beaver/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/busy- beaver/) ------ delsarto Numberphile did a great video on Busy Beaver which I found easy to follow - [https://youtu.be/CE8UhcyJS0I](https://youtu.be/CE8UhcyJS0I) ------ csl FWIW, I implemented some BB code in Python and made some pretty neat plots: [https://github.com/cslarsen/busy-beaver](https://github.com/cslarsen/busy- beaver) Of course I cheat by knowing S(n).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ljsyscall: Unix system calls for LuaJIT - lelf https://github.com/justincormack/ljsyscall ====== justincormack This is my project... not sure why it suddenly appeared on HN today, but happy to answer any questions. There is a short talk from Fosdem [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZty3v4xVnQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZty3v4xVnQ) and a longer one from last years Lua Workshop here [http://2013.capitoledulibre.org/conferences/lua- workshop/tow...](http://2013.capitoledulibre.org/conferences/lua- workshop/towards-a-lua-scripted-operating-system.html) One of my main ideas was to make things easier to understand by having everything in a scripting language; I chose Lua as the LuaJIT ffi had just come out. At some point porting it to other languages would be a good idea. ~~~ blindgeek Have you looked at scsh (AKA the Scheme shell)? How does your work compare with it? It seems like your goals are similar, except that you're working in Lua. ~~~ justincormack My goal really hasn't been to define something that is convenient to use as a shell (ie compositional etc), but something for programming, so it returns data structures which differ by function etc. Plus I provide lower level functions like namespacing and so on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Vim After 11 Years - statico http://statico.github.com/vim.html ====== h2s Lots of people seem to declare ; or , to be useless keys and remap them. They're two of my most used movement keys in certain circumstances. I used to have , remapped to <leader> but switched back when I realised what I was missing out on. I'd advise anybody else to reconsider if they've made the same mistake I did. ~~~ danneu I've had ; mapped to : forever. Is there a use for `;` I'm missing out on? `;` just seems to be for stuff like "`fp` -- Oh wait, I didn't see all the p's between my cursor and the p I wanted. ; ; ; ;." Now I use easymotion.vim which obviates that scenario. ~~~ goldfeld I created vim-seek exactly for this reason, it's like f but takes always two characters, way faster than easymotion within the line (though I still use easymotion for longer distances) <http://github.com/goldfeld/vim-seek> ~~~ danneu Cool! Until I found easymotion.vim, I was sort of doing a poor man's vim-seek with `/` and two chars. ------ niggler PG is there a way to have HN present the subdomain for github submissions? ~~~ julian37 I'm using <http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/121512>, works very well. ~~~ niggler Doesn't work in chrome :/ "Apps, extensions, and user scripts cannot be added from this website" ~~~ roryokane You can make it work in Chrome; there’s a way around the warning. Instructions are in “Steps on adding extensions from other websites” on the Chrome help page linked from that warning: [http://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/bin/answer.py?hl=e...](http://support.google.com/chrome_webstore/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2664769&p=crx_warning). In short, to add the user script, open Tools > Extensions, then drag and drop your downloaded 121512.user.js file into the Extensions tab. ------ gfodor Some small vim tweaks I've recently been using myself that I find very nice: nmap <CR> :write<CR> cabbrev w nope Re-map enter to save the file. If you try to do a :w it will yell at you until you take out the cabbrev so you can retrain your muscle memory. Took me about a day to retrain. let g:EasyMotion_leader_key = ';' nmap s ;w nmap S ;b Remap s and S to be easymotion forward and backward. I never use s, since it's largely a redundant command, and didn't like having to do a two key command for easymotion. (You can set the leader key to whatever here, the nmap's are the important part.) noremap <C-H> <C-W>h noremap <C-L> <C-W>l noremap <C-J> <C-W>j noremap <C-K> <C-W>k Move between panes with motion keys with control held down. Also the YouCompleteMe plugin got some HN airtime but it really needs to get more. It's amazing. <http://valloric.github.com/YouCompleteMe/> And as others have mentioned using vim inside of tmux is very nice. It's especially helpful to remap the entire tmux keymap to be vim-like. Also, does anyone have any suggestions for what to re-map Space to? I am amazed Enter and Space in command mode both do relatively useless things. Remapping space to page down is OK but I use ctrl-f/b which is just as fast imho. ~~~ ckw Space is my leader key. ~~~ straws Same, and return is my BufExplorer. Lightning fast. ------ puls Why do people keep suggesting iTerm2? The built-in terminal app on the Mac does Unicode and 256 colors just fine. ~~~ Xion iTerm2 has few other fancy features, like horizontal and vertical splitting or Guake-like top-down terminal [0]. [0] [http://ivanvillareal.com/osx/setup-iterm2-to-behave-like- gua...](http://ivanvillareal.com/osx/setup-iterm2-to-behave-like-guake/) ~~~ niggler I've used visor/simbl in leopard and snow leopard for years to get the top- down effect in terminal: <http://visor.binaryage.com/> ------ enoch_r I recently switched to Vundle from Pathogen and it is a joy to use. Best part: you can bootstrap[1] Vundle from your .vimrc, turning the two-part "vimrc & plugins" configuration into a one-part "vimrc" configuration. <https://github.com/gmarik/vundle/blob/master/test/vimrc> ~~~ johncoltrane No you can't, you still need to have vundle installed. ~~~ enoch_r Nope, I've done it quite a few times--you can bootstrap it from your vimrc like so: if !isdirectory(expand(root, 1).'/vundle') exec '!git clone '.src.' '.shellescape(root, 1).'/vundle' endif ~~~ johncoltrane Thanks. ------ zokier I'm not sure why the author advocates job control (ie ctrl-z/fg/bg) instead of using tmux/screen. A multiplexer offers far more flexibility, and most importantly does not lose state even if your session ends (eg ssh connection drops). ~~~ pekk While that's true, clipboard interaction through tmux is awful. ~~~ saurabh [http://grota.github.com/blog/2012/05/08/tmux-clipboard- integ...](http://grota.github.com/blog/2012/05/08/tmux-clipboard-integration/) ------ jrogers65 > Emacs has a useful mode which highlights hexidecimal colors in CSS and SASS > with the color represented by the text. <http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2937> > The biggest hole, however, is the lack of refactoring and smart completion. <http://eclim.org/> ~~~ pekk For Python, there is a choice of the jedi library or the rope library to do refactoring and smart completion. This in addition to ctags and the like. I imagine other languages have similar things. ~~~ luckystarr Jedi is pretty good actually. Initially it would sometimes be slow and mess up buffers, but that didn't happen for a long time. ------ SeoxyS My single greatest tip to make vim even more amazing is to run it in a tmux session: It makes it super easy to split panes and create new windows for related things you need to do (git stuff, compilation, running tests, running a REPL, etc.) ~~~ gnosis You can easily split panes (called windows in vim) within vim. You can also create new tabs within vim for related things you need to do. I still use tmux or screen to do other things which aren't convenient or elegant to do within vim, but splitting windows and creating tabs can be done just fine within vim itself (or, in my case, within gvim, which I prefer due to the increased color gamut and keybinding abilities over terminal vim). ~~~ SeoxyS When I said split panes in tmux, I meant to put shells, repls, or servers. I also use split panes and tabs within vim for extra buffers. ~~~ q_revert you should take a look at <https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime> , very handy for sending code from vim sessions to other tmux panes ------ derwiki The author mentioned CtrlP for fuzzy filename matching. Its great because it's in pure Vimscript, but in my experience it becomes unusably slow for moderately sized projects. A month or two ago, I switched back to CommandT (requires Vim to be compiled with Ruby support, engine written in C) and haven't thought twice about it since then. ~~~ pieceofpeace I have a repo with 3000+ files and I can't notice any delay searching with CtrlP. I have the following custom file listing command in my vimrc: let g:ctrlp_user_command = { \ 'types': { \ 1: ['.git/', 'cd %s && git ls-files'], \ 2: ['.hg/', 'hg --cwd %s locate -I .'], \ }, \ 'fallback': 'find %s -type f' \ } ~~~ atjoslin Just made my CtrlP use ag[1], it's awesome now :-) let g:ctrlp_user_command = 'ag --nogroup --nobreak --noheading --nocolor -g "" %s ' [1] <https://github.com/ggreer/the_silver_searcher> ------ brown9-2 _One of Vim’s strengths is that it starts lightning fast, so starting Vim from the terminal is trivial. With a modern, 256-color terminal like iTerm2 or Gnome Terminal, it will even look like gVim. But the best part is that you can drop into the command line at any time with Ctrl-Z, which suspends Vim, and your working directory is where you left off._ Is there any reason to do this instead of _!sh_ within Vim to drop into a shell? ~~~ slurgfest have your terminal map Ctrl-Z to fg, and you can cycle in and out of the shell almost instantly from vim with that key. ~~~ bsg75 As in Ctrl-z to background, and Ctrl-Z to fg back into vim from the shell? ~~~ danneu I'm sure they mean `map fg <c-z>` in Vim so that `fg` from Vim lines up with `fg` from shell and you can repeat the same stroke to easily "toggle" Vim. ------ yaj I can live without Vim but cannot without Vim mode. All apps I have used since learning Vim has some kind of Vim bindings - Visual Studio, Eclipse, PyCharm and ST2. I also rely on browser vim plugins (vimium, vimperator). It seems Vim mode is becoming ubiquitous in my apps. ------ Aardwolf Can vim do the following? I'm editing some project with 10000 C++ files. There is some C++ file I currently don't have open, say "palette.cpp" which is in a subdirectory "project/graphics/algorithms/color/". Now I want to open palette.cpp without ever having to type, not even with tab autocompletion, that path. IntelliJ (which I do use for C++ ;)) can do this easily: just press CTRL+R, then palette.cpp, ENTER, and there you are in that file. Another thing: Some IDE's and editors have this feature where if you change lines, it marks it with some color on the left, as well as colors in the scrollbar, to immediately see which parts of the file were changed compared to git and/or the last time you opened it. Can Vim do this? Thanks! ~~~ SeoxyS The CtrlP plugin will make opening these files a breeze. If you just trigger it and type palette.cpp, it should be the first match. ~~~ Symmetry Better, you can type palete.cpp and it should still be the first match. ------ fatbird Every time I read an article like this, it's how a power user installs an array of plugins and customizations to really soup up Vim, which to me kind of misses the point. If you want that level whiz-bang, use Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. I don't recall where I saw this, but someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment). I've tried this with Vim and it's surprisingly nice [0]. You have to read the code more closely, and think more carefully about what's on screen, and this has the effect of focussing me more. Simplifying my environment, making it more sparse, but always having the power of Vim available, makes for a really potent, semi-distraction-free environment. [0] Well, mostly. I leave it on in order to have three colors used: a good contrast color for code, a second contrast color for strings, and a third, very low-contrast color for comments and line numbers so that, if I want to see those things, I can look for/at them, but if I don't, they're easy to ignore. Likewise, visually distinguishing between strings and code continues to be really useful. ~~~ gnosis _"If you want that level whiz-bang, use Coda or Sublime Text 2 or Eclipse or whatever. I don't recall where I saw this, but someone advised disabling syntax coloring in your editor to remove a crutch (and, secondarily, to visually simplify your environment)."_ Perhaps you might enjoy using ed... From: [email protected] (Patrick J. LoPresti) Sender: [email protected] (News system) Subject: The True Path (long) Date: 11 Jul 91 03:17:31 GMT Newsgroups: alt.religion.emacs,alt.slack When I log into my Xenix system with my 110 baud teletype, both vi and Emacs are just too damn slow. They print useless messages like, 'C-h for help' and '"foo" File is read only'. So I use the editor that doesn't waste my VALUABLE time. Ed, man! !man ed ED(1) UNIX Programmer's Manual ED(1) NAME ed - text editor SYNOPSIS ed [ - ] [ -x ] [ name ] DESCRIPTION Ed is the standard text editor. --- Computer Scientists love ed, not just because it comes first alphabetically, but because it's the standard. Everyone else loves ed because it's ED! "Ed is the standard text editor." And ed doesn't waste space on my Timex Sinclair. Just look: -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 24 Oct 29 1929 /bin/ed -rwxr-xr-t 4 root 1310720 Jan 1 1970 /usr/ucb/vi -rwxr-xr-x 1 root 5.89824e37 Oct 22 1990 /usr/bin/emacs Of course, on the system I administrate, vi is symlinked to ed. Emacs has been replaced by a shell script which 1) Generates a syslog message at level LOG_EMERG; 2) reduces the user's disk quota by 100K; and 3) RUNS ED!!!!!! "Ed is the standard text editor." Let's look at a typical novice's session with the mighty ed: golem> ed ? help ? ? ? quit ? exit ? bye ? hello? ? eat flaming death ? ^C ? ^C ? ^D ? --- Note the consistent user interface and error reportage. Ed is generous enough to flag errors, yet prudent enough not to overwhelm the novice with verbosity. "Ed is the standard text editor." Ed, the greatest WYGIWYG editor of all. ED IS THE TRUE PATH TO NIRVANA! ED HAS BEEN THE CHOICE OF EDUCATED AND IGNORANT ALIKE FOR CENTURIES! ED WILL NOT CORRUPT YOUR PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS!! ED IS THE STANDARD TEXT EDITOR! ED MAKES THE SUN SHINE AND THE BIRDS SING AND THE GRASS GREEN!! When I use an editor, I don't want eight extra KILOBYTES of worthless help screens and cursor positioning code! I just want an EDitor!! Not a "viitor". Not a "emacsitor". Those aren't even WORDS!!!! ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!! TEXT EDITOR. When IBM, in its ever-present omnipotence, needed to base their "edlin" on a UNIX standard, did they mimic vi? No. Emacs? Surely you jest. They chose the most karmic editor of all. The standard. Ed is for those who can remember what they are working on. If you are an idiot, you should use Emacs. If you are an Emacs, you should not be vi. If you use ED, you are on THE PATH TO REDEMPTION. THE SO-CALLED "VISUAL" EDITORS HAVE BEEN PLACED HERE BY ED TO TEMPT THE FAITHLESS. DO NOT GIVE IN!!! THE MIGHTY ED HAS SPOKEN!!! ? ~~~ fatbird That's awesome. ~~~ snogglethorpe ... and it's from the Emacs distribution ($EMACS_SRC/etc/JOKES)... :] ------ jason_slack Wow. I wish I had this exact setup. I have never been good at configuring Vim and the SPF-13 VIM distro is wonky. Would save me from buying Sublime ~~~ slurgfest Try using Vundle to add one plugin at a time! ~~~ jason_slack Good idea. Thanks for the idea. ------ mathnode In Star Trek the next generation; as different users interacted with different physical platforms (tablets, desk consoles, wall panels, tablets, voice activated devices, "desktops", etc), the work space would adapt to it's physical medium....so....I'm sold! ------ snarfy My new favorite toy: <http://gh.codehum.com/nosami/Omnisharp/> It's 'real' intellisense for Vim/C#. It's fairly new and rough around the edges, but works great once you get it going. ~~~ sfvermeulen I've been looking for something like this for months. I've also never heard of easymotion or YouCompleteMe. How is it that I've been out of the loop for all these things ?? ------ johncoltrane netrw comes by default. No need to install NERDTree. ~~~ benmills I've recently uninstalled NERDTree in favor of netrw and I've been presently surprised at how little I miss NERDTree and how much more productive I am on default vim installations. ~~~ slurgfest Was NERDTree making you unproductive? How? ~~~ williamdix It's not that NERDTree makes one unproductive. It's that using NetRW on default vim installations allows you to get going without installing NERDTree. ------ mihaifm Instead of NERDTree you might want to try Vimpanel, it's based on NERDTree but much more evolved, and instead of using :bprev/:bnext you might want to try Bufstop, it uses history instead of the buffer list to get you to the previous buffer. I made these to get around some limitations for some plugins that everyone seems to suggest. <https://github.com/mihaifm/vimpanel> <https://github.com/mihaifm/bufstop> ------ mats_rauhala Am I the only who tries not to override default commands? It's not like I use them all, but I might learn it at some point, and I want to have them available. ~~~ tomlu As a rule of thumb you are right, but in the particular case of s, S I think it's OK. They are pretty darn redundant. ------ welder My vimrc file with step-by-step instructions for installation: <https://github.com/alanhamlett/Alan-vimrc> Some features in my vimrc file: * Code folding for bracket or indention based languages * Edit multiple files in tabs using minibufexpl plugin * Using the Solarized color scheme * Using Vundle for plugin management (apt-get for Vim plugins) * Common swp, backup, & view directories (No more ~ files left around) * Useful defaults (spaces instead of tabs, remove trailing newlines, etc.) ------ scott_s I use MacVim for editing files locally on my Mac: <http://code.google.com/p/macvim/> ------ kunai > With a modern, 256-color terminal like iTerm2 or Gnome Terminal, it will > even look like gVim Uh, I use xterm... It's obsolete, I know, but it's still the fastest. ~~~ dysoco Fastest? Like I'd realize the speed difference between xterm, urxvt or even Gnome Terminal. ~~~ kunai Trust me, when you have really crappy hardware (Intel Atom 1.3GHz w/ 512MB mem), you will notice the difference. Execution of commands that takes 2-3 seconds on Gnome Terminal will be nearly instant on xterm. ~~~ grn Is rxvt slower? Recently I switched from xterm to rxvt-unicode and it's really great! ~~~ kunai Not sure... I'll have to give it a go to see if it really is. ------ lightblade Here are my 2 cents set undofile " This creates a undo file that persists your undo history when the file gets closed imap >> <ESC> " Double right arrow to escape from insertion mode. This is faster and more comfortable (at least for me) than to reach for tab key for some people set clipboard=unnamed " This is bridges between your Vim yanks and your system clipboard ~~~ grn undofile sounds great! I didn't know about it. Some people use jj to go to the normal mode. Personally I remapped Caps Lock to Escape in my whole system, so I can go to normal mode easily. You can yank to the system clipboard by providing appropriate register to yank into. You do that by pressing "* before the yank command (e.g. "yy to yank the current line). ~~~ docwhat I have some code to keep the undo/backup/swaps in a sane place... [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4331776/change-vim- swap-b...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4331776/change-vim-swap-backup- undo-file-name/9528322#9528322) ------ delambo Recently, I made the switch to vim from Sublime Text and I have installed some of the same tools. So far, I've committed to vim, but I have found that the plugins for file searching, linting, etc. are easier to use, more intuitive, and less painful to setup in Sublime Text. ------ kidambisrinivas Does any vim plugin support context sensitive auto-complete like Visual Studio (auto-complete only with variables that are alive in the current block of code)? I code in perl and am currently using ctags for autocomplete, but it doesnt autocomplete based on the context. ~~~ docwhat My .vimrc does this. I haven't used it much in perl (mainly bash, ruby, and python) but it should work fine. [https://github.com/docwhat/homedir- vim/blob/master/vimrc/.vi...](https://github.com/docwhat/homedir- vim/blob/master/vimrc/.vimrc) The important bits are vim's built-in omnicomplete and neocachecompl Omnicomplete by itself isn't bad. I haven't seen any excellent documentation explaining how it all works, but even without my .vimrc I use C-X-f a lot to complete filenames. Ciao! ------ Bjartr Minor nitpick, but can any terminals do squiggly underlines or is that still a gVim only feature? ~~~ kunai Squiggly underlines? What, do you mean: 1 class Hello ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ --INSERT-- Like that? Of course; heck, even xterm does that fine. If you were referring to something else, I'm not too sure... EDIT: Never mind, now I know what you're talking about. No, I don't think you can get those in terminal vim, but I'm pretty sure there is a plugin for it. ------ grn I can recommend CtrlP (or Command-T). I can't imagine navigating in a project without them. They also have great buffer navigation. Personally I mapped <leader>t to CtrlP file search, and <leader>b to CtrlP buffer search (:CtrlPBuffer). ------ ichinaski My favourite ones: " Make Y behave like other capitals nnoremap Y y$ " Reselect visual block after indent/outdent vnoremap < <gv vnoremap > >gv ~~~ tomlu Curious - what's the point of retaining the selection after indenting? ~~~ jdonaldson Sometimes you want to indent more than once. This remap is fine, but the idiomatic way to do this is just to use a period to repeat the last command. It doesn't hurt to get used to that. ~~~ verroq Enter a number then any command to repeat it as many times as you want. ~~~ docwhat Sometimes it's easier to see things line up. ------ pseut I'm disappointed no one's mentioned digraphs yet. I've used emacs for years, but I'm starting to use vim now because ctrl-k G etc is just so easy (I type a lot of math). ~~~ oddthink If that's your only reason, stick with emacs but use evil-mode. I flip-flop between liking evil-mode (when I'm mostly just editing stuff) and preferring standard emacs keybindings (when I'm switching a lot between shells, dired, interactive sessions, etc.) ------ fghh45sdfhr3 With other people's code I prefer to use something like <http://astyle.sourceforge.net/> on the command line. ------ moron4hire One of the things that I really love about Vim is that it's the same on every platform, including Windows. Hell, it's the same on my Android device. ------ jagguli Has top level windows been implemented yet. It's been on the todo for a long time so has a lot other new feature requests. ~~~ jagguli Basically can you create one vim server and make multiple connections to it, sharing the same session and buffers. Like how emacsclient works. ------ dreamdu5t No Command-T!? FAIL. ~~~ Syssiphus That's what CtrlP is for. ------ papsosouid I use nvi, and have tried to switch to vim a dozen or so times over the years. But there are so many irritating little quirks and misfeatures and annoyances that I can never manage to fix. Does anyone know of a guide to getting a sane, non-broken vim working with some basic plugins like syntastic? Last time I tried I couldn't bind F-keys for some reason, I couldn't get syntastic's error marking column to stay on instead of shifting my text back and forth all the time, I couldn't get auto-complete mapped to tab properly, and a few other things I can't remember now. I eventually gave up again as the extra functionality of vim ends up being counter-productive when none of it works right. ~~~ slurgfest It sounds like you want vim features. But vi compatibility mode is probably not consistent with these. Mapping f-keys should work fine in a GUI vim, but in a terminal F-keys may depend on configuring the terminal. You don't have to use syntastic if it doesn't work right for you, you can just use individual checker plugins or set makeprg and use :make. Mapping auto-complete to tab depends on not having multiple plugins fighting over the key. Most of this is a matter of particular plugins, not vim itself. ~~~ papsosouid Right, I want some of the vim features, mainly plugins. I don't enable vi compatibility, it isn't even remotely vi compatible and it just breaks stuff. I want syntastic, that's the primary motivation for trying to get vim working. I just want it to be helpful instead of irritating. No plugins are messing with tab, I am just trying to get it to work using a normal mapping.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Backtracking, Interleaving, and Terminating Monad Transformers (2005) [pdf] - setra http://okmij.org/ftp/papers/LogicT.pdf ====== danidiaz These notes explain the logic monad by solving solve n-queens with it: [https://github.com/sshastry/queenslogic](https://github.com/sshastry/queenslogic) Despite its name, it's more of a search monad, it doesn't perform unification or anything like that. Another interesting paper is "Monad transformers for backtracking search" [https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2058](https://arxiv.org/abs/1406.2058) The Select monad described in the later paper can be found in the "transformers" library [http://hackage.haskell.org/package/transformers-0.5.4.0/docs...](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/transformers-0.5.4.0/docs/Control- Monad-Trans-Select.html) ~~~ ocharles Oh neat, I didn't know Ross had actually released a version of transformers with Select. Now I've _got_ to go learn it. ------ misja111 I like FP and Haskell, but when I read a paper like this and realize the amount of effort it takes to implement a basic backtracking algorithm, then I wonder if Haskell can ever become mainstream in production environments. ~~~ mbrock Do you know of an example of another general backtracking DSL implemented in another language that is significantly easier or more concise? ~~~ misja111 This is not what my comment is about. You wouldn't normally write a general backtracking DSL in an imperative language because a backtracking algorithm is trivial to write. Only when you are using a pure functional language it becomes non trivial to combine the results of the individual sub branches. ~~~ setra Perhaps you misunderstand what this is doing? Or perhaps I misunderstand what you mean. If all you want is to take some kind of search function or backtracking system that generates a stream of results then combining the sub branches is trivial. If you represent a stream as a list and use something like Haskell that is lazy, then all you have to do is literally combine the streams. myStreamGenerator1 p1 ++ myStreamGenerator2 p2 if you want a different search strategy you can intersperse. concat . intersperse (mySG1 p1) (mySG2 p2) the cases being DFS and BFS ~~~ misja111 With backtracking you typically have some kind of pruning stragegy. That means keeping track of your best result so far and dont go into branches where it is clear that they can never beat your current winner anymore. So you cannot simply concatenate the results of the subbranches, each new branch needs to be aware of what has been found so far. That can quickly become ugly in pure FP, that's why people have been looking for solutions that do that in an elegant way, e.g. using Monads. ~~~ setra Pruning can be implemented by just not computing a part of a stream based on some predicate. If you want some kind of global state of the current results then you just pass around the current calculated states. Pure FP has many simple solutions for passing around state.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Up Vote if you want long urls to be chopped - lupin_sansei http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28841 ====== ralph I want any particularly long word to be forcefully split instead of making the page wider than the window. I'd have thought 200B is the "right" way to do this. ------ davidw What I'd really like is markdown, but I don't suppose there are too many implementations of that sitting around for Arc. ~~~ jey I think this is actually a ploy by PG to ensure quick initial adoption of Arc. When he finally does release a version of Arc, lots of frustrated hackers will learn Arc so that they can contribute patches to news.yc. ;-) ------ bootload long urls as in '<http://link-to-site'> in the discussion or 'story titles' in the main index?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Machine Learning Fairy Dust - stdbrouw http://stdout.be/2011/07/18/machine-learning-fairy-dust/ ====== law What makes me really nervous is that we're nearing the point when Google's Prediction API and its knock-offs will increasingly pervade web sites much in the way that AJAX and other technologies have. While overuse of AJAX and the Facebook "Like" button is extremely annoying, it's still pretty harmless. Machine learning, on the other hand, isn't innocuous. In order to use the Prediction API, you need a large corpus of data, which will just further incentivize web sites to ignore the privacy implications of their actions. Machine learning is far too abstract and too much of an "umbrella" term for it to be anything but careless to refer to it as some sort of panacea. If you thought that Facebook's "Beacon" was a slap in the face to online privacy, just wait until you see what the feature holds. Once machine learning libraries with extremely robust, completely unsupervised classifiers become more abundant, we're going to see an exponential increase in the market for data. Banner advertisements will be replaced with much more terrifying 'targeted' ads, and we will enter into an age where we are judged not by the empirical evidence of our actions, but the inferences made from people who behave like us. ~~~ bluekeybox > Banner advertisements will be replaced with much more terrifying 'targeted' > ads Can someone please explain to me why ads for stuff I might actually be willing to buy (as opposed to hyper-annoying junk thrown at me every day) terrify so many people? Not that I am ambivalent to privacy issues; just playing devil's advocate here. ~~~ makmanalp First, everyone assumed that no one knew knew about anything they did on the net. They thought that when they looked at an oven mitt in an online store, only they knew about it. The truth was that information was just unused by the store, and so the user never saw it. Gradually, this notion became slowly dispelled when stores actually started leveraging this information to provide, for example, suggestions. It's all fine and good here. Finally came targeted ads. The part that people find terrifying is when the suggestions are "following them around!". This is creepy in multiple aspects: The first is that people don't quite understand _how_ this happens (of course, _we_ do). How is this information showing up in different websites? Did the store just let these other sites handle my information? In their eyes, the boundaries for who is allowed to my personal information seem to blur. This also breaks the paradigm of location that the user has in their mind. "If I don't go to site X that is, I won't see anything about site X." It looks like everyone knows everything. The second is that it's creepy-through-analogy. The fact that it's going wherever you're going and nagging you constantly is weird. When I walk into a retail store, I'm usually asked if I want any help, and I decline politely. If, however, the salesperson keeps approaching me and trying to sell me things that I don't want, I get the fuck out. With targeted ads, the average user can't do that! The creepy sales guy is following you out to the street and into your home. This usually ends in extreme frustration. Finally, there are also some nuances that targeted ads miss. Targeted adds are actually not that targeted, they're just there to grab at the "low hanging fruit" customers that are on the verge of making a decision. Just because I looked at a dildo once because I thought it was funny doesn't mean I want to be bombarded with the world's finest penis emulators for the next 3 days. ~~~ lotu So use, ad block and/or incognito mode. Problem solved. And don't say that most people don't know how to use these features. While true anyone, who is concerned about this is totally free to ask other people or even pay them to explain and solve the problem for them. The fact that they don't suggests to me that they _don't care_. Most of the whining about privacy is more the poster being upset that not enough other people are concerned in the same way the poster is. ~~~ makmanalp I'd like to point out that I came by the above insights after a conversation with my aunt (who is in her 40s), accompanied by a few other older relatives. I do actually care but those statements were not a reflection of _my_ cares, it was of theirs. While this is not equivalent to a comprehensive study of average computer using people across the world, they sure as heck cared but didn't even begin to know where to start, in contrast to what you are hoping will happen. ------ hammock There are NO shortcuts. This is a fantastic article, and he lists a lot of good examples- machine learning, "social", crowdsourcing, AJAX, real-time. I would add to that list "create a forum." Maybe that's part of "social." In marketing I hear it all the freaking time- you get a half-ass mediocre idea and it always includes some type of "forum" your customers will recruit themselves into somehow, and start to form a community. Most of these people have never been on a forum so I can't blame them for not knowing how it works, but it is a challenge. ------ dholowiski I was nodding my head u til I got to the end - it seems like the google prediction API _is_ the magic fairy dust we've been waiting for? ~~~ athst I think his point is that it's just a tool that makes it a little easier for startups to incorporate machine learning into their products - like he said, it may be appropriate for some types of problems, but not all. But I'm sure we'll start to see more tools like that become more widely used. When AJAX first came out, not everyone knew how to do it - but now, everyone can drop in jQuery and do all sorts of complex things relatively easily. ~~~ dholowiski I guess that a good point. I wonder what kinds of bad implementations of the api we'll see. What a great revenue stream for google - what startup won't use the api in some way? I know i'm setting it up tonight and using it on at least one project. ~~~ taliesinb Judging from their forum activity, they hardly have any usage. ------ wccrawford I think 'machine learning' is so complex that people just don't feel like trying to explain it. That, or their business secrets are tied up in it, and they don't want to give away the golden goose. ~~~ _delirium That's an explanation for some of the examples, but I think a lot of the times it's actually really simple, along the lines of, "we sift through some data and correlate it". The odd thing is, that often works, especially for user- facing perceptual stuff where there's a strong placebo effect, even more especially if you salt liberally with some hand-tuned biasing. Sort of how The Sims is able to use some super-simple algorithms to give the impression of interesting characters. However, if you _do_ need some real magic to be done, and your product really won't work without it, then things get trickier; bad statistics, or at least statistics not really used correctly, is really common in the innards of these kinds of products. ------ j_baker I think this is usually a case of marketing having a bit too much say in product discussions. In the publishing industry, it seems like "My widget does X" doesn't get as strong a reaction from publishers as "My widget does X _and_ it adapts to your readers". The problem being (of course) that people forget how hard a problem machine learning can be. ------ the_cat_kittles Its fine if people want to say that ML will take care of the "details" ...let them try to use ML right and they will see you need to spend a long time understanding how to do things right. Most of the time, you can't use linear regressions right out of the box, let alone SVM's. ~~~ arasraj Agreed. The use of ML is highly dependent on the data. Having a something like the Prediction api is fine, but seems like the use-cases would be rigid. ~~~ taliesinb Yup, and if commit to it and suddenly realize you need a little more flexibility than the API provides, you're probably in a worse position than if you rolled it yourself. Real-world ML is so full of black magic and hackery that it's the LAST thing I'd try to sell as a web service. ------ danw The cloud will solve it	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Pmarca: OK, you're right, it IS a bubble - alex_c http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/10/ok-youre-right-.html ====== jsrfded Bite your tongue. Folks with far less to show are regularly promoted to sainthood here. Marc climbed up from grad student to monster IPO, rode out huge corporate stuff at Netscape/AOL, left and started another company, raised huge money, built a huge business during the dot-com winter, and piloted the ship home through a dizzy chain of IPO/merger/acquisition. He is now blogging the best stuff about entrepreneuring you can read anywhere on the net right now. You should listen to this guy... ~~~ cglee You have to also realize nowadays he's a VC and runs Ning. I believe, like Mark Cuban's blog, his first interest isn't to disseminate insights, but to server his business interests. ~~~ neilc Is Marc A. actually a VC? I think he's been an angel investor in a few startups, but that's not equivalent to being a VC. ------ iamelgringo I have to say that I agree with Marc. The problem with the first bubble wasn't caused by non-profitable companies. It was caused by hubris over stock prices. The reason why so many people lost their shirts in the first bubble was because millions of Joe Averages took out cash advances or cashed out home equity to buy Internet stocks. There was a lot of hubris around the NASDAQ and average investors jumped in on the action en masse. I personally knew at least 4-5 people who had left their jobs to become day-traders. I worked with a Med student who had maxed out 8-10 credit cards, bought high tech stocks with them, and then bought a collection of motorcycles with his stock earnings. When the bubble popped, he was left with a bunch of loans on expensive motorcycles, $100,000 in credit card debt and a great position on worthless Pets.com stock. Sarb-Ox has really clamped down on the number of IPO's that are occuring now. So, even though there might be hubris around web apps right now, the average investor has no way of pumping money into those businesses, and that's a good thing. What start-ups are creating are several products in tandem: The first is software that actually does stuff. The second is a community of users that develop and grow around that software product. The third is a small tight-knit group of people who have proven their capacity to produce. Big Co is interested in all three of those things. And Big Co has proven repeatedly that they are willing to shell out a bunch of cash to aquire the software, the community or the people. Even if the startup isn't profitable, the software, community and people are still very valuable to companies that need those things. What start-ups aren't creating this time around is IPO fever where the stock price gets ramped up while the founders and employees cash out. This is what's going to prevent the next big bubble from forming around web apps for quite a while this time around. The fundamentals are much better this time around. ~~~ david927 And I have to say that I disagree. The Web 1.0 bubble wasn't based on the way in which people found the money to buy these stocks or the hubris in the expectation that these stocks would always go up. It's just about fundamentals. When you buy a stock, you are buying how much the company earns today and adjust that for how much it could earn, say, ten years from now. People bought Pets.com either with the naive expectation that it would earn billions in the future or with the expectation other people would think so. There was no evidence, just lots of hope and the eternal wish to get rich. So you and Marc are telling me that Facebook is really worth $10 billion. You two are saying that that's a realistic expectation based on an objective evaluation and anyone who doesn't agree should be ridiculed. Ah... there's the hint. Ridicule is a cover for fear. Personally, I don't need to hide. I have the fundamentals -- and time -- on my side. ~~~ Goladus I think iamelgringo's point is that it doesn't matter if Facebook is really worth $10 billion or not, because no one's actually paying that much; and the entities paying some percentage of those valuations are insulated from the effects of a crash. The term "bubble" scares people because of events such as those that happened in 2000-2001. It's an imprecise term because of that. If you mean "inflated valuations" we might be in a bubble, if you mean "reckless speculation by average consumers" then we're probably not. If Facebook turns out to be a dud before they ever have an IPO, who are the big losers? A few hundred employees, and some professional investors. Microsoft is still plenty profitable without Facebook, and VCs will bounce back or be replaced. It'll indirectly affect many others, but the typical portfolio of a typical working American will remain relatively stable. Conversely, if 500,000 average consumers average $20,000 invested in Facebook and it suddenly goes bankrupt, that's a huge problem. It causes a massive disruption in their lives, and it will have a much more noticeable indirect effect on everyone else. (eg nobody can afford to buy Christmas presents this year) ~~~ iamelgringo I concur. It's a free market, and Facebook's valuation is whatever someone is willing to pay for a piece of Facebook. If Big Co purchases a piece of Facebook for $500 million, then someone at Big Co made a guess that either the software, the community or the people were worth that much. Mind you, _I_ don't think that Facebook has a 10 billion dollar valuation, but that's a moot point, I don't have the $500 million to purchase those shares. My hunch on the Facebook deal, though is that Microsoft is trying to beat Google to the punch and wants to provide search services to Facebook. The software, community or people might not be worth that much to them, but I'm sure that keeping Google out of Facebook probably is worth $500 million to them. What's the worst case scenario for Microsoft? Google doesn't get Facebook's search, Facebook goes _poof_ in a couple of years and Microsoft is out $500 million. No big deal. Microsoft's cash reserves are well over $25 billion anyway. They have to spend it on something. Might as well spite Google with it. ------ aston This article is a mess. The strategy here seems to be "setup complete straw men for all of the arguments you don't like, then dispense with them not by making counter arguments but by showing the (straw man, distorted) arguments to be silly." Plus it's hard to read. ~~~ dbrush It seems to me that the strategy was to loosen some panties and inspire some laughter. I enjoyed the fruits of both efforts. ------ asmosoinio Gotta love this: "laid-getting wankers". :) ------ paul The Colbert maneuver. Nicely done. ------ henning Eh. Say all you want, no sustainable revenue means no business, sooner or later. ------ far33d Has there ever been an example of something incredibly popular that hasn't made money eventually? The best I can think of is napster, and their issues were legal. ------ nanijoe An Alien has taken over Pmarca's blog , he's had some strange posts in the last few days. ~~~ alex_c So THAT explains that Bionic Woman post! ------ sammyo Hmmm, most amusing, this community has a blind spot. ------ allenbrunson i don't think sarcasm is a good way to make any point, and i'm surprised to see the otherwise unflappable marca using such a tactic. ~~~ geebee I agree. I felt this was one of the weaker posts on a great blog. The problem with sarcasm is that it allows the writer to frame the opposition in exaggerated, silly terms. For instance, the post derides people who claim VC's are "All stupid, and unnecessary to boot". Nobody would half a brain would make that claim. Of course capital will still matter, in many cases. But there is still an interesting emerging argument that the cost of server space and programming tools have dropped to the point where bootstrapping has become a real option. I'd love to see a writer as good and experienced as Marc give me his take on this new trend. Is it a good idea? A bad idea? When would you want to do one rather than the other? This is all lost in the sarcasm format. But I agree with the other posters here who have pointed out that Marc is just having a little fun taking the piss out of the naysayers. Nothing really wrong with that. I enjoyed the post, but I hope he gets back to his more insightful style in his next post. ------ nurall pmarca on crack...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Day The Barges Opened - danhon https://medium.com/p/44df20177747 ====== codezero This is a fun piece of pop-culture fiction. I like this use of Medium better than the typical self-aggrandizing fare.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Should I Remove an Online Pseudonym? - valkorhe I've gone by a pseudonym online for around 8 years, but now that I'm older (over 18) I've considered replacing it with my actual name so online work I do can be easily attributed to me. This includes social media, GitHub, forums, and normal conversation. This is not a nickname, per se, but rather an actual name different from my own (like John Doe).<p>My primary consideration is GitHub - I would like to have projects I create hosted by my real account used in these online communities. Any form of migration I do would involve changing package name (com.mypsuedonym -> com.myactualname), so there is also a bit of a development aspect to this.<p>Has anyone gone through something like this before, or is able to offer resources on the process? Is this something that is a good idea, or should I prefer to keep using the pseudonym for as long as I'm involved in things online? My opinion is that if a change is to be made the sooner the better.<p>Thanks!<p>Note: I don't have anything online that's sketchy, illegal, inappropriate, or anything to hide from a potential employer or grandmother. ======	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Peter Thiel, Funds He Controls Sell Off All of Their Facebook Shares - NickSharp http://allfacebook.com/sec-082914_b134275 ====== biomimic Good.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Mellow, a robotic sous-chef for home cooks - zemvpferreira http://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow/ ====== zemvpferreira Screwed up the URL, here goes: [http://cookmellow.com/meet- mellow](http://cookmellow.com/meet-mellow)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Meet Alfie, Sears' voice-controlled shopping assistant - jawns http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-sears-alfie-virtual-assistant-0618-biz-20160617-story.html ====== jawns When I first heard about this, I almost laughed. Sears -- the boring department store -- is trying to compete with the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home? But it actually seems like they've cooked up something much more interesting than you would think, especially considering the price. It's a low-budget device (1/6th the cost of an Echo) that uses both automation (natural language processing) and human assistants (a la Magic+) to do shopping research. But unlike Magic+, there are no fees associated with using the service, apart from the cost of the device. Obviously, Alfie's range of services are more limited than those of Magic+ ... but Magic+ charges $100/hr.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Silicon Valley is coming back strong and here's why - rantfoil http://alex.posterous.com/silicon-valley-coming-back-strong-and-heres-w ====== TomOfTTB The irony is a lot of the points he makes are reasons to stay out of Silicon Valley. For example, he cites the "death" of VC money and how it's cheaper than ever to start a company. But proximity to VCs was one of the big reasons to move your company to the Valley and starting a company isn't that cheap if you're paying high rent for both home and office space. Other than that the other points seem pretty superficial ("it's not cool to work for a big company", "SV entrepreneurs are getting really good"). ~~~ byoung2 I believe he said _dearth of VC money_ and that it's not as big a problem as the media makes it out to be because it's much cheaper to start a company these days. High rent isn't a big problem either, because startups can work out of a tiny shared apartment and use cloud infrastructure and broadband instead of leasing expensive office space with a T1 and a server room. ~~~ jmtulloss Those costs that you do have, however, are almost certainly higher in the bay area. ~~~ byoung2 That is definitely true, but it can be worth it to be near VC and a large pool of talented people. I could start a company in Phoenix, AZ for pennies on the dollar vs Silicon Valley, but there would be virtually no VC and far fewer programmers (sorry Phoenix!). ------ ojbyrne I really wish there were fewer, smarmy, uninformed, superficial blog posts coming out of Silicon Valley. Then I'd be more inclined to agree with this post. Just to pick on one point (no. 2): "People have figured out SOX just means companies should go the acquisition route. SV has adjusted to the idea of never IPOing" As an alternative, I'd suggest that in fact the IPO window is suddenly there, which lifts all boats, including the acquisition boat. Thank you, OPEN.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CakePHP 1.2 Released - edb http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/the-gift-of-1-2-final ====== edb I don't know why this framework doesn't get more attention. Good on them for finally releasing the 1.2 version.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Roq – C++ HFT on Crypto Exchanges with μs Latency - thraneh https://roq-trading.com/docs/blogs/showhn/index.html ====== thraneh It's a framework supporting the whole life-cycle: * Data capture (binary format, streaming, consistent) * Exploratory research (InfluxDB into Jupyter) * Back-testing (incl. order matching, very fast!) * Live trading (suitable for HFT) This framework has been designed for _professional traders_ who emphasize full control, ultra low latency and a consistent back-testing framework. Everything has been designed so you can own, control and deploy your own software stack. Our primary focus is predictable ultra low latency during live trading. We support Coinbase Pro and Deribit and we will soon add more exchanges. The framework is not limited to cryptos: all interfaces are generic and have previously been tested against non-crypto exchanges. We will always use the better (faster, more reliable, etc.) protocol offered by each exchange: that means FIX being strongly preferred to WebSocket. (REST is a non-starter for any kind of HFT). Gateways are _free to use_ during our "beta" testing: we will implement a license model early 2020 (allowing also private individuals to participate). _Everything else will remain free!_ Many more details in the linked document. In particular, the minimalistic "tutorial" towards the end, for those of you who want to try it out. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
TripAdvisor Redesign - jjar https://www.tripadvisor.com/ ====== chrisma0 Is there a special designer school you go to, to learn how to draw those colorful, generic human figures (behind the search)? Reminds me a bit of the "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell" style. Seems like I see this pop up as a design trend everywhere recently. Does it have a name?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Modern Triumph of the Periodic Table of Elements - Hooke https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-08-28/the-modern-triumph-of-the-periodic-table-of-elements ====== sdrothrock I was disappointed by this article because it has almost nothing to do with the "Periodic Table of Elements," just the elements themselves -- as if we're supposed to be surprised by the fact that elements are in things. The article also presents the number of elements in things as if that can show some kind of quantifiable change in a positive or negative way (for example, they call out the number of elements in a cell phone as having increased since the first cell phone). I was hoping for something a bit more insightful about the design of the periodic table itself, whether about 1\. Increasing order by atomic mass (and the ramifications thereof) 2\. Arrangement of periods and the predictions we've been able to make/use 3\. The groups of the table and the predictions we've been able to make/use, though I guess this is most common among the noble gases 4\. Rare earth metals And I'm sure there's a lot more I don't know -- every time I learn something about the periodic table, the more impressed I am by how orderly and patterned it is today despite having been initially designed (with gaps!) a century and a half ago. The article could even have gone into how there are spoofs of the periodic table just because it's such a lasting, easily-understandable design. ~~~ lonelappde I'd expect the gaps, because the gaps are a natural consequence of the structure being interesting - that clear patterns appear as soon as you assemble a bit of data. Most spoofs of the PT are bad because they don't have any periodicity, wholly missing the point. I suspect this happens because the PT is the most famous organized list in science, and it's structure (not a simple array!) is fascinating even to people who don't bother to understand what the structure means (logically, not to mention chemically). If you are really into the "Periodic" and "Table" aspects, check out Theo Gray's Periodic Periodic Table Table posts ;-) ------ jhidding It's a nice figure displaying the presence of elements in the Earth core, human body and cell phones, but why does it give no hydrogen in cell phones? Also the picture of "native gold" is really pyrite, also known as fool's gold. My confidence levels for this article are low. ~~~ inflatableDodo >Also the picture of "native gold" is really pyrite I gave up before I made it that far. So it is. I wonder if anyone put that in deliberately as a metaphor?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: When is risk worth it? - beswift Alright, so I'm in no way a talented coder or even very technically savvy (much more of an admiring "coder wannabe" actually) but ever since I first stumbled on a PG essay on philosophy (in the midst of a typical googling/reading binge) a year or so ago I've become a daily troller of the HN site. During this time, I've become an avid reader of numerous tech blogs and have a huge appreciation for the way you guys process ideas and your thought processes in general. That being said, I would very much value some opinions on a (happy) career crossroads I've found myself in.<p>The short on me: I'm a 27 year old, hard working clincal coordinator for a mid-sized private medical practice (by hard working I mean hours don't phase me, I work for the clinic during the day, and split my nights and weekends between a free clinic and waiting tables.. student loans rock!). A 70-80 hour work week is pretty much a standard, and I'm fine with that.<p>My dilemma: My current job at the clinic is great, I initially took the job to help out my dad, who runs the practice and was short staffed..and ended up loving it. I've worked my way up from a tech, managing 2 clinical trials, to now running 2 of our satellite offices and being in charge of all of the IT stuff (part of my obsession with HN!) I love the doctors and patients I get to work with, and have been experiencing a steady rate of growth, both in pay and responsibility within the practice over the last 3 years (They even put up with and give me free range with our old servers for testing out ideas I have with record sharing.. it's great!) At the beginning of this year, I got fed up with the horribly arcane way we were tracking inventory and monitoring expensive drug ordering/usage across our 6 offices (literally, sticky notes and texts passed here and there)and decided to write a little program that would allow us to keep track of drug usage/inventory levels and reimbursment periods across all the offices in real time. It ended up working pretty well, and one of our docs ended up showing it off to a drug rep we worked with, who then borrowed it to use as an example for other practices(yay!) Now I've had a few offers from other practices and an EMR company, but haven't been tempted away.. until now. I was contacted earlier this week by a practice in the city I grew up in (and have been wanting to move back to) and asked if I was interested in taking the administrator position with their practice. They are wanting to implement an EMR, update 5 out of 6 of their offices (two do not have internet!), reorganize their practice structure and create/implement a marketing plan. Immediately my brain was spinning, by the end of the week I had talked to each of the partners individually, written out a few plans and was pretty excited about the opportunity. They gave me an offer Saturday, saying they'd rather fly me out once to look for an apartment and get to work than twice to meet me first because they knew they wanted me.<p>The catch: Before recieving an offer, I met with my dad, who has been doing this for the past 30 years, as well the main Doctor I work with. Both agreed it would be a great opportunity for me, and said I should jump on it.. on one condition.. they offer $X (the min salary for someone in that position, also the bottom of the salary range that my dad had actually given this practice a year ago when he had done some consulting for them and they were looking to fill this same position) I felt this number was a little high for my experience, however given the amount of work involved an the significant increase in cost of living, it's actually pretty reasonable. Their argument is that the dollar amount shows they are serious about the relationship, and that they would be supportive in future efforts when it comes to updating their systems. They offered significantly less, actually almost less than what I currently make at both jobs (total hours worked would probably be about the same) I was disapointed, but declined the offer, heeding my dad's advice. They called back today with a slightly higher offer plus an incentive once their EMR is implemented, the total is still less than the original target, but enough that I will make a little more than what I make now..although most likely be working much harder. They seem like good guys, they've promised that the compensation will increase and surpass my goals once I've proved myself and as my skills mature. The opportunity alone excites me due to the sheer challenge of pulling it all off and the experience I would gain along the way, however it's still definitely a risk, the practice is challenged and I could always fail badly. Additionally, my dad and the owner of the current pracice I'm with have advised that since they failed to offer an acceptable amount from the beggining, I need to move on, arguing their offer shows they aren't serious about changing the organization and I would end up frustrated and set up to fail.<p><pre><code> I would like to know, in evaluating your own job prospects, what makes the risk of a new opportunity worth leaving a safe and stable one? Currently I'm very happy where I am, and am able to "incubate" and grow my skills safely, to the point where in a year or so, the target salary given to this company should be quite easy to obtain. This new job though, while a huge risk, could be a sweet experience that lets me test what I can really do..or can't do, which could undue the gains I've made over the past few years?? I'm extremely conflicted, tired from all the negotiating (so please exucse the grammatical inadequecies!) and this forum has proven to be source of level headed discussion on a variety of topics, so I would greatly value any input/or stories from people with similar experiences. Thanks for taking the time to read/respond!</code></pre> ====== anigbrowl _They seem like good guys, they've promised that the compensation will increase and surpass my goals once I've proved myself and as my skills mature._ Yeah right. What that means is that they'll throw you a bone after they've eaten the steak, if everything works out, or put all the blame on you if it doesn't. Trust your Dad, who has already had experience with the other practice and has decades of industry experience on you. I have heard these kinds of promises on many occasions and they almost always fall through. The fact that they are inviting you to both reorganize their administrative structure _and_ put together a marketing plan is a big red flag for me. Those jobs are poles apart, and the problem with marketing is it's very hit-and- miss. Healthcare is not a normal market anyway, and if they don't know how to market their own practice something is wrong. In this case, a bird in the hand is definitely worth 2 in the bush. Besides, nothing makes you as desirable as your ability to reject people. Be nice about it, but firm - say you can't afford it and if they wheedle just stick to that basic point. They will try to wheedle you because they'll figure you're sufficiently financially secure to risk failure, but basically they're trying to offload the risk onto you and your Dad. That's just how business is, they're probably not even fully conscious of it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Science Reveals the Traits Every Leader Must Cultivate - successvalley https://www.successvalley.tech/traits-leader-cultivate/ ====== distant_hat Above every such article one must have big flashing letters saying 'Survivorship bias'.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Graphic Designers are Ruining the Web - jaems33 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/feb/19/john-naughton-webpage-obesity ====== halefx I've worked with so many graphic designers claiming to be web designers who didn't know the first thing about good web design. IMHO, you can't call yourself a web designer unless you write your own CSS, and graphic designers should NEVER have the final say in web design. ------ soonisnow It's about the how, not the who. Methods evolve, and truly good design is as much about resource efficiency and user experience as it is interaction dynamics and look and feel. Today, if our most iconic, beautiful buildings required, like the pyramids, 25,000 laborers hand-stacking mud-brick over a 20-year period, that would be bad design. If our intra-city train systems ran above-ground, powered by steam, that would be bad design. It's not Graphic Designers who are ruining anything, just as it's not Teachers who are ruining public education. It's bad Designers using inefficient methods. ------ jamieforrest No, Graphic Designers Aren't Ruining the Web. [http://jamieforrest.com/2012/02/19/no-graphic-designers- aren...](http://jamieforrest.com/2012/02/19/no-graphic-designers-arent- ruining-the-web/) ------ huskyr A good designer knows how to focus on the most important parts of the content, and together with a good frontend developer, can take care of making a web page both beautiful, useful and fast to load cross-browser and device. Unfortunately many designers tend to be handcuffed by marketeers and CEO's believing in cramming in as much ads, social media sharing buttons and other crap as possible 'above the fold'. That's not a problem of design, but a problem of vision. ------ appleflaxen This is a fantastic premise, and wildly fun to think about, but I think the author fails to prove his case. Good designers eliminate cruft, and if one is conscious of the design, then it's bad design (although it's possible I'm guilty of applying the "one true Scotsman" fallacy here).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sugar industry withheld possible evidence of cancer link 50 years ago - mtberatwork https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/sugar-industry-withheld-possible-evidence-of-cancer-link-50-years-ago-researchers-say ====== qwerty456127 The whole phenomenon of sugar and fructose being added to virtually everything is beyond comprehension. There are so many people, fat and slim, saying they don't want to be fat, yet eating foods with added sugar every day. Why not just replace all the added sugar with erythritol, for example? The whole situation with sugar reminds me of the situation with opium in early 19th century China ~~~ ams6110 The reason is that in the 1970s and 80s people started freaking out about fat. Everyone from the FDA to USDA to family doctor was telling people fat was bad. So food producers started making fat-free versions of everything. Only problem is it tasted like shit. So what did they do? They added sugar. So now you have sugar added to everything from salad dressing to pasta sauce to bread and muffins. The latter probably had some all along but the fat free varieties had a lot more. Edit: I'll add that saturated fat was considered especially evil, which begat trans-fats substituted everywhere. Turned out they were even worse. Bottom line, eat minimally processed meats and plants and you can stop worrying about it. ~~~ gregcrv There was no fat to remove from pasta sauce. Maybe they also figured out that sugar was addictive and added it everywhere to sell even more food with sugar? ~~~ tigershark You need to add sugar to contrast tomato acidity, it has nothing to do with sugar addiction. And it has been like this since forever, not only from the '70s. Source: even my grandmother added a pinch of sugar when cooking pasta sauce. ~~~ AmVess A very little bit of sugar that's in a pinch isn't any kind of a problem. Even a tbsp isn't that much. The problem is the massive amount they put in drinks of all types...and foods of all types. They even put it in bread for heck's sakes. In terms of taking the edge off of tomato sauce, shredded carrots works pretty well. I don't use sugar in any of my cooking, and no one has noticed. ~~~ crx087 Sugar in bread is _so_ nasty to me. I can't stand to eat it, yet it's in almost every loaf on the shelf at a supermarket with 50 types. ~~~ zaarn Even without sugar, bread contains a lot of carbohydrates that break down right into sugar just by coming into contact with the spit in your mouth. If you think that's not true, simply take a sugar-low bread (check the food label, don't just go for organic/whole-grain, those usually have more sugar) and taste it for a while in your mouth. You'll notice it starts to become sweeter in your mouth. ~~~ KozmoNau7 And that's actually not an issue. As you probably know, glucose is the fuel our bodies and brains run on, and while your body _can_ break down proteins to glucose in a pinch, it's not actually healthy (despite what proponents of ketosis diets will tell you). It's especially hard on the kidneys. As long as you stick to proper bread without the crazy added sugar, and preferably whole grain (actual whole grain, not just marketing "whole grain"), it's not an issue. Unless you try to subsist on literally _only_ bread, of course. ~~~ zaarn I'm not talking about various proteins and rather about starch, which is a natural part of a good bread. The enzymes in your mouth and digestive system will break down starch to normal Glucose without a problem. ~~~ KozmoNau7 My point is that we need carbs, it is unhealthy to subsist on protein alone. ~~~ zaarn Obviously, yes. A balanced diet is always a better choice than any extreme diet. Like basically anything else too. ------ DoodleBuggy Makes you wonder what we'll find out is being withheld right now, 50 years from now. ~~~ ashark I sometimes wonder which materials I directly interact with on a regular basis that people in a few decades wouldn't touch for anything short of large amounts of money. History tells us there are probably a few. Guessing at least a couple are plastics or plastic additives/coatings of some kind. Maybe whatever they replaced BPA with. Possibly gasoline will qualify. Probably one or two things currently on/in our food. ~~~ johnchristopher Some years ago (and I mean decades) my teenage self read somewhere or heard someone talking of the unknown dangers of some gas being released by motherboards (think: silent killers). ~~~ Moru That is usually flame retardant: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_retardant](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flame_retardant) ~~~ johnchristopher Thanks, that looks like it. ------ osrec Sugar is not far from being a drug in my opinion. It certainly feels addictive and has a definite impact on physical and mental state (especially true with respect to children). In that sense, it should undergo the same level of regulation... ~~~ afterburner I'm all for eating way less sugar, but you might as well say people are addicted to food. The body needs energy, of course providing it with energy alters its physical and mental state. ~~~ jmurinello Totally agree that in current times food is an addiction. Since when do we need to eat 3 meals a day? At least 90 percent of modern humans history, we used hunting and gathering to survive. Only in the last 10 percent we have agriculture, and much much later, refrigerators, supermarkets and convenience stores. If we needed this much food our species wouldn't last a week before agriculture. Spoiler alert: we lasted 300,000 years. ~~~ foobarge Agreed - and it's been proven (citation needed) that a low calorie diet prolonges life. But here we are, needing to consume more energy because we do things (good, bad, useless or wasteful) with our time (and these things aren't _directly_ looking for food.) ------ sillysaurus3 I recently started the Whole 30 diet (paleo), and it's nearly impossible to avoid sugar, corn starch, and dextrose. Almost all fooeds seem to have one of those. Often for no reason: why put sugar in beans and bacon, or corn starch in turkey? The amount of money I'm spending on food jumped by 3x. It seems accurate to say that if you're poor, you're almost forced to eat sugar for economic reasons. ~~~ obstacle1 >Almost all fooeds seem to have one of those Almost all _prepared, packaged, or preserved_ foods have one of those. The solution is actually pretty simple: eat meals made from base/raw ingredients only. Beans, nuts, meats, vegetables, fruits, vegetable oils, spices... Endless varieties of stuff to cook with, combine, and eat alone. People just aren't used to eating this way, because prepackaged crap has been the norm for so long. You are right that if you're poor, it's difficult to eat this way, though. ~~~ hydrox24 > prepackaged crap has been the norm for so long > if you're poor, it's difficult to eat this way, though. And it is difficult for some poor people to eat this way because their cultural poverty exacerbates or even causes their financial poverty. Their parents (if they were lucky enough to have two) didn't teach them to prepare basic meals, sharpen a knife, or care for a frying pan. Each of these skills is a barrier to entry, and they add up quickly for basic meals. It's not the only major barrier, but I think that we have really pulled the rug out from the poorest by exchanging cultural norms for convenience and a net rise in costs. ------ kinkrtyavimoodh 30–40 years later we might be saying the same thing about social media. ~~~ noncoml I wonder if people 80-100 years ago were as hysteric about radio and TV as we are today about social media. ~~~ eeZah7Ux They weren't. Television and especially radio were both cherished sources of reasonably reliable information in the beginning. ~~~ dragonwriter No, they weren't. They became, over time, accepted sources of _trusted_ and _emotionally engaging_ information, but IIRC studies many decades ago showed that—controlling for consumption of other news media like newspapers—increased consumption of news content from either or both broadcast media was associated with _decreased_ knowledge of current events. They were never sources of _reliable_ information (and, yes, from early on there were negative reactions against the mass acceptance, just as there are today for social media.) ------ DonHopkins Happy Jax => Sugar Crisp => Super Sugar Crisp => Super Golden Crisp => Golden Crisp But it's still "Sugar Crisp" in Canada, where Sugar Bear still says "Can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp"! Do they have better truth in advertising laws there or something? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Crisp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Crisp) At the 1904 World Fair, the Quaker Oats Company made a candy-coated puffed cereal, a wheat-based product similar to Cracker Jack's candy-coated popcorn. The product concept was re-introduced unsuccessfully in 1939 by another business as Ranger Joe, the first pre-sweetened, candy-coated breakfast cereal. Post Foods introduced their own version in 1948. The Post version was originally called Happy Jax, and was renamed to Sugar Crisp the next year. The name was later changed to Super Sugar Crisp, and in 1985, it was changed again to Super Golden Crisp. Finally, it was changed to Golden Crisp (during a time when many cereals dropped the word "Sugar" from their titles) in the American market. In the early 1970s, there was a short-lived variation on the original Sugar Crisp, called Super Orange Crisp, which had orange-flavored O's in it. The product is still sold as Sugar Crisp in Canada. In Canada, the box still displays the Sugar Bear mascot and the phrase "Can't get enough of that Sugar Crisp." ~~~ toomanybeersies Breakfast cereal companies are borderline criminal. Most cereals are just straight sugar on some substrate. Even most muesli/granola is loaded with sugar, whether cane sugar, honey, or dried fruit. ~~~ zaarn Depends on the cereal. The corn flakes I usually eat for breakfast have basically 0 nutritional value, I think the entire 1kg box contains about 800kJ, no sugar and the rest of that is then mostly air or filler. ~~~ Joakal [https://www.kelloggs.com.au/en_AU/products/corn- flakes.html](https://www.kelloggs.com.au/en_AU/products/corn-flakes.html) This is the most popular in Australia and it has sugar and salt. Which one doesn't have sugar? ~~~ zaarn I just pick my local store's brand. It's got the consistency and taste of wet cardboard but it gets me through the morning. ------ ellyagg Being overweight is a much stronger correlate to cancer and heart disease than "sugar". And, despite what you might have read in the press, it's nowhere near a consensus that sugar is the primary cause of being overweight. You really think a 50-year-old study is the smoking gun that's going to usher in a consensus among nutrition scientists everywhere? Personally, I buy Stephen Guyenet's theory that palatability is the driver of overweight. I think it's increasing palatability and falling food costs. ~~~ zzz157 Sugar seems to pretty obviously make people overweight. Especially in liquid form. And if this is not a consensus, well, see the title of this post. This isn't a hard thing to test. ------ doitLP Interesting but not surprising. Pharmaceutical companies, for instance, don't publish or cancel studies that show unfavorable results all the time and no one makes a fuss. Who knows the loss to the community and consumers at large in terms of knowledge and health? Beyond that, the take away is yet again: If it's a shortcut or if it's delicious, it's bad for you. (gazes longingly at holiday cookies on desk) ~~~ KozmoNau7 I don't know, I certainly find chicken (with skin and bone, and no salt/sugar marinade, thank you!) with rice and plenty of veggies to be quite delicious. A lot more delicious than cookies, honestly. I've been trying to live by the No S Diet for a while, and it seems to be working for me, I highly recommend it. ------ aquamo When reading a book about Alan Turing, I came across a reference to "Natural Wonders, 1928" by Edwin Tenney Brewster (free in iBooks and on the web) - where he refers to Chapter 38: Of Sugar and other Poisons :=) It's not surprising that after we made fat the demon, the supply change replaced fat with with sugar (at least in yogurts) and type 2 diabetes is now rampant. :-) ------ assafmo I started the keto diet with intermittent fasting about a month ago. Lost 13kg, doesn't have cravings anymore, doesn't feel hungry all the time, and it's easier now to consentrate, fall asleep and wake up. Defenetly feels like carbohydrates/sugar is poison. ~~~ devmunchies Keto diet is terrible for you. You are losing weight because you are sick. It's the refined carbs and sugar that are not good, you just need to get them from whole sources with the fiber and all. ~~~ dublinclontarf > Keto diet is terrible for you. Because? ~~~ saladeen In my online experience, 90% of people who straight up attack keto like this are vegans who want to keep propping up the dogma that 'animal products = bad for you'. They often also assume that keto = eating only meat. ------ jmurinello I consider sugar to be no different from cocaine (not that I ever tried), but we crave for it the same way people who consume that drug or any other, crave for. Sugar is everywhere, and it's our main source of energy, being that our body feels terrible when its levels are low, but as soon as you eat it feels wonderful. The same goes with cocaine. ~~~ anigbrowl It's a bit similar but I don't think it's good to make second-hand comparisons. Cravings are not a simple binary. Like, if you consume cocaine for pleasure then you can have a craving to keep doing more until you run out or its time to go home or whatever. But below a certain threshold the craving isn't that strong, so you could have a little bit and then get on with your day, much as you might have a cup of coffee in the morning but you don't necessarily want it round the clock. ~~~ jmurinello I agree, although when it comes to sugar we way past that threshold, since most of us crave for food many times a day when glucose levels drops. ~~~ anigbrowl Ah sorry, I was thinking of craving in terms of 'you want it whether or not you actually need it' as happens in abuse and addiction. ------ tengbretson Why were they responsible for this information in the first place? ------ Fnoord There's a plethora of E-numbers which are a safe alternative [1] (according to the EU). I could quote them, but you might as well just click on the link instead. They're supposedly easy to recognize as they're in the E95? and E96? range. Unfortunately the fear for E-numbers has caused manufacturers to stop mentioning them and instead naming the ingredients again. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E900.E2.80.93E999_.28...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_number#E900.E2.80.93E999_.28glazing_agents.2C_gases_and_sweeteners.29) ------ richardknop Has it actually been proven that natural fats are bad for you? I always thought fat is healthier than sugar. Both sugar and fat are required part of healthy diet but I’d rather eat some pork sausage than ice cream or chocolate. It seems much healthier to me but I could be totally wrong and this is just some irrational belief I hold. ~~~ KozmoNau7 Watch out for that sausage, it's very likely to have nitrite salts in it, as well as surprisingly high amounts of sodium and sugar. ~~~ richardknop Is salt unhealthy? I thought that is a myth too. I think salt is required part of healthy diet. In moderation of course. Sugar? Hmm I didn’t know there’s much sugar in sausages. I mostly eat family made sausages and I don’t think there’s much sugar. ~~~ KozmoNau7 Salt isn't dangerous, as long as you get enough fluids, your kidneys are healthy and you don't overdo it. In other words yeah moderation is key, but sausages (and other cured meats) can have a surprising salt content. Sugar routinely gets added to a lot of foodstuffs you wouldn't expect it in. But if you're primarily eating home-made sausages, you're probably not going to have any issues, they're mostly in processed and ready-made foods. ------ hutzlibu I am not sure, how appropriate this is, but a related question/poll: there is the stereotype, that hackers/IT guys are in general fat/unhealthy. But in my experience, this is not at all true. It might just be my circles of people (mostly germans around 30), but most of the IT guys I know, take good care of their body, eat healthy and do all kinds of sports. Even though some are now starting to get lazy, the overall picture for me is, that most are healthy, above average (compared to people of their age). So I am curious, how the world is for other people here on HN? ~~~ propelol People with higher education often take better care of their bodies. Here is my theory: A couple of decades ago, IT didn't require much education, because there weren't many schools doing IT. So many people without higher education worked in IT. ~~~ hutzlibu I would go more with, a lot of sad, fat kids at home, discovered the world of computers, where they could shine, because nobody cared how they looked in the real world, it only mattered what they could do. And this stereotype definitely still exists, I would be curious, how many of the HN crowd fit into it, but I can understand, that nobody wants to out himself like that. edit: and I believe every fat person, knows and knew, that being fat is bad, but when you are sad and eating is your allmost only joy, what can you do? Starving and give up that little bit of happiness? ------ stefek99 I don't really understand - what's the catch? Some other day I've heard the news they were sponsoring research that fat makes you fat. Capitalism baby - profit for shareholders - we need [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line) so that it is legally OK not to harm people. ------ ohiovr Count the isles in your supermarket, how many of them are nearly 100% dedicated to sugar and sugary products? Think back 30 years, is this the way you remember it? Saying diabetes and sugar aren't related while in America there is a massive influx of diabetes diagnoses is like saying your dog ate your homework. ------ sandov I find it hard to follow nutritional advise when there are so many charlatans taking advantage of women trying to lose weight without any health concern. A Medicine degree shouldn't be necessary in order to eat well. Any reliable source where I can learn the 'nutritional 101' in layman terms? ------ justboxing Required viewing if you are interested in the Politics of Sugar. => [http://sugarcoateddoc.com](http://sugarcoateddoc.com) Saw it on Netflix. Thought I saw it on youtube also for free, but can't seem to find the video. ~~~ thirdsun Only available on Netflix US and Canada as well as a handful theater screenings. I've said it before but it almost seems as if those documentaries try to limit their audience. I can't count the number of times I stumbled upon interesting small, niche and independent documentaries only to find out that they are only screening in a few limited locations worldwide without any purchasing option in sight. ~~~ saladeen In that case, here's the hash of the torrent: 376C45CE22B1DDE014F8AF2809BF4ECC798B4C19 ------ m3kw9 The issue begins when you have the sugar industry funding the research ------ lerie82 Maybe we should all just have some moderation. ------ anindha I wonder if we will see a class action for everyone that has developed type 2 diabetes. There is a precedent. ------ sddfd This doesn't surprise me at all. It took almost 40 years to prove that smoking causes lung cancer. Similarly, despite unambiguous scientific evidence, it still seems acceptable to deny that man-made CO2 release into the atmosphere causes global warming. There's actually a good book covering these two instances and others: "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming" ~~~ QAPereo Common factor: Money to be made. Tobacco was the core of many states' economies, and still remains a massive industry which makes many people wealthy. Dealing with CO2 emissions would have required dealing with fossil fuel use... and that's _tons_ of money and power in play there. Sugar is, at the very least, another substance people crave, and has been making people rich for hundreds of years. Delaying tactics are feasible when you have billions or trillions of dollars, control regulatory bodies, own politicians, scientists, and armies of lawyers. Delaying tactics on the orders of just a few decades means generations of VP's and C-levels getting unfathomably rich, as well as key shareholders. So... fuck the harm, delay, delay, delay. The key is that you have to not give a shit about anyone other than yourself, or be genuinely deluded. ~~~ ythn > The key is that you have to not give a shit about anyone other than yourself This is actually quite difficult. Despite its shortcomings (and perhaps ironically) religion can be effective at convincing people to put others first but I would say the default behavior in most people is "I only care about myself and family first". This default behavior is exacerbated when people follow the influence of greed, lust, etc. ~~~ StillBored Its a double edge sword. Most religions require suspension of critical reasoning as well in order to "take on faith" that which cannot be proven (or is outright wrong). The result is basically training people to be susceptible to propaganda. ------ MrScoobs When calories are controlled, there is no difference in health markers between a high sugar diet vs low. ------ rubicon33 I wish someone could explain in detail what EXACTLY is meant by "sugar". It's become an overloaded term. When we say sugar, do we JUST mean refined, processed, isolated sugars of the likes of candy bars, sodas, etc? Or do we mean carbohydrates in general, which are broken down by enzymes in our saliva (amylase) into sugars? If the latter then can we conclude carbohydrates in general are cancer causing? I'm no biologist, or medical professional, so this all gets really confusing when you start thinking beyond the simple "sugar is bad" assertion. ~~~ hathawsh Of the people I know who have been on a sugar-free diet, all of them continued to eat carrots, even though carrots have an interesting amount of sugar. [http://www.sugarstacks.com/carrots.htm](http://www.sugarstacks.com/carrots.htm) So when people say they're on a sugar-free diet, I interpret that to mean they are avoiding refined sugars. ~~~ anindha The total amount of sugar is less important than the glycemic load and the insulin response caused. Carrots are high in fibre. "The glycemic index is a value assigned to foods based on how slowly or how quickly those foods cause increases in blood glucose levels" [1] Coca Cola® (63) vs Carrots (39). Higher is worse. [1] [https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and- conditions/glyce...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/diseases-and- conditions/glycemic-index-and-glycemic-load-for-100-foods) ~~~ fattyboy420 Coca Cola® (63) vs White Rice (72). Higher is worse. By using that logic, chicken nuggets and Pizza Hut beat plain potatoes. Clearly not a good recipe for a healthy diet. ~~~ anindha Both pizza and chicken nuggets are higher in fat and protein so don't spike insulin or blood glucose levels. The preservatives and additives make the Pizza Hut pizza and frozen chicken nuggets unhealthy for other reasons. If you were making your own baked chicken nuggets or pizza from quality ingredients then they are definitely healthier than potatoes or white rice, assuming the calorie intake was the same. This is counter-intuitive to most people because of all the misinformation around the benefits of a low-fat diet [1]. [1] [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945404-the-obesity- cod...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24945404-the-obesity-code) ------ ratpik Mobile phones companies will be next. ------ microcolonel Fruits and vegetables are full of sucrose, it is the most commonly occurring sugar in plants. If splitting more sucrose (or is fructose really the problem?) increases your chance of cancer, it means very little on its own. Would you get the same results if they matched the starches to the glucose equivalent, rather than the same mass? Which is why I don't see why they would bother to suppress a result like this, but I guess the public interpretation would likely be the outrageous "specifically refined table sugar _gives you cancer_ ", so I can't exactly blame 'em for wanting to. ~~~ losteric A 12 oz can of Coca Cola has _twice_ the sugar content of an apple, without the beneficial fiber or vitamins. How many Americans are obese because they eat too many fruits and vegetables? An overwhelming majority are obese due to fast foods, soda, snacks, and sweets... costing taxpayers _millions_ of dollars while companies profit from the negative externality. ~~~ test6554 Where I come from, if a person buys and eats junk and gets obese, that's their own fault, not the fault of the person who sells junk, and certainly not the fault of taxpayers. Their additional costs should come out of their own pockets. ~~~ s73ver_ That's an extremely short sighted way to look at things, which gives a complete pass to a bunch of bad actors in the system. Why is it always "personal responsibility", but never "corporate responsibility"?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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