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Climate deniers get more media play than scientists: study - Errorcod3 https://phys.org/news/2019-08-climate-deniers-media-scientists.html ====== khawkins Link to the original article, strangely absent from this piece: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4.pdf](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09959-4.pdf) They include politicians and business people in their analysis, and though they do acknowledge it as a shortcoming, they don't really do anything substantial to mitigate it. Also, their analysis is really all over the place. It's not clear exactly how they're testing their hypothesis, they're just gathering a bunch of data and creating a bunch of pretty figures. Their "contrarian" list is kept private, so it's hard to know what they're really measuring. They put a ton of emphasis on using citations as a measure of scientific authority, but are using a dataset where they put politicians and business people in one group and exclusively scientists in the other group. There are plenty of climate change advocates who aren't scientists, why couldn't they match the two groups? This is a perfect example of an increasing trend where it seems like the headline of the popsci article covering the research was written first, then a "scientific study" was performed in order to generate the headline desired. ------ phillipseamore I guess the deniers have much more time to spend on media, since they aren't busy with researching, evaluating, predicting and trying to come up with solutions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Parsing the impact of Anonymous - mcantelon http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/09/parsing_the_impact_of_anonymous ====== wccrawford "As long as they don't break into other people's computers, launching DDoS should not be treated as a crime by default; " Yeah, they should. Those attacks are the same as vandalism. They destroy some things that are hard to quantify, such as trust and image, as well as cost the companies money to attempt to mitigate the issue. ~~~ onedognight > Those attacks are the same as vandalism. An analogy for you: What if all your (Anonymous) friends went to Wal-Mart and stood in line to buy something. Then when they got to the front they would fumble around in their pockets and say, "oh darn, I forgot my wallet", then they'd got out and come back in and do it again? Would that be vandalism? Would it cost Wal-Mart money? Would Wal-Mart have to spend time dealing with the problem? Would it be illegal? Should it be? What if these anonymous strangers stood just stood outside and held up signs? Wouldn't the company hire someone to deal with them? Wouldn't that cost them money? ~~~ patio11 That is, indeed, illegal. In Japan, the crime is Disruption of Business (rough translation). In the US, as soon as the clerk wises up and tells you to leave, you're trespassing. It is also probably public nuisance and disturbance of the peace, and an enterprising DA could probably indict you for larceny. But there's two or more of them doing it, with the intention of harassment. Ho ho ho, bad idea. Now we're up to conspiracy to commit racketeering. Tech people seem to think that the law is a finite state machine, which has no memory and so cannot parse a crime out of a series of legal actions. Tech people are foolish about a lot of things. ~~~ wladimir Stop generalizing. _All people_ are foolish in a lot of things. One can't know everything. ~~~ tptacek Concert pianists are foolish about hamster care. They will chew right the hell through a cardboard toilet paper tube! what are you thinking, stupid pianist! Audio engineers are foolish about contract law. It's called an implied-in-fact contract! IMPLIED IN FACT! It doesn't need to be spelled out in ink! Why do you always make this mistake, audio engineers? Sanitation workers are foolish about bespoke tailoring. Functioning sleeve buttons don't work on off-the-rack clothes! You can't position the buttonholes until you've altered the jacket! Stop putting functioning sleeve buttons on those jacket and get back to collecting trash! See, there, I can name three. What is your point? He didn't say tech people are simply foolish; he said they're foolish about _a lot of things_ , and he's right, and you literally agreed with him _the very sentence after_ you told him to stop. Tech people sure are thin skinned. Way, way more thin skinned than audio engineers and san workers. ------ z5h Perhaps if the author had titled the article "Understanding the impact of Anonymous" people would be better able to parse the title. ------ endtime Anyone else sick of articles implying that anyone who doesn't want to support Wikileaks is "bowing to pressure" from some unnamed "they" (probably _Republicans_ )? Wikileaks very much seems to have an anti-US agenda and I can totally understand why an American company would want nothing to do with them. ~~~ randallsquared Stances regarding Wikileaks cross party lines. The current Democratic administration is against them, and I noticed some attempts by narrative- seeking media to pigeonhole support for Wikileaks as being the province of Tea Partiers. But lots of the US left like Wikileaks, so that doesn't work well. A slightly better division might be that the extremes of both the Left and the Right like Wikileaks to some degree, and the middle mostly doesn't. But support on the Right seems to be scattered throughout the span of extreme to moderate, possibly based on whether they think of Wikileaks primarily as attacking the Obama administration (them) or primarily as attacking the US (us). ~~~ hugh3 I don't think you'll find many folks on the right supporting Wikileaks on the grounds that they're attacking the Obama administration. But you'll probably find some supporting them on the grounds of radical libertarianism. It is very much an us-and-them-ism issue though. I find that to a great extent it breaks down upon whom you consider to be "us"; a funny-looking geek with bad hair and some kooky political ideas, or the United States Government. It's a sad reflection on my own consistency that I'd be much more inclined to support Wikileaks if Assange weren't so damn creepy-looking. Something about him just makes me want to flush his head in a toilet. ------ mipapage More from the same author/author background: [http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what...](http://www.ted.com/talks/evgeny_morozov_is_the_internet_what_orwell_feared.html) I knew I'd seen that name before. ~~~ jdp23 Evgeny's done a lot of writing on cyberactivism, and was one of the most outspoken critics of Haystack. Even when I disagree with him (which is a lot of the time) I think his articles are generally well-reasoned and well- researched. He comes from a foreign policy background, not engineering, but usually does his homework well. ------ raintrees "...empowering the likes of NSA/Cyber Command..." This makes me apprehensive that a possible "sell" of this power would be "would you like us to get rid of most/all spam? With our new technology, we will have the ability to trace spam messages back to the source and take appropriate legal action." On the other hand, I would imagine this will spark the digital DNA to rearrange chromosomes so that a distributed anonymous internet appears embedded in the current implementation to continue to avoid power wielders... If adult content has been a driver of past innovation, will spammers be drivers of the future? (I am guessing they already are...) ------ binaryfinery Corrupt officials in the US government must be overjoyed at how this is playing out. What is on the news? Is it: a) That US tax dollars paid for a US "security" company to throw a boy-rape for stoned Afghan police recruits, b) The US Government is engaging in censorship c) Wikileaks' personal army of hackers is stealing credit card information. We have the most damning release of information ever, and yet the media is successfully portraying this as a hacker issue. And we're all fucking making it happen. ~~~ mcantelon The media is very adept at avoiding the real news so if it wasn't Anon it would likely be Assange's "rape". ------ dnsworks Anonymous punished some bad corporate citizens for doing the wrong thing, and bullied some of them into doing the right thing. This is in direct response to the bullying Assange has gotten. Legal or not, it's sort of awesome to see bullies get bullied back.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mac Pro teardown finds a largely traditional desktop inside - Elof https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/mac-pro-teardown-finds-a-largely-traditional-desktop-inside/ ====== flashman Original article: [https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+2019+Teardown/128922](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Mac+Pro+2019+Teardown/128922) ------ vaxman SSD tethered to the T2 and can’t be replaced. That allows them to forever enforce their political authority over what software they let you run using maths.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When a Mars Simulation Goes Wrong - scott_s https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/06/mars-simulation-hi-seas-nasa-hawaii/553532/?single_page=true ====== duxup It makes me wonder who they are testing with and if they are all just academic folks testing isolated academic folks who are constantly concerned about the test they're in.... is that really a test about an experience on Mars? Touching exposed wires (what the heck), turning on the wrong port on a switch (how can they not fix that them self?), nobody answering an EMERGENCY phone? Obvious safety issues not being taken seriously by other participants... Seems like a wonky experiment gone wrong that is pretty distant from testing a Mars experience with people who actually might go to Mars. ------ walrus01 Sounds like some seriously amateur hour electrical shit. I've seen photos of their setup. An off grid photovoltaic system with battery storage, and propane generator that feeds a battery charger, is not rocket science. Telecom people build them all the time for remote mountaintop sites with kWh/day loads much greater than their habitat. They can't ground things properly and have exposed wiring? For the multi million dollar budget, inexcusable. I could build a better power system than what I've seen pictured for well under $80,000 in one time equipment expenses. This article focues on how the medevac compromised their experiment. How about their failure to adhere to proper engineering standards compromised their experiment? Nobody wants to take the blame. Edit: Here is a photo of their pv setup. All COTS stuff. [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project- hawai...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mars-nasa-hi-seas-project-hawaii- completion/) ~~~ exelius Not disagreeing with you at all; just keep in mind that these conditions are ultimately no more dangerous than camping — where exposed, temporary electrical setups are common — which probably gave them a false sense of safety about the setup. Real NASA systems would need to be orders of magnitude more safe/reliable, but I suspect this experiment was at least partially designed to identify potential failure points that engineering solutions need to be built for (I.e. what things can a human fix safely and what needs failsafes and self-healing). ~~~ walrus01 The Wh stored in their battery and the AC power of their inverter are significantly larger than that you'd see camping. Maybe what you'd see "camping" in a $90,000 50 foot luxury motorhome. I'm guessing the habitat has a battery bank of at least eight 12v 100Ah batteries (if AGM lead acid, or equivalent capacity), and at minimim one 4000W sine wave inverter feeding several 120v 15a circuits. Also sounds like somebody shocked themselves on the AC power side, maybe the generator transfer switch, maybe just exposed wiring. Either way there are safe ways to do temporary ac power with twist lock receptacle extension cables and distribution boxes that are insulted up to 600 or 1000V and won't shock people. ------ MisterTea This sounds like a complete lack of training. I imagine the astronauts on a real mission to mars would be instructed to keep hands clear of any live-front electrical gear during such operations. ~~~ Johnny555 It's hard to train someone not to do something that they already know they shouldn't do. Everyone knows they shouldn't touch bare wires, but unless you work with electrical circuits regularly, it's hard to develop the practices that keep you from accidentally brushing against an exposed wire. And cutting over to the emergency generator is something that happens rarely. It's unconscionable that they didn't have NEC compliant covers over _all_ exposed wiring. And they shouldn't even be flipping breakers (unless interlocked) to transfer power, they should just be flipping a transfer switch. If they _really_ need to get to the wiring to fix something, it only takes a minute with a screwdriver to take off the cover. ~~~ emilfihlman I mean this is harsh but how dump are the people you work with if this is how you see people? Not touching a wire is easy to do. If you can't do that perhaps you shouldn't be participating. ~~~ Johnny555 _Not touching a wire is easy to do. If you can 't do that perhaps you shouldn't be participating._ Accidentally touching a live wire is _very_ easy to do, all it takes is a moment of inattention when you put your hand down or a reflexive action to catch a dropped flashlight. That's why electrical code doesn't allow _any_ exposed wires, even in breaker boxes in a locked utility room. ~~~ Gibbon1 Even better you can't have exposed insulated wires. Wires have to be insulated and then they need to be covered. Either run through conduit or with a second insulating jacket ala Romex. ------ jimnotgym As interesting as this is, and no doubt useful for the _pioneering_ missions to Mars, most of these concerns are rather negated by the plan to colonise Mars. Looking at the Elon Musk plan he is talking about taking 100 people at a time IIRC. This allows social groups to form, and allows breaks from the norm by the ability to visit others. If we are talking about 100's at a time, then there would be doctors, engineers, surgical facilities, public meeting areas etc. Presumably the initial settlement will take place in one place not in lots of isolated areas? Early trips presumably would be setting up the space-port and living facilities, making rocket-fuel etc. I think with work to do and with more people and more space to wander around the social problems would be rather easier to bear ~~~ Nokinside Visiting Mars few times, then the public losing the interest is the most likely scenario. Mars Colonization in our lifetime is fantasy. Not necessarily from technical but from purely economic perspective. You can't make near time colony self sufficient and maintaining it would require billions in subsidies year after year. ~~~ nickparker Mars settlement is going to turn out fantastically profitable. At this point it’s pretty clear that with low enough launch costs orbital industry will be a big thing. All sorts of high performance materials can only be made in microgravity: * Better optical fibers with ZBLAN (happening today) and better optics in general with zero-g glass forming * whole new alloys which can’t be made in normal g due to density separation. Think better nickel superalloys, and guess what the price per kg could be * much larger, purer, more perfect crystals of all sorts for semiconductors, drug development, etc * artificial tissues and organs grow better when not under their own weight Launch costs are dropping fast today, but will eventually probably plateau someplace north of $50/kg until we can move past chemical rockets, which IMO is fantasy in our lifetime. As long as launch costs stay that high, it’s strong incentive to develop mining and refining capacity on Mars. The gravity well is so much shallower than Earth that for any destination past LEO, you’re saving money launching from Mars. Martian materials won’t be used on Earth for centuries, if ever. But $50,000 / ton Martian steel + Martian launch costs will be cheaper than ~free Earth steel + Earth launch costs within our lifetimes, imo. ~~~ Nokinside Mars does not have a microgravity. Everything you say is argument for not going to Mars but develop industry in the Moon, close Earth asteroids or in the Earth orbit. Mars is in the bottom of big and expensive delta-v well just like Earth. If asteroid mining becomes profitable, Mars can never compete. It has no microgravity, no enough sunlight, corrosive soil and dust everywhere. It's just a lifeless desert in deep delta-v. Having small economic settlement inside near earth asteroid could be economically sound idea. Most of the work would be done by semi-automatic robots and people on Earth but maybe there is need for on-site crews as well. ~~~ nickparker Mars has half the escape velocity and a much thinner atmosphere. Just from the ideal rocket eqn the same reusable rocket flying from Mars can lift more than 4x the mass it can on Earth, and the comparison is even better when you look at drag and engine efficiency differences. I don’t have the expertise to really compare asteroid mining to Mars, but I’m suspicious of the fixed infrastructure costs. Mining and refining takes a lot of mass. Replicating that mass for each object you want to mine or flying it from rock to rock both seem like significant costs. Perhaps we’ll find a big Goldilocks rock that’s near Earth, will stay near Earth for a long time without insanely expensive capture maneuvers, and contains all the materials we want, but I think Mars has a better shot. Mars also has much friendlier conditions for propellant manufacturing, which is an important factor in these cheap launches. ~~~ Nokinside Mars is red because metals in mars are oxidized (iron regolith). Removing that oxidation requires energy. Just as on earth, most valuable metals are likely deep under surface. Metals on asteroids are easier to extract. Some asteroids, like 16 Psyche are almost solid chunks of metal. Asteroid ice (oxygen and hydrogen) can be turned into rocket fuel with electricity from solar panels. Single asteroid close to the Earth can supply all the needs on earth for centuries. ~~~ nickparker Only the very surface is red[0]. Martian crust is fairly normal rock underneath as I understand it. 16 psyche is one of the 10 most massive objects in the belt. The belt is more than twice as far away, and transfers to it are much more variable over the years than the fairly regular Mars windows. Finding the “Goldilocks” object that supplies all our needs, can be regularly reached economically, etc etc isn’t an easy problem. Also, water gets you hydralox propellant, which is a bit of a pain in the ass. You really want organic compounds too so you can do methalox, which is one more constraint on Goldilocks. [0] [https://m.phys.org/news/2013-05-curiosity-mars-rover- drills....](https://m.phys.org/news/2013-05-curiosity-mars-rover-drills.html) ------ gonzo41 My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. Mars is a long way away and if you have a problem its your's alone to solve. But really how do you not have rcd power supplies in this sort of context! Does Nasa stuff run on AC? I can't see a reason why you wouldn't want something like mains power for the crew being 12v dc for most applications and only a few things like an oven or high wattage device needing more. Kettle? ~~~ matt4077 > My first thought is kill one, train a thousand. While there may be an argument to make for more risk-taking in science, with space travel itself being among the likeliest candidates, I don't see how it applies to this situation. Remember that every one of these simulated missions provides hundreds or thousands of examples for indidividual human interactions each. That's an indication of the amount of data needed to draw applicable conclusions. Allowing people to die could never approach those levels. Any conclusions would also be tainted by the nature of these experiments as simulations far more than any other events–because "is the result worth the price" would be the dominating question. ~~~ gonzo41 I was being flippant. I was suprised by the electrical fault. That sort of mistake doesn't really seem very NASA. ------ 21 Interesting thought in the article: > If the crew goes rogue, the people back on Earth might have no idea. Some > degree of eavesdropping on the crew might be necessary. ------ Nokinside I don't think testing small group dynamics with a crew who are not "the right stuff" tells lots of useful things of what happens when astronauts go to Mars. Especially when there is no real danger. ~~~ akvadrako It has been suggested before that people who are "the right stuff" might actually be poorly suited for a Martian mission. Becoming an astronaut or world-class scientist is highly demanding and takes a lot of energy. But a Martian trip will likely be incredible boring and stress interpersonal relationships. So what we really want is competent, relaxed people who can handle 6 months of downtime in tight quarters. ~~~ Nokinside Are you familiar with the Navy saying: Every Sailor a Firefighter? Do you think that damage controlman rating trains mainly for boredom (because usually nothing happens) or do they drill for surviving in a emergency? Just like the life in the sea, aviation or in the ISS, Mars mission will be going trough checklists and routine inspections and preparation for emergencies. When something goes wrong it's the end of the downtime. ~~~ neurotech1 Not disagreeing with the "every sailor a firefighter", although the current generation ISS astronauts get considerable EMT training, along with other necessary emergency skills. Most astronauts have considerable knowledge of electrical system as well. Were the Hi-SEAS astronauts trained to the same level as a NASA ISS astronaut? Unlikely. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one highly experienced EMT, if not an actual emergency physician? Yes. Should a future Mars simulation have at least one person with considerable experience in electrical engineering, computer science or avionics systems? Yes. ------ eps Having an option to call 911 in a pinch renders this whole setup a complete joke. Regardless of what they are testing the mere existence of this failsafe massively skews the results, if not rendering them useless completely. Remarks like "I'm not a doctor, but it could be a heart attack _or something_ " don't instill much confidence in the quality of the experiment either. It's also telling that first responders refer to them quite bluntly as "fake astronauts." ------ txsh What a complete waste of time. The point of a simulation like this would be to see observe how people react in isolation and under stress. But, reading this article, its clear that these people are acting to please the scientists rather than reacting naturally to events. If everyone clucks like a chicken on Day 7, is it because that’s what happens under these conditions or is it because the software developer from New York saw it in a movie and thinks that’s what the scientists want to see? They’re even quoting lines from the Martian while they are in the simulation. They are playing make believe. This is not science. ~~~ practice9 The article gives an impression of a group of people who behave like cultists. ~~~ marcosdumay Guess what, if you give people some high purpose, lock them away from society and force them to stick together, they start acting like cultists. It may still be useful to see what kind of cults develop there. If I had to guess, I'd say the experiment planners want to discover how to manipulate people into the right kind of cult. ------ liquidify Article was way too long.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A day in the life of a memory leak hunter - hollywoodcole http://www.szegedi.org/articles/memleak.html ====== huherto Excellent article, it was invaluable to me a couple of years ago when I was trying to find a memory leak that was placing a very large project in jeopardy. ------ cstejerean As a mental exercise think how many people that call themselves "Java developers" would be able to troubleshoot the issues this guy encountered. I love statements like "take a look the code below" followed by what appears to be perfectly normal code to me and then "the problem in the code above is obvious". ~~~ bayareaguy This guy definitely deserves credit for focusing on the problem. Most java developers I know would have tried some cheezy workaround like periodically restarting the process. As a consequence things like this go unsolved for years. This is actually a common issue whenever you have long-lived processes which suck in third-party code. Half the complaints I see about browsers these days is that they leak memory. I remember a similar problem in C++ years ago with a poorly coded initializer. One of the core dumps of an X application I looked into had over 50 megabytes of copies of the string "Helvetica". ------ asmosoinio I read it, understood some of it -- and am now happy not to be this guy. And I do consider myself a "Java developer", even though I have not been working with Java lately. ------ gojomo Though he doesn't mention which Java version he's using, nowadays some core bundled facilities can make such diagnoses a lot quicker. 'jmap -histo' give you instance counts by class in a running JVM -- so over a period of unexpected memory retention, or the period just before an OOME, you can identify supspiciously overrepresented types. A binary heap dump and then browse with the 'jhat' tool can backtrace the exact reference chains causing objects to be retained. -- especially if you have the luxury of debugging a 16MB heap, rather than (say) a 2+GB heap. The really annoying OOMEs in my experience are those that aren't really object heap exhaustion -- but other depletions that still get reported as OOME. Sometimes, increasing your object heap makes these worse (eg by allowing less space for non-heap JVM structures). At least starting in Java 6, these "other OOMEs" tend to have different messages.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple stock trading halted; pending news imminent - golfer https://twitter.com/CNBCnow/status/1080576067436494848 ====== steverb Apple lowered revenue guidance to $84 billion, down from the $89 to $93 billion it had previously projected. The company lowered gross margin to about 38 percent from between 38 percent and 38.5 percent. From: [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/apple-warns- on-q1-results.ht...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/02/apple-warns- on-q1-results.html) ------ Dunedan > BREAKING: Apple warns on Q1 results My guess is that the round of price increases we saw last year was too much, so more and more people decided to switch away from Apple. ~~~ Despegar >While we anticipated some challenges in key emerging markets, we did not foresee the magnitude of the economic deceleration, particularly in Greater China. In fact, most of our revenue shortfall to our guidance, and over 100 percent of our year-over-year worldwide revenue decline, occurred in Greater China across iPhone, Mac and iPad. It was China actually. ------ dang [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18810469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18810469)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
IBash Notebook - jeroenjanssens http://jeroenjanssens.com/2015/02/19/ibash-notebook.html ====== toth This looks great! I've been looking for something like this for a while! I've tried to use ipython (with the '!' magic) as a bash notebook, but it doesn't handle bash variables in a nice way, and it requires escaping $s and some other characters. Too much friction for me. The author hints at future Bokeh support, that would be icing on the cake! ------ wodenokoto This is really cool. I hope it'll move forward! I'm also very excited about the IHaskel kernel mentioned, though it is very difficult to install currentlyb(I've failed on 2systems so far)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
10 Tips For Achieving Email Bliss - Lightbody http://blog.lightbody.net/post/17327461693/10-tips-for-achieving-email-bliss ====== pavel_lishin This is pretty good for work e-mail, but I 100% disagree on not using filters in personal stuff. I get a lot of notifications - forum replies, twitter follows, upcoming concerts, facebook stuff - that I absolutely don't need to see in my inbox. ~~~ Lightbody Thanks. I probably should have added: for that kind of stuff, I aggressively unsubscribe. Consider that tip #11 :) ~~~ pavel_lishin I want some of that stuff. I don't visit Facebook on its own, so I need the reminders. I don't crawl concert sites on my own, so I like being notified of that stuff. But none of that ever requires my immediate attention.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Codeschool is giving Free access: Learn web technologies with coding challenges - pajju http://go.codeschool.com/voV55g ====== pajju most of the course(CodeTV and screencasts) are downloadable in SD/HD formats, but trust me, SD has got excellent resolution, and so don't download HD formats. Another worth mentioning point, go to CodeTV and download if you want it for offline access.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How to build client trust - neilos http://bluespot.io/2016/04/25/building-trust.html ====== brudgers An interesting insight. Reading it made me think that the other side of the information asymmetry is equally relevant: the client knows more about their strategic and tactical goals as well as their economic capacity to pay for work.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Does Evolutionary Psychology Show That Normativity Is Mind–Dependent? (2014) [pdf] - lainon https://philpapers.org/archive/BERDEP/ ====== SolaceQuantum Note that evolutionary psychology, which theorizes that human behavior is genetic and controlled by largely genetic forces, is highly controversial in of itself for being excessively reductionist and prescriptivist in its research. I would recommend reading a few of the outlined common criticisms and then looking at the paper with more context as to what it may be exploring here. A simple summary of some things: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_ps...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology) ~~~ walter_bishop "Note that evolutionary psychology, which theorizes that human behavior is genetic and controlled by largely genetic forces, is highly controversial in of itself" If 'human behaviour' hasn't evolved along with homo sapiens then what do you propose as the source, and if you invoke some non-corporeal entity then please get thee to a pulpit :) ~~~ SolaceQuantum I think human behavior is more nurture than nature, especially so considering that human culture changes much faster than the timeline of evolution normally does, and to ascribe the traits of one culture to inherent human fundamentals(as evolutionary psychology has been criticized of doing) is so Eurocentric as to imply that there is only one way to be a human being.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
HackrTrackr.com - jacquesm http://www.hackrtrackr.com/ ====== blakeperdue Nearly crashed by browser. Perhaps limit the initial number of map items to load? ~~~ bd Yes please. There are many clustering / level-of-detail solutions available for Google Maps: _Handling Large Amounts of Markers in Google Maps_ [http://www.svennerberg.com/2009/01/handling-large-amounts- of...](http://www.svennerberg.com/2009/01/handling-large-amounts-of-markers- in-google-maps/) ------ krisneuharth I like the idea but it seems like it has not been worked on in over a year, and then another year before that. This could be a really useful tool for organizing meetups. If someone out there associated with this project is listening: I should be able to move my location in the event I move or made an error entering it. I should also be able to update my HN name should something happen to it. When logged in, auto-zoom the map to my location. ------ metachris HackrTrackr makes FF 3.0 as well 3.5 unbelievably slow. Will have a second look if this is fixed. ------ AndrewDucker Multiple people in the same city seem to be overlaid on top of each other, so that you can only see one of them. ~~~ mcantelon If you zoom their differing locations will become apparent. ~~~ Keyframe no, they wont. edit: for the downvoters - try it first, then downvote. If multiple people are in the same city/place -> only the last one added is shown, since others are probably overlapped with it. ~~~ sh1mmer It seems like the "location" field is just getting geocoded. So some people entered an actual address rather than just a city name. That said I bet there are a bunch of people stacked on "San Francisco, CA" ~~~ mixmax Copenhagen is the same. I see only one user, but I know that there are at least two. I'm the second. ------ henning Holy shit, visiting that site is worse than loading a PDF if you're on an old machine. ------ johnnyg This loaded fine for me in ff3.5 + ubuntu linux. Hopefully you get some more traffic and the blanks will fill in. Meetup.com returns no results for "ycombinator" so it looks like the Houston Ruby users will be my only monthly meetup obligation. P.S. I'm only the second from Houston, TX. I feel like some rare, endangered flying frog... :) [http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090810/sc_afp/asiaenvironmentw...](http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090810/sc_afp/asiaenvironmentwildlifewwfhimalayas_20090810104611) ------ TallGuyShort I appreciate the verification mechanism - allows one to maintain security on both sides of the fence... ------ prpon Why do I not show up on the map? Is there something a HN user need to do to show up? I looked around all of Los Angeles area, I don't show up. ------ ScottWhigham Wow - there are only two Dallas-based folks - me and "sid12112". That is odddddddddddddd. Sure there are a few surrounding-city folks in the area but only two _in_ Dallas. ------ dakr So many letters. How about hkrtrkr? ------ bemmu Hello Koobe from Tampere =)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dmytri Kleiner: Kickstarter will never become big with it's current model - webmonkeyuk http://www.dmytri.info/for-projects-like-kickstarter-to-scale-they-can-not-depend-on-the-limited-funds-workers-are-able-to-divert-from-consumption-and-must-tap-into-the-real-source-of-accumulation-surplus-value/ ====== clavalle Only, under current laws, this is impossible due to restrictions on non- accredited investors. That is why the crowdsorcing investment laws snaking their way through Congress right now are so exciting. I don't see what is stopping other countries with less restrictive laws from incubating such a company, though.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Gene Wilder Has Died - cpymchn http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37215553 ====== simonsarris Willy Wonka (screenplay by the genius Roald Dahl) has one of my favorite scenes in film and I invite you all to watch it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sz9jc5blzRM) > In 1970, when originally offered the lead role in Willy Wonka & the > Chocolate Factory by director Mel Stuart, the great Gene Wilder accepted on > one condition. "When I make my first entrance,” he explained, “I'd like to > come out of the door carrying a cane and then walk toward the crowd with a > limp. After the crowd sees Willy Wonka is a cripple, they all whisper to > themselves and then become deathly quiet. As I walk toward them, my cane > sinks into one of the cobblestones I'm walking on and stands straight up, by > itself; but I keep on walking, until I realize that I no longer have my > cane. I start to fall forward, and just before I hit the ground, I do a > beautiful forward somersault and bounce back up, to great applause." Asked > why, Wilder said, "Because from that time on, no one will know if I'm lying > or telling the truth." Quote from: [http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world- part...](http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/06/part-of-this-world-part-of- another.html) ~~~ grovulent I wonder if younger folk today watch that and think how quaint, old and dated it seems... or if they see it and wonder if their current modern cinema fair is really missing something these strange films had. ~~~ oneeyedpigeon It's a great sadness to me that many children have grown, and will grow, up with the perception that the vastly inferior Tim Burton remake is the definitive version. The film starring Wilder should be included on future releases of the former as a public service. ~~~ dkonofalski I never understood this. The Tim Burton version of the film isn't a remake of this one. It's a direct adaptation of the book and is vastly more faithful to the source material than the GW version of the movie. Why people continue to compare them as if they're the same thing is weird to me. I enjoyed both almost equally but for entirely different reasons. Why others can't is beyond me... ~~~ simplexion How is it more faithful to the book? I also really like both of the films but I don't see how either is more or less faithful to the book. ~~~ jmcgough It shares the same name, and some scenes are more faithful - like the squirrel room, which became a room full of geese in the original film. ~~~ memsom But in the Burton film, ultimately, it's a story about Wonka reconnecting with his estranged father, explaining all of his weirdness and childlike behaviour as being somehow related to this event. Charlie is a second runner in that respect from the moment Wonka enters the screen. My other issue is that Depp is insufferable, irritating and took the "child- like" description to an extreme. I dislike the Burton version more than I dislike the Hitchhikers film... which is to say, a lot. Both took a well trodden and loved story and changed it in a way that seems to add nothing to the narrative. The Hitchhikers film[1] fell back on the "but Douglas Adams never told the story the same twice in any medium" as an excuse. I don't believe Burton had that one to fall back on. Especially as Dahl felt Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory didn't capture his vision for the movie[2]. [1] [http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_ab...](http://www.therobotsvoice.com/2011/05/the_15_worst_things_about_the_hitchhikers_guide_to.php) [2] [https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy- wonka...](https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/why-roald-dahl-hated-willy-wonka-and- the-chocolate-120115179.html) ~~~ WorldMaker Regarding your footnote [1], it wasn't entirely an excuse. Most of the new things people hated in the movie were from Douglas Adams himself (he did almost all of the film's many, many drafts), because he never could tell the story the same way twice. You can almost tell there was a telephone effect in Douglas Adams writing, revising, rewriting his own drafts so many times for the whims of Hollywood executives. The interesting bit of final irony being that when Douglas Adams passed Hollywood passed it off to British directors that didn't meddle much further with the final draft beyond what happens naturally when you cast it and storyboard it. ------ fitzwatermellow My favorite scene, and it's an absolute masterclass in comedic technique, is from Woody Allen's _Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex_. The moment his Greek patient confesses: "Doctor, I'm in love with a sheep!" Without saying a single word, Wilder's expression goes from jesting to confusion to amusement to fright to intrigue and back again through the entire gamut of possible human response. He sputters and strains. It's all right there on his face! We feel the tortured struggle occurring within his mind, grasping for any semblance of assessing the situation and formulating the appropriate thing to say. It's truth is it's genius! ~~~ pshc Found it! [https://youtu.be/B94lP-fZyLk?t=40s](https://youtu.be/B94lP- fZyLk?t=40s) ~~~ ourmandave I sheepishly clicked the Up Next Video link: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbMa7BpPsNc) ~~~ lberlin "Sheepishly"! ------ rdtsc Young Frankenstein is my all time favorite comedy [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072431/) It just has the right mix situational and sarcastic humor. I usually re-watch it every couple of years. Gene Wilder is just so good in that role. ~~~ kahirsch Wilder also came up with the idea for the movie and wrote the first draft of the screenplay: [http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstei...](http://www.screenplay.com/downloads/scripts/youngfrankenstein.pdf) ~~~ epimetheus I did not know that, it's interesting to know. However, Mel Brooks did direct it, and I wonder how genius it would have been without his direction. ------ dmd [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRb3u0PtEZE) is how I always think of him. ~~~ dcherman What did you expect? "Welcome, sonny?" "Make yourself at home?" "Marry my daughter?" You've got to remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know... morons. He'll always be the Waco Kid to me. ------ woodruffw Very sad. Young Frankenstein was probably my favorite movie as a kid - the Frau Blucher scene[1] always made me laugh. He'll be remembered (and watched) for a very long time, which I suppose is the greatest honor an actor can receive. [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIID_TGwhM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdIID_TGwhM) ~~~ ourmandave Young Frankenstein is filled with so many wonderful moments. "Igor, help me with the bags." "SED-A-GIVE?!" I just wish they hadn't opened with a coffin jump scare. It sets the tone of the movie as horror and it took 14-year-old me a while to realize it was a comedy. Fast forward _many_ years and I couldn't get my young daughter to watch it because that first scene scared her. ~~~ mjklin "Damn your eyes!" "Too late!" I laugh every time. And I can never meet a girl named Abby (including my niece) without murmuring to myself "Abby...Normal..." ~~~ rdtsc Just the setup and the props are hilarious, like the slot in the door with the label "Brain Depository / After 5:00pm slip brains through slot in door" The first few times I had missed that, and then kept finding little things like that or bits of dialog I missed (English is not my first language it took a while to catch some phrases in it). ------ greggman As a Gene Wilder fan I was once digging for things to watch on Amazon and stumbled on a documentary narrated by Gene Wilder. I wouldn't have even noticed it but when I saw his name He'd been out of the limelight for so long I thought "wow, what could have made him agree to do this?" So I watched it. I can't recommend it enough. It's called "EXPO - Magic of the White City" and is as about the 1893 Chicago Exposition. It takes about 10 minutes to really get started and it's got some cheesy stuff but it was fascinating. I've shown it to several people and they all got sucked in. Not sure if this is a legit upload but it's on YouTube [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cpOQE5KJJds) Or Amazon [https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene- Wilder/dp/B004S...](https://www.amazon.com/Expo-Magic-White-Gene- Wilder/dp/B004S77VGW) If it weren't for Gene I'd never had known about such an amazing topic. Thanks Gene! ~~~ citruspi Last Spring I read Erik Larson's The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America. It's about the same 1893 World's Fair in Chicago. It's non-fiction, but written in a novelistic style. I absolutely loved it, I can't recommend it enough. [0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_in_the_White_City) ------ bitwize Is the grisly Reaper mowing...? :( Alternatively... Do you know what happened to the man who suddenly got everything he ever wanted? He lived happily ever after. ------ 1024core I'll always remember him from Blazing Saddles. ~~~ hakcermani and See No Evil Hear No Evil with Richard Pryor. ~~~ caseysoftware I watched that again recently on Netflix. It was fantastic and yet another movie they could _never_ make today. ~~~ riffraff I also love the movie, but why do you think they couldn't make it today? ~~~ angersock Put simply, films like _Blazing Saddles_ made fun of racism without necessarily making fun of racists. They showed the institution as silly and absurd without having to look down and mock the people beyond an initial "Well, yeah, they're bumpkins". A modern film would likely lampoon them mercilessly and dehumanize them. Additionally, the comic talent those films drew from comes from a very different lineage. Folks like Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor and Mel Brooks have a very different frame of reference for how to do comedy, how to pace it, how to deliver it. I find that modern comedians, having come up with the increasing HBOfication and Comedy-Central-style shows, tend towards very similar schticks: generally progressive-leaning (though the non-progressive stuff is awful redneck pandering as well!) inclusionistic near nihilist little screeds on stage. These tend not to lend themselves to being cast as anything other than a reflection of their own brand in a movie. I won't really make the "Movies are all PC" argument, because that's silly and overused, but I will say that from a pure marketing standpoint it's difficult to sell a movie as thoroughly dirty as say _Sleeper_ or cleverly offensive as _Blazing Saddles_ : audiences are not interested in that sort of comedy anymore in a world of _Soul Plane_ and _Larry the Cable Guy_ and so forth. ------ milge "A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men." One of my favorite quotes from Willy Wonka. ------ jv22222 Young Frankenstien is one of the funniest movies of all time. Every scene a classic. If you haven't watched it, I highly recomend it. RIP Mr Wilder ------ mattezell "From that fateful day when stinking bits of slime first crawled from the sea and shouted to the cold stars, "I am man.", our greatest dread has always been the knowledge of our mortality. But tonight, we shall hurl the gauntlet of science into the frightful face of death itself. Tonight, we shall ascend into the heavens. We shall mock the earthquake. We shall command the thunders, and penetrate into the very womb of impervious nature herself." -Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein. ------ amyjess _The Producers_ will always be one of my all-time favorite movies. Gene Wilder was a fantastic actor. ------ Imagenuity Good night, Herr Doktor. ~~~ jv22222 This comment is perfect in every way. It made me laugh, then it made me cry. Thank you. ------ rmason How many people remember that Gene Wilder was in Bonnie and Clyde? Or maybe I should ask how many people here have even seen that movie with Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway? [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061418/) ~~~ ArkyBeagle I do! I remember it well. ------ gm-conspiracy Also, a great buddy comedy w/ Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor: See No Evil, Hear No Evil [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098282/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1) ------ gm-conspiracy Also a good comedy, Haunted Honeymoon: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091178/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_11) ...with Dom DeLuise in drag. ------ petergatsby Still my all-time favorite song in a musical: Pure Imagination [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ- uV72pQKI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ-uV72pQKI) ------ btgeekboy He lived a long and accomplished life. I can only hope to be as as successful as him. Good day! ------ ArkyBeagle Wilder combined with Mel Brooks... that's a high-water mark. It's nearly criminal that he wouldn't make any more movies after Gilda died, but I admire the gesture. ------ syngrog66 huge fan of him and especially Young Frankenstein. so much so that I created a character in a comedy story named Heinrich von Hexenhammer as a homage to Gene's definitive mad scientist: [https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_...](https://reddit.com/r/DSPR/comments/1m4zrl/when_heinrich_met_betty_a_scene_from_book_2/) ------ Salijerr Rest in Piece Gene Wilder This quote and other ones will never forgotten "You get nothing! You lose! Good day,sir!” ------ mikeryan dammit 2016. ------ sverige Love his acting and the great romance he had with Gilda Radner. ------ madengr Wilder and Pryor were the dynamic duo. Loved those movies. ------ BatFastard May you rest peacefully in the land of your imagination. ------ davesque Probably the nicest man who ever lived. ------ dredmorbius Metacomment: As I've gradually shifted from reading, listening, or watching news, which I increasingly find almost wholly irrelevant, if not downright insulting, to expose myself to, I'm relying on curated sources, and HN in particular, to a larger degree. So this is the first I'd heard the news, some 13 hours after posting as I write. One thought that occurs is that HN has something rather good going on, in its incentives, audience, financing (HN isn't a revenue center, but does feed awareness of YC), and resulting informational production. Developing it further might be of interest, or finding a way to tap into it to produce a higher-quality "what's happening of significance in the world" product (feeds and filters off of HN already exist, e.g., the HN subreddit, basRSS). And a substantial part of that is the culture that's been specifically cultivated. Researching the issue of trolling online, I happened across a post from nearly two weeks ago (which I'd missed in first appearance) on _Time_ magazine's "how trolls are ruining the Internet" article. HN admin and mod dang offered a rebuke to an uncharitably rude comment, in this thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12322114) The context for _that_ was my experiences in the past week in a new community which turns out to be quite centrally founded on the principle of pervasive anonymity. An interesting premise, but difficult to get right. My venture there didn't go well: [https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imz...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/500ysb/the_imzy_experience_well_that_escalated_quickly/) There's also the premise that news itself is often simply unproductive and unhealthy, and its different formats, particularly television/video, but also radio and print, have some fairly deep psychological influences, despite the fact that individual stories often have little personal impact -- we can neither do much about them, nor they to us. This isn't _always_ the case, but the factors that _do_ make news matter, relevance, context, background, and an exposing of the powers and reasons behind events, is rarely part of the modern product, which emphasises shock, reaction, outrage, and distraction. Not only mainstream commercial television, but the "better" sources -- BBC, CBC, NPR, PBS, _The New York Times_ , _Telegraph_ , and _Guardian_. [https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad- ro...](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/apr/12/news-is-bad-rolf-dobelli) I receive a local paper. I'll listen briefly to headlines. I occasionally read news sites directly online. But whether it's me or the media, something seems changed, and relevance is largely missing. Just to give an example, the local paper where I'm visiting carried a story this morning about an "artificial leaf" development by a university research team. The story ran a half page, from a news service billing itself as ecological news -- one of the many wire-service pieces that fills what's left of the business section of the paper on Mondays. Hoping for an explanation of the design, mechansim, or product, in that half page, there was one sentence revealing _any_ of this, and I quote: _Here’s how it works: The energy of the sun rearranges the chemical bonds of the carbon dioxide._ Read it for yourself: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic- artif...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/originals/ct-uic-artificial- leaf-bsi-20160822-story.html) Literally the entire remainder of the article was noninformational filler. A paragraph or two of which on why synfuels-based energy storage is useful, I can understand. But ... this isn't even _pretending_ to inform. (There's a _Science_ article which reveals slightly more: [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6298/467)) The remainder of the paper is similarly loaded with anti-information. A brief news roundup buried in the back of the first section contains what little actual news is present, again largely wire articles. There's perhaps a well- written article every week or two. Op-eds are occasionally, though rarely, considered. A friend characterises the columnists as largely writing about themselves or to each other. And yes, this is the same Tronc product John Oliver lampooned, with absolute justification, consummate skill, and delightful effect, on HBO a few weeks back. Oliver's right: the media business environment stinks. But Tronc have stopped even trying. So: HN, an intelligent audience, a diversity of views, a fostering of civility, even in disagreement, principled readership, and quite frankly a really boring design asthetic, are all soft-power influences shaping a quite useful information stream. Thoughts kicked up by seeing this headline in the story list. And yes, beyond that, I'll miss Wilder, a gentle but brave comic genius of our age. ~~~ dang Thanks for the thoughtful reflections. I'm glad I saw this. ~~~ dredmorbius You're welcome. I'll add, you've spanked me at least once for an off-flavour comment (on the Slashdot aquisition story). Interesting thing there was that your guidance prompted me to go beyond my first impressions (I was, and remain suspicious of the company which bought Slashdot), and turned up a fairly messy past. Might still not excuse the tone, but that ended up strengthening the basis for the sentiment considerably. ------ AncoraImparo How is this relatable to Technology? ~~~ knicholes Humans involved with technology also sometimes have favorite actors. ------ mdevere i enjoyed his portrayal of steve jobs ~~~ anonbanker Very dry humor. Upvoted amidst a storm of downvotes.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are the benefits of Docker? - bozho Docker is becoming quite popular. I've used it as an end-user just 3 times, and it never worked as expected. But assuming it does work, can you please list some actual benefits? And contrast them with install scripts, for example (considering the overhead of the VM and the issues in VM-host communication).<p>There are two use-cases - software that gets distributed to end-users for deployment, and internal software that gets deployed on your own (or cloud) infrastructure.<p>Let's look at the 2nd case, which is more dominant. Why would I, as a developer, package my software with docker, if I can provide install scripts that do all of that, and thus have scriptable deployment without any extra overhead or learning curve? Or is docker mostly useful for the 1st usecase above? ====== davelnewton The arguments for (and against) Docker are all over the web. It's useful in both cases; it's not clear to me what you mean by "actual benefits". You have precise control over what's getting deployed and have almost zero reliance on anything on the deploy environment. If you have "install scripts" that do all of that then you're duplicating the efforts of Chef, Puppet, Docker, etc. that are probably (but not necessarily; benefit of the doubt and all that) better than your deploy scripts. You're also still at the mercy of the environment where those scripts are run.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A reddit image viewer I hacked together over the weekend - teapot01 http://reddit-slider.herokuapp.com So, I was annoyed with clicking back and forth between reddit and things like imgur and quickmeme, so I hacked this together in about a day.<p>Its built on a couple of php scripts on a free heroku instance, backed by a mecachier cache (also free) and still maintaining reasonable response times despite increasing traffic. ====== teapot01 The entire app is built on a Heroku static php stack, with a memcache backing. Despite ~20 users per minute, and free hosting tier it's still running reasonably quick	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Could Patriotism Be Genetic? - BIackSwan http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/why-were-patriotic ====== vijayr genuine question - why should anyone feel patriotic at all? shouldn't we love/like the whole planet? what is the point in getting attached to a place just because we were born there? ~~~ bovermyer The article explains this, to a degree. The short version is that we naturally identify with people similar to us. Geographic separation is an influencer in this. As such, a person will identify more closely with those around him than with those hundreds of miles away. An ingroup and an outgroup are thus formed. Per the article, such a distinction can then lead to either patriotic (pro-ingroup) or nationalist (anti-outgroup) behavior, depending on how strong one's ties to one's own group are. This is why the only way to unify the planet as you suggest is to introduce an extraterrestrial threat strong enough to make our entire species an ingroup. Which is, if you'll forgive the comics nerd moment, exactly what Ozymandias does in the Watchmen. ~~~ Kristine1975 But that doesn't explain why the ingroup and outgroup follow along a nation's borders. _> exactly what Ozymandias does in the Watchmen._ Although Dr Manhatten casts doubt on whether he achieves that goal for a longer period of time when he last talks to Ozymandias. ~~~ coldtea > _But that doesn 't explain why the ingroup and outgroup follow along a > nation's borders._ They follow across MANY borders, including a nation's. They follow family borders, neighborhood borders, city borders, county borders, state borders, nation borders and even wider cultural borders (e.g. US, UK and Australia closer to each other than to Peru or Brazil, and vice versa). ------ ris Hold on, are we talking about patriotism or nationalism? There's a difference. ~~~ dang The article goes into this distinction in detail. ------ sanxiyn Betteridge's law of headlines failed, because the answer is yes. All of Big Five personality traits are heritable, with about 50% heritability. So this is pretty much expected result, not a surprising result. ~~~ vox_mollis It's surprising to the mainstream left, which is as ignorant of current behavioral genetics research as the mainstream right is of climate change research. Edit: downvoters, I'm not trying to be explicitly political here. I'm really just making a broader point that the uncritical embrace of the blank slate hypothesis is the reason this is surprising, in the same way that confirmation of AGW would be surprising to a climate change denier. ~~~ facetube You're being downvoted because you're being overbroad IMO. To claim the entire "mainstream left" is ignorant of behavioural genetics research is demonstrably false and may be viewed as being politically motivated. ~~~ crusso Notice that you had to add "entire" to vox's statement to make your point. Vox's point was a bit of a generalization, but your argument used an unfair exaggeration. ~~~ facetube Was he talking about only a portion of the "mainstream left"? These are individual American citizens with a variety of competencies and experience; it's unclear to me why there'd be a connection between this and one's political beliefs. ~~~ crusso Even the modifier "mainstream" suggests a subset of some larger "left". If you understood his similar comment about the "mainstream right", that should give you an idea of how he drew the connection for the "mainstream left".	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
SARS-CoV-2 Point of Entry into Cells Captured by Cryo-EM - ajaviaad https://www.genengnews.com/news/sars-cov-2-point-of-entry-into-cells-captured-by-cryo-em/ ====== easytiger This is what I see when I click the above link [https://imgur.com/a/NPKYdBR](https://imgur.com/a/NPKYdBR) The web had been well and truly ruined ~~~ pdm55 The relevant paper: [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/03/scie...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/03/03/science.abb2762/tab- pdf) Note: Official names have been announced for the virus responsible for COVID-19 (previously known as “2019 novel coronavirus”) and the disease it causes. The official names are: Disease coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) [https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2...](https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel- coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus- disease-$covid-2019$-and-the-virus-that-causes-it) ~~~ fuzzfactor The artwork on this Science PDF looks excellent. However, on the Linux I am using, the text color on the images is not fully consistent with the art, nor is its description below the figures. This can get more confusing with the superimposed structures in Figure 5.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Give it five minutes - sathishmanohar http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3124-give-it-five-minutes ====== analyst74 I come from the opposite direction, where I was thinking too much. In the sense that I am quiet in most conversations, because I need to think about what to say back, and most conversations flow quite quickly, and I end up with a response well past the point it's applicable. This is bad for two reasons: 1, if you don't say anything, the default assumption is you don't know anything, unless you have well known achievement in the field. Now your peers will eventually learn what you know, maybe even more than they do, but it takes time, and modern life is fast; 2, you don't have to be wise/correct/knowledgeable in all conversations, especially casual ones where people are just shooting the stars and will forget what was talked the next day. The real tricky thing, the thing that distinguishes a <i>wise</i> man, is to know when to speak like a fool, and when to dive into deep thinking, and when to shut up. ~~~ silvestrov _if you don't say anything, the default assumption is you don't know anything_ This is an US-ism. In northern Europe it is often the opposite: constant talking heads are regarded as empty and being concise is a valued skill. We're just nice to the talking heads and let them fill the air with words, but we don't regard them as better than the quiet ones. I've often experienced that the longer the quiet persons don't say anything, the more nervous the talking heads get, until they can't restrain themselves and demands that the silent ones say what they think. ~~~ tertius Being a immigrant (to the U.S.) I completely agree. Many people can't stop talking because of insecurity, a little of what Jason said in the article about himself. ------ sray This reminds me of _And the Rock Cried Out_ , a short story by Ray Bradbury. The story revolves around two American tourists who are in South America when the US and much of Europe is wiped out by nuclear attacks during the Cold War. With the US in rubble, everyone is out to get the tourists as payback for all of the terrible things America has done in the past. Anyway, they eventually meet a man named Garcia who offers them help. They're shocked, since everyone else wants them dead. Garcia explains: _Do you read the papers? Of course, you do. But do you read them as I read them? I rather doubt that you have come upon my system. No, it was not exactly myself that came upon it; the system was forced upon me. But now I know what a clever thing it has turned out to be. I always get the newspapers a week late, from the Capital. And this circumstance makes for a man being a clear-thinking man. You are very careful with your thinking when you pick up a week-old paper._ That always stuck with me for some reason. ~~~ jurjenh I like that. I may use it next time someone hassles me for reading week(s)-old newspapers. I've always maintained that it gives the news a chance to mature, so it becomes a lot easier to separate the filling from the meat, but the flip side means missing out on the leading edge (forecasts of storms / shortages) that may prove to be very important. ------ leftnode I frequently fall victim to this and I've gone through considerable effort not to. One example: at my previous job, our ecommerce site had individual templates for each product. We only had around 20 products, but I came from a job where you might have thousands of products, so a single template was used. I just couldn't wrap my head around why you would have individual templates for each product. The pages were mostly static (aside from a header and footer, and the pricing), and they took quite a while to make. Then I realized that because we had so few products, we could really customize and market each page to highlight the features of each product. I went on to build a personal site with only a handful of products the same way as well. Like Jason said, spending that extra time (even if it isn't literally 5 minutes) can really change your perception of something. ------ youlost_thegame Oh man, I'm like having a dejà vu. This realization occured to me about a year ago, and when it came to me, everything was so clear. I had been an asshole in too many meetings because of wanting to speak first. My manager, on the other hand, was a very quiet, enigmatic guy, and he seemed wise. While the engineers discussed some ideas, he listened. By listening, he was able to detect who was full of B.S. and who was has the best ideas. In the end, when he finally broke his silence, he was usually right. Silence is very, very powerful, and it's never too late to learn to shut up ------ rumblestrut I have found this approach to be quite useful with my co-workers, friends and even my spouse. Sometimes I hear an idea and my initial reaction is "No," when what is really going on inside me is "Let me mull it over." The trick for me is to not open my mouth too soon before I've truly given the idea a chance to breathe a little. ~~~ zotz > The trick for me is to not open my mouth too soon before I've truly given > the idea a chance to breathe a little. Silence is the ultimate wisdom. I just proved I'm a fool by even mentioning it. ~~~ pshc Tangental: reservation of judgement can be taken too far, becoming extreme relativism/pacifism/social signalling. <http://lesswrong.com/lw/yp/pretending_to_be_wise/> ------ jilebedev >I came into the discussion looking to prove something, not learn something. I'm just future-fantasizing here but ... Wouldn't it be a ripe topic of neurochemical study to find out what happens in a brain that decides that ego stroking is more important than learning through constructive conversation? I suspect that "deciding to learn" requires a significantly higher activation energy than simply choosing to prove "I'm right". ------ MattJ100 > Learning to think first rather than react quick is a life long pursuit. It’s > tough. I must admit I stopped reading about here. I don't think I'm among the intended audience for this post. It personally takes quite something for me to stand up and criticize someone's work. I certainly couldn't do it within five minutes - I need to soak an idea up first. I often explain to people that I'm a slow thinker. I actually don't know if it's that, or that I just have a higher threshold of thought before I have confidence to speak about something. That usually means I'll be the last to speak on a subject, but I'd hope that my contributions when I do speak are then at least a _little_ more considered than those who spoke first. That's what I'd like to think, anyhow. ------ Toenex Interesting. I read this as saying "have some respect for those brave enough to present a novel idea for consideration" which I think we would all agree with. How we do that is always a function of our personalities and consequently of our personality disorders of which we should be mindful. However, good ideas need to be tested and must therefore survive robust discussion. I'm an ENTP/ENFP on Myers-Briggs personality tests and thus I do tend to get very enthusiastic about ideas, bombard people with questions and point out any issues I observe. This is just how I learn but can be annoying for people unless they know me so I try temper my behaviour. I'm from England where the workplace can still be a little more reserved. ------ joelhaus _"Seek first to understand, then to be understood."_ \- Habit 5 of Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People[1]. Trusted, influential and successful communicators are trained to engage with people this way. It's less about "thinking" before you speak, than what the intentions are behind your interactions with others... are you seeking first to understand or to be understood? Everyone wants to be understood, and when you consistently give them that, you get much more in return. Another case of common sense being not all that common. If you're like me, then you too need to make this a conscious pursuit. [1] <https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit5.php> ------ draggnar This relates quite closely to the idea of thinking "fast" and "slow" as proposed by Daniel Kahneman. Here is an interview from the other night: <http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/12185> The basic idea is that our brains have two methods of thinking, first on intuition, like when we are driving a car. Natural reactions based on intuition are very powerful, but the flip side is that they are often wrong and we won't realize we are making a mistake. That takes going into the second mode of thought, thinking "slow". It is important to realize when to step back from the intuition of fast thinking to the rationality of slow thinking. ------ RyanMcGreal > Asking questions means you want to know. Ask more questions. Just make sure they're real, good-faith questions, not booby traps. ------ smountcastle This is really difficult sometimes. I wholeheartedly agree with Jason about giving new ideas some time (and thought). Most people are resistant to change and their immediate reaction is to reject new and/or novel ideas. Some ideas take days of rumination before you fully grasp the implications so you just have to take the time to let them sink-in. ------ ronnoles Am I the only one who's really tired of the 37signals people tossing their dime-store philosophy on us? ~~~ homosaur Not clicking on links is very, very tough. I can understand how you're having trouble. ------ pazimzadeh There is a French expression for this: "Tourner sept fois sa langue dans sa bouche" or "Turn your tongue in your mouth seven times before speaking." <http://french.about.com/od/vocabulary/a/7foissalangue.htm> ~~~ emmelaich They also have 'esprit d’escalier' :-) ------ jinhwang That's solid advice. AND it JUST happened to me. Another entrepreneur with ZERO credibility in the space that I'm operating in flat out told me that another company is ALWAYS going to deliver a feature better than we are. My knee-jerk thought was "Who do you think you are? Jeff Bezos?" I disagreed and later said I would think about options. I should get into the habit of stepping back and absorbing what just happened or what was just said. Although I still disagree with the delivery of the message, I do see some insightful gems from the casual conversation. And you always have to have thick skin in the startup game. Nay-sayers are everywhere but there is wisdom all around you. You always need to listen for it. ------ bostonvaulter2 This advice reminds me of "The Soak". Here's an excerpt: Back to the original flame mail from your friend. You’ve received these before and you know the absolute wrong thing to do is immediately respond. Of course, your animal brain is dying to do so because IT FEELS SO GOOD TO PUNCH BACK, but it’s never the right move because your animal brain is defending itself, it’s not resolving anything other than proving BOY CAN I PUNCH BACK OR WHAT? My advice regarding flame-o-grams and hard decisions is the same. Sleep on it. [http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/04/05/the_soak.ht...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2006/04/05/the_soak.html) ------ fourmii I think this is a pretty simple but important little piece of advice. I am certainly guilty of speaking before thinking a lot of times. In the day of 140 characters, blogs and a steady stream of self-anointed 'expert' bloggers and media pundits, you don't get too many examples of the eloquent thinker. I'm glad I came across this post, as it applies to my actions, in professional and certainly in private life. Thanks again Jason! ------ sankalpk Imagine an environment where you did TWO things: 1) You gave your opinion immediately without fear for others thinking of you as an asshole. 2) You thought about it for more than 5 minutes later. You might even think about it for hours later that night. It's not one or the other. Both are very important. I've seen more annoying and bureaucratic things happen because people are too afraid to say what they think. Not because people think too less. ------ robinjfisher It’s great advice. When somebody is talking, people are very rarely listening. They’re waiting to speak or preparing their next argument. By doing that, you don’t hear what the other person is saying and more often than not misinterpret what they are saying. It’s a skill I’m still learning and it’s a combination of patience, humility (I’m not always right) and a desire to learn (other people will know more and have better ideas than me). ------ tikhon As recounted in Carnegie's classic book: When General Meade squandered a great opportunity to capture General Lee and his army after the Battle of Gettysburg, Lincoln wrote a harsh letter to Meade. The letter was found after Lincoln's death, still in his desk drawer, never sent. <http://www.lettersneversent.com/pages/about/index.php> ------ Chirag If I get a negative remark, I usually take a step back, kind of like a out of body view, and see if there is any validity, if there is truth in the remark, I thank the person and ask questions; else I just smile. Some people mistake a smile for agreement and I use smile to put a full stop to the argument. In my limited experience I have seen there is no point winning a pointless argument :) ~~~ youlost_thegame I absolutely agree with you. I try to avoid fighting about some stuff, especially if I have the feeling that the responsible to implement some feature is going to do whatever he wants anyway. ------ emehrkay Great stuff. I dont blog, but I want to. I recently came to the conclusion that I don't think about things enough, I dont form an opinion. I read a lot of stuff and wonder how the author came up with what they wrote or how they managed to piece two points together that otherwise would have seemed unrelated. The answer is as simple as they gave it five minutes. ------ yepreally I think 5 minutes is too little time when you've taken offense to something. A day is usually the right amount. For idea consideration, I think 5 minutes may not be enough for some and may be too much for others. ------ duncancarroll To see a post like this is both satisfying and depressing. Satisfying because it's always good to see someone learn an important life lesson. Depressing because I know far too many smart people with zero humility. It's such. a. shame. ------ techiferous Reminds me of this Zen koan: <http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/1acupoftea.html> ------ stretchwithme Very true. Commit your grievance to whatever system you use for reminders and take a walk around the block, comforted in the knowledge that it is in the queue. ------ vlokshin If you give this article 5 minutes AFTER you read this article, it's like... extremely honest and... awesome. ------ funkah At the same time, the world is full of ideas, and a pretty tiny fraction of them are any good. The world feels especially full of ideas these days, since a lot of folks now fancy themselves "creatives" (that is, people who come up with ideas without having to get into the yucky business of actually executing on them). Here's the real challenge: What deserves your five minutes in the first place? Many intellectually bankrupt ideas benefit from the notion that both sides of an argument should be considered. This is partially why we have dumb ideas like "intelligent design" floating around -- they get their oxygen from the mistaken notion that both sides should be considered, when in truth the issue is much more one-sided, or should be. _Because_ ideas have power, there is an incentive to pitch such ideas and to persuade others with them, however hollow they may be on examination. There is value in talking about "clean coal", even though no such thing actually exists in the world. You can't waste five minutes of your life every time someone says their ideas at you. So, what do you do? I suppose my approach is to try to develop a filter, to try to focus on things that are actually worth thinking about. But honing that filter is a challenge in itself, trying to keep oneself intellectually honest, trying not to indulge in parochialism. This is a tough subject, there are no easy answers. ~~~ lclarkmichalek "A pretty tiny fraction of them are any good"? I really don't agree. Most every idea is pretty good, at least in a couple of circumstances. Most every idea also has very serious flaws. But that does not mean the idea is worthless. I guess the most obvious example is democracy; it has some very serious flaws, but it's the best we've got. Usually, the same can be said for any popular political philosophy; good, but with some serious flaws. Also, in the vast majority of cases, both sides of the argument should be concidered. Sure ID should be dead by now, but the first time it was proposed it very definatly should have had both sides heard. Look at when evolution was first proposed as an idea. Had both sides not been heard on that idea, had it not been given it's 5 minutes, we would live in a very different world. Of course this is an example that will make many people wince, as I am comparing an evidence backed theory with pure religious dogma, but I fail to see the difference. If religious based dogma cannot be successfully argued against, then maybe some more research should be done to counter it. But until a rational/scientific argument can be formed against it, I see no reason why it should not receive its 5 minutes. I disagree with you. Every time you deny an idea 5 minutes, or the time it takes to form a convincing argument against it, you are presuming guilt. It's standard that we put the burden of proof on the person proposing the idea, but just recently I've been trying to put the burden of proof on myself. If I cannot form or find a convincing argument to counter the idea, then what reason do I have not to accept it? Or if not accept it, at least give it a space in the great library of valid ideas. Maybe "giving the idea 5 minutes" is a bad way to look at it, but coming up with a purely rational/scientific basis for the dismissal or acceptance of any idea is a very good exercise. ------ drats Six days ago, during the last HN cycle of 37signals blog/marketing, I said that I thought they were desperate to prove that their path was so awesome because there was tension about not getting acquired and not really working on anything world-changing (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3629729>). I think this post of introspection from 37S supports my point. It confirms that all the other 37 Signals stuff was part of their program of constantly churning out contrarian pablum because it's good marketing, because people (young men usually) like to do that and because they have this uncertainty about them which needs to be masked with an aggressive stance. Whatever the past reasons for posting I welcome this blog, if it's genuine, because it might be the first signal of a change from the usual blogspam from 37 signals that magically makes it's way to the HN front-page on a regular basis. ~~~ aspir I think you're looking at the world through rose-colored glasses. Sure this blog is marketing. All blogs serve at least a partial marketing purpose, whether they be from individual software developers, small businesses, big companies, or nonprofits. The difference is that "good blogs" are ones where I can extract value from the post. Signal vs Noise is one of these blogs. I don't understand your complaint at it's core. Are you upset that multimillionaires are sharing their key decision points, advice, and retrospectives in exchange for promotion? Most people charge for such disclosure, and highly so[0]. We're lucky that the culture and technology of the web has torn down this glass ceiling access to insight. Just look at the forum we're discussing this in -- new.ycombinator.com -- if you're anti marketing, you may not want to raise issue within a forum owned and run by an extremely active investment fund [0][http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/search/?feerange=ABOVE%20$50,...](http://www.kepplerspeakers.com/search/?feerange=ABOVE%20$50,000) ~~~ drats But they don't share anything of worth to my mind. I like _most_ HN links that make the front page but I've yet to find a 37 Signals post that's really anything but smoke and mirrors designed to indirectly praise themselves. Someone made that same smoke and mirrors criticism of PG's essays a while back and I think that's false, he puts work into his "blog" and it's interesting. More than that he gets other people to read it and give feedback before he publishes. The quality of the 37 Signals stuff is just incredibly low and it only makes the font page for "hip" reasons. ~~~ LargeWu There is a foolproof solution to this. It doesn't even require any time or effort on your part. It's this: Don't click on the link. Just don't click it. I'm not even going to speculate why you are so worked up over the fact that other people find value in something you don't. We get it. You don't like what they write. Just don't read it. Problem solved. Ask yourself if this is really worth any more of your time or emotional investment.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How hard are beginning college CS classes? - solipsist ====== T-R Depends a lot on the school, and how much prior experience you have. As far as rigor and workload, that really depends on the professor. That said, intro courses are usually designed to be at least survivable by someone with no background at all. Strictly talking about the difficulty of concepts, a curriculum based off of SICP (or something with a similar emphasis on functional programming or math) will probably be full of new concepts even for those who've had some experience programming. I'd say this is a good thing for everyone involved, because it both levels the playing field for those without experience, and ensures that those who have some still get something out of the course. Most schools, though, start with imperative concepts (as does AP Comp Sci), which isn't a bad thing either, but someone with experience won't get as much out of it until later in the course. If you're applying to schools or about to start a class, it wouldn't be a bad idea to dig through the department website and see if you can find the site for the class to see what it entails. ------ ibejoeb * What school? They can be very different. Some curricula are highly theoretical, some practical, some hybrid, but most still are termed "Computer Science." * What is your background? Have you been exposed to mathematical proofs, logic, discrete math, or computer programming? * What is your purpose? Are you worried about filling a single freshman requirement, or are you planning on studying computer science? ------ Wingman4l7 In my experience, CS 101 was easy to get into and seemed to be designed to get students excited about computer science. Heck, one of the final projects was to implement an Asteroids game. We even used a beginner Java IDE developed by one of the professors -- <http://sourceforge.net/projects/jigsaw-ide/> ------ Stythys not very hard at all, at least in my experience.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Criminals aren't going dark, says Harvard study - theandrewbailey http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/1/10887838/criminals-going-dark-terrorism-berkman-center ====== brudgers The Harvard Study: [https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/dont- panic/Dont_Pan...](https://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/dont- panic/Dont_Panic_Making_Progress_on_Going_Dark_Debate.pdf)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook buys Parse - uptown http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/25/facebook-parse/ ====== cletus This doesn't surprise me in that it seems like a natural fit for Facebook, who has a Mobile Problem [tm]. As much as people fear Facebook becoming The Internet (in the AOL sense), Facebook is actually really late to this party. Apple has a mobile OS, a content and payments ecosystem and a deeply integrated set of products. Google has a mobile OS, GMail, a search engine, a burgeoning content ecosystem and its Maps/local properties. Amazon has a content and payments ecosystem, a limited mobile presence (Kindle Fires basically, which are of course tablets not phones) and cloud infrastructure. All of these things are (IMHO) pieces in technology's future. Facebook really is a one trick pony (although an 8000 pound pony if you want to stretch the metaphor). It's why you saw them panic about Instagram (if a ~2 year old company with 13 employees is an existential threat then your position is, by definition, precarious). It's why rumours of a Facebook Phone have circulated for a year or two (eg Project Spartan) and why Facebook launched Facebook Home. It's trying to get the benefits of having a mobile OS without actually developing one and building market share (ask Microsoft how hard that is). Facebook's strength really is being a closed silo/platform for The Internet (or a version of it at least). So buying Parse makes perfect sense as they want to extend the reach and power of the Facebook platform. Congrats to the Parse guys. Disclaimer: I am an engineer for Google. ~~~ Apocryphon Ironic that Google seems to have a social networking problem, while Facebook has a mobile problem. ~~~ jacquesm If google keeps ramming their social network product down peoples throats it won't be very long before they have more than just a social networking problem. ~~~ voidlogic As a user my G+ experience is so far superior to my Facebook one that I laugh every time I read something like this. I check my G+ every day because my streams are interesting and I enjoy it; I check my FB everyday because my entire extended family, pre-school friends and their dogs have accounts there. People are crazy to think that Google should not just have one account that spans all their services, it makes business and technical sense; however, if you don't like G+ just don't use it- your Google account just might mean you have a blank place holder page there. ~~~ jacquesm I don't use facebook either. So G+ is far inferior because at least I can get facebook out of my life. ~~~ psbp Do you just not like the name? As voidlogic points out, it's basically a generic account for Google services. There's a potential to engage socially, but you don't have to. ~~~ jacquesm I'm pretty hard to fool. ~~~ saraid216 No, you're just hard to please. There's a difference. ~~~ reaclmbs He is a C programmer. ------ oneplusone Damn. I was going to use Parse for my app, but now I will not. What are some of the alternatives out there? ~~~ dweekly Bummer. Can I ask why this changed your mind? At FB, we're quite serious about finding ways to gift third party developers with APIs, tools, open source, platforms, whatever we can do to help. I think Parse is pretty awesome and is likely to become more so at Facebook. That's a useless opinion if it's not shared by the wider community, though. So: feedback taken seriously - we're listening. Fire away. ~~~ newhouseb > gift third party developers with APIs... Phrasing like this concerns me. When making platform decisions, I would very much like greater assurance that there is an expectation of how a relationship matures than you would find in a "gifting" scenario. I feel like sometimes the attitude from Facebook has been "We're giving all of this stuff away for free! What is there to complain about?" Free means no expectation of warranty and zero assumed reliability. I don't really even care about free. If you're running a real startup, you pay for things, and I would gladly pay for Facebook API usage if it meant that Facebook took their APIs a little more seriously (I could talk at great length about all the subtleties in Facebook's APIs that require us to duplicate insane amounts of work that Facebook could _easily_ take care of). Amazon is clearly the best at this with AWS (especially in preemptively coming up with new services it turns out everyone was building piecemeal anyway), I would look at Amazon's APIs and try to port the some good insights to the Graph API. ~~~ randartie I think the word gift and give in this context are interchangeable. Sounds like you found a word to pick at and are now just hating Facebook for the sake of it. (You managed to extrapolate that Facebook has 0 assumed reliability because he used the word gift.) ~~~ newhouseb Quite the contrary, I think Facebook is great and is only getting better. But as someone who builds a lot of stuff on their APIs I can say it's easily the shakiest component of our architecture. ------ pxlpshr Congrats to the Parse team!! As a customer, not necessarily happy about this. I don't like Doug Purdy's quote, "We don’t _intend_ to change this." We use Parse and love it. I really hope they maintain some autonomy as to not get sucked into the "move fast and break things" or "documentation? f--k it." Nonetheless, probably makes a lot of sense for Facebook's mobile strategy. ~~~ csmajorfive Our focus on quality in product and documentation got us to this point so we're not going to change that strategy anytime soon :-) ~~~ bitcartel What did your revenues look like? This acquisition doesn't really tell us if Parse, based around a proprietary SDK, had a viable business model or not. ~~~ csmajorfive I can't share revenue numbers but we picked this route over multiple Series B term sheets. So, that's a measure of viability. ------ csmajorfive Shout out to HN favorite grellas for being our counsel. <https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=grellas> ~~~ grellas Thanks, Ilya - amazing outcome and richly deserved. A wonderful group of founders and a supportive and first-class group of investors. ~~~ jacquesm Now there is a good combination :) Congratulations to all of you! ------ aashaykumar92 It's nice to see Facebook is aware of the areas which it lacks in. Just recently (in the last couple of days), there was an article clearly saying how mobile developers are in fact turning away from Facebook, for a variety of reasons. Acquiring Parse is not only demonstrating acknowledgment of this problem, but also providing a potential solution and way to tackle the problem. Congratulations to the Parse team and good luck in helping to bring more developers to Facebook's platform! Given Parse's success so far, I don't see how or why Facebook shouldn't benefit from this acquisition. ------ tsurantino Could this mean that Facebook is positioning itself as the AWS (in a very metaphoric sense) for mobile and expanding opportunities for the Facebook kapp ecosystem? I understand that this is a new revenue stream for the company but I've never really seen the Facebook apps platform spawn "fully-fledged" apps other than those that boasted some form of basic Facebook integration. On the desktop at least, a Facebook app has always existed as a second-class citizen, being on a separate page that is segregated from the rest of the Facebook experience. Of course, you can argue that News Feed integration is one way to mitigate that, but from what I've seen, such integration is sparse and jarring - serving as an ad for the application that people on Facebook see. ------ abijlani I'm a big fan of Parse even though I prefer Firebase as a developer. This is sad news because I think they were one company that was executing really well and would have been successful on their own. Even though Facebook and Parse say they are not going to shutdown the service we all know how that story goes. ~~~ csmajorfive They may not be the majority but there are acquisitions where a service keeps running. This is one of them. ~~~ youngerdryas Parse is awesome, and you may be right, but for me being owned by Facebook is a deal breaker. ------ fizzbar Interesting that Ilya doesn't seem to apprehend why so many people are uneasy about this. ~~~ csmajorfive I apprehend it and it's an important issue to address. So, I'm addressing it. ~~~ swombat You're not addressing it, you're just making reassuring noises. Addressing it would involve explaining why Facebook actually bought Parse and how it fits in their overall strategy. There are many reasons, both honest and dishonest, why you may not be able to explain that, but until you do, you're not addressing the issue. Which is fine by me - I don't have any eggs in this basket - but the pedant in me needed to point this out. If you want to have a chance to dispel all the doubts, start by answering the above clearly and with no overly enthusiastic exaggerations à la "Facebook is awesome and Parse is so great" and so on... ~~~ avichal It's really not that hard to understand why Facebook "actually" bought Parse. Parse has a great product that developers like to use. Facebook has a platform and that requires making users and developers happy. Buying a product that makes developers happy and making it a part of Facebook's platform is a pretty straightforward strategy. ~~~ swombat That's an incorrect explanation. _Facebook has a platform and that requires making users and developers happy._ No, Facebook has a platform that requires extracting as much personal data from people as possible in order to sell ads to advertisers. The developer platform, apps, etc, are all subordinate to this objective. There's no business model for Facebook to "make people happy". It is absolutely an advertising company, and Parse is/was not. So, the question remains, how does Parse fit into Facebook's advertising-driven business model? ~~~ avichal That is a pretty big misunderstanding of how Facebook operates. If Facebook put advertisers ahead of users, it would not be at 1B users and it would not have been around for 8 years, and dominant for many of those years. The business model is primarily to make people happy to make sure to have their attention, and secondarily to sell ads against this attention. I've worked at Amazon, Google, and Facebook. The core characteristic of each of these companies is that they are all ruthlessly focused on their primary customer as the user, not as the retailer or the advertiser. And it is for this reason that they get to massive scale and become dominant. If you don't get this, then you won't understand why Parse is a clear fit. ~~~ swombat Ah, that ruthless focus on keeping the users and the developer community happy must be why Google killed Reader and will probably kill Feedburner soon, and why so many great products got acquired and then killed by their new owners a few years later. You're right that if you believe what you just declared, then Parse's future at Facebook seems reasonable. You're also right that we won't convince each other of our views on this, so I guess time will tell whether Parse continues to thrive or gets shitcanned in a few years. ------ khangtoh Apple should have just acquired Parse. iCloud is a mess, it's a next step for them to provide some sort of back end API for iOS developers. They're sitting on a huge pile of cash and all Tim could come up with is stock buyback. ~~~ zw While I agree that there needs to be a "fix" (and I have to assume one is in the works), but taking the Microsoft route of throwing money at problems until they work put them into the position they are today. ------ mseebach I'm not a mobile developer, which is probably why I struggle to see what Parse does? What does Parse give me (if I was a mobile dev) that I don't get from Heroku+libs? Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it? ~~~ rdouble _Are push notifications and identity so painful to deal with that there's a business in creating a full platform to deal with it?_ Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win) Parse has an iOS data object that syncs properly, whereas there is no evidence that any developer has ever gotten Apple's own iCloud + Core Data to sync properly at the record level. Parse is cross platform so you can easily get the same data for a user on a desktop, web, android, iOS and windows mobile app. Cobbling all this together with Heroku + libs would be possible but would require a lot of work. Parse just works out of the box. ~~~ pifflesnort > _Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win)_ er, what? It's an afternoon's worth of work, involving basic PKI and TCP sockets. I know it's an afternoon's worth of work, because I've done it in an afternoon. ~~~ jkubicek That's silly. Seeing as how I had to google PKI to see what it was, I doubt I'd be able to build a Parse-like service in one afternoon. Parse may not be strictly necessary, but it's a fantastically easy and cheap way for iOS (and Android and front-end and Windows Phone) developers to get their backend up and running. ~~~ pifflesnort > _Seeing as how I had to google PKI to see what it was, I doubt I'd be able > to build a Parse-like service in one afternoon._ Then it's something you would learn, and those several afternoons would mean that you'd be well equipped to tackle a similar problem in an afternoon later. Basic x509 certificates and PKI is really something an iOS developer (or any developer, really) should be able handle. Understanding this stuff is pretty central to just about all secure communications we have between clients/servers _anywhere_. It's not like you have to reimplement a crypto library; you just need to know the basics of how they work. ------ drusenko Congrats guy, you all deserved it. Awesome team, lots of hard work, and it sounds like Facebook will be a great home. ------ davidkatz Parse is handling 10 million requests for our app per month, and I'm very uneasy about this. ~~~ csmajorfive Why? Email me - [email protected] ~~~ jonknee Is it really not obvious? Parse doesn't overlap with Facebook's core goals and that frequently means somewhere down the road "business as usual" means "you have 60 days to GTFO". There's also not wanting Facebook to have access to your data or just plain not wanting to do business with Facebook (I fall under that category, a FB buyout or partnership is the fastest way to get me to stop using a service). ------ fizx Here's my speculation: Facebook bought Parse to attempt to own mobile usage data. Draw parallels with what Google did when they bought Urchin to form Google Analytics. I don't think Facebook cares about creating developer experiences. I think they care about having tracking hooks into mobile applications. ~~~ csmajorfive That's incorrect. ~~~ WayneDB Why? Makes sense to me. Why else would Facebook want to "power my app" with Parse? Haven't they always only offered developer services for their own platform and not the wider web? ~~~ mhartl The person who wrote "That's incorrect" is a Parse founder (<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=csmajorfive>). ~~~ pifflesnort Does that make his statement more or less likely to be accurate? ~~~ donohoe More likely to be accurate. If the original statement had a nugget of truth it would be easiest to just ignore it and not answer. Instead, they are going on the record and saying its not true. ~~~ pifflesnort > _Instead, they are going on the record and saying its not true._ It's not like "going on record" means anything; truth is an oddly malleable thing. What's true today might not be tomorrow, what is said to be true may only be what the speaker _needs_ you to believe is true, or it may be the speaker only _believes_ it to be true. The best predictor of what's to come is past experience and objective observation, not the words of people who have both incentive and ego wrapped up in propagating a particular narrative. [edit] From another comment, here's an e-mail from the Parse team, from 1/15/2013 -- only 3 months ago: "Being acquired isn't part of our game plan for now. We want to build a viable business that people can use and enjoy. We have 50k apps built on our infrastructure and a huge customer base that is growing rapidly. Everyday we have more and more Basic, Pro, and Enterprise users paying us for our awesome services." <https://gist.github.com/brianpattison/5463282> When you're dealing with venture capitalists, the truth is whatever they need the audience to believe. ------ namuol _/me immediately downloads dumps of all his app's data._ But seriously, what will this mean for my user data? Privacy, portability, etc. What alternatives are there that compare in quality? Don't tell me HeliOS, because that's iOS-only (I use Parse for it's web apps mostly). ~~~ csmajorfive We're not changing anything. We're not going to suddenly lock in your data, share it somewhere you don't want it to be shared, or anything like that. ~~~ jonknee No one gets married with a divorce planned, but divorces aren't exactly uncommon. This quote from Zuck comes to mind: > "We have not once bought a company for the company. We buy companies to get > excellent people." As do a few acquisitions followed by shut-downs: Drop.io, Face.com ($100M!), Gowalla, etc. ------ corylehey And I was having such a great day until I read this. R.I.P. Parse ~~~ jamesgpearce Why? No plans to let it rest. ~~~ modarts I'm sure that's not Ilya and team's plan; but the issue is that they no longer have ownership of their "plan". I'm struggling to see how this isn't blatantly obvious to a lot of commenters here. ------ 6thSigma As a Parse user I had hoped they would be a "never sell" type of company. This news saddens me. We will likely be migrating off soon. ~~~ merlinsbrain As someone who was just about to use Parse, what options are you looking at? ~~~ estel See the replies here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5609898> ------ julianpye I hope the platform can stay as independent as it is. I just recently won a Google arranged hackathon in Munich (and through it a fully paid trip and tickets to I/O - yay!) and it would have been totally impossible to do this without parse. A few lines of code and I was able to setup a complex messaging system between a native Android app and a server visualisation. It sets you free from so many worries and really makes any mobile app that talks to a server so much easier to develop. It's the single most useful service I have ever used in this space. ------ BillySquid Good news for the Parse team, but not so good for Parse users. ~~~ csmajorfive Why? We're not going anywhere. Email me if you want to chat - [email protected] ~~~ redrocket For the love of code, please place a 'delete account' option within your gui. ------ mamatta Everyone wants a piece of mobile dev tools. Think Twitter + Crashlytics and now Facebook + Parse. As some might remember, Facebook at one point only had Heroku as their core Dev partner [1], so it only makes sense for Facebook to get in this space. [1] <https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/558/> ------ txttran Does $85M seem really cheap to anyone else? ~~~ jsnell No? From what I can see they've taken less than a 10th of that in VC. And this is the first time in over a year that I've heard anything about them. Buzz isn't everything, and maybe there was a viable business there. But they certainly weren't setting the world on fire. It's pretty hard to see how a near $100 million exit in circumstances like that would be disappointing or "really cheap". (And congrats certainly seem in order for everyone involved). ~~~ pg _But they certainly weren't setting the world on fire._ Actually their growth was _very_ good, among the steepest of all the 500 or so companies we've funded. ~~~ jsnell That's great to hear. But since pretty much nobody here has access to those awespme internals, I still don't see where the gp's "really cheap" impression would be coming from. ~~~ sarbogast When you have used the technology and seen with your own eyes the amount of time and effort it saves you when developing a mobile app, $85M really seems very cheap, especially when you compare it to how much they paid for an Instagram for example. Plus it should be mentioned that although their primary focus was on mobile platform, their SDK's also support Windows desktop, MacOSX, and traditional web dev. The potential is absolutely huge. ------ zan2434 Whoa. This is pretty big news. This + Piecable + Facebook's huge push in mobile development recently = Facebook building a new, simpler development platform/environment for mobile apps? This speculation can be taken pretty far. ~~~ apalmer Facebooks problem is a fundamental development culture one, 'move fast and break things' is not great from the perspective of developers latching onto your platform. If the reward is great enough, yes its worth it... ~~~ jamesgpearce Working on improving these things! Indeed we hope this deal demonstrates that. ------ techbubble Dammit...was just about to start using Parse on two major projects after a fair bit of testing. Back to square one it is. ------ gailees Parse is an amazing product. Facebook just killed it on this acquisition if they can find a way to leverage Parse's ability to provide quicker deployment and their position as a great platform for rapid distribution. ------ DrinkWater Seriously disappointed. Many (me included) will fear that a brilliant product like Parse will be abused to reheat the future outlook on Facebook. I hope the product itself will stay as independent as possible (very unlikely). ------ stephen And here I thought there wasn't any money in dev tools... ------ joeybaggles Well this is not the future I was hoping for with Parse and our apps. What to do, what to do... ------ jedc Congrats to the team for being the third-biggest exit to date of a company to come from a seed accelerator. <http://www.seed- db.com/companies/funding?value=exit> [edited; originally said FB bought OMGPOP but it was Zynga. Sorry I was wrong, it's past midnight here] Looks like they're making Ignition Partners happy... I'd guess around a 4x return. But making a lot of other angels/funds happy, too. (Garry Tan, Google Ventures, David Rusenko amongst others). Details here: <http://www.seed- db.com/companies/view?companyid=102025> ~~~ kul I thought Zynga bought OMGPOP? ------ grigy I just started to build my app on Parse. Now I want to migrate. What are the alternatives? ------ icodestuff Congrats, Parse guys. Please try not to let Facebook ruin an awesome service. ~~~ chrisblizzard We heart them and their services. They aren't going anywhere. ------ cpher It's weird... Last night I had a completely "arbitrary" dream about this company. Like, my <insert fake company name here> company was struggling with payments and this company was in my dream. I'll acknowledge that I've been using CPAP for over a year and now can actually remember my dreams (_shudder_) because I sleep so well, and I don't actually use this service, but for some reason my dreams were very vivid. I'm not even sure why they might be relevant to me right now. Maybe I read too much HN before bed... ;) ------ gridmaths If you could have invented Parse.. you would have invented Parse ------ jmacduff Congrats to the Parse team, great product and team. (from the buddy.com team) ------ macarthy12 28 days ago I said : Expect Parse to be bought soon. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5454779> ~~~ dmcy22 Nice. What caused you to think that then? ------ juanbyrge Lol that's a lot of money to pay for a mongodb instance ~~~ csmajorfive lol ~~~ onedev lol ------ aespinoza Congrats to the Parse team. I am a bit bummed. I was very happy to compete with them. Hopefully the founders stay and keep bringing it on. ~~~ csmajorfive We're staying. ~~~ aespinoza Cool! See you guys in the trenches. ------ mtitus16 That was fast <https://www.stackmob.com/parse/> ------ modarts This is really disheartening. I'm glad that I only build a POC on top of Parse before fully diving in. Any recommendations for comparable services (something with a decent javascript api would be nice; i'm not doing a whole lot with native mobile) ------ sinzone Soon FB will monetize most of their APIs too. Example: Real-time access to all its social stream is going to be a paid usage API. ~~~ mcintyre1994 I'd rather see that approach than a no entry, shut down developers approach. Admittedly Facebook offers a lot more than Twitter to justify such a cost, but Twitter seems like somewhere developers want to be too. Paid usage API sounds like a good idea to me. ------ mcs So surges of facebook apps will have data with default ACLs set to everyone? ------ jpatel3 Congrats to Parse folks! ------ afinlayson Congrats! ------ youngerdryas That really sucks. I mean it is great for the Parse team but I trust Facebook as far as I can throw Zuckerberg.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
$87 M. News Corp. Backed Startup Shuts Down Before Launch - ccarella http://www.betabeat.com/2011/12/31/to-oblivion-and-beyond-wait-no-just-oblivion-87-m-news-corp-backed-startup-shuts-down-before-launch/ ====== freejack I think this is less a story about a failed News Corp. ambition and more a story about how the music and telephone industries have developed first rate competencies at stifling innovation. Hearing stuff like this makes me really sad for the future of the Internet if everything new & exciting will need a gatekeeper or two to sign off on it. I don't know how viable the business model was, or why they needed $87m to prove it wasn't viable, but I can't help but think that we would have had services like this 10 years ago (okay, 5 maybe) if media and networks weren't so tightly controlled. Thank god for the Open Internet 'cuz the closed one doesn't seem to be doing much... ~~~ rhizome Just think how far that $90MM would go at other companies in the same space. ~~~ freejack heh - yeah, that's like 10-20 startups worth of cap! ;) ~~~ sc00ter Or 1.5 Color's worth. ~~~ rhizome So in an age where C-level executives have to be paid some higher amount in order to attract "the best talent", BO and Color and their $150MM wasted dollars would seem to provide an object lesson to the contrary. ------ listening How much of the $87M went toward legal fees? Lots of negotiation here. The technology is trivial by comparison. Thinking out loud... Has any publisher managed to control their content in the digital age? Academic publishers still manage to keep their content under control. How? The cost of a subscription is exorbitant. Only large entities can afford it. The large entities, e.g. universities or large firms, pass on the cost to their customers, e.g. students or clients/customers. There's also the small fact that the content is not marketed heavily and in high demand among the general population. Unlike music. Perhaps music should only be marketed to customers who can afford it: large entities. It wouldn't stop piracy by individuals but it would ensure the existence of some customers who were willing and able to pay, and to refrain from piracy. Imagine a situation where working for a large firm or attending a university gives you a temporary subscription to a vast catalog of not only academic journals but also major label music. It would be a huge perk. Yes there would be piracy, but the large firms would have an incentive to try to stop it. They know who their employees and students are and could no doubt do a better job preventing piracy than the RIAA lawyers have done. Whatever might happen, the labels would still make money from exorbitantly-priced subscriptions. Nah, it would never work. ------ zipdog The most telling comment is this one: "Beyond was always a tremendously grand ambition as the advances required by the record labels and music publishers were substantial" .. because there were no tech advances required; the only 'grand ambition' was getting the record labels to listen to reason - which they apparently didn't ~~~ rckclmbr It's actually a lot more complicated than that. The record labels listened -- there were multiple news reports of them signing deals with the labels... the labels were actually excited at the idea. The problem was that not only did they have to deal with the labels, but they had to deal with the publishers, each individually. And there's a lot of freaking publishers. To top it off, they also had to convince a carrier to purchase the product, which would mean either they lose revenue or pass the extra $60 on to the consumer, risking lost sales. They had to change/convince multiple businesses to conform to this new business model, and that's why it was such a grand task -- each one had its own, different risks, and it was up to Beyond Oblivion to convince them the model would work (which it would). The labels themselves were just a small piece of that very large puzzle. Michael Robertson (mp3.com guy) recently posted a great article (although I can't find it) about the challenges of an online streaming service which summarizes the above a lot better than I said it, plus goes into further detail. EDIT: Found it. [http://gigaom.com/2011/12/11/why-spotify-can-never-be- profit...](http://gigaom.com/2011/12/11/why-spotify-can-never-be-profitable- the-secret-demands-of-record-labels/) ------ lonnyk How did it take $87 M for this idea to fail? If the real challenge was getting everyone to agree why did it cost so much? ~~~ rhizome Less than 2 years. ------ earbitscom This is a perfect example of why Avichal Garg's post was spot on: [http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/build-something- peop...](http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/11/14/build-something-people-want- is-not-enough/) This company was certainly building something that people might want, but failed to see if the roadblocks that had stopped similar efforts before them had been removed. They should have been able to find out how much work, money in the form of advances, and relationships they needed to even come close to pulling this off far before they ever raised so much money. The fact that they took $87M and anyone gave it to them without this analysis is just sad. ~~~ rhizome $89MM. The $10MM in 5/2010 was series B, they got $2MM before that. ------ vyrotek Sad news. My neighbor was one of their developers. I couldn't believe it when he told me he was looking for a new job. Sounded like it came as a big surprise. On the same note, I know a guy looking for a new gig. Anyone hiring? :) ~~~ ethank Yes. :) ~~~ vyrotek What's the best way for him to reach you? ------ Zirro Considering they didn't even manage to seal the deals, where did all the money go? ~~~ dan1234 From what I understand, a lot of the raised money was for the advances required by the various labels in order to close the deals so I'd imagine a lot of money was returned to investors once it was clear the deals wern't going ahead. There's a bit more on the story here: [http://musically.com/2011/12/31/beyond- oblivion-shuts-down-b...](http://musically.com/2011/12/31/beyond-oblivion- shuts-down-before-ever-launching-commercially/) ------ sixQuarks Good, I hope all these failures lead to Murdoch's downfall and bankruptcy. ~~~ rhizome Reflect on the saying, "more money than God." ~~~ objclxt Yes, this isn't the first and won't be the last time a News Corp backed venture sucks up a load of cash and closes down before launch. About a year ago a News Corp project running in London that had about $40 million odd sucked into it was shut down before launch. For a company that size, it's not a huge investment. ------ kmax12 was all of the 87 million used? ~~~ rckclmbr No	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Side Effects vs. Promises - dangoor http://www.blueskyonmars.com/2015/10/01/side-effects-vs-promises/ ====== inglor So much wrong in one place. A promise _is_ the IO monad, with `then` being `>>=` [1]. If you write your promises code not to cause explicit side effects - it won't and you get pure code. The fact you have (controlled!) side effects is the whole purpose of the IO monad. You can't avoid side effects or your program wouldn't do anything, a promise keeps the side effects in a box (the promise) and lets you code using boxes so that your code is purer. Of course, not all your code can be _actually_ pure because all code needs side effects. The FUD about async/await is even stranger. JS _has_ async/await, it already shipped in Microsoft Edge (IE) and it's coming to other browsers. It is based on promises (just like it's based on Tasks = Promises) in C#. The fact people talk so much about this without learning the topic is amazing. I'm genuinely disappointed with the quality of discussion in HN over these topics lately. Monet is also a bad implementation of the IO monad in JS, in fact it's not an implementation at all. Here is an issue I opened there a while ago: [https://github.com/cwmyers/monet.js/issues/25](https://github.com/cwmyers/monet.js/issues/25) [1] up to the fact `.then` does both `fmap` and `>>=` through overloading based on the return type. Seriously, if you remove the exceptions and the fact you can return an unwrapped value it's `Promise a -> a -> Promise b -> Promise b` for then's signature (the Promise a being `this`, the a -> Promise b` being the handler and the return value being itself). ~~~ dangoor > If you write your promises code not to cause explicit side effects - it > won't and you get pure code. The way I've seen promises used in JS is always in this pseudocode form: \- initiate something side effecty (making an HTTP request, for example) \- resolve the promise once the value is ready Is there something you have in mind for how we'd write promises-based code without side effects in JS? ~~~ inglor The same way you'd write "code that doesn't cause side effects" in Haskell. You cause side effects. The thing is with promises (like IO) the side effects are limited to a box you can open, process and close. So given the same input the same function will always return the same output. If you have a function that asynchronously computes a random number - it won't return different numbers and will always return a promise for a random number. It will never be observable that being called with a different input it produced a different output (as long as you don't mutate global state or anything like that). In Haskell, IO is implemented in a way that causes side effects at the platform level. If there are no side effects there is nothing going on and the program is a no op after all :) Monads like IO are about _limiting_ side effects and _controlling_ state. In Haskell, the lack of side effects is by the fact IO is provided by the platform. There is no fundamental difference between Haskell's `getLine` and the DOM's `fetch`, both return a boxed value. ~~~ dangoor Thanks for the followup! > In Haskell, the lack of side effects is by the fact IO is provided by the > platform. There is no fundamental difference between Haskell's `getLine` and > the DOM's `fetch`, both return a boxed value. In his talk about "effects"[1], Chris Armstrong also talked about making testing easier in Haskell, though I paid less attention to that part, to be honest. `fetch` returns a promise, but calling fetch causes the side effect to occur immediately. I don't know if that's how `getLine` works in Haskell. If I want to test code that calls `fetch` without an HTTP request actually hitting the network, I need to put in a mock `fetch`.[2] _Or_ , if there was another return type that put the side effect in a box that the platform handles later (or not at all, in the case of a test), that seems like a win. [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D37dc9EoFus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D37dc9EoFus) [2]: another option, pointed out on Twitter, is that a promise (either from the fetch or from the test) could be passed in to the code under test. That seems less pleasant but requires no new machinery. ~~~ inglor Fetch doesn't actually make an HTTP call - that's the thing :) Fetch boxes a value so that the _platform_ can make an HTTP call. You couldn't implement `fetch` yourself without platform APIs and you certainly couldn't do it in JavaScript without the DOM. The second suggestion you pointed (from Twitter) is exactly what you'd do in Haskell (you'd pass an IO from somewhere else). You can call it "pass an effect" if you'd like but it's the same thing :) ~~~ dangoor Indeed, the platform is responsible for the HTTP call, so I see what you mean. The side effect is happening in the platform itself. I should watch the second part of Chris Armstrong's video to see how he approached making testing nicer in Haskell. ------ saosebastiao All of the back and forth on async callbacks vs async/await vs promises makes me sad that more people haven't yet discovered async computation expressions as found in F#. It is easily the most intuitive and expressive form of declarative async computation out there. I wish F# were more popular so it's revolutionary concepts like this one would bleed their way into other languages. ~~~ Chattered I haven't used F# much, but aren't computation-expressions just a Haskell like do-notation, which you get for free because the async type constructors are a monad? Ocaml and Haskell should have this, at least, with lwt and its syntax extension, and Async respectively. I'm not sure what the situation is in Scala, but they surely have something similar with their generic for- comprehensions. Outside of those, I don't know what the story is. ~~~ edgyswingset I'm not a Haskeller and haven't played with monads _knowing_ they were monads, but async in F# basically works like this: 1\. Call the function with async { } block and have it return a computation object 2\. Start that computation object in three primary ways: a. On another thread, then wait (non-blocking) on it to finish b. On another thread but don't wait for it to finish c. On the current thread and don't wait for it to finish There's a lot more details but that's going to cover probably 95% of the use cases. My takeaways from it are: a. Super easy to write code for it that's easy to read b. Really hard to fuck it up In my opinion, it's superior to the model that C#/VB have ... and pretty much every other language I've tried async support on. Have yet to use Haskell for it. ------ msoad I never liked the event oriented async programs. They are just harder to debug. Once you have more that a handful of evented object with couple of possible events you pretty much guaranteed to not know where to look for bugs. Promises are not perfect either, but at least you can inspect them and thanks to new developer tools you can do it much easier. ~~~ munro Bluebird makes debugging easy with long stack traces [1], and unhandled rejection detection [2]. Without the unhandled rejection detection, it's easy to get burned by forgetting to handle a rejection case, or use `.done()`. [1] [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#promiselongstacktraces ---void) [2] [https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#...](https://github.com/petkaantonov/bluebird/blob/master/API.md#promiseonpossiblyunhandledrejectionfunction- handler---undefined) ~~~ inglor As a bluebird contributor it's worth pointing out that while our stack traces are pretty sweet - unhandled rejection tracking exists in most modern promise libraries. ------ dclowd9901 So what are we talking about here? Just wrapping side effects with a constructor so they're isolatable? You could just modify the Function prototype to mock a constant return for the same purpose, and it'd be completely transparent (no API littering the entire codebase). ------ k__ I use promises most of the time. In frameworks like koa they even got a bit nicer. Is there something like this for event systems? I mean, if I send stuff to the server and wait for it to answer, promises work really well. But what about things like onClick? The promise can only resolve once. ~~~ inglor For this there are Observables and async iterators. I warmly recommend [https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang- NEXT-2014/Ke...](https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Lang-NEXT/Lang- NEXT-2014/Keynote-Duality) . I've also personally been using Rx and RxJS a lot and have been enjoying it a lot over the past few years. Observables and async iterators are both features that are on standards track for the language. See [https://github.com/zenparsing/es- observable](https://github.com/zenparsing/es-observable) and [https://github.com/Reactive-Extensions/RxJS](https://github.com/Reactive- Extensions/RxJS) ------ greggman Since we're talking about promises ... can anyone point to some good patterns for nested promises and not losing errors to the either? Every time I use promises I find that I lose errors and it takes hours of adding console.logs all over the place until I find the place with the error some nested promise is hiding. ~~~ inglor Hey! In NodeJS we added a handler that helps you with that here: [https://nodejs.org/api/process.html#process_event_unhandledr...](https://nodejs.org/api/process.html#process_event_unhandledrejection) Here is a talk I gave about adding it last June: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGpmUyFnyuQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGpmUyFnyuQ) Personally, I recommend you use a faster richer userland library like Bluebird which has stronger unhandled rejection tracking. ------ wildpeaks I can't wait for async/await native in Node because they're imho required for really unlocking its potential; sticking only to es6 promises and generators feels incomplete. Edit: I mean ES7 async, not async.js (even though it's a great library) ------ arianvanp I've recently decided that all this async and evented stuff is just too hard to reason about. A proper language should have (lightweight) threads if it wants to support concurrency. Seems a lot easier to reason about. See go or haskell for example. ~~~ inglor You know, Haskell's IO is pretty much equivalent to JavaScript's promises. JavaScript's generators let you have do notation in JavaScript, and using async/await the "evented" stuff becomes not so evented and pretty easy to reason about. I agree that it's not optimal, but the alternative (implicit IO) has its own share of pitfalls either. The async code that gets produced with modern JavaScript or Python is pretty easy to follow. ------ berryg Take a look at elm-lang.org. It is a functional language that compiles to javascript. Effects are implemented as Tasks (as I understand kind of like a Monad). It has very good interoperability with javascript code. ~~~ dangoor Yeah, Richard Feldman's Strange Loop talk[1] touched upon Tasks and they do indeed look exactly like what I'm looking for. Elm does look very nice. Not sure if I'd get the team on board with that kind of change ;) [1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV0DXNB94NE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV0DXNB94NE) ------ krisdol Personally, I hate promises, but on topic > write unit tests for your code without mocking, by specifying the expected > content, results, and order of side-effects performed by a function No mocking? This is absurd. Some functions rightfully hit databases and the network. It either gets tested the right way, with mocks; the wrong way, with actual network calls; or not at all, as the author seems to suggest. Mocking belongs in some part in unit tests ~~~ bonobo3000 If you can write very pure code, mocking is not needed. For example, a function for a database call could return a closure of what to do given a cursor into the database, or a SQL query which can be tested. The side- effecting functions themselves would just create a connection to a db or network host and do exactly what is prescribed in the request, making them simple enough to not need to unit test. This is one of the big benefits of FP and pure functions really. I'm sure there would be practicalities that get in the way of doing this cleanly for all code, but it can go a surprisingly long way. The idea is to write a completely pure core and restrict input/output to be through a few small and obviously correct functions. ~~~ lkrubner "return a closure of what to do given a cursor into the database" Some people would insist that the closure is a mock, but otherwise this is correct, using closures in this way does help isolate one's tests. ------ ihsw Promises in the JS world have lost out to async[1]. The callback pyramid madness has been traded for a simple and flat waterfall[2]. The constant .then and .catch when working with promises naturally makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and on top of that the async library provides a plethora of other collection manipulation and control flow utilities. Frankly I think managing side effects should be abstracted away, and furthermore I cannot wait for C#-like async/await to become first-class citizens in the JS world. [1] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/async](https://www.npmjs.com/package/async) [2] [https://www.npmjs.com/package/async#waterfall](https://www.npmjs.com/package/async#waterfall) ~~~ aikah > Promises in the JS world have lost out to async[1]. What (js) planet are you living on ? async package certainly has it's place, but the fact that promises are object you can pass around make them more useful than any async package. > Frankly I think managing side effects should be abstracted away, and > furthermore I cannot wait for C#-like async/await to become first-class > citizens in the JS world. Well too bad, because async/await will work with promises. And I quote the blogpost : > In practice, returning side effects rather than performing them and > returning promises can increase the size of the “functional core” of your > application, which is a win in my book. Which is exactly what I'm saying. ~~~ notNow Well too bad, because async/await will work with promises. and promises are built on callbacks at the lower level. I just don't really get these callback-intolerant people's averse reaction towards this construct when it's literally all over the place and those new abstractions are there to conceal them which is a good idea by the way but not to extinguish them completely as they might hope or believe.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Dear India, Show Some Spine: Take Hong Kong for Example - jayadevan http://www.nextbigwhat.com/india-hong-kong-snowden-297/ ====== michaelpinto So India should take orders from Beijing? China Said to Have Made Call to Let Leaker Depart [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said- to-h...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/24/world/asia/china-said-to-have-made- call-to-let-leaker-depart.html) ~~~ jayadevan India, which claims to be a democracy, must bat for free speech, privacy and expression. It is funny that China, often branded as an autocratic country, for whatever reasons, is doing it. ~~~ wutbrodo India is ranked 140th/179 in the Press Freedom Index, there are cases of academics being arrested due to sociological theories that offend people, there are consistently cases in which people are arrested for social media statuses that are benign but that are minorly negative towards someone in power (and even arrests for 'liking' statuses!). Pretty much every one of those cases is far less defensible than an indictment of Snowden would be (i.e. there is literally no ethical ground to stand on in any democratic society in these cases, whereas one can conceive of a reasonable devil's advocate argument for Snowden's case). India's recent record on free speech is pretty abysmal, unfortunately. It's a nice thought, but I don't see why they would go out of their way and stick their neck out diplomatically to protect it in Snowden's case. Immediate edit of a typo: "less defensible" \--> "more defensible" ------ apalmer The statement said Hong Kong had informed the U.S. of Snowden's departure. It added that it wanted more information about alleged hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies which Snowden had revealed. \--right now snowden is looking like a pimp	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why do I do this to myself? Bob's first predictions for 2018 – I, Cringely - rbanffy https://www.cringely.com/2018/01/16/bobs-first-predictions-2018/ ====== hacknat I think the death of net neutrality is an act of desperation (clearly someone is behind it, because...why now, why the spam comments, why so fast, etc), because cable was a medium of control, but broadband is a utility with little opportunity for resource extraction. Here comes 5g and lots of wireless bandwidth for even more price competition which will either put incredible pressure on the ISPs to violate net neutrality to extract value or create a proliferation of ISPs, ala the 90s that race to the bottom, some of whom will offer net neutrality as a feature of their service. Curious to see how the increase in bandwidth affects the market in the coming years. Wireless presents all kinds of interesting possibilities. ------ mcguire " _All the mobile carriers will begin rolling-out 5G wireless networking in 2018, though only about 22 percent of the country will be covered by the end of this year._ " 22% by population or by geographical area? (Yes, I think I'm funny.) What exactly are the details of 5G? My understanding was of lots of short- range, very smart antennas. Which would require some kind of backbone, probably wireline, right? And which those of us who do not live in major metropolitan areas probably shouldn't expect to see, ever. ------ chrisbennet I've wondered for years now, who is the woman in the image with Cringely? Partner, coauthor, wife, daughter, model? (To be clear, I don't want someone to DOX her, just curious as to her relationship to Cringely's web site.) ~~~ TeMPOraL (In no way trying to impact the perception of submitted text - just honestly asking for context.) I have a better question - _who is Cringely_? It's the first time I hear of him. Is he some SV celebrity? ~~~ irontoby Short story: he was a big deal back in the day, has had a couple pretty big stories but these days he's much less influential. Now he blogs very infrequently, largely concentrating on his slightly-creepy obsession with IBM. The fact that he so easily gets duped by scammers pretending to be Google[1] and then actually blogs about it is quite indicative of how far his finger is from the pulse of technology. So, no, you're not missing anything. [1] [https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/07/evil-google-waiting- on-l...](https://www.cringely.com/2015/09/07/evil-google-waiting-on-line-one/) ~~~ mkstowegnv His essays have been submitted 40 times as HN stories in the last two years (most with more than one person submitting). I have gotten useful insights from all that I have read. If you are going to be so dismissive you might at least give us your recommendations for who has a better bird's eye view of current technology. ~~~ ghaff I think he's reasonable enough although he doesn't write a lot. The world has changed to the degree that it's probably hard to point to a generalist weekly writer who is the equivalent of the columnists at the old weekly computer magazines. Today, you tend to get writers who are more specialized in AWS, IoT, virtualization, cloud, or whatever. And most of them are consultants, vendors, etc. rather than full-time journalists. ------ mrfusion What is buffer bloat and how do old routers contribute, how did new routers fix it? Also I didn’t realize broadcasters can sell their frequencies and it can be used for non broadcasting uses such as data? Is that true? ~~~ scardine From wikipedia: > Some communications equipment manufacturers designed unnecessarily large > buffers into some of their network products. In such equipment, bufferbloat > occurs when a network link becomes congested, causing packets to become > queued for long periods in these oversized buffers. In a first-in first-out > queuing system, overly large buffers result in longer queues and higher > latency, and do not improve network throughput. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bufferbloat) ~~~ tacon Measure the bufferbloat in your connection: [http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest](http://www.dslreports.com/speedtest) ------ coldcode Whatever ISPs will do with no more net neutrality (assuming its not overturned by Congress) may affect the prediction about streaming. Guessing what this will result in is impossible. ~~~ codingdave Guessing the result should be informed by the cycles of regulation and deregulation in the telecom industry as a whole. We have decades of history to pull from, if anyone wants to take the trouble to learn the history and apply it to the current scenario. ------ tonyedgecombe *Microsoft’s concentration is on: 1) Azure; 2) Azure services like storage and — to some extent — Office 365; 3) Microsoft Office, and: 4) Windows. If something is your fourth priority it might as well not be on the list. ~~~ b3lvedere I sure hope my government still adresses things after #3 on their to do lists. ~~~ thealfreds Well certainly maintained. ------ Cyberdog > 5G is interesting because it will bring a huge increase in wireless > bandwidth that we don’t really need. 640K of RAM… ~~~ jackhack Correct. We (users) don't need that bandwidth. Advertisers and social media companies who consume us and market us as a product to be sold needs that bandwidth. ~~~ Spivak Don't be such a cynic. If you think the differentiator between 1G broadband and a 56k dial-up is ad bloat you're crazy. Significant bandwidth increases enable applications that weren't possible before. I want that bandwidth to do cool things. And there's nothing stopping you from doing cool things with it either.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Sell at a Loss - mattmcknight http://www.trizle.com/topics/1134-why-sell-at-a-loss ====== mattmcknight Trizle is thinking like a plumber ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=412785> )	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Download And Upload Free High Resolution Pictures - vishalnegal http://www.Pinhat.com ====== brudgers This make a good "Show HN". Guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html) Is there a story behind it's development?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Comprehensive list of built-in utility types in TypeScript - miloszpp https://codewithstyle.info/Comprehensive-list-of-useful-built-in-types-in-TypeScript/ ====== sonnyblarney Superb. Would be nice for non-nullability to be baked into the syntax. ------ ghego1 Great list! Thanks for sharing!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A website to count the votes of #TheDress - SILVERjl http://colorthatdress.com ====== jgehrcke The "scientific" conclusion taken by Wired is not correct. Nobody is "wrong". The phenomenon we observe is known, and it is the manipulative way the questions were asked that led to the weird hype. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9120940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9120940) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9118214](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9118214)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Jobs Involving Routine Tasks Aren't Growing - sebgr https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2016/january/jobs-involving-routine-tasks-arent-growing ====== kristianc I'm interested by the classification here. Many backend jobs involve routine work from people who could be doing non- routine work if the CRUD routine job was automated. Within an industry or a profession it seems like there could be a mix of routine and non-routine work. Similarly, how many people's jobs have changed from being routine jobs to non- routine jobs through either retraining or automation allowing them to take on higher order work? Again, doesn't say. Also, interesting to note that the actual unemployment rate for routine congnitive, routine manual etc 2009 shock aside doesn't actually look anomalous compared to much of the last two decades of the graph is to be believed. ~~~ netcan I think you've hit on the right point. I'm also always curious about how far these definitions can and should be pushed. Talking in terms of "automation of routine tasks" sounds reasonably descriptive of how the spread of technology works. But, technology is a concept that is notoriously elusive in economics. That's because it's hard to clearly define in concrete terms useable in the context of economic theories, whether they're mathematical conceptual. For example, we've always been imagining "robots" as tin humans that do stuff people where doing. You have science fiction movies, books and such being written right now with this imagery, just like the 1950s sci fi art, Jetsons. Just like the mechanical turk and automatons of the 1700s. I think robots are a useful mental placeholder. "Technology will be doing task X." But in reality, technology is usually more like "tools." Imagine a mechanic in the future. Maybe the cars come in with better self diagnosis before he sees them. The parts he needs are already known so he has them ready ahead of time. An AR (or whatever) info delivery thingy tells him exactly how to install or remove parts. etc. What you have is a more useful mechanic. As long as a mechanic is still involved, I think "tool" is a better description. If people are no longer involved, "robot" seems a bit better. Ahead of time, when you are trying to imagine where technology is going it is very hard to discern tools from robots. Is a lawnmwer a robot? Is a a self guiding scalpel a tool? ~~~ spacehome > What you have is a more useful mechanic. The endgame here is that I don't need a mechanic. ~~~ netcan Yup, potentially. In that case what you have is a more useful car, or cloud transport service. But endgame, where it's "robots" as we all imagine it is always a moving target. Mechanics weren't needed 200 years ago either. So far, we've needed new professions. Maybe that will end. My point was just that automation is a fairly fuzzy way of explaining what is going in. ------ btbuildem Assisting or caring for others is not a low-skill job! It may not require a doctorate in theoretical physics, but it requires a lot of emotional intelligence, stamina and ability to be present with other people. It's far from routine! This immediate nitpick aside - I think it's great that routine task jobs are going away. The bulk of those are mind-numbing, dead-end jobs - do we really need to keep subjecting people to 40h/wk routine boredom? ~~~ JeremyNT > _This immediate nitpick aside - I think it 's great that routine task jobs > are going away. The bulk of those are mind-numbing, dead-end jobs - do we > really need to keep subjecting people to 40h/wk routine boredom?_ Sure, it's great that we are gaining this capability, and the people working towards it should be lauded for their progress. The issue is that many people rely on the ability to exchange 40h/wk of routine boredom for the basic necessities of living. Our society assumes that most people will contribute enough value from their "work" that they can exchange for the things they need in life. If their work loses all value, then we need to figure out what else we can do for/with these people. At this point, it seems as if our engineering ability is advancing beyond the pace of our social structures and legal system. ~~~ nly > If their work loses all value, then we need to figure out what else we can > do for/with these people. Global warfare would solve this problem on all fronts. You know, if the prospect of war these days didn't stand a good chance of ending the species. ------ awinter-py Scary parallel here with the recent jeff dean talk about NN. He claims he won't let his team touch any 'research task' that takes more than a week, and prefers to stick to experiments that take under a day to set up and run -- that there's so much low-hanging fruit that every ML project should be simple. Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. I hope I'm misquoting him. But my takeaway is that between manually coding processes that could be solved with ML & doing infrastructure profiling, most devs are spending half their time fixing problems that are 'routine' at the big three. ~~~ savanaly >Very very scary if tech that most of us still haven't touched is also in a sense routine. Isn't that more properly regarded as exciting than scary? The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the temporary costs. I would personally be very happy if my own current job- software developer- were somehow automated out of existence. Not only would it allow me to put my money where my mouth is regarding praising automation but it would mean huge gains for the human race. ~~~ FilterSweep > but it would mean huge gains for the human race. This entirely depends on the model the human race is running off of. With the current state of mass-centralization in tech (see, again, the big 3), you will never get to experience such gains. In fact, you would quickly grow dependent on someone else to feed and shelter you, considering you can no longer provide a benefit to society that puts food on the table. In fact, most people wouldn't provide value anymore. > The long term benefits to automation have rarely failed to outweigh the > temporary costs. For _some_ people, yes. You are correct when it comes to the numbers. GDP increases. A nation has more "wealth" to work with altogether. But the other side of the coin is that wealth disparity becomes more extreme. Big however - If we ran off a decentralized model - arguably the way the Web was originally intended, I could see how the human race would be placed in an unprecedented position for future growth, and humanity would really thrive. Granted, regarding the current state as ""exciting"" boils down to what you value, I guess. When (not _if_ ) I automate myself out of existence, I'm sure as hell not telling anyone I did it. ~~~ nostrademons The assumption that the "current model" (I assume you mean capitalism) makes is that people, when placed in a position where they no longer provide a benefit to society and yet must in order to put food on the table, will find a way to provide a benefit to society. In my experience, this is true over longer (1-2 year) timescales, even if it's not obvious _how_ at the outset. Most people, when made redundant, find new ways to make themselves relevant. The process isn't exactly pleasant, but the outcome often results in a lot more lucrative and fulfilling career than they had before. ~~~ abakker If you _owned_ the product of your labor (i.e. the automation of your job) then it should make no difference. The trouble is, then when you create an automaton that replaces a $100K/year employee, then the creator gets f __*ed. Put another way, if you could create a way to automate your job entirely, then there also has to be a guarantee that doing so will not result in you getting fired. Alternatively, if you automate someone else's job, then the company needs to be responsible for training them to do a new job. Even if this is not practical or possible in all cases, it needs to be the case more often. Right now, corporations pay the government to solve this problem (not voluntarily), but the government does a pretty bad job of helping. Ideally corporations interested in any social responsibility need to solve this problem themselves. When the automation revolutions becomes real enough to threaten executive jobs, I suspect they'll solve it pretty quickly. ~~~ nostrademons Or you could automate yourself out of a job and get a new job. There's nothing that says that jobs are sacred. Indeed, most folks born since 1980 believe that they'll have to switch jobs every few years to a.) stay relevant and b.) get paid what they're worth. ~~~ abakker Jobs are not sacred, but salaries are. Your automation has a certain NPV on it, just like your job, and just like the "value" of not working. So, there are really 3 scenarios. a) do your job, same as always b) automate your job, and either end up unemployed, or find a new job, still working xx hours/week. c) don't tell anyone you automated your job, don't work, collect the money. If you are capable of automating your job (you have the skills, the know-how etc.) then all of these options have different moral and economic tradeoffs. a) if you like your job, you get to keep doing it, but, by not automating it, you are maybe not doing your job as well as it could be done, and/or are costing the company money which could be reallocated. As an employee, you maybe have a responsibility to automate your job and by not doing it, you are shirking your duties (its a stretch) b)You automate your job, get a new job, and take everyone else who was doing the same job as you and automate their jobs as well. You end up ok, because you're talented enough to automate your job. the other people who weren't talented enough just get fired and have no shiny new credential. c)You are definitely dodging the obligation to your employer, but at the same time, they don't know the difference. If the work is unchanged, then you are free to use your time for an alternative economic benefit. It seems unfair, since you get to double-spend your time. In my mind, B is the choice most people worry about. There are fewer people who can automate a job than there are people currently doing that job, and that doesn't even touch the problem that few low-skill jobs are filled by the people that can self-automate their jobs. So, more worrying is that someone invents the roomba of floor waxers, or the self cleaning toilet stall and then we don't need janitors anymore. ------ erikb Oh well, please let us not connect softwaredevelopment and management too much with non-routine work. On a daily basis I see so many people who work on less than 50% of their capabilities because they haven't created routines in their work, thinking that their work is 90% non-routine. Think about the last time you heard how a developer tells you that you don't need to learn the ten finger system to program well, or that he is capable of using 10-20 programming languages. How can a person think about usability of his software and a debuggable architecture, if he has to think about how to put an "i" and an "f" in the text editor? How much time is left for genius ideas when he has to look up all the time if the current language requires him to write a try-catch or a try-except block? ~~~ leereeves I touch type ("ten finger system") but I can see a point to the argument that it's not necessary to program well. Typing is only a small part of programming, and touch typing isn't a huge benefit even for that part, considering all the numbers and symbols used, auto-complete for identifiers and keywords, and macros for common idioms. And it painfully overworks the right pinky. ~~~ erikb I see your point. Typing is not the main part of programming, so just typing faster than your colleague doesn't make you feel that much more powerful. Let me give you another example that maybe drives the point home better: Have you seen the videos of how Minecraft was made? A very short amount of time was spent on getting the I/O to the filesystem to work, of setting up a window and filling it with colors, of creating the basic 3D world. I believe that is a huge part why not everybody can write a successful game as Minecraft. Because I don't have trained the routines, I need to spend a considerable amount of time getting all these basic things done before I can start with an actual 3D game. Thus an experienced game developer is already done with his first demo in the time I am done with the basics. And at this point he has a demo to show for, I have nothing. So he even gains more motivation in the same time to continue, and he may even gain some first user feedback. This will make him code longer (huge benefit, I give up at this point) and he will also develop more in the direction that is fun for players (huge benefit two). It is hard to connect directly the geometrical transformation math to making a game that is more for the players. It is in fact not directly connected. But if you don't sit down to learn the "boring math" you can't get there. That's what typing faster is for. It's not yielding benefits directly. But if you learn that, learn your text editor, learn your language, learn some design concepts, you will reach a level of competence that is not reachable without. Of course you could also do other things to get the ideas from your head into the computer faster, like voice input, or flow programming with touchpads. But then you need to get into these very well to get them out of your way as well. ~~~ lmm > Let me give you another example that maybe drives the point home better: > Have you seen the videos of how Minecraft was made? A very short amount of > time was spent on getting the I/O to the filesystem to work, of setting up a > window and filling it with colors, of creating the basic 3D world. I believe > that is a huge part why not everybody can write a successful game as > Minecraft. Because I don't have trained the routines, I need to spend a > considerable amount of time getting all these basic things done before I can > start with an actual 3D game. Thus an experienced game developer is already > done with his first demo in the time I am done with the basics. And at this > point he has a demo to show for, I have nothing. So he even gains more > motivation in the same time to continue, and he may even gain some first > user feedback. This will make him code longer (huge benefit, I give up at > this point) and he will also develop more in the direction that is fun for > players (huge benefit two). I think Minecraft's success is mostly luck and doesn't really prove anything. A lot of very experienced game developers write games that fail, all the time. You're right that as a programmer, when you start working on something you're not yet familiar with then there will be a period in which things that are routine and automated for someone experienced in that area are not yet routine for you and you haven't yet automated them. I just don't see that as particularly important. You learn how to do these things, then you automate them, and you've only needed a small one-off extra effort compared to the experienced programmer doing the same thing. 80% or more of the work of writing a program isn't solving business problems directly, it's writing the tools that make it straightforward to do the actual business problem solving. Most of the skill of doing this is transferable, and learning 10-20 languages really doesn't involve that much overhead. ~~~ cableshaft Angry Birds' popularity was mostly luck and timing. Minecraft was doing something that wasn't very well represented in video games and touched on people's creativity, primed as children with Lego blocks, and helped create a whole new genre. I don't think there's a parallel universe where Minecraft was created and did not become a hit. Sure, he did get lucky that Penny Arcade (and Kotaku, and a bunch of other sites) covered his minecart rollercoaster video to get that initial burst of attention to his project, and maybe you could argue that it was lucky that he stuck with the project's development for two years in relative obscurity for it to get developed enough to help reach its overnight success. However, I definitely feel it was a novel enough of an experience that it would have eventually found a way to hit the mainstream and been a big hit regardless. ------ debacle Isn't that the purposeful outcome of technology? "I could replace everything you do with a script." I know for a fact that work I have done has contributed to the demise of many positions. Could you imagine the industry for "Internet Cataloging" if we didn't have search engines? Email if we didn't have Gmail? Technology is a job killer. That idea is something that's been a part of society and literature for hundreds of years, sometimes in violent fashion. Our economy needs to evolve in such a way that the destruction of jobs is a net positive for society. ~~~ tomjen3 Most of the population having access to most of the worlds knowledge in the palm of their hand is a gigantic boon to society. What we should accept is that the time is approaching where a) it is possible for skill and lucky people to make many millions of times more money than those who are neither and that b) the cost communication has decreased so much that in many cases it no longer makes sense to employ people, instead it makes more sense to contract the work out. This means we should do two things: stop talking about income differences and focus on making sure the poorest have tolerable lives and b) make it much, much, much easier to start your own small business. This means tax cuts but above all simplifications of the relevant law. ~~~ bdavisx I think we need to be careful about what "tolerable lives" means too. I've seen "guaranteed income" proposals talking about something in the $25,000 USD range or similar. That's basically poverty level - and while that's better than nothing, it probably won't work as more and more jobs go away. Imagine a world (or the US) where 75% of the people are at the poverty level and 25% are "rich". How long do you think that's going to last? ~~~ maxerickson $25,000 is a very reasonable existence for a single person, as long as it's present buying power and after tax. You can rent for less than $1000 and should be able to do utilities for ~$300. That leaves about $200 a week, which is certainly not the lap of luxury, but it's plenty for food and necessities (I've done 2 people eating well enough for ~$100 a week so I really don't feel full of shit saying that). There's no planning for the future in that, but part of the idea of a basic income is to de-risk things like that no? ~~~ paulryanrogers For the young and healthy that may be true. But we're all going to get old, and most of us will need medical care that could easily exceed that. ~~~ maxerickson That's fair, but that's a problem we have to solve regardless of whether a basic income is installed or not. (At least, if we means the US and we keep providing Medicare and similar) ------ dante9999 I wonder if you can reliably classify jobs into "nonroutine" and "routine". There is element of routine in every work, and I'm pretty sure that even most boring and repetitive job can be done better with some degree of creativity. It would be really interesting to read more about reasoning behind classification presented in this article. I mean can you seriously say there is no "routine" in programming or management? ~~~ ktRolster Here's a better article that discusses that: [http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/08/is-your-job- routin...](http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/08/is-your-job-routine-if- so-its-probably-disappearing/) If your work is just following instructions, then it's probably routine. As for me, I'd like to see most middle management go away, since I largely see it as a waste (basically, if people know how to manage themselves, you can get rid of most middle-managers). ~~~ kristianc It's not a knowledge problem it's a process problem. You can get rid of most middle managers but only once you have the conditions in the business where people can be both autonomous and aligned to the business goals. Most middle managers end up achieving neither, but a layer of management is the default solution that companies most end up with. ~~~ ktRolster That is an interesting thought. I would suggest that one of the goals of the company should be to teach people to be autonomous and aligned to the business goals. ------ x5n1 All of this points to the fact that work is a consumer good. We need to manufacture work just like we manufacture products. You buy work with time, and in return you get money; after all time is money. It should be work that we actually want to do, in an environment which we find to be psychologically positive. We need to just call it a day for capitalism and all the other garbage that goes with it. Let's throw away idiotic ideas like efficiency and productivity. And let's focus on meaning. Maybe we can build a fulfilling society rather than this madness and busi-ness we have created to produce garbage at breaknecks speeds so capital owners can do more of the same. For instance this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time- based_currency](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_currency) ~~~ brbsix Not everyone's time is worth the same. Some people have more experience, intelligence, or can simply brute-force the task with determination. Productive societies reward people as such, and for good reason. You're talking about obliterating incentives as we know them. Perhaps you can test your hypotheses in a voluntary society before advocating for a coercive state to enact such policies. ~~~ x5n1 It's easy to account for this in terms of education. Number of years of education should be added into the calculation for that. For instance for every year of schooling you get a a certain percentage more currency in terms of hours worked than someone with less schooling. And I am for all sorts of pilot programs to explore how else we can organize society. As for "productive societies", I don't know what that will actually mean in the near future. Automation is 100% productive. It needs no people for that. These terms have meaning for industrial society where people are treated like robots. It has little meaning for society where robots produce more of the goods. And everything else is about simply organizing society so that people feel some sense of meaning and contentment. At the end of the day in motivated people with money, and engineering society in that direction, we actually get a lot of ills like burnout, alcoholism, workaholics, etc. Yes people can be coerced by money, but often it's not for their own good. It for the good of the owners of money so they can make more profit. But at the same time, this sort of thing ruins the experience of life for the worker. ~~~ sarreph I'm not sure I agree with > Automation is 100% productive Because perfect (i.e. 100%) productivity is technically unobtainable because there will always be efficiencies to be made. Yes, machines are 'always on' and will complete a task in the most efficient way we tell them to, or that they learn to do themselves, but I think that humans will always play a role in raising productivity of even fully-automated systems by making efficiency improvements. That is for the foreseeable future anyway, until AI starts making its own exponentially big efficiency improvements ;) ~~~ x5n1 Whatever you get there rather quickly. Things are productive enough as it is now. It will only get better. It's irrelevant. It's sad how obsessed we have become over terms like these, when they should not matter at all. Reality is that art like entrepreneurship does not care about efficiency. Only factory work does, and when it is done by robots then yes I am sure some engineer will figure out how to squeeze that last bit of performance out of that before starting to hit diminishing returns and getting himself fired in the process. Eventually machines will learn how to optimize themselves, and at that point in a very very short time they will be fully optimized and stay that way forever. These terms will become redundant and irrelevant. ------ ktRolster I really like Mike Rowe's viewpoint on unemployment: [http://profoundlydisconnected.com/](http://profoundlydisconnected.com/) ~~~ Johnnybe It's disconnected alright. There's only 3 companies advertising for jobs on his careers page. And one of them is a franchising company (Mr. Sparky). Trades are very competitive. Just look up the number of electricians in your area. It's a race to the bottom in the trades. ~~~ Futurebot Do you have more sources on this? I've been looking for good data on the competitiveness of traditional blue-collar "trade" jobs/industry since it started becoming the go-to panacea to all our job woes a few years ago. It seems like plumbing, electrician work, HVAC, etc. would be pretty easily saturated areas; how many plumbing jobs can be sustained per neighborhood, for example? ------ jkot With self-driving cars, drone delivery.. unemployment will get even worse. ------ atemerev What's wrong with that? This is called "progress". ~~~ mrrrgn Progress implies moving toward a goal. What goal are we moving toward? Our society and economy aren't optimized for scenarios involving large scale unemployment. What use is automation if it only leads to mass human suffering? ~~~ atemerev Luddites were saying the same around 200 years ago, but it turned out better than expected. Lots of new jobs were created, replacing manual labor. ~~~ ska Not for the Luddites. This is one of the most consistently misunderstood and misused historical lessons I run into in tech circles. The true lesson of the Luddites isn't that "things will turn out better than you thought", it is that "there will be casualties". The Luddites were basically correct - they were trading "good jobs" for fundamental unemployment. Demographically speaking the families involved did not on average recover from the damage for a few generations. So while from a global perspective the overall change may be positive over time, you can't discount people out of hand for saying "wait a minute, we're going to get screwed hard here". They may well be right. It may still be the right thing to do. What the policy implications of such are or should be is a separable issue. Another potentially deep issue: the industrial revolution creating a bunch of new jobs and job categories does not demonstrate that the same will be true of a putative automation revolution that we are entering.... ~~~ marknutter Technological advancements displace jobs at a relatively slow pace. It doesn't happen overnight. And as those jobs get replaced, the demand for the remaining people who can do those jobs goes up because not all companies can afford to automate initially. The "casualties" you mention are more likely the future workers for a particular profession, but they're unlikely to care much having, y'know, not been born yet. ~~~ ska No, that is not at all what happened with the Luddites. Which is the point, really. This is exactly the sort of assertion that is often made ... and often the Luddites are trotted out as an example. But they are a better _counterexample_ to what you assert than an example. ------ crdoconnor Note that they _were_ growing faster than any other kind of job: [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/28/business/economy/recovery- has-created-far-more-low-wage-jobs-than-better-paid-ones.html) ------ pluma The site's layout seems to treat my 10" android tablet in landscape mode as if it were a first generation iPhone in portrait mode. I wonder what happens. Faaulty browser sniffing?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
From 0 to 16K users in 2 weeks – Visual Inspector is designer's dream come true - vipul4vb https://medium.com/@CanvasFlip/visual-inspector-web-designers-rescue-from-digging-in-codes-1a636f6a4cde ====== andreicon cute, but it doesn't export the edits in any way, how do i pass my modifications to the frontend devs?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are the best cross-platform options for desktop (and mobile)? - rustyrose I'm interested in developing cross-platform applications. I know that it's not ideal and there are some shortcomings, but I want to support Windows, Mac, and Linux. If the solution offers some form of mobile support as well, even better. Electron is popular, but many seem to have a negative opinion of it. What are my best options? I'm flexible and can learn any language/framework required. ====== danieka I'm a firm believer in web technologies. There are a ton of reasons to build your app as a web app. Only one code base, in the true sense of the word. There are good frameworks and with transpilation you can support a wide range of browsers. I feel very productive with web technologies, but that may be due to a couple of years of experience. A huge benefit is that your application does not have to be installed, which can be a problem for users in a corporate, locked down, environment. Do you need Electron? You can do a lot of cool stuff in browsers these days. If you go through some of your requirements I might be able to give suggestions on how to implement them in the browser. This of course depends on what you are doing. If you think performance might be a problem or you know your users will have low end mobile devices you should probably consider something else. I use AngularJS/Angular and Ionic/Ionic 3 daily and I can truly recommend both Angular and Ionic 3. The framework is now easier to develop in and performance is greatly increased since AngularJS. That being said, many swear by React and I'm sure that if you pick it you will not have any reasons to regret that choice. ~~~ danieka By the way, if you choose web I strongly recommend Typescript. Works fine with whatever framework you choose and having a type system is invaluable for productivity. It works great together with Visual Code. I really, strongly encourage you to try it. ------ oblib I asked myself that question about a year ago. What I did was go play around with the tutorials at todomvc.com to get a feel for what was out there. When I was done I couldn't really decide what was best and after straining over that for a few weeks I finally decided to look at what was "easiest" (for me) instead. That allowed me to look at it an entirely new way. That was a question that I could answer. I ended up choosing PouchDB/jQuery/Bootstrap. Those tools provide an amazing feature rich set of APIs that work together seamlessly and all have great community support. From there I can look for smaller libraries of code that focus on a specific task and drop them in too. Once I got started with them I was amazed at how productive I was. It's easy (for me) to get things done using those tools. ------ bananicorn Okay, depending on the complexity of your app, maybe bundling it with webkit[0] is a solution? You'll need to know about cross-compilation in C though. It's certainly more complicated than just using Electron, but if you don't want all the bloat that comes with it and don't need features only Electron offers, then it might just be fine. [0][https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/WebKitGtk/ProgrammingGuide/T...](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/WebKitGtk/ProgrammingGuide/Tutorial) ------ seanwilson What kind of application? If you're working by yourself, faster time to market and simpler cross platform support is a massive benefit that unfortunately is more important than CPU and memory use for most applications so Electron makes a lot of sense. Electron gets a lot of negative comments on HN but for many apps I don't think consumers will have strong opinions about it. Most small teams don't have the resources to develop polished native Windows + Mac + Linux apps. Electron might not be perfect but it's better than having to exclude a platform. ------ floating_cloud Qt or CopperSpice? If mobile is not a priority and native look and feel on desktop is essential then go for wxWidget. Ultimate++ is another option. ------ paxpelus You may want to have a look on Quasar framework. It can do web, windows, Linux, Mac,iOS, android. ------ 1ba9115454 I would go for Bootstrap and Elm. Bootstrap gives you all the responsiveness you need to go across platform. It's basically a HTML and CSS library. Everything you need to create UI. Then I would use the Elm programming language. Why ? Because it's a gateway to Haskell, you'll learn loads. ------ mhoad It would probably be worth asking yourself if the main criticisms of Electron are actually something you or more importantly your end users care about because if not it is a fairly obvious answer with a lot of major upsides as well. ------ j1e For business/database apps Xamarin Forms can work really well. ~~~ jetti That doesn't seem to fit with what OP wants, being able to deploy to Windows, macOS and Linux. According to Xamarin's website[1] Xamarin.Forms is: "Xamarin.Forms is a cross-platform UI toolkit that allows developers to easily create native user interface layouts that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone." [1][https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin- forms/](https://developer.xamarin.com/guides/xamarin-forms/) ------ assafmo Go? React native? ionic? depends om your specific needs... I really love go's cross compilation, it's awesome and super easy. ~~~ DoctorOW Go is pretty cool but it can't be compared to Electron at all... Electron is a framework for HTML/CSS/JS guis, while Go is a programming language without any great GUI support. ------ umen kaspersky antivirus do not allow this extension to run complains about : \Extensions\nicokganngdkmjiejngaacdlllkdpikn\0.1.1_0\bg.js what you have there ? ~~~ umen sorry wrong post , how do i delete it ? ~~~ c8g you can only delete within two hours.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tesla Model S P100D Crushes All Competition in ‘World’s Greatest Drag Race’ - mpweiher https://electrek.co/2017/09/21/tesla-model-s-p100d-crushes-all-competition-in-motor-trends-world-greatest-drag-race/ ====== sixbrx "Crushed" is maybe a little strong. Won by a tenth, but at lower speed, runner ups were gaining and would have overtaken had it been a bit longer. ~~~ jsjohnst Did you notice how much of a lead it had initially? It was multiple car lengths out in front off the line. If Tesla didn’t cap the top speed on them, I bet it wouldn’t have been close even at the quarter mile. Source: I’ve driven a prototype Tesla roadster on Moffett Airforce Base’s runway flat out. ~~~ milkytron This made me wonder what the top speed would actually be had they not put a limit on the car. I came across this interesting discussion in their forums: [https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/real-top-speed- model-s](https://forums.tesla.com/forum/forums/real-top-speed-model-s) ~~~ jsjohnst Almost lost hope before getting to it, but thankfully a sane reply finally appeared. Seems the answer is about 150mph. 18,000 rpm / 9.73:1 gear ratio = 1850 wheel rpm. 19” wheels have 27.7” diameter, so... 1850rpm * 27.7in diameter * 3.14159 * 60min in hour / 12in in foot / 5280ft in mile = 152.45mph ------ woodandsteel This result was not surprising, given that electric motors produce full torque from a stand, whereas ICE's have to get up in rpm before the torque gets up there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Japan Now Has More Electric Car Charging Spots Than Gas Stations - SimplyUseless https://transportevolved.com/2015/02/17/official-japan-now-electric-car-charging-spots-gas-stations/ ====== grillvogel >Unlike the majority of gas stations in Japan however, the 40,000 electric car charging points quoted by Nissan includes ones in private homes, causing some critics to cry foul. After all, if a charging station is hidden in a privately-owned garage, it isn’t easily accessible to the public. >Yet while we understand that criticism — and it’s why we used an asterisk in our headline — the rise of charger-sharing sites like PlugShare.com means that more people than ever before are offering their private charging station for others to use, either as an altruistic gesture or for cold, hard cash. oh wait its fucking nothing ------ sfifs Apples vs. Oranges. An electric car requires hours to charge vs. a minute to fill gas. So you need several hundred times as many Electric charging points OR a comparable number of battery change stations to be remotely comparable assuming service as a metric	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New College of Florida - deskglass http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_college_of_florida Recently, there have been many submissions that critique the cost and structure of higher education. As such, I think many of you will find this college interesting. I attend it and would be happy to answer any questions you have about it. ====== deskglass Recently, there have been many submissions that critique the cost and structure of higher education. As such, I think many of you will find this college interesting. It does not have grades and charges 6k for in-state tuition. I attend it and would be happy to answer any questions that you have about it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bill Gates' Philanthropic Impact Put in Perspective - mike2477 http://www.insatiablefox.com/blog/2016/4/21/the-bill-and-melinda-gates-foundation-is-really-big ====== dharmon If you put aside the "M$ was evil and he is just atoning" arguments, Gates is a huge inspiration, at least for me. This guy finds problems that he's passionate about and attacks them with such ferocity that it is truly awe inspiring. I'm mildly embarrassed to admit it, but he was my childhood hero through the 90's. Even later when everyone thought Jobs was the bee's knees, I wanted to be as effective as Gates. ~~~ amelius Also worth mentioning is that, over the years, Microsoft has published an impressive amount of research, whereas (e.g.) Apple has always been disappointingly closed. ~~~ ignoramous I think Apple revolutionized HCI with the Mac and then with the iPod and now with iOS. They continue to push the bar in industrial design. They're contributing in different ways. I'd not belittle their achievements. Design principles that Apple has long been following are the norm today. Every tech company has done their part. I don't like this constant bickering, I wish people were more accepting and just saw the positive side of things more often. ------ muntac The size of the Gates Foundation is only impressive if you believe public policy should be disproportionately influenced by the whims of a few rich individuals. Philanthropists may not be motivated by profit like lobbyists, but that doesn't mean they understand the needs of the people any better. For issues related to relatively concrete sciences like medicine this matters less. But in areas such as education for example, the role of the Gates foundation has been disastrous. [https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates- foundation...](https://theintercept.com/2015/11/25/how-the-gates-foundation- reflects-the-good-and-the-bad-of-hacker-philanthropy/) ~~~ solipsism Disastrous? Isn't that a bit hyperbolic? Reading the article, perhaps "ineffective" could be argued. Maybe their support of Common Core and such did more harm than good, but they've pivoted based on evidence. They're trying their best to do good with their money. This is more than can be said for most billionaires. Are you suggesting it would be better if all billionaires simply kept their money in the family and didn't try to help others? Any bold investment carries a risk of failure. Does that mean no one should make bold investments, to you? ~~~ mike2477 Amen. ------ WalterBright Bill Gates was a tough competitor, to be sure, and you had to bring your A game when dealing with Microsoft. But the complaints that he was 'evil', when you drill down to see what the actual complaint is, just seem to fade away. Most of it seems to be simply envy. See "In Search of Stupidity" by Chapman. P.S. I was in the industry throughout that era, and competed directly against Microsoft in programming languages. ~~~ ploxiln Sure, it was just smart business plays in the tech industry, not really "evil" like physically harming people or stealing stuff from them. But as an engineer (well, at that time, a tinkerer in high school), it was very frustrating how they had their own flawed formats and protocols. They made it as difficult as possible to interoperate in order to entrench their dominant position. I guess it's what all the biggest tech businesses did in their day. Networking sucked, filesystems sucked, windows updates sucked. There were arbitrary limitations on "home" and "pro" versions (like number of concurrent connections). And it was all closed, so third party fixes were brittle binary patches. And then there was OOXML, microsoft's "hey, we have an open XML format too! we named it so common people would confuse it with openoffice, and we had to whip it up quick so we just gave the ambiguous binary bit flags names and put them in xml tags!" Surely you recall this memo about ACPI, and how unfortunate it would be if linux worked great with it: [http://edge- op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000...](http://edge- op.org/iowa/www.iowaconsumercase.org/011607/3000/PX03020.pdf) So yeah, Microsoft wasn't an african warlord conscripting children or anything like that. They weren't dumping toxic chemicals into the environment. They were just offering software, and people more or less did fine with it. And these days they're doing practically everything differently than they used to. But a software engineer hating microsoft in the early 2000s was completely justified. It wasn't personal, just business, but they went out of their way to make my life worse, over and over again. ~~~ Nutmog You might think the technology sucked, but all the competition sucked worse, much worse. Nobody else could be bothered maintaining so much backward compatibility. Apple kept changing their CPU architecture and resetting the clock on developing apps. Other platforms like Amiga also pursued their own platform blind to the fact that their products couldn't interoperate with the most popular and cheap software and hardware. There was OS/2 Warp which for some reason failed in the market. Probably more of the same incompatibility problems. It's hard to see that the world would have been better without MS. It could very well have been more fractured with people having to buy two computers because they would never know which one would run the software or hardware they might want to use. Or it could have been like the disaster we have today with native mobile development - you have to program everything twice, for two different platforms! What a waste of developer time. The gist of what you say about MS now applies to Apple today. It keeps a similar grip over iPhones, and people love them for it. It's that grip that makes Apple successful, just as Microsoft's grip over PCs made them successful. The smartphone world would surely be worse off today without Apple too. ~~~ WalterBright I bought an early Amiga in order to port the compiler to it. It irritated me that they used standard connectors, but changed one pin in order to force people to buy peripherals from them. I thought that strategy would doom Amiga, and decided not to expend my dev time on it. DEC did the same stupid move with their Rainbow PC (in this case requiring special floppy disks), with the same results. ------ mike2477 Hey there, data geeks! I am doing research on the rise of social entrepreneurship and got sidetracked by what a badass Bill Gates is. I found out that his foundation is 4x larger than the next largest private foundation in the US. And if you add up the wealth pledged as a part of The Giving Pledge it is 10x larger than that. I compiled The Giving Pledge data on my own by researching net worths of each pledgee. Planning to put the data on the Wikipedia page shortly. I found the other data from the following sources (see direct links in article): Foundation Center The Giving Pledge NP Trust GBD Compare AVAC Happy to answer any questions and would love feedback. ~~~ vezycash How about a comparison with historical philanthropists like Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie in constant currency? ~~~ eru Or as ratio of nominal GDP at the time. ------ lazaroclapp I was surprised to not find a comparison between those private charitable contributions and the money spent by nations all over the world on similar programs. Unless I am missing something, it would look to me like the Giving Pledge, all together, spent more money on the fight against AIDS in the last 10 years than the U.S. government did [0]. If that is true, then there are still the questions left of who spent money more efficiently, whether and which other uses of taxes are more important than the fight against AIDS, as well as the general philosophical question of whether we should allow a few individuals to control how a huge proportion of the resources of the world are used, and under which circumstances. But beyond all those delta-from-the- ideal-world questions, it is indeed a pretty huge amount of good likely being done there. [0] [http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s- federal-f...](http://kff.org/global-health-policy/fact-sheet/u-s-federal- funding-for-hivaids-the-presidents-fy-2016-budget-request/) ------ swampthinker Website needs some work for mobile view: [http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/vlwi2hh.jpg) ~~~ nathancahill Yes, and the Subscribe popup breaks it on mobile. ------ octref More and more I feel the best data visualization for most scenario is just bar, line, and pie charts. They need no explanation and communicate information effectively. Too many visualizations that are fun and fancy but convey ideas poorly. ~~~ csours Pie Charts are the Worst [1]. In this context, a single pie chart is OK. I agree bar and line charts should usually be sufficient. [http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the- worst-2013...](http://www.businessinsider.com/pie-charts-are-the-worst-2013-6) ~~~ eru Scatter plots can be decent, too. ------ zurn I was expecting to see a comparison to public sector development programs in countries with bigger government. For example USA does only 0.22% of GNI in foreign aid compared to the 0.7% target and 0.3-0.5% realized in its cohort of industrialized countries. ([http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm](http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/press/07.htm)) ------ sametmax Don't you find very suspicous that since the past year, we get regularly those stories comming up in reddit, imgur, hacker news, etc ? Think about it: there are a ton of nice people doing nice things around. Even tech people. But you hear only about Bill. The Gate Foundation existed for a long time. It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before reaching me, BTW), and we didn't have this incredible "yeah, best man ever" crazy minset going around. It smells a lot like well done PR, with a lot of money behind to give a better image of the man, targetting social networks by subtils channels. And if you need PR and pays to much for it, you probably DON'T deserve the praises. ~~~ forgetsusername > _It actually paid my bills 7 years ago (wasting half of the money before > reaching me, BTW)_ Maybe you should have taken the moral high ground and _declined the money_ , rather than taking it, criticizing how much was "wasted", then bad-mouthing it on a public forum. Talk about a sense of entitlement. ~~~ sametmax Yes, I made a bad decision. I don't pretend to be a wonderful person. However, I can see people are trying very hard to make sure people think Gate is. And he is not. ------ mcguire I was just pondering Gate's legacy the other day. While I was blowing away another copy of Windows that I paid for but never booted. ------ k_lander i'm curious as to whether it is more effective for an individual to hold a contribute-as-you go style to philantrophy vs a make-money-first-then-donate strategy like gates did. Given that most people aren't going to be billionaires, I would guess the former but maybe someone who has looked at the data can provide some insight. ~~~ TheLogothete Donating money if you are not (filthy) rich is foolish. Those money would be MUCH better spent on you. If you want to help, do it with personal efforts. ~~~ eru What makes you think so? ~~~ TheLogothete Because your money would not be spent efficiently. ~~~ eru I don't get it. If you are looking for pure efficiency, most people on here are much better working in IT and giving money to efficient charities. If by personal efforts you mean helping out in a soup kitchen or flying to Detroit to help struggling kids---that's pretty inefficient. Or did you mean something else? ------ throwaway_xx9 Before you lionize a convicted monopolist ... 1) The USA tax code encourages wealthy people to create foundations. The money in the foundation is still controlled by them and has tax benefits. 2) In other countries, wealthy people are taxed to provide social services like education and healthcare. In the USA, they're not - the capital gains rate of 15% is basically a round-off error compared to 90% last century. 3) Foundations work very well for tax planning. Who knows what their efficiency is as charity? ~~~ geomark People fail to understand the difference between innovation driven monopoly and government enforced monopoly. The former is commendable, indicating that a company has developed a product so useful that it becomes so widely adopted as to become a monopoly. Nobody is forced to buy the product - people just find it so useful that the it dominates in the marketplace. And there is nothing preventing the rise of a competitor other than the monopolist's success. Got enough smarts and money to beat them? Then go for it. That's quite different than when a company uses regulatory capture to get regulations passed that maintain their monopoly and block competitors. ~~~ eggy I understand that, and I like the label of Corporatism when it is a big company colluding with the state, as opposed to Capitalism, which is for all its good and bad, better than the alternatives right now. ~~~ geomark Yeah, I guess those are pretty good labels. I looked for a succinct definition of Corporatism: "the control of a state or organization by large interest groups." That happens in every economic system, not just capitalism. ------ known I'd request Gates to contribute to [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Development_Goals) ~~~ williadc They're on it. [http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media- Center/Speeches/2013/03...](http://www.gatesfoundation.org/Media- Center/Speeches/2013/03/High-Level-Dialogue-on-Health-in-the- Post-2015-Development-Agenda)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Whats your preferred CMS for non technical users? - webstartupper Hi All,<p>I am looking at building a CMS for a very non technical audience. Rather than re-build the wheel I would like to extend an existing CMS. I have worked with WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and Serendipity. However, none of them is very easy to use for the lay man.<p>Would it makes sense to build one from scratch or is there something out there that is super easy to use?<p>Thank you for your time.<p>Update: I have looked only at the php based CMS since I am most comfortable with php. However the language does not matter, so I am very open to Python, Ruby and others. ====== Sid_M I think the important thing is to be realistic about how much you can expect your non-technical users to do. Your job is to only give them access to the things it makes sense to let them touch. For example, in drupal, it's probably a bad idea to give them the ability to edit blocks, but you might let them use promos or panels. If there's something it's not realistic for your users to do, then either you have to take responsibility for doing it, or you have to exclude it from the site. Having said that, I'd recommend wordpress or drupal as they seem to be the cms's with the most active development around them. ------ solost I highly recommend that you check out: <http://www.expressionengine.com> as it might be what you are looking for. I hope that helps. ------ kingsidharth WordPress is fool proof for non-tech people. ------ desigooner My vote goes for Wordpress.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ideologues miss Orwell's greatest lesson - i-j https://unherd.com/2019/02/idealogues-miss-orwells-greatest-lesson/ ====== Barrin92 Orwell as a flexible thinker who doesn't fit neatly into any category is a very common take, but I honestly think this is too positive. When I read 1984 for the first time I had a similar reaction to Asimov, whose review of the book I only encountered later ([http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm](http://www.newworker.org/ncptrory/1984.htm)) but resonated with me " _[...]The communists, who were the best organised, won out and Orwell had to leave Spain, for he was convinced that if he did not, he would be killed From then on, to the end of his life, he carried on a private literary war with the communists, determined to win in words the battle he had lost in action.During World War II, in which he was rejected for military service, he was associated with the left wing of the British Labour party, but didn 't much sympathise with their views, for even their reckless version of socialism seemed too well organised for him.He wasn't much affected, apparently, by the Nazi brand of totalitarianism, for there was no room within him except for his private war with Stalinist communism. Consequently, when Great Britain was fighting for its life against Nazism, and the Soviet Union fought as an ally in the struggle and contributed rather more than its share in lives lost and in resolute courage, Orwell wrote Animal Farm which was a satire of the Russian Revolution and what followed, picturing it in terms of a revolt of barnyard animals against human masters.[...]"_ I honestly found a lot of his fiction to be representative of his personal feud with Stalinism, while most of his views of society seemed remarkably old- fashioned and conventional. I've always had the same feeling about one his admirers, Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens also was often treated like a maverick, but to me it seemed like he just rebelled in his reputation as a contrarian, with his views being more shaped by personal fights than anything else. ------ trabant00 Offtopic and inflamatory, I know. But I do have to question: why is this not flagged like opposing view posts? It's the same: a political oppinion piece belonging to one end of the spectrum. No valuable information or intelectual discussion.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are your group messaging use cases? - technothirst So group messaging is becoming more popular and some argue that will be the new form of social media.<p>I'm curious what do people use group messaging for and what are the most popular use cases?<p>Let's discuss the group messaging behaviors. trends etc ====== PaulHoule Machine to Machine, for one thing. That is, that kind of system is a good communication fabric for many "internet of things" applications. ~~~ technothirst but where do people fit in then?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
MySQL vs PostgreSQL - chaostheory http://www.wikivs.com/wiki/MySQL_vs_PostgreSQL ====== jhancock I've read many MySQL vs Postgres articles/papers over the years. This one is the best. Not highly opinionated. "Just the facts" mostly. And in a good format. Thanks for publishing!!! oh yeah, go postgres!!! ;) ~~~ iamelgringo Great comparison of the most recent features and versions. It's nice to see PostGres get some kudos in the speed department. And, it's nice to hear about the upcoming developments of the Falcon and Maria engines. ------ olefoo If you're in Portland this weekend and want to learn something about Postgres then you should attend <http://pgcon.us/> Postgres West. ------ st3fan We switched from MySQL to PG when mysql suddenly returned different results in a unit test when we upgraded to a newer minor version. Never looked back. ------ jamongkad OTOH I was thinking about moving my app from MySQL to SQLite. Did anyone else has gone through the same situation? ~~~ ashleyw That is a bad idea I think — SQLite locks the database while inserting data, obviously this is bad for a big application. I don't think it was designed for web apps with possibly hundreds of queries a second. ~~~ ash You are right. But "hundreds of queries a second" are fine if there're mostly _read_ queries. <http://www.sqlite.org/faq.html#q5> ~~~ ashleyw Yeh I should have mentioned the times I've used SQLite was early in development, or one time when I created a script which would pump tons of data into the database in threads, which resulted in errors and missing data. I'm sure I could have added better error exceptions and keep retrying, but if you translate that to a multi-user app, thats just not going to cut it. A quick change to MySQL fixed it. :) I do like SQLite, just not for anything where you cant control the writes per second, or need it to be high. ------ dazzawazza This is very useful (although I am not qualified to say if it's definitive or not). I chose PostgreSQL based on one single fact that I ONCE crashed a MySQL server with a query (about 4 years ago) and I've never crashed PostgreSQL. It's a flimsy reason tbh but it's all I had to go on. Having said all that I do really love PostgreSQL now after 4 years of using it (via SQLAlchemy). ~~~ rbanffy I tend to chose PostgreSQL because of the query language. It is more comfortable to program in. As ORMs become more prevalent, things like query language start to become less relevant, but so do relational databases. I really don't care how my data is stored, as long as it's safe and performs well. ~~~ tdavis ORMs are a case of "good enough for most," however, I have seen ridiculously dramatic increases in performance when dealing with millions of DB rows by using SQL and stored procedures. By design, it's pretty much impossible for an ORM to ever reach such levels of performance since they need to be generic enough to work across various RDMS systems and so forth. ------ Maascamp My preferred DBMS is Postgres, but I have to use MySQL at work. I can honestly say that moving to MySQL after Postgres is a serious downer. What happens when you want referential integrity alongside fulltext indexes? An ugly database. ------ joestrickler I don't understand why MySQL has 9 different storage engines. Would someone mind quickly posting the benefits of that architecture as opposed to focusing on one 'storage engine' and making it really good? ~~~ cbrinker Well, I pose to you this question: Would you rather have 1 type of car that the government makes that works pretty reliably and is a middle-ground car, or would you rather have a selection of cars to chose from; sports, truck, sedan, minivan, etc. ? Everyone has different needs. I use MySQL extensively for it's memory-based storage engine, MyISAM for quick & dirty non-escential data i/o, and InnoDB for when data needs to be managed securely for processes. I would use PG for transaction-based data processing in a high-volume situation with multi-processing clusters. Otherwise MySQL works fantastic for all my needs. ~~~ samuel The flexibility is great, but only if grouped with consistency. No foreign keys on MyISAM but yes on InnoDB? Thanks but no, thanks. ~~~ thwarted No disk backed storage with heap tables but yes on InnoDB? Thanks but no, thanks. Uh, the definition of flexibility is lack of consistency between the options. Otherwise, it's a false choice. ------ rbanffy Flamewar in 3... 2... 1... Oh... This is not Slashdot. Sorry.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A comparison of programming languages in economics - scarmig http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/07/a-comparison-of-programming-languages-in-economics.html ====== minimax Their code is on github [1]. I am a C++ programmer so I'm happy that C++ came out on top, but the comparison is obviously flawed (as these sorts of comparisons always are). The problem is that the implementers don't have the same level of skill in each language and who knows how much time they spent analyzing and refining each version. See Russ Cox's response [2] to a Google paper [3] of a similar nature comparing C++, Go, Java, Scala for an example of a similar boondoggle. The R code, for instance, is obviously unidiomatic. If you have a four levels deep nested loop in R, you're doing it wrong, and it's taking every ounce of willpower to keep from spending the rest of the afternoon trying to fix up their code and make it faster. 1\. [https://github.com/jesusfv/Comparison-Programming- Languages-...](https://github.com/jesusfv/Comparison-Programming-Languages- Economics) 2\. [http://blog.golang.org/profiling-go- programs](http://blog.golang.org/profiling-go-programs) 3\. [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37122.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub37122.html) ~~~ bradfordarner It is unfortunate that the authors of this paper didn't reach out to experts in each programming language in order to write high-quality code against which they could have run the analysis. This seems like the perfect use-case for open-source: academic study, subject-matter experts in one area who are stepping outside their areas of expertise and an interesting subject matter. They should have crowd-sourced the code for this study with a Top Coder-like contest. ~~~ k2enemy From the paper... _Second, to make the comparison as unbiased as possible, we coded the same algorithm in each language without adapting it to the peculiarities of each language (which could reflect more about our knowledge of each language than of its objective virtues)._ They have invited others to fork the code on github and write the fastest possible for each language. ~~~ igouy This is not "as unbiased as possible" \-- it is biased towards the initial form of algorithm description. To make the comparison "as unbiased as possible" would be to code the same algorithm but adapt it to the peculiarities of each language implementation. ------ zissou I used to be gung-ho about convincing economists to use Python (started econpy.org in the 1st year of my PhD in economics, stopped updating it after 2 years). But now I just don't care. The vast majority of economists are horrible programmers, however most know how to script in at least 1 language, and a small number of them are actually really good at scripting. An extremely small number of economists know they're way around at least 1 entire general purpose programming language. It seems that every time this gets brought up online a sea of infamous Fortran-programming-economists always tell you how fast Fortran is compared to everything else, signing it with "Fortran or GTFO". I've met hundreds/thousands of economists and econ grad students at schools ranked from 1 to 200, and I don't recall a single one that actually used Fortran (I'm sure there is a non-zero quantity -- I probably just haven't cared to talk with them b/c they are most likely macro theorists). The fact of the matter is that in economics graduate school, your professors could care less what language you use. It isn't an algorithm competition, it's a story telling competition. But the type of story telling economists do is no less noble than writing elegant algos. Writing a story based on economic mechanisms and behaviors and supporting it with quality data, sound statistics, and logical/exact theories is no simple task. ~~~ bachmeier "The vast majority of economists are horrible programmers, however most know how to script in at least 1 language, and a small number of them are actually really good at scripting. An extremely small number of economists know they're way around at least 1 entire general purpose programming language." As an economist whose hobby is the study of programming languages, you can imagine the frustration that I feel. What I have found works best is to make grad students use basic functional programming techniques. Everything they do is just a few lines long. As opposed to a 250-line heap of garbage with three nested for loops. ~~~ JAlexoid I'm sorry, but that it's a wasted emotion. Economists are not software developers. They do the minimal they need and nothing more. It's like complaining that a masseur has poor baking skills. Get over it! It's a support tool for them and until they demand that you take their code as a perfect example, developed have no need to complain. ~~~ avemuri It's more like saying a masseur doesn't have a deep knowledge of anatomy. For most healthy people it wouldn't be an issue if the masseur just did what they were taught, but they'll consistently be suboptimal and will occasionally do some real damage. See the recent high profile errors with economists using excel. ------ nemoniac Two economists judge the relative suitability of a bunch of programming languages. I have to wonder how it would be received if two computer scientists wrote an article judging the relative merits of a bunch of economic models. ------ cschmidt Direct download link of the original paper: [http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/comparison_languages...](http://economics.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/comparison_languages.pdf) ------ oniTony This seems more a survey of compilers than programming languages. Python is represented by 3 different compilers, spanning 2 orders of magnitude in performance: CPython (155x), PyPy (44x), Numba (1.57x). It's hinted that C++ similarly depends on compiler choice: > although one needs to be careful with the choice of compiler [for C++ and > Fortran] ------ MrBuddyCasino In case anyone missed the Java results, I do think it is worth mentioning that it is very competitive: "Our fourth result is that Java imposes a speed penalty of 110 to 169 percent. Given the similarity between Java and C++ syntax, there does not seem to be an obvious advantage for choosing Java unless portability across platforms or the wide availability of Java programmers is an important factor." ~~~ dodders In my professional life I have rarely (if ever?) seen a language chosen on the basis of it's syntax. ~~~ adrusi It's true, most good programmers won't choose a language based on just syntax. And even though most economists aren't good programmers (in my experience), they're still smart people who can see past the syntax. The paper is probably misusing the term syntax though. C++ and java really are quite similar in many ways, far beyond just syntax, java just letting the programmer forget about some annoying things like memory management and portability. If most of what they're doing in the language is numeric analysis, then there probably isn't much of a difference at all, and they will probably get slightly better performance from C++. ------ civilian What about Excel? I know, I'm also horrified of how economists use excel. But it does tend to be their go-to tool, and they are all comfortable in it. It'd be nice to show them just how poor the performance is in excel, to tempt them into learning scripting languages if they have an excel workbook that will barely refresh. ------ georgewfraser There are two glaring problems with this paper: 1\. The algorithm is just a bunch of arrays and loops in one giant block. This is the easiest possible case for compilers that optimize through specialization. Even a bad specializing compiler will be good at this but will blow up when faced with a big piece of code with lots of functions and data structures. 2\. The runtimes are only ~2s, which is not long enough for the JIT-compiled languages to "warm up". I suspect Java in particular would have had the exact same runtime after warming up, because in an easy example like this Hotspot will generate the exact same instructions as the C program. EDIT: I stand corrected. I downloaded his examples off Github and ran them the same way as the paper. I get 1.87s for C, and for Java... also exactly 1.87s. ~~~ Alupis > EDIT: I stand corrected. I downloaded his examples off Github and ran them > the same way as the paper. I get 1.87s for C, and for Java... also exactly > 1.87s. Your code probably got JIT'ed... which essentially makes your java code into native C... So... it's no surprise they perform around or exactly the same (given the JVM is allowed time to warm up, discover "hot spots", and then perform the JITing) ~~~ georgewfraser True though oddly I compiled and ran them exactly the same way he described in the paper -- one time through, no warm-up time. ~~~ Terr_ I think the command-line option -XX:+PrintCompilation should show you if/when the JIT kicks in for a method. ------ larrydag It seems like this is a comparison of speed. Not a comparison of languages. Each language has their own pro's and con's. For instance, I use R on a daily basis. I don't require speed to do my job because I'm analyzing data and drawing inferences to help make business decisions. I like the fact that there is a huge library and an active community that can help me implement solutions. Perhaps if a solution/product I come up with needs speed then I'll implement a tool that will do that job well. But my "toolbox" requires fast prototyping and development. ------ wcember I think the paper should be called "A comparison of programming language run times in economics." It's not obvious to me that run time is an important quality of a programming language for economic research. ------ adrusi It's important to note that the available libraries for each language varies a lot, and the best performing ones are proprietary for the most part. Fortran, for example, has a set of proprietary libraries that many employers buy that have been continually optimized for nearly 50 years. Both C and Python can readily bind to Fortran libraries, but for other languages like R, Matlab, Mathematica, etc. this is a major disadvantage. ~~~ bachmeier Not only is it easy to call Fortran functions from R, the inline package actually allows you to embed Fortran functions inside your R program. ------ psychometry Economic is a large, diverse field and it would be reasonable to assume, for instance, that R is used in very different ways than C++, so this study is already of limited use. Furthermore, they claim to be comparing the "strength and weakness of each language" yet only analyze the performance of naively- written, unoptimized code. ~~~ zissou You bring up a good point in that the use cases for each language varies. R is a good example because one of the main reasons it is chosen is due to the fact that it already has the largest set of drop in econometrics operations for tons of extremely specific situations. In any other language, you'd often have to code a bunch of complex linear algebra by hand, which would totally negate any marginal benefits due to computation time. In terms of econometrics, Python is going to surpass closed source software packages like SPSS, SAS, eViews, etc soon simply because the rate at which econometric procedures are being implemented in Python is growing steadily (e.g. via a statsmodels/pandas/numpy/scipy based stack). I don't think Python will ever pass R in this respect though as R has a large share of the statisticians helping add the implementations relative to Python. ------ mikecb Another interesting comparison from the github repo[1] is the proportions of lines that it took in each language. [1] [https://github.com/jesusfv/Comparison-Programming- Languages-...](https://github.com/jesusfv/Comparison-Programming-Languages- Economics) ~~~ igouy Programs for some languages are tall and narrow, while comparable programs for other languages are short and wide. ------ plumeria It would be cool that people from different areas of expertise (whether C++, Rust, Go, etc...) committed their most idiomatic implementation for the benchmark. ------ JAlexoid Wasted time on a wasted subject. The person that compiled it had nothing better to do... Economists are not developers and should not imagine to be ones. It takes a lot of time and effort to be one.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Carlo – Web rendering surface for Node applications - styfle https://github.com/GoogleChromeLabs/carlo ====== yathern Very interesting. If I understand correctly - this essentially solves the problem of each Electron application having to package the entirety of chromium with it. However it comes at the cost of assuming the user already has chrome installed - as well as a more separate model between browser (UX) code and application logic. I see this as being extremely useful for community tools that currently run on Electron (like iNav [https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav/wiki](https://github.com/iNavFlight/inav/wiki)). I'm hesitant to think it will be very viable for commercial products - but my instincts are wrong most of the time. Ideally carlo would also be able to create a build target that bundles chromium with it, so that there is support for users without Chrome - and carlo will act more like Electron in that case. ~~~ willchen I think the problem with bundling chromium is that it wouldn't be evergreen, which means it doesn't have the latest security fixes, etc . ~~~ thefounder On the other hand you have more control over your app. The app will work and look as the author intended. ~~~ ramses0 Many[citation needed] electron-ish apps are also available over the internet (vis: slack, atom, vscode, discord being examples I've personally used). In the case where your software development practices require static bindings to exact versions, you're correct, but your app is participating in the "IoT anti-pattern" of deploying baked code which may or may not be updated based on the long-term viability of your company / product. I think this offers a great leap forward in transparently keeping local software up-to-date. Your argument boils down to it being better to ship an entire Windows95 VM with your app so you "have control". In most cases, better to ship your own app and integrate properly with the external operating system / runtime provider (or hide: "Use bundled chrome.exe" as an advanced checkbox). Ideally it'd be possible to select puppeteer/firefox as the target runtime environment as well. ~~~ yathern VSCode and Atom are available over the internet? I've seen online cloud-IDEs based on some of the work in them (Cloud9) but wasn't aware the vanilla versions could run in the browser. ~~~ lilactown Yes. At least, VSCode is using monaco-editor: [https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/) ~~~ orf That's not the same thing ------ tokyodude This seems like exactly what I as an app developer do NOT want. Basically this is my app that may break every 2 to 6 weeks as the Chrome team changes stuff outside my control. With Electron I ship on a version of Chromium I know my code runs on. With Cario today it works, tomorrow they deprecate an API, push an update to Chrome and my app breaks. I'd prefer to get a new version of Electron behind the scenes so I can fix any things that come up and then later push a new version. ~~~ btown What kinds of Chrome APIs are you using? Anything related to web styling and DOM should be stable. ~~~ qualsiasi > should What if a bug in Chrome (layout rendering, dom, ..) breaks your application? It's a corner case, possibly it will never happen. But this solution makes impossible for you to roll out a patch by just changing Chrome version bundled. User will notice a bug in your application and maybe none of his frequently visited web-apps/web-sites exhibits the same bug, so you won't have the user engaged to update (or downgrade!) his Chrome version. All in all you're breaking one thumb rule which is to use fixed versions of dependencies for your products, so to be sure they always work as intended. As a side note, how is one going to test a GUI build this way? Should it be tested against all Chrome versions that may be possibly installed at least at one customers premises? ~~~ betageek Run tests against Canary, you will have plenty of time to update. How is this different from normal native apps when OS updates break things? ~~~ qualsiasi It's not different at all, but you might not want to add this "breaking" scenario to any component in your app, or you might accept the risk - up to you. If you accept the risk for _any_ component to break you'll eventually end-up spending your time fixing something other people broke, offering a poor experience to your end customer. Mind that in corporate environments getting authorized as a software supplier to deploy an update could take weeks if not months, in the meanwhile the customer perspective is that "your product broke" (and made them lose money) - this is why I like to ship as many dependencies as possible in the final bundle. This is my opinion, maybe biased by the market sector I'm working in. Not saying it should work the same way for everyone, just my 2c. ------ mohsen1 This is something Electron itself can probably do and I can see why some people might be interested in shipping their Electron apps without Chromium. There is also Quark[1] and and Electrino[2] that do this _with_ branding APIs. [1] [https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark](https://github.com/jscherer92/Quark) [2] [https://github.com/pojala/electrino](https://github.com/pojala/electrino) ~~~ flanbiscuit I'm glad to see Quark picking up where Electrino left off, I'm very interested in those projects. However both of them are not production ready or even close to production. Plus now you're dealing with the same issues you get on web where you're coding for multiple browsers. However, if you're going to be using electron or similar then you're already used to that ------ FreeFull As a side note, blurring sensitive information in a screenshot is a bad idea. It's possible to recover what the blurred text was using brute-force guess, blur and compare, or a smarter method. ------ aylmao Pretty cool and interesting idea, and I guess the usability is banking the fact that Chrome is the most popular browser and probably installed on most user's computers. Idea for another project: a wrapper around the system's bulit-in web-view that automatically polyfills the different engines to somewhat the same capabilities. ~~~ dangoor There are a few wrappers around system web views in various languages (I've seen Python and Go, at least). The problem is Windows... Apparently only crufty old IE is available as a system default embeddable webview on Windows. Had it been a modern Edge, this would be a viable approach! ~~~ WorldMaker With XAML Islands, Edge can now be embedded in Win32 and WinForms/WPF apps. There's an official wrapper control for it that binds a mostly compatible API to the old IE control and you can almost just "drop in" replace any existing uses. Also, Windows has native HTML/JS application support as a part of the UWP platform, and among the best support for PWA applications on top of that. Apple has been the biggest holdup for PWA adoption. ~~~ dangoor Oh, cool! If someone can get a scaffolding around the Edge embedding in one of those libraries for Go, etc., that would be a nice cross-platform solution for building HTML-based apps that are much slimmer than Electron ones. ------ xyclos You have to install a separate completely unrelated (from the users' perspective) application to run an application written with this? that seems bad. ~~~ evilduck .Net Framework? JRE? Flash? ~~~ aylmao All examples of bad user experience, yes. ~~~ jamesgeck0 .NET Framework is preinstalled on Windows. If you don't target a preinstalled version and you don't bundle the runtime for your targeted version with your installer, of course that'd be bad UX. But the issue there lies with the developer, not .NET Framework. ------ Lerc I'm curious as to whether this could be generalised to any browser if there was a small server that accepted websocket connections and for each one, opened up a listening port on the server side. If the socket was exposed as an environment variable WEBSESSION=/tmp/websession_socket.16417 Then applications could connect to the socket at WEBSESSION and feed data to the browser (to display in an iframe). Mostly I say this because I've made one of these but haven't been using it. ------ russellbeattie This seems useful for prototyping and quick GUIs. Usually for one-off apps I end up creating a local http server on some port then pop up the browser to view it. Before I know it, I end up serving a few different ports and losing tabs... Being able to pack each script up complete with GUI - without a lot of effort or huge dependencies - seems like it might be convenient. ------ zserge It probably might be a good idea to make a similar Chrome-based backend for [https://github.com/zserge/webview](https://github.com/zserge/webview) to provide consistent browser engine for all OSes. ------ nancyp Looks like this was an alternate to the chrome apps which they removed from other os-es than ChromeOS The advantage is size reduction, which is pretty much less of an issue since our disks are only getting bigger. But this will lock in vendors to use Chrome which Electron could provide an alternate. ~~~ jamesgeck0 > But this will lock in vendors to use Chrome which Electron could provide an > alternate. Maybe not. If Firefox's and Chrome's headless communication protocols converge sufficiently, it may become possible for Carlo to support them interchangeably. ------ arusahni At first glance, this looks like it establishes a shared runtime for all Carlo apps. I'll be interested to see how well it supplants Electron once it matures. ------ pier25 TL;DR: this is like Electron, but instead of bundling Chrome it uses the local Chrome installation. pkg is recommended for bundling the Node app so I imagine the bundle includes V8 and Node. [https://github.com/zeit/pkg](https://github.com/zeit/pkg) ~~~ _verandaguy Is it fair to assume then that this would result in: \- Smaller disk footprint per app; and \- Drastically smaller memory footprint per running process? ~~~ mikewhy Disk footprint would be smaller. Memory wouldn't change, at least not too much. ------ kyberias If it requires Chrome, why not simply develop a Chrome app? "A Google Chrome App is a web application that runs on the Google Chrome web browser. Chrome apps can be obtained from the Chrome Web Store where apps, extensions, and themes can be installed or bought." ~~~ smaddock Chrome Apps are deprecated [1] for all platforms except Chrome OS. [1] [https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to- web.ht...](https://blog.chromium.org/2016/08/from-chrome-apps-to-web.html) ~~~ pjmlp Yes, they were replaced by PWAs, which is the proper way of doing apps for devs that don't want to touch OS APIs. ------ jamesgeck0 What is the size of the executable that pkg produces for a Carlo example app? ~~~ asadlionpk linux: 39MB macOS: 39MB Windows: 27MB I wonder if this can be further reduced. ~~~ 13years NeutralinoJS says it can run in as little as 1MB [https://neutralino.js.org/](https://neutralino.js.org/) ~~~ asadlionpk Too bad it doesn't support macOS. ------ nwienert Would be nice to just see this as an opt-in add-on for Electron where it uses Puppeteer in the same way. ------ aaorris Biggest detraction here for me is the Apache license, compared to an MIT license in Electron. ~~~ willscott Hunh? Apache is a more permissive license than MIT. why is Google waiving it's claim to patents on this project a problem for you? ~~~ rossy The patent restrictions make Apache 2.0 less permissive (even if you think they're a good thing.) They cause practical problems, even for well-meaning free software developers, because they make the licence incompatible with GPLv2.0, which means, if you use an Apache 2.0 library in your program, you can never use any GPLv2.0 licensed libraries or vice versa. ~~~ Fice But Apache 2.0 is compatible with GPLv3, which means, that you can combine GPLv3 and "GPLv2 or later" libraries with code under Apache 2.0. ------ cdicelico Great name. ------ browsercoin so basically an officially sanctioned nw.js ------ snacktaster anything that requires chrome to function is essentially spyware. so.. no thanks ~~~ sctb We've already asked you to improve your comments, so we'll ask again. Can you please post civilly and substantively or not at all? ~~~ snacktaster feel free to delete any comments you dont like ------ oculusthrift ew. I was with you until you said it requires chrome. ~~~ yathern That's the whole point of it. Not the caveat really, but the primary feature! Whereas Electron will package chrome in every binary, this uses what you already have installed. Obviously not great for many product types. You wouldn't want to build a product off of this, knowing that a user might not have Chrome. But for internal enterprise stuff, or community-built tooling - I can imagine this is quite useful, and downloading a 3MB binary is a whole lot better than downloading a 300MB for the same program. I would love to see this work alongside Electron, where you can provide two download buttons for your app. One if a user has chrome already (3MB) and another if they don't (300MB). Of course the API and model differences between the two would be hard to solve, and require another level of abstraction. ~~~ aylmao I'd like to see this as a single button, where you download the 3MB standalone, and if the user doesn't have chrome, it downloads an Electron runtime. ~~~ finchisko I would like to see electron as system package. Would work similar to Webview in Android (which is updated as normal package and any app can use it). And the best part is, that it can be done (I mean, create such a component with nice installer and auto updater). Just nobody done it and rather keep bundling full electron with every app. ~~~ zserge I started a webview project some time ago, and I see some people using it in their projects - [https://github.com/zserge/webview](https://github.com/zserge/webview) Basically, it provides some high-level APi over a native system webview (WebKit or IE, depending on the OS). ------ snacktaster looks like it's basically electron but doesnt bundle chrome. and electron is a piece of crap. edit: one time I downloaded this little mac menu bar applet that did something I wanted. I took a look at the little .js file that actually did stuff and it was about 200 lines or so. but the "application" was about 140 mega bytes. I never deleted something off my computer so fast. ~~~ woah Doing your part to conserve our planet’s disk space	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: enter URL, get screenshot and hosted link to image - fduran http://site2pic.com/ ====== waterside81 Cool, works well. It looks like you have some default viewport size so if content scrolls beneath it, it gets cropped in the image: Compare: <http://site2pic.com/pics/littleheroes.com9474.png> To: <http://www.littleheroes.com> Care to share how you're doing this? Instrumenting webkit server side? Edit: Just discovered a ruby program that can be installed with homebrew on OSX (brew install webkit2png). It's a command line call that does the same as this web service: webkit2png <http://www.google.com> webkit2png -W 1000 -H 1000 <http://www.google.com> (Sorry OP, don't mean to take away your thunder, just thought others might want to try this too.) ~~~ fduran Thanks, all the magic is done with url2png.com, I'm just adding a front-face with Twitter Bootstrap and a Django backend. (edit) The cropping is because I've started with a 600x600 image, so taller sites will be cropped. I may add different image sizes as options. Also I'm thinking about adding an editor with Raphaël. Other ideas are welcome. One of the use-cases (for me) is to be able to quickly send a link to a screenshot to someone (technically challenged) with a button or something circled in red to explain "this is where you need to click". (edit)I'm aware this can be done with command line, it's just that most people don't know how. ------ tszming 1\. Chinese/non-English not supported? <http://site2pic.com/pics/www.yahoo.com.hk9533.png> 2\. You use `mailhide` in the Contact Us, what is the point? (I think some people who wanted to give you feedback might be scared by the ReCaptcha) ~~~ fduran Thanks for the feedback 1\. I'll look into the debug log for that page. 2\. The point of reCaptcha is to thwart automated email harvesters. In any case I'll setup a proper "contact me" web form. ------ blueplz Didn't work the first time for www.cricinfo.com \-- <http://site2pic.com/pics/www.cricinfo.com4813.png> Some bugs to be worked out, but cool nonetheless :) PS: Worked on subsequent tries ------ Sephr This rejects TLDs (e.g. <http://io/>) and IPv6 URLs. ~~~ fduran This tool is for websites (places you can browse to), not URIs in general, thanks. ------ jimbocortes really cool	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
LivingSocial Brings Daily Deals To The Hood - brianbreslin http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/livingsocial-local-deals/ ====== brianbreslin interesting to see how they manage sales for hyper-targeted areas. someone has to build a self-serve tool for these services.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Internet Doesn't Love Anything. It Is Not a Human Being. - yiedyie http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2014/06/the_internet_loves_the_internet_hates_no_the_internet_is_not_a_person.html ====== okonomiyaki3000 I disagree. Saying that the internet loves something is similar to saying that "information wants to be free" or that a certain material is "hydrophobic". None of these things are "sentient" and so can't have opinions, desires, or fears, right? Well, maybe but what gives us "sentient" beings opinions, desires, fears, etc? I reckon it's just some kind of emergent phenomena. Well, the internet's "love" of cat photos is similar to this. Probably. ------ noonespecial It does exhibit emergent behaviors that are arguably lifelike. Mostly its still human driven, like the worlds biggest Ouija board _(1)_. It will get lots more interesting when it becomes mostly machines interacting (and effecting the physical world) thanks to the IoT. _(1) And it seems to have spelled out "I can haz"._ ~~~ yiedyie Remindes me of [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_$TV_series$) ------ izietto Sophism; _The Internet loves X_ implies _People on Internet love X_. Moreover, the Internet is for Cats [1] [1] [http://theinternetisforcats.com/](http://theinternetisforcats.com/) ------ xg15 Good that we have cleared that up. So, after that, could anyone explain to me how Washington can keep making all those laws and far-reaching descisions about our lives? Isn't it just a collection of buildings? ------ guard-of-terra Internet is not a human being, but one might argue it is to some point alive; and that it even responds to irritations. ------ cotwomey The internet is clearly very frustrated about being described as human. ------ waps Why not ? One of the main properties of neural networks, like the human one, is that many of them act just like a single one (provided they communicate), only smarter. In fact, your brain is not a single piece of brain matter. There are 3 "main" sections to your brain. That, and they're doubled up on 2 sides. Shoot all 3 on one side, and that human will respond almost as before, with very minimal loss of function (assuming the resulting bleeding doesn't kill the person of course). That's not where it ends, the cortex is further subdivided in ~300 regions, each of which is to some extent independent. For instance, they have their own separate connection to the spinal cord. That means you could shoot 299 of them, and the person would not die and still respond like a human being to some extent. There are caveats, like that only 4 of those regions are connected to the eye, only 4 are connected to the ear, so chances are if you kill off most of the brain, it'd be a blind and deaf human being, but ... So the internet should respond, in the other direction and only to some extent (because communication is very slow), like a human being. ------ fit2rule It's not just the Internet. It's also "them". And "us". No such thing! "Everyone knows" is, like, a modern prayer. You just say it, and then everything else becomes true. Everyone knows you can just say 'everyone knows something' and you'll have described the Godhead, and/or thus God itself. Which, everyone knows, doesn't actually exist. The Internet is an electronic godhead. Did everyone not get that briefing at the entrance door?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The future is software engineers who can't code - ZnZirconium https://qz.com/778380/the-future-is-software-engineers-who-cant-code/ ====== kristianpaul Professional developers jobs are still safe. Most people still cannot code without engineers assisting. QuickBase surveyed its customers and found about 75% of them rely on IT specialists to start their projects, do about two- thirds of the work, then hand them off for the “last mile.”	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk sub 'impractical', won't be used - oldgradstudent http://www.khaosodenglish.com/news/2018/07/10/elon-musk-sub-impractical-wont-be-used/ ====== robryan It is possible to both do good and generate positive PR. If he was getting in the way or come uninvited would be one thing, but other than that nothing wrong with an extra option. Rich and well known people can’t win really. They get criticised for helping and also criticised for not bailing out bad government policy. ~~~ untog > Rich and well known people can’t win really Counter-argument: they are already winning, and will continue to win until the day they die. I think the obscenely rich can cope with a small ding to the ego every now and then. ~~~ sawmurai Don’t treat people differently based on their financial situation ~~~ stnmtn But think of the mega-ultra-rich billionaire's feelings! ~~~ jagermo "Billionaires are people, too. We are leaders in technology, in industry, in finance. Look at history. Do you know who else vilified a tiny minority of financiers and progressive thinkers called the Jews?" ~ Gavin Belson ------ lingz On one hand it's nice to see the valley: 'let's solve this' attitude. On the other hand, it's common to see them blinded by hubris, resulting in problem solving approaches divorced from reality. ~~~ antris Weird to see comments like this. Elon Musk was asked to help, he agreed to come there and now people talk about "hubris" as if he had tried to force his help on them? Can't famous people even help kids stuck in a cave without someone criticizing them for it? ~~~ learnstats2 >Can't famous people even help kids stuck in a cave without someone criticizing them for it? Yes, easily: 1\. Don't press release (or tweet); treat what you are doing with confidentiality. 2\. Actually help in a way that's helpful. Here's a good example [http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/15/george-michael- secretly...](http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2018/01/15/george-michael-secretly- donated-500000-to-hiv-aids-charity/) ~~~ antris 1) If someone is helping, I don't give a ---- what they say about it. Actions speak louder than words. People criticizing Musk probably haven't lifted a finger themselves to help the kids. 2) How do you know if Musk's help wasn't helpful? Do you work at the rescue site? ~~~ InitialLastName I think the criticism of Musk is exactly that the words spoke louder than the actions. Very few of the people criticising Musk had the ability to do anything to help the kids. He is in a rare situation to have the flexibility and resources to make significant financial and/or logistical contributions to literally any cause he notices. In this case, he did it in the most self-aggrandizing way possible, while appearing to make no actual contribution. ------ kraig911 Well I feel embarrassed for him. I genuinely think he wanted to help. I guess it's like automated cars maybe? It'd save million's of lives but we're so stuck on validating that it might not come in time. ~~~ jamesholden He did nothing to be embarrassed about. He tried hard to quickly help out, using his own resources, asking nothing in return. They started getting kids out suddenly (after they already started on the sub), to take advantage of the lower water levels. I see nothing here that would embarrass him. He tried to do a kind thing. His speed about it wasn't anything he had control over. To be honest though, they built that thing fast as hell. ------ jamesholden Some comments I have read throughout the internet, tweets, etc, suggest that he was too slow to react and that they had over half the kids out already etc. Reminder that he started this when they were expecting them to be stuck there possibly MONTHS. The rescue in action now was executed quite quickly and surprisingly (to me), as they had said it could be a long term ordeal. The sub too, was designed it to fit in the narrowest parts of the tunnel as well. I think it's admirable he quickly got this put together and tested, and flew it over to them as fast as he could. Likewise, he was respectful and didn't take too much of their time or resources when visiting. I think he tried to do the right thing. He gave them an option that they didn't have previously. If it's not used, so be it. If they had no other options, then they would have another. ~~~ s2g > and didn't take too much of their time or resources when visiting No, why would he. He got what he wanted already. ------ codeulike It might have been useful. A week ago they were talking about the boys being trapped for months. He'll get stick of course, but people suggested he might be able to help and that's why he got involved. ~~~ emptyfile Pretty sure most divers agreed it was way too dangerous. If there's barely space in the cave for an adult diver then there's no space for a submarine. ~~~ codeulike _... no space for a submarine._ Recent tweet from Musk on this subject: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016686032907931656](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1016686032907931656) _Moreover, based on extensive cave video review & discussion with several divers who know journey, SpaceX engineering is absolutely certain that mini- sub can do entire journey_ ------ nichtich I just couldn't understand why he thinks the container should be made of hard metal. Sure maybe the current equipment like dry suit + full face mask has limitations. But shouldn't the natural path be building on top of that? Why is a hard long object that can't bend to fit through some narrow gaps, don't have power and don't use the power of the human it contains, and much heavier, be their go to solution? ~~~ mehrdadn Remember he didn't have the luxury of time here. He'd have surely designed something better if he had the chance to design, manufacture, and test it from the ground-up, but I doubt there was enough time to do such a thing. He probably tried to do the best with whatever he had at the time, on the off chance it'd still be useful. So he took the pre-designed parts of his Falcon rocket that could be useful and tried to use those. Also see this comment: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17496684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17496684) ~~~ ofrzeta This is another reason why people like me are skeptic about that whole "submarine" thing. Taking "pre-designed parts of his Falcon rocket" is ... also a bit ridiculous. If I were do design a rescue capsule getting a stainless steel pipe and welding a flange to it or anything would be the least of my worries. You can get stuff like that off-the-shelf with same-day delivery. But surely a submarine made from Falcon parts makes for a nice myth or headline. ------ spdy Musk is a "technology can save problems"-guy and his team got something done in a short amount of time. With all his involvements in the past years he likes to tackle complicated technical problems (SpaceX) or use modern technology to disrupt a segment (Tesla/Powergrid/Hyperloop). ------ ofrzeta Literal money quote: "Anuphong said the two spoke about helping the remaining people out of the cave. He said Prayuth encouraged Musk to invest in the country’s Eastern Economic Corridor. Musk then said he would return to Thailand in the future." ------ jonsen What procedure do they actually use? I'd guess SEALs allready have standard procedures for transpoting persons under water in difficult circumstances. Secret procedures probably, so we might never know exactly how they do it. ------ satysin The people who like Musk will say he is doing good trying to help even if they can't/won't use what he offers. The people who dislike Musk will say he is using this awful event for PR and such. ~~~ Lambdanaut As it is with every politically charged event. The truth in this case, and most similar cases, is "it's probabaly a little bit of both". Its a joke to think elon is the pure saint many hope him to be. It's also a joke to think that he's just a rich selfish big-egoed businessman. ------ aplummer Although I see the hubris point of view people here have, if oxygen dipped or some other catastrophy and someone fell unconscious, they could have been in a situation where this contraption was Useful. People like to jump to black and white but maybe it’s shades of grey, some hubris and also a chance of being genuinely helpful. ------ senectus1 local Australian media is saying that the report that the kids cant swim was wildly inaccurate, they even showed photos of the kids swimming with their friends. The "sub" was never really needed... but good on him anyway. ------ jf- I’m torn on whether this was a publicity stunt or not. If it was, it’s an amazingly transparent one. That almost makes me think it was sincere, but absurd. I don’t see how Musk et al score points either way. ~~~ Angostura I think it's sincere and well intentioned 'here's a difficult, interesting problem, lets put my big brain to work on out-of-the-box solutions'. There _is_ touch of hubris, perhaps. ------ thisisit Interestingly I can't find the 'impractical' quote. Just found this one: > His equipment is technologically complex and advanced, but we cannot bring > it into the cave for this mission ~~~ NVRM A simpler one: «we cannot bring it into the cave» ------ baxter001 Just at the basic level of what the experience for these boys would have been like, sealed in a metal cylinder and towed through the cave system for hours - it seems a greater feat of endurance for them than being lead out - particularly with how traumatised by darkness and claustrophobia they must already be. ~~~ DecoPerson The boys were extremely weak and unhealthy. The trek was demanding and risky for experienced, healthy and prepared divers; there was a lot of doubt as to whether the boys would be able to make such an arduous journey. ------ crumbshot This is the best outcome for Musk, as he gets the positive PR (and bolsters his supposed "Iron Man" image), but bears none of the risk of his half-baked idea failing and killing someone. More generally, one should be wary of capitalists claiming they can solve all of your problems. They're likely just in it for themselves. ------ ofrzeta From the pictures I don't see how the "submarine" could have worked, when they say the cave is so narrow in places that you need to take off the scuba to get through. Also probably not cylindrical. ~~~ Numberwang Actually it is kind of cylindrical: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qySXPJ2WE&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qySXPJ2WE&feature=youtu.be) ~~~ ofrzeta The cave, not the submarine.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Swift: Google’s Bet on Differentiable Programming - sturza https://tryolabs.com/blog/2020/04/02/swift-googles-bet-on-differentiable-programming/ ====== eggy I will stay with Julia because although it gets touted as a general purpose language it's audience is predominantly in the sciences, and it is fast. The article mentions the program fine tuning itself which reminded me of genetic programming. I read Koza's book back in 1997(?). I might take a look at Swift, but I did think it was a weird choice for Google until I read in the article about Chris Lattner's involvement.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
99% of Those Who Died from Virus Had Other Illness, Italy Says - kasperni https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says ====== gentleman11 “Other illness” is extremely vague. Apparently having had a high blood pressure reading counts. What about sore knees? Migraines? Edit: if you scroll down, you find info that is actually meaningful: a chart showing deaths by age. What this shows is that 90+% of people over 60 have had a doctors visit that turned up an issue. ~~~ mardifoufs It says in the article: "More than 75% had high blood pressure, about 35% had diabetes and a third suffered from heart disease" Which makes sense considering most of them were older people ~~~ Lldjjxnn Heart disease is undiagnosed diabetes [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoQiDaWnuE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZoQiDaWnuE) ~~~ AnimalMuppet That seems highly improbable to me. Can you give some data to back your assertion? [Edit: I see you added a Youtube video, with no further information. No, I'm not going to go watch a no-further-information-given Youtube video to find out if your claim has a scientific basis, or if you're a quack. If it's real, it ought to be in text somewhere, with data.] ~~~ Lldjjxnn Diabetes mellitus is highly prevalent amongst patients with heart failure, especially those with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), and patients with the two conditions have a higher risk of mortality compared with patients without diabetes or heart failure.[1–3] Diabetic patients have an increased risk of developing heart failure because of the abnormal cardiac handling of glucose and free fatty acids (FFAs), and because of the effect of the metabolic derangements of diabetes on the cardiovascular system. A wealth of epidemiological evidence demonstrates that diabetes mellitus is independently associated with the risk of developing heart failure, with the risk increasing by more than twofold in men and by more than fivefold in women.[1–3,6] Both population studies and clinical trials have demonstrated that diabetes mellitus significantly increases the risk of recurrent hospitalisations for heart failure and the duration of hospital stay in patients with heart failure, and it is associated with a significantly higher mortality compared with those without diabetes.[11] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494155/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5494155/) Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in women. Both obesity and diabetes mellitus are important independent risk factors for the development of cardiovascular disease. Obesity is the leading risk factor for type 2 diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that 32% of white and 53% of black women are obese. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066828/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066828/) ~~~ lioeters > diabetes mellitus significantly increases the risk of recurrent > hospitalisations for heart failure I hadn't heard this - good to know! However, the studies you cited do not seem to support your earlier statement: > Heart disease is undiagnosed diabetes Perhaps a qualification would fit better: deaths from heart disease may have been caused by undiagnosed diabetes. ------ stephsmithio I think headlines like these are extremely detrimental to the global fight of this virus. Whether or not you're at risk (age, health problems, etc), you are a vehicle for transporting the virus and so while there is no need for "panic", it's both respectful and pragmatic to distance so that the virus can be contained. ~~~ garraeth Why? Shouldn't the truth be known? Wouldn't it be wise to know actual stats vs/ trying to hide the truth in order to propagate undue panic? Then discuss it, and options, as how to move forward with correct information vs/ guesses and/or rumors? It's sad that this report was downvoted on a site (HN) that is supposed to be so analytical. ~~~ cameronfraser In a perfect world where everyone reacts rationally sure. However, the actual reaction to this information is that individuals deem themselves not a risk and go about their daily lives. Unfortunately they are endangering everyone who is at risk in the process. ~~~ ardy42 Yeah, there's _so_ much complexity here that a simple number could lead someone to miss. So, 99% of those who died had another illness. Almost everyone has illnesses, so what kinds are we talking about? A patient surviving doesn't mean the patient didn't need intensive medical care. So you survived, are there any long-term symptoms you'll have to learn to live with? I've also heard that (at least in some contexts) a "mild" case of COVID-19 is defined as _one that didn 't need breathing assistance._ That's not the colloquial definition of "mild." ------ lazybreather About 90% of the general population have "other" illnesses. ~~~ toomuchtodo A third of the US population suffers from high blood pressure [1]. More than 100 million U.S. adults are now living with diabetes or prediabetes [2]. About 15 million Americans have cancer of some sort [3]. About 10 million people are immunocompromised or immunosuppressed [4]. So, you're not wrong! The high risk factor cohort is enormous, and the more risk factors you have, the higher your risk of death is (based on data coming out of Italy). A lot of folks are going to die from ailments they had and knew about, or ailments they had but didn't know about. [1] [https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/facts.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/bloodpressure/facts.htm) [2] [https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes- repor...](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0718-diabetes-report.html) [3] [https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html](https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/all.html) [4] [https://www.google.com/search?q=americans+immunocompromised](https://www.google.com/search?q=americans+immunocompromised) ------ heisenbit Most people dying from AIDS die from other illnesses. If something new pulls the bodily systems down across the board by viral replication, dying cells and lack of oxygen there will always be a place that is a weak spot which gives. ~~~ guenthert With AIDS attacking the immune system, this is an patently bad example. ------ fenesiistvan Multiple reports now mention this "high blood pressure" criteria. What this means more exactly? Elevated (above 120/80) also counts as high? ~~~ beagle3 I haven’t been able to find a good description, but I suspect it means there is a known history of high bp (which indeed is usually defined as you wrote) However, there is confounding issue of bp medicine - there was a lancer article about ibuprofen and some kinds of bp medicine causing increased ACE2 expression, which is suspected to increase susceptibility to sarscov2 and worsen covid symptoms. So, it could be that the blood pressure isn’t actually the risk factor, but treatments for it. Will take time to tell ~~~ arpa The official position of the european cardiology association is that claims that BP medicine can increase suceptibility and worsen symptoms is basically FUD: [https://www.escardio.org/Councils/Council-on- Hypertension-(C...](https://www.escardio.org/Councils/Council-on- Hypertension-$CHT$/News/position-statement-of-the-esc-council-on- hypertension-on-ace-inhibitors-and-ang) It is strongly suggested to keep taking your BP medication. A bonus also lies in that link: there is evidence from studies in animals suggesting that these medications might be rather protective against serious lung complications in patients with COVID-19 infection, but to date there is no data in humans. The mechanism of protective action is explained by this comment on HN: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505537](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22505537) While the theory of ACE inhibitors/blockers making covid-19 worse is basically based upon the presumption that due to inhibition/blocking of angiotensin receptors, the body upregulates by creating more ACE receptors, to which the virus can bind. ------ jonrimmer This doesn't mean that many of those who were younger and without pre-existing illnesses weren't in a serious condition and in danger of dying, just that, with the help of intensive care, they were able to survive. If and when heath services become completely overwhelmed and there are no longer enough hospital bed/ventilators/doctors and nurses to provide the assistance they need, then we'll likely see a lot of younger and otherwise healthy people start to die as well. ~~~ DeonPenny It's that the opposite of what they are saying. In a situation where you just described when the system in italy was very openly overwhelmed young people not only didn't die there's very little evidence they got sick, to begin with ~~~ Teever Was this due to triage where resources were focused on younger people with complications as the medical professionals felt that it was a better use of limited resources? ------ rayvd Same as with influenza.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
B- environment merits B- effort - mickeyben http://37signals.com/svn/posts/3461-b-environment-merits-b-effort ====== arkitaip "the statistical outliers who do not follow this are not worth focusing policy on" This is a great idea that 37signals keeps coming back to, i.e. don't shape HR policies based on outliners and exceptions. ~~~ DannyBee This is because they don't have a large enough group of outliers to matter. So yeah, I wouldn't shape HR policy in a small company based on outliers. But if i had a company of 50k people, i probably have at _least_ 3500 significant outliers, performance wise. ~~~ zeidrich I don't think he meant let those people hang around being disruptive. Just don't structure policy around them. If they are outliers in that respect, then will any policy you come up with make those people productive? Will it have overall positive benefit or will it damage the ability for the other 95% to work? If you have 95% of your workforce who want to succeed and 5% of your workforce who are "slackers', you can provide tools to help those who want to succeed and fire the slackers. On the other hand, you can force through workflow policies that force the slackers to do minimal work while frustrating and slowing down the workflow of the rest of the staff who want to excel. As well, the more freedom you give to those staff who want to excel, the more rope you give those staff who will not to hang themselves with. Force them to jump through hoops to show that they are working and they will do what they can to hide the fact that they're not. Give them free reign to slack off and they will not have false metrics to hide behind, nor will they feel the need to hide so much. ~~~ DannyBee I agree you should fire the slackers. But that is a policy, and you've focused on them and structured it around dealing with them, which goes against what he just said you should do :) ~~~ absconditus I think that he means do not do things like create a process that everyone must follow, full of red tape, simply because your worst employees cannot perform a task correctly. ------ dyno12345 Another 37signals post! Let's get started! > If you want star quality effort, you need to provide a star quality > environment. No, window dressing like a free meal is not it. Boy, we've all been there. I know what he's talking about! Now I want to know what specific advice he has. > It can serve as a cherry on top, but if the rest of the cake is full of > shit, that’s not going to make it any more appealing. Hahaha, now he's got me on the hook! > Make people proud to work where they work by involving them in projects that > matter and ignite a fire of urgency about your purpose. Find out who you are > as a company and be the very best you. Give people a strategic plan that’s > coherent and believable and then leave the bulk of the tactical > implementation to their ingenuity. Oh. No specific advice. Free food isn't good enough, so... do some other stuff to get people excited. So this is another Chicken Soup for the Startup Soul post. Or maybe a more charitable interpretation, instead of just blowing hot air at us, he's asking us to blow hot air at employees? ~~~ sageikosa I say this to my kids all the time: "Bye! Make good choices!" I stole it from Jamie Lee Curtis's character in Freaky Friday when she drops her kids off at school. ~~~ calinet6 My dad's was "Bye! Don't be stupid!" It was endearing, and it stuck. ------ jheriko "Being a slacker is not an innate human quality" I really can't swallow this. Laziness is /the/ primary motivator for invention. People want to do the least possible to attain their goals - this isn't a negative quality - but in the context of earning a paycheque it hurts the employer. I've noticed the larger the company i've worked at, the more people treading water and hiding inbetween people who actually do work. On the other hand I do broadly agree that window dressing is not enough. We end up judging employers by actions more than words by nature... ~~~ kolektiv Laziness does not have to equate to being a slacker. Lazily (or inventively) pursuing your employers goals is not a problem - generally if you find a way to satisfy them with less work, everyone's happy. Slacking would be following your own goals (loafing around, hiding) when they conflict with your employer. As the article says, if your people aren't bothered or motivated by your goals, they probably shouldn't be there (at least in skilled positions - of course there are plenty of jobs which are purely for the paycheck). It's not worth changing your company based on the attitudes and motivations of people who shouldn't be there anyway. It is easier to hide in (many) big companies, but that doesn't mean that the solution should be to remove all potential hiding places - it should be to remove (or re-motivate) those who are hiding. ------ ry0ohki While I certainly think a bad environment can make people perform worse, I'm not sure the reverse is true. There are just some people who don't give a shit regardless of the awesome trusting environment you give them. ~~~ jameskilton He covers this point in the first paragraph, basically saying that they aren't worth your time. In short, fire them. ------ hipsters_unite "If you’re doing work in a less than star environment, you owe less than star effort. Quid pro quo." This describes every bad job I've ever had. You do a great job, nobody cares, you do a mediocre job, you feel bad. Lose lose. ~~~ slantyyz DHH leaves professionalism and personal pride out of his analogy. I try to do good work even for bad employers. Instead of reducing the quality of my work product, what I would do is quit and find a better employer. ------ gohwell "It can serve as a cherry on top, but if the rest of the cake is full of shit, that’s not going to make it any more appealing." Got to love that ~~~ zenogais Reminds me of a lot of shitty start-ups out there - where management is terrible but thinks it can bribe people into sweatshop-style labor with meaningless perks. ~~~ rquantz I used to do freelance work in a big open office setup with a lot of different companies all owned by the same big holding company. Once or twice a week one of the partners of the parent company would come in with a box of brownies or some such thing. The startup kids who hadn't paid themselves in months would all stand around eating the treat, saying "god, this is the best place to work." ~~~ pekk If you can afford not to get paid for months... ------ GhotiFish I've got that kind of mind that can drift off while reading. By the time I had regained my focus, the article had descended into this: "If you’re doing work in a less than star environment, you owe less than star effort. Quid pro quo. By all means, do yours to affect and change the environment. Nudge it towards the stars. But also, accept the limitations of your power. You can drag a horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink. So ration your will and determination. Invest what’s left over, after meeting the bar of your work environment, in your own projects, skills, and future. The dividends is what’s going to lead you to the next, better thing. Everyone deserves to work at a place that inspires them to give their very best. Don’t stop reaching until you have that." Thank _goodness_ I was worried I was going to run out of platitudes today. ~~~ thetrumanshow Once you earn the spot of a visionary with an audience, you have to continue to espouse ideas. Movements require that ideas be constantly re-framed to draw more and more people into the fold. Also, you must reinforce the same ideas for the existing audience. If you're beyond the need to receive the "milk of the gospel" and are ready for the meat, then its probably time for you to be a producer and not merely a consumer. But, don't blame the minister for continuing to feed the babes. ~~~ anoncow That is exceptionally deep, my friend.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Firefox Send: Private, Encrypted File Sharing - networked https://send.firefox.com/ ====== nneonneo The last time this was posted I hacked up a quick and dirty Python client for Send: [https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend](https://github.com/nneonneo/ffsend). I just updated it for recent Send changes, which streamlined the crypto and removed some redundancy. Firefox’s JS client requires the whole file be in memory in order to perform the encryption, and has to decrypt the whole file in memory in order to download it. My client doesn’t have that limitation so it could theoretically upload much larger files (subject only to the server’s upload limit). ~~~ solnyshok have you bumped already into server upload limit? ~~~ ihale Would that not simply be your specific allotted disk space, and bandwidth? ------ sarabande I'm curious -- Mozilla says it can't decrypt the file on their side: Mozilla does not have the ability to access the content of your encrypted file [...] https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send How is the receiver able to decrypt the file -- i.e. what is the decryption key if not the URL slug, which presumably Mozilla has as well? ~~~ KwanEsq The key is the hash, which isn't sent over the wire when loading a page. Now granted it's accessible via location.hash in the client, but one has to trust Mozilla not to do that. ~~~ zeveb > one has to trust Mozilla not to do that. Exactly. One has to trust Mozilla _every time one visits the page_. They could _easily_ configure it to be malicious one time out of a million (say); what are the odds that they would be caught? Web-page-based crypto is fundamentally insecure, and Mozilla is committing an extremely grave error in encouraging users to trust it (as they also do with their Firefox Accounts). Security is _important_ , and snake-oil solutions are worse than worthless. ~~~ Yoric Send is meant to be an improvement on Dropbox & co for a specific use case. Is it perfect? No, it isn't. But it is still a considerable improvement. If you have a better solution in mind for the average user crowd, feel free to suggest it, of course. ~~~ carussell Spec out and implement resource pinning, already. Like RFC 8246, but authored more with the user's interests in mind, rather than the service's. As a show of nothing-up-the-sleeve, a service asserts that it's in a stable state and will continue to serve exact copies of the resources as they exist now—that they will not change out from beneath the client in subsequent requests. When a user chooses to use resource pinning, the browser checks that this is true, and if finding a new deployment has occurred, the browser will refuse to accept it without deliberate consent and action from the user (something on par with invalid cert screen). This means that for a subset of services (those whose business logic can run primarily on the client side), the users need not trust the server, they need only to trust the app, which can be audited. When deploying updated resources, services SHOULD make the update well- advertised and accompany it with some notice out of band (such as a post about the new "release", its changelog, and a link to the repo), so the new deployment may be audited. When new deployments occur, clients SHOULD allow the user to opt for continuing to using the pinned resources, and services SHOULD be implemented in such a way that this is handled gracefully. This gives the user continuity of access while the user (or their org) is carrying out the audit process. Areas where this would be useful: \- HIPAA compliance \- Web crypto that isn't fundamentally broken \- Stronger guarantees for non-local resources used in Web Extensions—in fact, the entire extension update mechanism could probably be more or less rebased on top of the resource pinning policy ~~~ the8472 This would also have the added bonus that one could reload such pinned resources from anywhere once you got the pin. Even without TLS setup or having to trust certificate chains. Caching proxies would suddenly become viable again because only the first download has to through HTTPS while "I don't have this in the local cache anymore, can you serve me this content" requests could go through sidechannels or outside the TLS handshake or something like that. Caches could even perform downgrade non-attacks. ~~~ Dylan16807 How many pins would you expect a browser instance to have? I feel like most of the time the pinned content could fit in the browser cache and make this variety of proxy-side caching pointless. ~~~ the8472 Immutable content is a prerequisite for pins. The caching benefits mostly fall out of the immutability, not the pinning. So as long as the hypothetical standard would allow one to be used without the other additional uses could fall out of that stack. ~~~ Dylan16807 My point is, those particular benefits only exist in a narrow circumstance where the browser is half-caching. ------ zaroth As I recall, there was a Bitcoin wallet service which relied on securing the access key behind the '#' in the URL for its security -- turns out it's not perfectly reliable and shouldn't be used for protecting money. Likewise for files you really need to be secure. Since boring crypto shouldn't have weird failure modes like this, I'm thinking this design is a big mistake? EDIT: I think it was Instawallet and apparently while they had robots.txt set to prevent crawling, the theory was people typing their URL into Google (or Omnibar) would alert Google to the URL and it got into search results anyway. I know that web-keys is based on the theory that since the fragment isn't sent by User-Agents in the Request-Uri that it's secure, but there are things that see the full URL which aren't conforming agents, and it just seems risky for any long-lived secret. ~~~ akavel Given that it's explicitly a _short_ -lived secret (below 24h), and one-use - so probably Google crawler (or typing into url bar - presumably to immediately follow by Enter) would invalidate it on first access - I don't feel convinced any of those concerns apply? ------ NikolaeVarius It really is a shame that there still isn't a easy way (A person whose computer knowledge extends to using facebook), that I know of, of sending arbitrarily large files that isn't tethered to a specific cloud service and is also reliable (can tolerate connection dropping). It seems that bitorrent protocols are pretty close, but I don't think there is a seamless client that allows for "magical" point to point transactions. ~~~ AndrewDucker You're at a computer. You need to connect to another computer. First you need to know a route to that computer. If it has an externally reachable IP address and you know that, then great. If it has an externally reachable IP address and a DNS entry and you know _that_, then also great. If you don't know the IP address or domain name of the other computer then you'll have to do some kind of lookup/exchange to find it. That means some kind of centralised service to provide the lookup functionality. If the other computer doesn't even has an externally reachable IP address then a central service is going to have to act as a connection point which you can both connect to (or provide some other method of helping the two of you connect). I'm not aware of any entirely decentralised system which would allow two computers which are behind NAT to find and then talk to each other. Or any obvious design which would work there. ~~~ jchw Two thoughts: \- IPv6 kind of helps here, at least if we hope that no NAT standard ever makes it into IPv6. Crossing my fingers. \- There does exist at least one NAT hole-punching technique that can traverse two NATs with no central server using ICMP-based holepunching and UDP. Obviously, like all hole punching techniques, it only works on certain kinds of NATs, and firewalls can kill it. ~~~ ac2u > There does exist at least one NAT hole-punching technique that can traverse > two NATs with no central server using ICMP-based holepunching and UDP. > Obviously, like all hole punching techniques, it only works on certain kinds > of NATs, and firewalls can kill it. I think you're referring to this? Clever hack indeed. [https://github.com/samyk/pwnat](https://github.com/samyk/pwnat) ------ mtgx They should add this as a shortcut button in Firefox. I think it makes even more sense than having the Pocket icon there. Not everyone may want to save their articles on another service, but pretty much everyone needs to send a file privately to someone else every now and then. So something like this should be super-easy to access. I learned about Firefox Send when it launched but completely forgot about it until now. I would definitely use it more if it had an easy-to-access (read: not burried in the Settings page) shortcut in the browser. ~~~ floatingatoll It's a Test Pilot project, so easy-to-access may be deferred until they choose to upgrade it from Test to Release, but it is certain they'll consider ease- of-use _if /when_ they do decide to release it. ------ narag This is actually very useful. You can send files from and to mobile devices and desktop. Delete on download doesn't seem to be a problem, just adjust your storage strategy. Security could be acceptable for most use cases. I hope they add it to the browser. ------ spyridonas I think Mozilla should create a more privacy friendly analytics service, since they experiment with new projects ~~~ jagermo Do you know Piwik? Its a really nice open source, self hostable alternative to Google Analytics. I've been running it for years, very stable and great insight. www.piwik.org ------ Aissen I've just checked the code. It indeed deletes the file once a download has been completely consumed, so it can't really replace other file-sharing services. BUT I wonder how does it deal with race conditions ? My guess is that if many people start a download at the same time, they'll all be able to complete it before the file goes away. At least that's how I'd see it working with S3 or local storage. You could abuse it by sending the same file many times in order to create lots of download links; but there's little to gain in bandwidth savings: you might as well run your own server. The only advantage I'd see is hiding your IP address, but then you could also run a tor hidden service. The other would be bandwidth amplification by synchronizing all the clients (for big files). ~~~ ge0rg The sender could open a download connection and stall it as far as possible (maybe keep the download rate shaped to some bytes/second, to prevent an inactivity timeout). That would open a large time window for further downloads. ~~~ AgentME I assume the file would be deleted as soon as any client finishes downloading. (If the files are backed by regular files on a unix-like system, then the existing open handles to the file will keep working, allowing currently- connected clients to finish downloading, but preventing any new clients from starting the download.) ~~~ Aissen Indeed, I tested this too, but forgot to mention. That's how it works. ------ mnx It seems nice, but I think it should be made more explicit upon downloading, that you can only do that once. I can see myself e.g. downloading a file I received on my phone to take a quick look, intending to then download it again on my computer later. I would be surprised to see it just gone. ~~~ fluxsauce Known issue, apparently - [https://github.com/mozilla/send/issues/497](https://github.com/mozilla/send/issues/497) ------ ElijahLynn One thing that could be improved with this is to have an option for a human readable/typeable link. I wanted to quickly transfer a file from my desktop to my phone. Used Send and realized I didn't want to type that cryptographic URL. I ran the Send link through Typer.in (specializing in hand-typed urls) and it worked as I initially expected. However, it would be nice if Send had this functionality by default. ~~~ jwcacces Typer.in stores the link you give it, and returns a human readable lookup link. The whole point of Send is that the link includes the secret key to decrypt your file. Whoever you give that secret to, including Typer.in can get the file. The Send link must include the secret key, because no one else should get it, and that key must be of sufficient length to protect your file. Thus human- readable-izing it could do nothing to decrease its complexity and would just result in a huge string of words that were just as much as a pain to type in. ~~~ indiv0 At least at the moment, downloading the file once removes it from Mozilla's servers. So in the event typer.in used the URL you provided to download the file, you would know as the file would no longer be accessible. ------ lwerdna If you only need to send text, [https://cryptopaste.com](https://cryptopaste.com) does everything client side and shows the ciphertext in a "staging area" before you commit it to the cloud. You can instead save it as a self-decrypting document, attaching it to email, copy to thumbdrive, upload dropbox, etc. ~~~ n2j3 Great implementation but doesn't work with Greek, spews out garbage. Here against original text in notepad.exe [https://i.imgur.com/n1WCsnZ.png](https://i.imgur.com/n1WCsnZ.png) ~~~ lwerdna If you have a chance, please try again. UTF-8 support is added. ~~~ n2j3 It works, thanks! ------ floatingatoll This is technically a dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14901998) from a couple months ago. ------ Devid2014 1 download limit looks really problematic to me. Some times download just do not start or get aborted and then everything need to be done again. Something like 3 downloads limit would make this more usable! ~~~ Aissen No, this is only deleted if all the file has been transferred. ------ fefe23 Why do the Mozilla people keep doing this sort of thing? Aren't they supposed to be making a good browser? I remember them telling me they are now going back to their core competences. I think it was after Firefox OS failed. Not trying to piss on anyone's parade here, just wondering how this kind of thing keeps happening. I was wondering the same thing when Mozilla added Pocket and now Cliqz to Firefox. What is the rationale here? Do they have leftover money they need to spend before January 1st or something? ~~~ potch Perhaps peruse this: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/mission/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/) Firefox is Mozilla's flagship, and the largest by far way in which we achieve our mission, but our goal is a healthy and open internet. Additionally, this is a great way to determine whether something like this would work well as an in-browser feature, and we've built it in such a way that it works in more browsers than just Firefox on day one. ~~~ actionscripted > ...and we've built it in such a way that it works in more browsers than just > Firefox on day one. Sure wish other browser vendors would consider other browsers when releasing their products. ~~~ duncan_bayne Google won't because the browser isn't their product. Your data and attention are their product, which they acquire in exchange for a free browser. ~~~ duncan_bayne Unsure why this seems controversial. Google is an advertising company, not a Web browser company. ~~~ flukus An advertising company with 60,000 employees whose interests overlap with this forum ;) Most of the wealth in silicon valley comes from productizing eyeballs. In related news, this just triggered someone into downvoting my entire post history! ------ rebyn I've just uploaded a 140MB file from my mountain cabin (in Viet Nam) and it was lightning fast. I then gave the link to a friend of mine residing in Melbourne, Australia and his download speed was blazing fast as well. Would be keen to learn more about the infrastructure setup behind this service to achieve such a good performance. ~~~ hnarn Probably Amazon. ------ geostyx This has been out for a while. I use it occasionally, but a single download is a narrow use case. ~~~ hnarn > a single download is a narrow use case. Is it really? I mean, if I wanted to send a file to someone via Google's e-mail servers or a chat application like Facebook Messenger but wanted to make sure it didn't stick around for those two companies to data mine, this seems like it would do the trick. From Mozilla's perspective, doing "one upload, one download" also kind of solves the problem of becoming a new "megaupload" for illegal content. Not the problem of the illegal content being there (since it's unsolvable), but the accountability of being the party responsible for spreading it around. ------ sangd What does it mean "it’s best to keep your file under 1GB"? Can I send 2GB+ size files? ------ Larrikin Can anyone confirm whether this works in Safari/iOS now? It seemed great but when I tried to send some files to friends to promote it it completely shat the bed and my mobile friends ended up getting nothing but garbled text when the (fairly large) downloads finished. It was quite frustrating since the upload was painfully slow. ~~~ kiliankoe Seems to work fine on my end. ------ peternicky How does this compare to Keybase folders? ------ viperscape Pushbullet offers a great service. I'm not related to the team, but really enjoy the product. It's both an addon for browsers, desktop app, and standalone mobile app. Easy as pie, and now they have 'portal' which is local network direct transfers ------ wyred I made a subreddit for anyone to upload any file and the first person who accesses the link gets to download it. [https://www.reddit.com/r/send/](https://www.reddit.com/r/send/) ------ naskwo Is this a Wetransfer killer? ~~~ jagermo No, since its just downloadable once. ------ thinkMOAR Just my experience/test: it takes longer to upload the file to mozilla then it would have sending directly to DSL of a friend.. edit- Download tested now too, not bad, though nothing to write home about. ~~~ AndrewDucker What software did you use to create a direct connection to your friend? ~~~ thinkMOAR https ~~~ chrisper That's a protocol. Not a software. ~~~ thinkMOAR You must be great at parties. Software is irrelevant imo. Indicating same protocol as FF send is imho more relevant. ~~~ ohitsdom The whole point of this discussion is that sending files to another computer is still cumbersome. Software is entirely relevant. So if you're complaining about speed of FF Send, you should specify what you're comparing it to. ~~~ thinkMOAR lol no.. my point was that it wasn't as fast as i would expect a service from mozilla to run and broadband connections here are a lot faster. Second, it wasn't a complaint, just an observation. And if you really think one 'https' enabled webserver software on a home subscriber cable/dsl connection is much faster then the other for a single download, then i will have to inform you that you are mistaken. And setting up a simple webserver to exchange files isn't that hard at all. To say file sharing is cumbersome is a bit stretching the truth. ------ _pdp_ In order to take this further, this functionality needs to be part of the browser so that one can trust the page is not maliciously modified in transit or at the server. ------ skarap Mandatory XKCD link: [https://xkcd.com/949/](https://xkcd.com/949/) ------ bikamonki I need something like this to send myself links from my phone to my pc. ~~~ Markoff Chrome, Firefox or Samsung browser have all bookmarks sync ------ metahost So, where is the money coming from ? Who's the product here ? ~~~ soapdog When thinking about a Mozilla offering, it is healthy to think beyond "money and product" as this type of analysis will usually leave you with a conclusion of "this doesn't make business sense". Mozilla is in the game of keeping the internet healthy. Part of it involves products, such as Firefox and its quest to recover userbase. Parts of it involves money, such as MOSS awarding grants or prizes for FOSS stuff they use and see value. But most of Mozilla actions can be thought on "how close they get Mozilla to achieve its mission as stated in the Mozilla Manifesto[1]". In the case of Firefox Send, it enables less friction sending files and protects the user privacy, so it IMHO advances item #4 of the manifesto: "Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional." It also serves as a nice branding reminder for people, as it works with other browsers, makes people using some other solution remember Firefox... [1]: [https://www.mozilla.org/en- US/about/manifesto/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/) ~~~ programmarchy Not sure how true that is anymore. They seem to by trying hard to squander their reputation. First their MITI officially signaled they now consider themselves a political force, then the whole Cliqz debacle following shortly after showed their willingness to sacrifice their principles. ~~~ superkuh Don't forget their switch to a walled garden for extensions in order to protect users from themselves. ~~~ soapdog That is FUD and also a lie. You can still distribute your extensions on whatever site you want, you just need to sign them on AMO. The workflow is: 1 - Build webextension 2 - Upload to AMO 3 - Choose "distribute on AMO" or "sign and distribute on your site" ~~~ superkuh If I need to get Mozilla's approval before I can run code in the browser running on my machine then I see a wall. That they've automated it so much as to mitigate the protection a walled garden normally gives almost makes it worse. ~~~ chungy You can install Firefox Beta or Nightly and have unrestricted extension installation options (or use a Linux distro's packages: most of such firefox packages do _not_ require signed extensions). It's a measure to prevent casual trojans, there are many ways around it for non-casuals and developers to employ. ~~~ superkuh >or use a Linux distro's packages: most of such firefox packages do not require signed extensions That's actually pretty cool. Can you give me an example distro that does that with Firefox (w/FF brandings)? ~~~ chungy Both Debian and Arch do this. ------ Markoff how is this different from Mega.nz ? ------ mcemilg But why? ~~~ Markoff because it's easier to do this than give mobile Firefox users option to pull down to refresh, thus enjoy Brave or Samsung browser and stay away from Firefox ------ marindez I don't understand why is this called Firefox Send. Shouldn't it be called Mozilla Send? ~~~ elsurudo Probably branding purposes. Even non-techies recognize the Firefox brand. Mozilla – not so much. ~~~ Markoff eh, what's current Firefox market share? I would not bet my money many non techies recognize Firefox at all, it's pretty niche nerd product for people with addon fetish, rest of the world just use Chrome/IE/Edge ------ Numberwang I wonder how many downloads can be done before it expires ~~~ 0xfeba Another commentator found you can initiate multiple downloads, and complete them all. As long as you start them before any finishes. ------ lucb1e Let me guess, with free Pocket® integration? Mozilla blew it for me recently in so many ways, I am taking them about as seriously as I would Facebook right now. ~~~ hollander How can you compare the Pocket thing with Facebook? The good kid messed up this time. And you can simply ignore it, don't have to use it. Yes like you can decide not to use Facebook, but then all your friends and family use it, or use Instagram of Whatsapp and force you to use it. That includes uploading your complete contact list two or three times. Do you have to use Firefox because your family uses it? I don't think so. How do those two compare? ~~~ srathi They are repeating it with the Cliqz integration now. I love Firefox, but these decisions are baffling! ------ SgtSauceBoss I've learned not to trust companies when they tout "completely encrypted" and "totally private". Show me the open source code, otherwise they're likely collecting data in some way to pay for hosting this web application. ~~~ yscik Here you go: [https://github.com/mozilla/send](https://github.com/mozilla/send) ------ vesinisa Do they share my files and "anonymized" upload history with a third party (edit: was "advertising company") for this service as well? ~~~ eli You can see exactly what they collect here [https://github.com/mozilla/send/blob/master/docs/metrics.md](https://github.com/mozilla/send/blob/master/docs/metrics.md) and decide for yourself. I think it's misleading to refer to Google as an advertising company when talking about Analytics since this data won't be used for targeting ads. ~~~ vesinisa I was actually referring to this incident where Mozilla started shipping an opt-out "addon" in Firefox that automatically shares your browsing history with a third party: [https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_shi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/74n0b2/mozilla_ships_cliqz_experiment_in_germany_for_1/) ~~~ eli OK, well this doesn't do that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Briss Trims PDFs so They Fit Better, Are Easier to Read on Your Ereader - mono http://lifehacker.com/5744899/briss-trims-pdfs-to-make-them-more-readable-on-your-e+reader ====== larsberg I know I should "just do it myself," but I keep waiting for something that can unsplit and unwrap PDFs generated in ACM double-column style with LaTeX word- breaking and turn it into an epub with graphics for the figures/tables. Trying to deal with that 9-ish pt. font is a huge pain for my old eyes. I ended up giving up on reading them on my iPad because keeping a reasonable zoom level and managing to scan down then over to the next column required the finger dexterity of a concert pianist (even on GoodReader, which is quite, well, Good). ~~~ rubidium Calibre was mentioned in the article as being able to convert PDF's into epub format. I had my hopes up for a second, so downloaded it and tried it on a textbook and a smaller scientific publication. It threw up on both the math equations and figures. It didn't handle the general formatting of the book too well either. To my knowledge, a good PDF->epub converter has not yet been built. Any takers? ~~~ dpapathanasiou " _To my knowledge, a good PDF- >epub converter has not yet been built. Any takers?_" Check out eBookBurn.com, which is a site I launched last month (<http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=468>). It lets you upload pdfs and attempts to parse them into editable text. The pdf parsing is based on my experiments with pdf-miner (<http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=343>), and while still imperfect (in general parsing pdfs is a difficult problem), it works fairly well for certain types of whitepapers. ~~~ roel_v This is a wicked cool site, but you need to put in screenshots of the input (how it went in) and the output (what the output looked like in an epub reader). What approach do your algorithms use? Do you do recognition of title, subtitles etc based on differences in fonts, spacing, line length etc.? Or do you need to enter regexps to recognize those? Do you recognize paragraphs correctly? Can you filter out front- and back filler like the ToC, and extract only the 'content' pages? If so, it's 90% of what I'm looking for and I think good enough to pay for :) I have some notes on how to approach from when I tried to make it myself, it includes what functionality I consider necessary for a MVP. Let me know if you're interested... ~~~ dpapathanasiou I'm working on an FAQ/Help page which will show some of those features in more detail. The algorithm I use is a variation of the code described here: <http://denis.papathanasiou.org/?p=343> except the output is html, not text, so that I can take account things like font sizes and paragraph breaks. If you signup and try it (it's free for the first 3 days), you'll see that the parser renders each pdf page as text, and it's up to you to decide which range of pages you want to use in your book. Feel free to contact me by the form on that site, and I can reply in more detail. ------ felixc A similar tool is my own PDFMunge, previously discussed on HN here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1089068> and in more depth on my site here: [http://www.felixcrux.com/posts/pdfmunge-improve-pdfs- ebook-r...](http://www.felixcrux.com/posts/pdfmunge-improve-pdfs-ebook- readers/) But this looks quite a bit more polished and user-friendly. ------ afshin Clever name ... a little crass. ~~~ chopsueyar I thought Briss was the client app, and Mohel was server side. ------ gaiusparx PDF is ill fitted to be the format for mobile devices due to its format-for- print purpose with no text-overflow. Its time epub and mobi takes over. ~~~ sliverstorm Really PDF is just ill-suited for distribution of text. The only reasonable exceptions are when that text is _explicitly_ meant for printing (ala fliers or posters), or when said text is not computerized- e.g. a scan of written script that has yet to be OCR'd ~~~ stcredzero Is the name of this product a commentary on those who send PDF to mobile users? ------ fdb On the iPad, GoodReader can do margin cropping on the fly, and remembers the margins you've set up for a document so they're reapplied when you open the document again. <http://www.goodreader.net/goodreader.html> ~~~ larsberg I just wish it had some smarts for two-column PDFs (easily 90% of what I read). I often resize, read down the left column, then shift to the top, which moves the crop window and confuses GR horribly. ------ kraemate I've been wanting something like this for ages - particularly to print ebooks and latex stuff with their huge side-margins. The basic aim is to trim all margins and print 2 pages side-by-side (landscape). While Briss trims the margins just fine, printing the (trimmed) document as pdf(or ps) restores the margins. (Tried on okular/evince). What gives? ------ chopsueyar Good name. ------ siculars Oy vey.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Scientists find 2,000-year-old brain in Britain - epi0Bauqu http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081212/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_ancient_brain ====== zandorg Should go nicely with that 2,000 year old computer...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Global Price Tag for 100 Percent Renewable Energy: $73T - chmaynard https://e360.yale.edu/digest/the-global-price-tag-for-100-percent-renewable-energy-73-trillion ====== erentz > In the U.S., reaching 100 percent renewable energy by 2050 will require an > investment of $7.8 trillion. It will involve building 288,000 new 5-megawatt > (MW) wind turbines and 16,000 100-MW solar farms... I know it’s a contentious topic, but what would the equivalent cost be to do just do this with nuclear as France did in the 80s? Very back of the napkin says we’d be talking something in the vicinity of 500 new reactors at $5b a piece. That’s only $2.5 trillion so a third the price.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What do you do after losing thousands to bad advice? Become a financial adviser - mirandajane720 https://medium.com/the-modern-adviser/financial-advice-fever-pitch-with-former-footballer-daniel-nardiello-4bf2e3c75439 ====== mtmail The title is "Financial Advice Fever Pitch with former footballer Daniel Nardiello" Please don't mix comment/opinion with the title.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Would the internet be healthier without 'like' counts? (2019) - headalgorithm https://www.wired.com/story/internet-healthier-without-like-counts/ ====== mattgreenrocks Addicts never want you to cut their supply off. Social media is a video game as much as World of Warcraft is. There's no value judgment there; I enjoy video games. I liken it to video games to suggest that perhaps playing video games 5 hours a day constantly isn't healthy, that you probably shouldn't be playing video games while on the clock, that real life usually has a more lasting impact on your well-being than video games, and that, like other addictive behaviors, they often mask a void in a person's life that may be better being addressed directly. Also, I'm still salty that the general public would've snubbed private Internet use as nerdy in the early 2000s and now has no problem being addicted out in public to the point of awkwardly ignoring real life conversations. ------ grishka As someone who worked at a rather popular social media company through the transition from "we're helping people connect" to "we're making all the money in the world" — not really. In my opinion, it's not the likes themselves that ruin the internet; the like count is simply the number of people who agree or empathize with something. It's the algorithms that boost content that is likely to get more interactions and demote everything else. When I started, we didn't have much in the way of recommended anything. Your newsfeed was literally a list of posts made by the people and communities you follow, in a reverse chronological order, and nothing else. You had complete control over it. There were likes and reposts, but there was no way for something to be surfaced to a large audience without a bunch of people intentionally sharing it to their followers, retweet-style. Without the algorithms meddling with what they see, people (usually) don't tend to chase like/share counts as much. There were civil discussions. People were simply talking to their followers by posting things — with no incentive to abandon everything human and become a "blogger". It was beautiful. ------ blackflame7000 Yes absolutely. People are not able to draw accurate conclusions from the demographic of viewers vs voters to draw meaningful conclusions from like counts. It breeds thoughtless support / activism. “Why learn about a topic of concern when I could just like Sarah’s post and everyone will know that I’m down for the cause.” ~~~ Bud Well, except that like counts alone don't make it so that "everyone will know" you support a given comment or cause. This site, for instance, used to have like counts, but you could not see who liked (or disliked) a given post or comment. You could only see the number. I personally liked it that way, although I understand why the site admins decided to do away with the visible # of likes for comments. ~~~ blackflame7000 Well you can’t tell the number of likes in the positive direction but based on the shade of grey you can tell how negative it is haha ------ starpilot Healthy way to use social media is to avoid anything that garners likes. Don't post things that are approval or attention seeking. Just use it for exchanging messages with people you know, or asking genuine questions. I stopped posting to my Instagram feed, but I do use Instagram Stories which aren't likeable. Also, stop liking others' stuff. When you avoid the "social currency," you cease to be played and deprive these companies a little of their data feed on you. ------ josephg Yes. A few years ago I installed a browser extension that removed display of likes from Facebook posts. I could still like things, but when I made a post or a comment I wouldn’t be able to know how my friends reacted. I didn’t expect this, but it made me feel way more free when I posted. A lot of my anxiety went away, and I posting or commenting felt more like an act of personal expression rather than a performance that would be judged by my friends. I highly recommend giving it a try if you can. ~~~ Tarsul Cool! Maybe HN could add a feature that hides your own like-number (in the top right corner) so that even the last remnants of "gaming" your likability can be eradicated from HN? (at least for those who then do hide their number in their config options) edit: o wait, there's already a discussion about this :) ~~~ smichel17 I mostly use the app Materialistic, which does not show vote numbers on your comments. Went through a phase of using the website more (I'd really rather use a pc than phone), but found that the existence of the page that shows your comments (/threads?id=username, I think) warped my behavior in ways I didn't like (compulsively scanning for new replies, thinking about how upvoted different of my posts were. The app has a similar page, but notably it doesn't provide a way to see replies to your comments -- without scores or replies, there's not much incentive to check it. I also enabled email notifications using hnreplies.com, so I wouldn't have to worry about missing replies I might care about, overall it's worked out well and I I'm back to just commenting when I feel like it. ------ ffpip Yes. Wish there was a way to disable points and karma on HN ~~~ dgellow I'm using the following stylesheet to hide scoring on HN: /* Hide score / / Top bar / #hnmain>tbody>tr:nth-child(1)>td>table>tbody>tr>td:nth-child(3)>span { font-size: 0 !important; } #hnmain>tbody>tr:nth-child(1)>td>table>tbody>tr>td:nth-child(3)>span { font-size: 10pt !important; } #hnmain>tbody>tr:nth-child(1)>td>table>tbody>tr>td:nth-child(3)>span>a:nth-child(1) { margin-right: 20px !important; } /* Main page and discussion page / #hnmain>tbody td.subtext span.score { display: none !important; } / Profile page / #hnmain>tbody>tr:nth-child(3)>td>form>table>tbody>tr:nth-child(3) { display: none !important; } / Threads page */ #hnmain .comhead .score { display: none !important; } It's hacky, but I have this since ~5 years and it has been quite stable. It's not on the chrome store, but I have a dumb browser extension to enable/disable: [https://github.com/dgellow/hn-no- pressure](https://github.com/dgellow/hn-no-pressure). ~~~ ffpip Or you could add a single line to uBlock Origin (in 'my Filters' ) news.ycombinator.com##.score ~~~ wrnr Thanks I'm doing that now, always the person who prefers to spend ma karma instead of hoard it. Bury me deep all you want, got tha fingers in the ears ------ Nasrudith This is a silly exercise in scapegoating really that forgets about some of the downsides of traditional message boards. There the most recent posts were what brought it up by default - no likes required. Of course this isn't a measure of how relevant they are. All of those bits spilled for a stupid persistent idea of "the mirror made us ugly!". ------ krm01 The question is not so easy to answer. HN's 'Like' Counts somewhat helps rank content and thus save me time to check out the top stories. It's not bullet proof and many great posts get lost. But it's somewhat of a helpful tool to organise information. The same goes for Google search results. One could say they are organised by 'likes' (how many pages link to that particular page). So while on the surface, the gut reaction is YES. Kill the like button. The reality is that it's somewhat of a useful mechanism as well to quickly find what's relevant in the sea of content. ------ glial “Likes” are just one technique among many for increasing engagement/addiction. The core problem is the ad-based business model, that incentivizes companies to make addictive products. ------ earthboundkid What if the rule was that aggregators could not also be advertising platforms? If you’re both linking to stuff and selling attention, it creates tons of perverse incentives, whereas if you’re just creating content and selling ads, the incentives were better aligned. Notice that the 20th century saw a big shift to centerist media because that’s where the money was, and now we’re seeing the opposite. ~~~ Nasrudith That rule sounds more geared towards punishing "felony interference with a business model" and gatekeeping than anything else. Content is fundamentally valueable because it gets attention in the first place regardless of who pays for it! ~~~ earthboundkid How can the government pass a law that is a felony? ------ nixarian Yeah, too bad there isn't a website that understand this issue, and has never had like counts, and whose participants largely deride the idea of like counts-and have for a long, long time.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Mathlore, Your Math Knowledge Base - CatsAreCool https://mathlore.org/ ====== CatsAreCool I created Mathlore to help students, researchers, and hobbyists learn, explore, and discover mathematics by creating a place where they can collect math knowledge (either in a public collection or their own private collection) and easily discover it later when they need it. This post is an update to post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290812](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290812). I listened to your great feedback, and I improved the site. Thanks for the feedback, I really appreciate it. New Features: * Added the ability to have your own private collection of math knowledge. * Repositioned the site as knowledge base where you can manually keep track of and store math knowledge either in the public collection or your own private collection. The original site made it seem like Mathlore was a math search engine. * Added the ability to contribute to the public collection without needing to create an account. * Added the ability to record and search for math resources such as books, articles, and online resources. * Added the ability to record not only theorems, definitions, axioms, and conjectures but also record notes, exercises, and problems. * Added a better landing page to describe how Mathlore can be used. * Improved the look and feel of the site to make it easier to use. * Added the ability to comment on items in the collection. * Added the ability to search and tag information by topic. This is useful for looking tagging and searching for results in a particular area of mathematics. * A tag can be anything you want and so in your private collection, you can use tagging of knowledge to mark things as hard, or interesting, or "On the final exam", or anything you like. * Add the ability to export or delete your entire private collection with a click of a button. * Fixed many rendering issues.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Why should I use Django? - xcoding I want to build an app allowing users to search local car for rent availability. ====== cyberpanther If you want to use Python then use Django. As with any framework, it can be hard to work around but Django gives you the most options to work around the framework than any other framework I've found. Normally, if you are having a hard time with Django its because you're trying to work around it the wrong way. This takes time to learn but Django can be really elegant to work around and with. The second option is Flask or Tornado which are pretty great too. Both would give you more freedom but also less structure. I find it better to have the structure because unless your an experienced engineer your Flask or Tornado project will turn messy quick. Django projects can turn messy too, but at least there is a more training and protocols for people to follow. I use Flask/Tornado if I want to use Python and I know my project is a small service and will probably not get big. I use Django if I want to use Python and I know the project will grow over time or I need features from the start like a database, migrations, cache, etc. ~~~ NumberCruncher >>Django gives you the most options to work around the framework So Django stands in my way and its' advantage is that it is easy the work around it? ~~~ tedmiston No, I think you're misinterpreting the comment. Django guides you the right way and how it guides you works most of the time. However, when you do hit the edge, Django's very well written docs and thoughtfully designed architecture guide you in building around its limitations. For example, if you want to swap in Jinja over Django templates or SQLAlchemy over Django ORM. Really needing to do so is still the exception to the norm, but just know that Django does more here than most other frameworks. If you are interested in understanding this a little deeper, I highly recommend picking up the Two Scoops book [1]. [1]: [https://www.twoscoopspress.com/products/two-scoops-of- django...](https://www.twoscoopspress.com/products/two-scoops-of-django-1-8) ~~~ idw I second the Two Scoops book. Django documentation is excellent (try the tutorial if you want a quick sense of django). Two Scoops help you understand why to do things in particular ways and make good design choices within all the things django can do. ------ jonasvp We've built web applications based on Django for small CMS sites, large multi- language CMS sites, up to large custom-built applications (mostly API-based) for the likes of Mercedes-Benz and Deutsche Bahn. I can honestly say that I never regretted the decision. It scales beautifully (see the likes of Instagram, Disqus, Sentry, etc.), has a great security track record, sane deprecation schedules, and the core team keeps up with the times and new technologies but does so at a sane pace and without rushing things. Not to mention the documentation - ohmygod, the documentation! In a nutshell: pick Django, keep learning Python, and try to build something that your users love. ~~~ tedmiston I've stopped citing Instagram as an example of Django scaling after learning from one of their engineering managers at PyCon 2015 that they're running a heavily modified internal fork of Django 1.5 or 1.6. It sounds like they really have built their own framework (before today's Django + DRF existed). Maybe this has changed post Facebook acquisition. I know Facebook is mostly on Python 3 and modern stuff now. ------ hobarrera Things I really like about django that are objectively good: * A lot of _very common_ situations and patterns are already solved for you, and they're solved in the cleanest way possible. * The documentation is excellent, both with "guides", examples, and API reference. Django (along with OpenBSD), has probably the best documentation I've seen around. * Clean design (of django itself) means that you can extend it, or avoid using bits that for some reason don't suit you. * Very transparent development, and the developers are really into open source - everything is done out in the open. This last point might not be really important as a user, but it helps if you ever want to contribute (or understand) anything to django itself. \--- Even after years of django, I very occasionally still come across a functionality in django that I'd overlooked and saves be a bunch of my own code. ------ falcolas If you have a usecase that matches Django's niche - i.e. a CMS style CRUD application - you would have a hard time doing better than Django. If you're not in that usecase, think long and hard about it. Django is fantastic to use when writing with the framework, and a nightmare to work around when you need to do something it doesn't easily support. Your app does sound like it is in Django's wheelhouse (CRUD against a DB with users), so it is probably a good fit. ~~~ avinassh > and a nightmare to work around when you need to do something it doesn't > easily support. Can you elaborate more on this? And also for what kind of apps one should avoid Django? ~~~ falcolas Nightmarish (without building additional systems): Asynchronous operations (i.e. any task that takes place _after_ you return a response), anything involving websockets or long poll responses, anything involving cross-client communication through the server (like chat). Intelligent master/slave DB routing for read-only queries. Hard: Using any DB but PostgreSQL. You can use other DBs, but Django silently disables features. Doing anything with the DB that isn't directly managed by Django itself. Doing anything but basic pre-defined URL routing as supported by their routing system. Use something else: Not using a relational DB as a backend. Not using their user management and authentication system. If you want to use something other than their built-in ORM, templating, and routing. I personally recommend Flask in the cases where Django is not a good fit. A threading/forking fastcgi model with basic nginx caching is incredibly performant. That said, Flask is pretty terrible at most of the "nightmare" level tasks as well. ~~~ rayalez Are you familiar with django channels? [https://blog.heroku.com/in_deep_with_django_channels_the_fut...](https://blog.heroku.com/in_deep_with_django_channels_the_future_of_real_time_apps_in_django) They supposed to make this sort of thing easy and straightforward. I'm still learning them, but this system seems to be well designed and makes a lot of sense. Django + Django REST Framework + React should give you pretty much everything you need to build whatever you want, including single page apps. At least as far as I understand it. ~~~ wahnfrieden Channels don't guarantee at-least-once delivery, so you can only use them at best as a refinement - you have to assume your clients will miss messages. Which makes it unusable for many use cases (though I'm sure many negligently ignore it too). ------ wahnfrieden Django REST Framework is Django's killer app (as Django is Python's killer app). If you need an API, it's a great batteries-included way to build one. ~~~ danpalmer Could you elaborate a little about DRF? I spent a day or so evaluating it among some other options for an API in a Django project, and it seemed to be a relatively poor player in the Django ecosystem and be quite complex for the same outcome compared to other libraries. It seemed like it would be ok for a DRF specific project, but in as a single part of a larger project it didn't seem to fit well. That said, I have very limited experience with it. ~~~ teilo DRF is at its best when you develop an application from the ground up using it. It also "does the right thing," and helps you stay RESTful. In particular, if you use its HyperlinkModelSerializers and its baked ViewSets, it just plain works, no fuss. But it's important to know what these shortcuts are doing so that when you need to write custom APIs that go beyond CRUD, you know what to do. For very simple APIs, DRF is overkill, and if I only need a couple JSON endpoints, I don't bother with it. But if I need full access to my models, you just can't beat it. ~~~ danpalmer Thanks! Much appreciated. ------ superquest Before I was sophisticated enough to investigate such decisions on my own (given the mass of discussion freely available on the internet), I really don't think it mattered which framework I chose. So I'd suggest you just some popular framework and don't worry whether it's the right one. Pick one and run with it! ------ dopeboy I picked up Django early 2015 and it has been my choice of backend ever since. Though I haven't used Django to build a fullstack application, I have used Django REST framework extensively for my backend. Impressions over 1.92 years: 1) Great documentation. Well organized, well written. Good balance between theory and examples. 2) Superb ecosystem. Coming from PHP land, I got the sense of a "anything- goes" mentality. On SO, people who help are very much interested in doing things the idiomatic way. 3) You get to practice Python! ~~~ dozzie > 3) You get to practice Python! Not really. You mostly write Django and need to go really far before hitting any non-superficial Python feature. ~~~ collyw Agreed. I moved to Python form Perl 5 years ago because of Python. I feel I never know Python as well as I knew Perl, but I do know Django really well. But then the built in functionality means I rarely need to go too low level with my code. ------ rubberstamp Consider Pyramid web framework. Deploy it on gunicorn server with eventlet workers. Use pushpin if you need realtime. Its easy, it scales, use any DB and Pyramid framework has good documentation too. Or go with web2py if you need to start simple and easy and fast prototyping. It has an ORM which supports many Relational DB and MongoDB too if you need it. It has good documentation. Its authentication and authorization system is too easy. Stick to python3. Really good python learning resources. [http://www.diveintopython3.net/](http://www.diveintopython3.net/) and [http://greenteapress.com/wp/think- python-2e/](http://greenteapress.com/wp/think-python-2e/) ~~~ tim333 Slight nitpick - web2py has a database abstraction layer (DAL) rather than an ORM. It's kind of like SQL except written in Python. ------ dom0 Django is a good framework, because it's opinionated about _the right_ things (ie those that fit most very well). Also, "there's an app for that". The ecosystem is large and healthy. If you don't want Django cause it's Django, then Flask and Pyramid are other excellent alternatives. There is also a swath of more specialized frameworks (eg. Tornado). ------ dexterbt1 I'm copying here what I wrote back in 2013 to some other forum, much of it is still true... Django is mature, full-stack, flexible, has sound architectural decisions behind it, relatively good security track record. There is a built-in admin and permission systems to help with what you require. Batteries included such as an ORM, templating, routing, forms. The Django third-party apps/module ecosystem is rather large and accessible: from authentication, social media integration, payment gateway integrations, APIs, to whole apps like invoicing, helpdesk, etc. ------ jstimpfle I don't have experience with Django, but you could also just build everything yourself on plain WSGI (the python version of (Fast)CGI). Note I am not saying "build a new, generic framework because all other frameworks stink". Building libraries with the goal to support other projects is a neverending task. But only building the support paste as you actually need it is not a lot of work. WSGI is a quite simple interface. I'm doing this myself and the support I currently need is only ~500 lines. The only external library I use is jinja2 templates. As database I use plain sqlite3 from the python standard lib and in some places text files. If you don't know and don't want to learn HTTP and Web application architecture you will of course end up with a broken design. On the other hand it's very rewarding to learn how to decompose an application into independent components (templates, services, routing, database access, business logic, authorization, session management, config parsing, project directory structure, what have you). The other big advantage is of course flexibility. If you do a good job the decomposition is better than with a framework. This means flexibility. It's easier to fix problems than with an opinionated framework. ------ olavgg I think frameworks like Django, Rails or Grails are excellent tools for building many business applications. Especially when there are plenty of CRUD operations and complex workflows with different administrative roles. These frameworks excels in developer productivity, stability and maintenance over years. I've been using Grails for over 10 years, my clients are super happy with what I have delivered. I've built complex issue tracking systems, e-commerce web sites, administration panels, data management tools and so on. Code I wrote 10 years ago is still working fine today! I highly recommend learning one of these frameworks, you will make new friends and good money! ~~~ vorg > Code I wrote 10 years ago is still working fine today I'm wondering if any of it's been upgraded to Grails 3, or if they're still on Grails 2, or even using a Groovy 1.x version of Grails. ------ kayman If you're using Python and don't use Django (I've tried it as an exercise for one of my pet projects), you have 2 options. Create your own framework - writing http headers etc from scratch which will take you forever or Use a lightweight framework like Flask or Web.py. Either way, you'll end up creating your own ways to query the database and creating patterns to communicate with frontend. As you write more code, you'll abstract your code to reusable methods. About a month into the project, you'll realize that you're slowly rolling out your own framework which has grown organically. Soon you'll realize you're better off using a polished framework like Django which has abstracted many of the details so you can focus on delivering value instead of clobbering together your own framework which will become a burden to maintain alongside your app. ~~~ aftbit I've always preferred microframeworks for exactly this reason. As you build, you tailor things to what you actually need instead of building features that match the framework. I've got one project that's built on flask + sqlalchemy, but I've been slowly hacking sqlalchemy out of the fast paths because it is just too slow and I'd rather improve my grasp of SQL than spend my time learning SQLAlchemy. ~~~ crdoconnor Django's opinionated nature means it fits together better. Random django packages will do admin, ORM handling, etc. in a single consistent way whereas flask packages typically don't. E.g. what seems to be flask's most popular CMS uses mongo as a backend. ------ dv35z Any Django developers who have made the switch to Play Franework (in Scala), would you share your experience? About to go down that route, and would like to know if it's as great as everyone says, challenges, etc. The usecase is fairly mundane CRUD app, 10-15 interconnected tables. ~~~ paulddraper I have. Django does a lot automatically: authentication, schema creation, ORM, default forms, admin interface. These are things useful to 95% of CRUD apps. At a certain complexity, nearly every project would have to replace or mostly replace all of those. A full table scan is prohibitive, you want to customize indexes, you want to customize the design of everything, etc. The Play Framework provides just that: an web MVC framework with basic routing, templating, and HTTP utilities. It's more general and will scale further in project complexity, but you should expect to spend more time figuring stuff out initially. \--- Other than that, there are the obvious differences between Python and Scala. Personally, I love, love, love the confidence of static verification, but there are good things about both sides. ------ alexbecker Django is great for fast prototyping if you need very dynamic pages (because views written in Python are so powerful), a complex site structure (because it has excellent url routing), and lots of database interaction (because of the ORM). If you only need the first two, I recommend Flask instead. But be careful if you intend to create a stable, heavily-used site. I have so many problems with Django in this use case that I've gotten tired of listing them each time it comes up and collected them into a blogpost: [https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#django-is- terrible](https://alexcbecker.net/blog.html#django-is-terrible) ------ megamark16 Django gives you a ton out of the box, with lots of sane defaults, but it still allows you to override those defaults when you're ready for more complicated functionality or business rules. I like the templating language, it lets you drop a lot of dynamic functionality into existing html templates, while staying out of the way for the most part. ------ econner Lots of people will say not to use Django because ORMs don't scale. In my experience, if you don't use an ORM you end up writing one (and doing a poor job) in the early stages of a project. Usually this happens because you're changing things quickly and favoring iteration time. You don't know what you're building yet, so you can't choose the super optimized solution. Once you need to scale things can become specialized and it's easier to go that route because you have a better idea what you're building. ~~~ appleiigs I like Django's ORM specifically because it automatically creates the database migrations for you. Just change the model, then "makemigrations" and "migrate", then you continue with the next task. Great for prototyping. ------ NumberCruncher If you want to use python I would give web2py + intercooler.js a try. It is "good enough" for most CRUD pet projects. Reading here the comments about Django's advantages an inner voice always says "fine, web2py has it too" except the excessive documentation and the weird non-pythonic syntax. If you want to make something really professional just ignore the words of a n00b. ------ koliber Figuratively speaking, Django gets you from zero to 60mph in 2.4 seconds. Getting from 60mph to 100mph takes 20 seconds. Going above that takes a lot more time. Lacking details, it seems like your app could be a good candidate for Django. For me, the main appeal is the Django admin. It gives you a great way of interacting with your data with minimal effort. ~~~ yen223 Django admin is great in the early stages of a project, when you just need to quickly bring up a page to view your data. I highly recommend ditching the admin page as soon as you can though - the number of things you can do with it is extremely limited. ~~~ collyw For me the problem was it is easy to go too far with the Admin and hack everything in there. Its not that limited. ------ rayalez As far as the backend frameworks go, you have the 3 most popular, very good options: \- Ruby on Rails \- Node + Express \- Django The major reason I have picked Django is that it is written in Python, which allows me to use an elegant and beautiful language that I can apply in any field, and utilize a huge amount of python apps, scripts, and stackoverflow examples. Using Django has also enabled me to learn the solid foundations of web development, which I can expand upon and apply anywhere. For example now I am experimenting with React and Express, and knowing Django helps me enormously, it makes understanding these things way easier. I have built a bunch of projects with Django, and I am extremely happy about my choice, so I highly recommend it to anyone who is beginning to learn web development. ------ idm Django has excellent documentation. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, it is appropriate. That is to say: there are good tutorials for starting out and there is good reference material for going deep. As others have mentioned, Django is opinionated and I think they get it mostly right. I use Flask myself, in part because I wish for my data modelling language to be a separate part of my stack, but my use of Flask is heavily influenced by Django's philosophy. I am the primary developer of Flask-Diamond, which attempts to adapt Django's opinionated choices to Flask. However, I would still recommend that most people start with Django. ------ welder This post about Django vs Flask might help you decide to use Django or not: [https://wakatime.com/blog/14-pirates-use-flask-the-navy- uses...](https://wakatime.com/blog/14-pirates-use-flask-the-navy-uses-django) ------ jasonthevillain The reason I keep sticking with it is the "optional batteries included" approach. User auth, for example, is something that just works out of the box with the admin/ORM, and has a lot of basic security necessities addressed. In a more a la carte framework, such as Flask, there are packages to help with user auth, but you have to do a lot more work to get them working with whatever ORM you choose. This means I can spend my time making products instead of wrangling packages together. ------ andr After spending several years developing in Django, I am currently building something in a Scala web framework (not gonna name names) and the level to which Django just works is utterly amazing. If your application fits the use case - a mostly CRUD application based on SQL, HTML-based or REST, no heavy real-time component - don't think twice about it. Of course, none of those factors are a hard limitation, but if you stick to them, Django fits like a glove. ------ al11588 All you need to do is use Django as the backend create a rest API and then use react or Angular to retrieve the data. ------ zitterbewegung Do you want to make a CRUD app and know python with good documentation and batteries included? Use django. ------ dopeboy Couldn't anyone comment on the pros/cons of using Flask? Currently I've been using DRF and it's been serving my needs pretty well. I'm curious if there's anything to be gained from Flask. ------ cmdrfred Are you proficient in Python? ~~~ xcoding No, I am learning. It's my project. ~~~ hiphipjorge If you're just learning Python, I would not recommend to start with Django, since Django does so much for you. It does sound like Django would be a great choice for your side project. It seems it's one of those things where you have to decide: Do I want to learn or do I want to build something and optimize for that. ~~~ j_syk I actually taught myself python through Django. Basically started the tutorial without previous python experience. When you start with the ORM and models, views, etc, there is enough Django-specific stuff you have to learn anyway. Not that I'd recommend this way... but 6 years later it seemed to have worked. ------ sunstone Because you're a gentleman of exceptional demeanor, character and surpassing technical judgement, who unfailingly chooses the best tool for the job at hand from the Maelstrom of pretenders. ~~~ Lordarminius > Because you're a gentleman of exceptional demeanor, character and surpassing > technical judgement, who unfailingly chooses the best tool for the job at > hand from the Maelstrom of pretenders. :) :/ ?? ------ wenbin Popular websites / online services that use Django: \- Instagram \- Pinterest \- Nextdoor \- The Onion \- Disqus \- Washington Post \- Bitbucket \- Eventbrite ------ morissette And thoughts for microservice architectures? I run flask for our microservice backend and have a angular frontend decoupled from the backend ~~~ collyw No need for them in the vast majority of apps. Well thats my thoughts anyway. ------ ericfrederich [https://youtu.be/Niq-HoraNPo](https://youtu.be/Niq-HoraNPo) ------ symmitchry Nice documentation in one good reason. The official tutorial is great. ------ garymoon I have experience with Flask, that's why I have the same question. Any answers? ~~~ brianwawok if you want to use sqlalchemy use Flask. If you want to use DjangoORM, use Django. Pros and cons to both. I guess you can find weird solutions that look better one way or the other except the ORM.. but I don't really see it. I currently like DjangoORM like 10% better, so I would use Django. It is my favorite ORM I have ever worked with. Right balance of saving you SQL writing time, while still having a good SQL escape hatch when needed. If you hate DjangoORM, seems silly to suffer through it though.. use Flask or something else. ------ pmontra I read in an answer of yours that you're learning Python. I learned Ruby myself with Rails in 2005 because I had no other reason to use Ruby back then. Rails was a much lighter framework than Django is now. I would recommend to start with something very lightweight, get the gist of it and move on to Web2py or Django. What you're looking for could be Flask or even something simpler like [https://docs.python.org/2/library/simplehttpserver.html](https://docs.python.org/2/library/simplehttpserver.html) or its Python3 version [https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/http.server.html) Now, about Django... I inherited a Django project and after a few months working on it I wouldn't start a project of mine with it. Obviously customers can ask me to do anything :-) Disclaimer: I might be biased against it because I don't like Python much (it looks like a badly engineered Ruby, and probably the other way around if you like Python, no bad feelings). First problem: coming from 10 years of Rails, Django is very weakly opinionated, so you can arrange the project as you want, name the db fields as you want, etc. This is not as bad as having no framework or using Flask, but a developer joining a project might have to spend time to get familiar with the general structure of it (and the bill for the customer keeps growing, so the chances he won't be happy). Second problem: it doesn't import automatically every model and module. It gets tiresome to do that in every file and in the shell (and the bill...) This is not a language thing because Ruby has to import modules too but somewhat Rails works around that. Surprisingly it raised problems for me only a couple of times. The sum of the time lost with Python in the last few months is greater than the one I lost in Rails because of that. Third: the templating language is not Python but some crippled down language. Somewhat people still manage to write nice code with Web2py which uses full Python in the templates. Rails too. Why not Django? More time lost to learn one more thing. Web2py is an alternative but it has its share of problems: the first two of Django plus a very risky approach at migrations which are automatically enforced as soon as you run the code. If there is a way to turn that off and you really like Python or have to work with it, look at Web2py. About the nice points, it's got everything that it has to be taken for granted in a past 2005 web framework: tests, migrations, ORM. It doesn't miss any particular feature, it's got a big community so it's a safe choice and I won't steer customers away from it. ~~~ pythonaut_16 Those are all intentional choices and benefits of Python 1\. This gives you flexibility to structure your app in a way that makes sense for what you're doing. In addition, I've found Django's approach to modular apps to be far more manageable and approachable than Ruby's "all the controllers go in the controllers folder" approach. 2\. Explicit imports is a Python thing and a huge benefit. I've looked at plenty of Rails code bases where I had no idea where different functions and variables were coming from. In Python/Django, you can always see the explicit definition at the top of the file. 3\. The "crippled down" templating language is very intentional as well. Django is preventing you from writing your application in the templating logic (something I've seen too much of in Rails) All your template should be doing is specifying how the data is to be rendered in HTML/whatever. Really Python/Django could be said to be Ruby/Rails flipped on it's head. Ruby itself isn't very opinionated (there are usually several ways to do something), while Rails is. Python itself is pretty opinionated (there should be one right way to do things), while Django isn't. In general it's a matter of opinion and perspective but I personal find Python and Django to be much easier to work with than Ruby and Rails. ------ dschiptsov In theory, one should take a look at web.py and flask first.. It will teach essentialism and minimalism (web.py) and doing the right thing in a right way (all of them and Python in general).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Introduction to the Resource Description Framework (1998) - tosh https://www.dlib.org/dlib/may98/miller/05miller.html ====== emmanueloga_ TL; DR I think Jena, a free and open source RDF framework, has been around for the last 20 years, and still releases pretty often. If you are considering using a graph database for your next project, you should give it a try! Here are some notes on how to get into RDF [1]. \-- RDF is really at its core such a simple concept! What's built on top can go pretty deep though. RDF is a technology to describe graphs, with tools on top that allow querying, traversing, validating, and inferring information. The way RDF describes graphs is with the use of a "triple". This triple has the form: Subject -> Property -> Object A sample triple could be: Tarantino Directed Kill-Bill. The power of the model comes from the fact the elements of the triple use unique IDs by mean of URIs, so a more realistic triple could be: <[http://imdb.com/tt0266697>](http://imdb.com/tt0266697>) <[http://movies.com/job/director>](http://movies.com/job/director>) "Kill Bill Vol. 1"@en. In this example, the object is a literal instead of a entity with its own URI: the English title of a movie. As long as someone else uses the same subject URI, I may automatically discover new things about my own data by merging someone else triples into mine. There's also an extension that allows naming the graph where the triple lives: the triple becomes a "quad". The name of the graph should be an URI: <[https://me.com/my-movies>](https://me.com/my- movies>). Through the years there's been more stuff built on top of the model: various serialization formats (most of them plain text based), a query language (SPARQL, similarities with Datalog), frameworks for "semantic inference" (OWL), schemata and constraints, asking the graph to be a certain shape (SPIN, SHEX, SHACL), an easy way to make statements about the triples, like "this triple was created on this date by this person" (RDF*), and I'm sure a lot more stuff I'm forgetting or I don't know about :-). 1: [https://www.reddit.com/r/semanticweb/comments/fxtaxe/books_o...](https://www.reddit.com/r/semanticweb/comments/fxtaxe/books_on_the_semantic_web/fppxi1l/) ~~~ jbmsf At my last company, the system that eventually became our Knowledge Graph started out as RDF. It seemed like a great fit, but we didn't really have much luck. There was an unnecessarily complicated process for schema definition and the SPARQL engine we chose (on top of PostgreSQL) wasn't ready for a production load (e.g. was not performant). I really liked the concept and we borrowed the "triple" approach in our next iterations, but we really didn't get any benefit from using RDF. Quite possible it was our fault. ~~~ sawaruna What did you end up moving to? ------ jaygray0919 Most websites in the world implement RDF in the form of schema.org - a nearly pure implementation of RDF (pure meaning no non-standard variants). Wikidata is an RDF instance. The largest chemical database in the world is based on RDF (PubChem). There are hundred, thousands of other RDF instances. ------ sawaruna As someone still using RDF in research / work, always nice to see it pop up on HN. Even if it is nothing particularly substantial. ~~~ OnlyOneCannolo Can you share something more substantial with us? How are you using RDF? Can you share some other RDF resources? Do you have an uncommon take on RDF? ~~~ sawaruna I wouldn't say I have an uncommon take on RDF. I feel it gets more focus (maybe too much) in semantic web related academia and research than it does on the general web. And the substantial thing wasn't meant to be that harsh of a critique, but like another comment mentioned, sometimes these 'introduction / wiki articles about __' are a bit of a tease, and I wish someone were posting something more novel. As for what I'm doing, it's a project that is taking various siloed fan- created data on the web and collecting, aggregating, and transforming it into RDF for the purpose of being queried by researchers. I think RDF and RDF- adjacent things (e.g. knowledge organization, ontology application) are useful here, but the actual querying / data analysis requiring an RDF transformation is maybe questionable. ------ DLA Why do people post wikipedia links with absolutely no context or comment? ~~~ JadeNB I often find Wikipedia-only links handy to introduce me to topics that I never even knew existed—that is, where, in some sense, "this topic exists" is interesting in itself. One particularly memorable one was [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/199_398_500_A](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/199_398_500_A) (though I can no longer find the HN link to it); it's then easy enough for me to Google around for more context if I care to do so. ~~~ tosh [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011467](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011467)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook Fudges Your Password for Your Convenience - ryan_j_naughton https://www.howtogeek.com/402761/facebook-fudges-your-password-for-your-convenience/ ====== chmaynard This is so, so wrong. Now I have another good reason to avoid Facebook.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft Patented Cryptocurrency System Using Body Activity Data - MadMx https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2020060606&tab=PCTBIBLIO ====== cyberg1 00109] Concept 24. A device, comprising: one or more processors communicatively coupled to a sensor, the sensor configured to sense body activity of a user; and memory storing executable instructions that, if executed by the one or more processors, configure the device to: receive a task; generate body activity data based on the sensed body activity of the user, wherein the sensed body activity is associated with the received task; and transmit the generated body activity data to a system or network which verifies the body activity data to award cryptocurrency.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Advice on Beggining a Career as a Freelance Web-Developer. - blister http://ericharrison.info/2010/06/01/ama-how-do-i-get-started-as-a-freelance-web-developer/ ====== phatbyte I'm a web dev freelancer as well. And here my thoughts and tips. \- First, I don't find it a crazy lifestyle, in fact it changed my life for good. I can manage my schedule, I've no boss, damn I'm my own boss. I can choose who I work with and I get to meet very cool people all around the world. Unlike being stuck in a office, with people that you probably don't even like. Also, I can work in any place in the world, as long as I have a computer + internet connection. Take that you in-house Senior Software Engineer (just kidding) \- However, isolation is your worst enemy, you better have friends you can hang out with at the end of the day, or this can really be a very lonely life. Organization, you MUST BE FREAKING organized, you must really know you. You need to record everything, working hours, projects timelines. To-do lists will help you a lot on this. Always create for the next day before you go to bed. Freelancing is great, but there will be times where you will have no projects and no money getting in. So put aside money enough for you to live for at least 4 to 6 month. Have a network of friends who do also freelance, we trade a lot of projects and it's a great help. You can also create a product but just remember that this takes time, and time is money. Forget bidding boards, really, get the hell out of there. Do you really want to value yourself/compete against to some guy who codes for less than $10 an hour ? Instead, find job boards, contact clients directly, just don't spam anyone. If you are good at this, look at yourself as a brand, have a a great portfolio, brand yourself, and price yourself for how good you are. You may not get that "I need a wordpress ninja for custom plugin", but if you are good at it you can get much more reliable clients, and by reliable I include, awesome connections, work, steady projects and cool apps to build. Last but not least... Instead of trying to be a swiss army knife, focus on what you are really good, and apply yourself, and be the best you can. This will be your turning point after awhile, believe me. ~~~ mgkimsal Excellent points. I might take a bit of exception with the 'focus on what you're good at', with the reply that some people may simply be really good generalists. Besides understanding tech, you generally need to have good people skills. Between good social skills and having a good graps on the tech to serve your clients, you may not need to become a domain expert on DNS, or email spam filters, or CSS3, or JavaScript, or any number of tech skills (or business domain skills). Sometimes being able to parse out a client's problem and bring in the appropriate freelance skills when necessary may be the best skill you have. That said, you have to know yourself. If you're really passionate about search, go become a Lucene expert and become the 'go to search guy' in your area (or perhaps even in a vertical). Isolation can hurt - I have regular phone calls with a distributed group of guys who are all in similar (yet different) career stages as me, and we bounce ideas off each other, critique, offer support and skills when needed, and so on. Hearing real people on a phone helps much more than solely email or forums. phatbyte - I'd like to pick your brain a bit more - [email protected] please if you're so inclined. Thanks. ------ adriand I worked for a couple of years as a freelance web developer and the only tip I think is really valuable here is "Bonus tip: Make friends with small design shops." As a freelancer, I think it is very difficult to try and attract work via your web presence. There is too much competition online. In fact, when I was freelancing, I didn't have a professional website of my own at all, I just had my own personal blog, which brought me zero clients. For me, being an effective freelance web developer was all about making and cultivating personal connections. As a freelancer you must be reasonably good at all aspects of business, including business development and sales. I think most salespeople would tell you that the key to sales is meeting people, telling them what you do, and finding out if they need your services or if they know anyone else who does. The great thing about being employed in web development work is that it is a skill with a lot of demand, so it is not difficult to find people who need it. What is more difficult is finding people who will pay at a level that makes the pain of freelancing worthwhile (for me, the pain of freelancing was mainly being solely responsible for absolutely everything, including the parts I detest, which are primarily billing and collections.) ------ fr0man Odd, it's a guy who's not nor has ever been a freelance web developer giving advice on how to become a freelance web developer. ~~~ rwhitman As a career freelancer I find it difficult to find the time or motivation for open source work. I feel like most of the people who get involved in open source are probably doing it on the clock at the office, where the extra time spent perfecting free software is subsidized by a salary. But maybe I'm wrong? ~~~ mikeytown2 I picked a hard problem (Drupal Performance) and worked on a open source project (Boost Module) for about 7 months till I was approached by a company and offered a job. This was an exit strategy I had in mind, get highered. I'm now paid to work on performance related issues & I enjoy it. When it comes to performance, I open source (GPLv2) most of my code since sharing is the fastest way to solve complex issues involving speed and scalability. All of this to say if you don't find the open source work exciting, maybe you picked the wrong problem for you to solve. Now that I have a 9-5 job, I have less time to perfect the free software I've created. If it works 100% for the biz, why would they want to pay me (time) to fix problems the biz doesn't have. I've spent time in various open source projects and Drupal was the first one where something stuck (people wanted to higher me). Luck has a lot to do with it; picking the right project at the right time. I've been contributing to Open Source since 2004, 2009 was the first time someone saw my code/work and wanted to higher me. ------ lanstein Because I see you wrote this, blister, don't spell stuff wrong in titles. That's my advice. ------ ryanwaggoner _My full-time job pays me far too much money to make it worth my time to realistically ever waste it freelancing on the side. Whenever I do actually sit down and start doing freelance work, it’s at my extremely ridiculous hourly rate. I charge effectively triple my hourly salary just to make it worth my time._ This seems quite self-contradictory. Regardless, I've found that after doing it for a few years, I can make 2-3x more doing freelance than I could in a salary job. All it takes is hustle. ~~~ joshcrews 3x salary is actually a great formula for equivalent compensation. If you make $30/hr salary, you really make $40/hr with vacation/health/employer-paid taxes/use of office and equipment for free/reimbursed travel+conferences +you don't get paid for slow times, and non-billable tasks +you have to compensated for the increased risk you take on (consider the reverse--you would take less average pay to know that it's completely reliable and consistent) ~~~ jdminhbg While you don't get paid for slow times, you do get paid for busy times. That seems to balance out in my experience. ~~~ ryanwaggoner Exactly. That's what I meant when I said all it takes is hustle. When you freelance, your have very direct and tangible control over how much you make. You have some control when salary, but the correlation with effort is a lot murkier, in my experience. ------ benatkin I think this is a dangerous platitude: > Every single thing you build from here on out should have as much quality as > you can provide. On one hand, it would discourage me from just going out and building stuff, to get experience. On the other hand, exceptional circumstances ought to be treated as exceptional. If I'm moving between servers, I'd better triple-check that everything has been moved properly before hitting the switch. ------ jim_dot I do not like this guy.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
20 Subjects Every Software Engineer Should Know - nikosmar http://www.dotnetcodegeeks.com/2012/07/20-subjects-every-software-engineer.html ====== tstyle I'd rather hire someone who excels only at two or three things on this list(#3, #20), along with some product sense and good communication skills. ------ roguecoder Apparently "spelling" is not on the list.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Breaking Chains with Pipelines in Modern JavaScript - fagnerbrack https://www.wix.engineering/post/breaking-chains-with-pipelines-in-modern-javascript ====== dvdhnt Maybe it's just me, but I don't see the purpose of a pipeline operator - at least in JS. From a cognitive perspective, it doesn't make code more readable or easier to understand. From a practical perspective, why? What can't we do with it that isn't aesthetic? Edit: Okay, after reading through the article again, I get it. I've had issues with eager loading in Node AND I will say the pipeline is easier to understand than simply using generators. Good article. ~~~ crooked-v A simple example would be mixing map/reduce stuff on arrays with other non- built-in utility functions that take arrays without having to break the logical flow. For a very simple example, manipulating and summing an array of values: import { range, sum } from 'ramda'; range(0, 6) \|> x => x.map(i => i * i) \|> sum Compare to: import { range, sum } from 'ramda'; sum( range(0, 6) .map(i => i * i) ) ...and then add three or four other non-builtin methods in between map steps and consider the resulting readability. ~~~ MFogleman I mean, I think one of the big arguments against a pipeline operator is that you can easily roll your own with const pipe = (...fxs) => x => fxs.reduce((v, f) => f(v), x); If you're going to pull in ramda for example, they have their own pipe, and a map function that takes (predicate, array) as curried arguments, to aid with composition import { map, pipe, range, sum } from 'ramda'; pipe( range, map(i => i * i), sum )(0, 6) I haven't messed with HN formatting before, so I hope that turns out right. My team uses Ramda and pipes regularly in our Node code, and its absolutely wonderful ------ crooked-v I really wish we could just get a pipeline operator past stage 1. It seems like such a simple idea philosophically but apparently the big players can't agree on any of the exact details. ------ sequoia > Fortunately, a much better syntax for this type of expressions is being > introduced by ECMAScript, known as the pipeline operator. This is "Stage 1: Strawman Proposal." It's not exactly accurate to say the operator is being introduced " _by_ ECMAScript", more like "it's being proposed for addition _to_ the ECMAScript specification." ------ oweiler I would have preferred .pipe, .partial and .partialRight functions in the std library instead of adding more syntax sugar. ------ timw4mail Since when does "modern" mean not-yet-standardized? ~~~ sequoia [https://sequoia.makes.software/what-is-javascript- part-1-the...](https://sequoia.makes.software/what-is-javascript-part-1-the- problem/) agree ------ swsieber Huh, I'd never seen a pipe method with the # as the placeholder before. That seems like a pretty nice way to make it flexible. ~~~ sequoia Clojure has a similar thing, where % is used as a placeholder in threading, which is similar [https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros](https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros) ------ archarios RamdaJS may interest you if you like pipes ~~~ MFogleman For anyone looking at picking up Ramda, the docs at ramdajs.com are great API docs, but don't tell you a thing about how to actually use lenses, transducers, and point free data last functions with pipes. Randy Coulman has a great list of guides on how to actually use Ramda on his blog[1]. Start at the bottom with the introduction and work your way up. [https://randycoulman.com/blog/categories/thinking-in- ramda/](https://randycoulman.com/blog/categories/thinking-in-ramda/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Grove, Ellison, Andreessen, etc. speak out on Steve Jobs - adamhowell http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/technology/0911/gallery.steve_jobs_testimonials.fortune/index.html ====== blasdel Larry Ellison, uber-consumerist: _I remember when Steve was my neighbor in Woodside, Calif., and he had no furniture. It struck me that there wasn't furniture good enough for Steve in the world. He'd rather have nothing if he couldn't have perfection._	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Atheist Defends Religion - Kapura https://medium.com/understandings-epiphanies/2bed2dd4ed78 ====== divinedefault Part I: The value offered by religion has absolutely no bearing on the truthfulness of the religion. Charitable acts or creating a sense of community by Mormons, Scientologists, or Christians do not mean that Joseph Smith found those gold plates, the character Xenu ever existed, or that Jesus was the son of God. It is possible to have communities without worshiping invisible beings who may or may not answer prayers. In big bold letters, the author states that "God makes people happier by providing answers." If we look at the happiest countries in the world ([http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/earth- institute-world...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/09/business/earth-institute- world-happiness-rankings/)), we see countries with large atheist populations at the top of the list...every single year. He references a "shitload of evidence", but I wonder if he's ever taken a look at crime statistics around the world. Even if he looks at just the United States, he would find higher rates of crime in states where religiosity is highest. Religion does not seem to be a barrier to immoral actions nor is it a panacea for happiness. Perhaps we have different meanings for "shitload of evidence." Part II: This is the classic strawman section. I actually agree with the author that many of the examples given in most debates are evidence of the evil of men, but he fails to recognize that religion has historically provided cover for those actions. Slavery has historically enjoyed such cover. Misogony and homophobia have luxuriated and continue to luxuriate under such religious cover. I'm quite familiar with the problem of evil and the author did absolutely nothing to negate this. If God knows that evil is happening every minute of the day, He either can do nothing to prevent it or doesn't care to. As Sam Harris points out, God is therefore either impotent or evil. Every day I hear from religious people who claim that God helped them in some manner. They regularly give Him praise for things that He does on their behalf. I find this to be narcissistic, callous, and completely immoral when I consider that at least a dozen children under the age of 5 will have died during the course of you reading my remarks here. They and their parents will beseech Heaven for food and water and this same God who answers frivolous prayers somehow finds these starving children unworthy. There is nothing humble about this line of thinking. I fail to see how the fact that our holy texts (regardless of how they have been translated or cobbled together) have frequently been shown to be incorrect is a flawed argument. An omniscient being should be able to explain in unambiguous terms what it expects. No holy book fits that description. Whether it is stopping the planetary motion of either our sun or our planet for 24 hours to allow Joshua to finish his battle (Bible - Joshua 10:13) or Muhammad splitting the moon (Qur'an - 54:1-2), these are cosmological claims being made by our religions. I fail to see how my inability to read it in Arabic somehow makes this scientifically possible. If there is a conflict between religion and science, I get the feeling that the author feels it's ok to reject the scientific account. The problem I have with this is that unlike religion, science is not subjective. It has been the most consistently reliable way for us to determine fact from fiction. When a religious person disputes evolution in favor of creationism or asserts the historicity of a prophet flying to Heaven on a winged horse, those are anti- scientific views. Plain and simple. Part III: This section basically deals with the author's desire to treat other peoples' beliefs as sacred. As H. L. Mencken said, "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." What the author fails to understand is that beliefs directly influence our actions. If the creator of the universe commands us to kill people for imaginary crimes like witchcraft, should we respect that belief (FYI - witch burnings still happen in places like Kenya)? If someone wants a religious belief like creationism taught alongside evolution in our classrooms, is the appropriate response one of tolerance? Unlike Jesus, I don't think we should enact thought-crime legislation, but if religious people cannot keep their unsubstantiated beliefs in check, we must oblige them to. ~~~ Kapura I'd prefer this discussion continue on this site rather than the other, if you've no preference. ;) >The value offered by religion has absolutely no bearing on the truthfulness of the religion I don't disagree, but I argue that the value it offers is more important than the absolute truth of every ideology. Faith, by definition, transcends evidence. If that's not OK with you that's fine, but I also doubt that every word you've ever uttered was the complete and total truth. Also if you can causally link those statistics, I'd love to read it. But from where I'm sitting, I see only correlation. The fact that religion has been used to cover atrocities does not mean either that they were caused by religion nor that they would not have happened without religion. As evidence I point to atrocities divorced of religion. I am not fit to debate the problem of evil, but my point again is that this isn't a silver bullet for atheism. There are faiths or interpretations of faith that circumvent the issue entirely, so I don't view it as an overly effective argument. I can't debate the aspects of the qur'an because I, you know, respect others' beliefs, but for the Biblical aspect I'll quote something that another commenter on hn brought up: >Joseph Campbell: "These bits of information from ancient times [myths], which have to do with the themes that have supported man's life, built civilizations, informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage. And if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way you have to work it out yourself. " >See [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html) Very few people read the Bible literally. To pretend that they do is the essence of strawmanning. >I get the feeling that the author feels it's ok to reject the scientific account N-no? Why would I think that. I don't defend people who deny scientific fact. But again, it's fallacious to think that that represents the whole, or even the majority, of religious folk. >Unlike Jesus, I don't think we should enact thought-crime legislation Tipping your hand a little bit there. I don't ever remember Jesus saying "Let's not let others have freedom of thought." Again, I DO NOT advocate ignoring science for the sake of religion. I never said that, and your and others' persistent insinuation that I am saying this is exactly the sort of behaviour that motivated me to write that in the first place. ~~~ divinedefault When you say "the value it offers is more important than the absolute truth of every ideology", that is a subjective statement that could quite possibly be impossible to quantify. You can argue it all you like, but in the end you're stating your opinion. That's not an objective statement. How do you know that the value is greater than the harm? I do take issue with your statement that "Faith, by definition, transcends evidence." A quick glance at Dictionary.com gives me a different definition that states faith is "belief that is not based on proof". If faith, by your definition, somehow transcends evidence, why should I respect that? In what other area of our discourse is it not only permissible but actually desirable to believe something strongly either in the absence of or in direct refutation of evidence? I agreed with you on the evil of men, but the point I was trying to make is that religion does not seem to be a barrier to atrocities. A glance through the pages of history is all that's needed to demonstrate this. Even the pope in 2000 gave a mea culpa on atrocities committed by the Church in the course of two millenia. I found the passage from Campbell to be entertaining. Frankly, it's white noise. What I find interesting about this and the suggestion that we shouldn't read these texts literally is that you have somehow stumbled upon the "correct" interpretation. Of course the universe wasn't created in six days. Of course the sun didn't stand still in the sky for 24 hours. Of course God didn't drown the entire world in a massive flood. Of course Jonah didn't actually stay in the belly of a large fish. Are you saying that people throughout history have never taken these stories literally or treated them as historical facts? The truth is that as our knowledge of the world has advanced, we now treat these stories as parables and metaphors. Allow me to quote my earlier statement: "An omniscient being should be able to explain in unambiguous terms what it expects. No holy book fits that description." When we read in the Hadith (which has equal canonical authority to the Qur'an) that the appropriate punishment for apostasy is death, are we to believe that this is simply a metaphor? Are we taking it too literal? I contend that it's either the will of God or it isn't. Perhaps Christianity is easier to discuss for you. In the Christian faith, I can assure you that men like St Thomas Aquinas and St Augustine had read Jesus' teachings in the New Testament along with God's Old Testament commands to suffer not a witch to live, and they found it completely appropriate to kill women for this imaginary crime. If you're saying that God never meant Exodus 22:18 to be taken literally, congratulations - because you've been able to correctly interpret this ancient text in a way that some of the most venerated religious leaders could not. Kudos to you. I don't understand your "tipping your hand" comment, but I can address the gist of your argument. Just because you don't ever remember Jesus enacting thought-crime legislation doesn't negate my argument. Read the Sermon on the Mount. When Jesus says that not just the physical act of adultery is against the law, but that the thoughts leading up to it are just as immoral and against the law, that is the very essence of thought-crime legislation. No? Having read your opinions and responded to them, I am inclined to agree with an earlier poster who doubted your atheistic standing. "Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." ~~~ Kapura I'm disinclined to continue responding if you continue _BELIEVING_ that I am lying to you about the _FACT_ that I am an atheist, that I have no religion, that I don't believe in God. If you presume that I am so wrong on every point that I don't even know my own religious beliefs, is there even any point for me to continue this discussion? I love discussing these sorts of issues because I loving finding a point on which we can agree, even if we just agree that it's a difference of opinion. But I'm not convinced that it'd be worth either of our times to continue if that goal is impossible. ~~~ al1x If you really are an atheist you've taken this whole idea of "open-mindedness" way too far and let a slough of nonsense overwhelm your rational sensibilities. Stop trying to be "ok" with everyone and everything. It's foolishness. There are truly fucked up people in this world with truly fucked up beliefs. You don't need to be "ok" with them. You need to confront them and help educate them. Fight ignorance, don't condone it. Help make the world a better place. If you have nothing to say in response to divinedefault, fine. But there's no reason to storm off in a huff and refuse further dialogue because he questions the authenticity of some of your claims. I doubted them too. Be a man. Deal with it. Get over it. Continue the dialogue if you can. If you can't, keep processing what he's said. He took a lot of time and spent a lot of effort replying to your blog post. You owe him more than this "I'M NOT TALKING TO YOU ANYMORE" nonsense. ~~~ divinedefault Each of my arguments is clearly outlined in the aptly titled book "The Divine Default". ------ mattkrea My first comment here (as an Atheist) would have to do with the fact that: If you believe in the Christian "creation" story you don't believe that the world is 4.5 billion (give or take a few hundred) years old. This would be a fairly significant problem for someone calling himself or herself a scientist yet while being a religious person. The bigger thing for me is that I see no facts surrounding it. So, I see people that I know taking this on faith and that, to me, is a fundamental flaw in their thinking. I think most people out there understand why religion exists and I agree with many of your points here but I still believe that it is fundamentally wrong. Humans used to believe lightning and fire was caused by a god until we understood what actually caused it. Give it a few thousands years and I think we'll be much further along. This is not to say that I go out of my way to attack it but I surely will fight if someone presses it on me. ~~~ russellsprouts But you don't have to believe in the literal Christian creation story 7000 years ago. Most lines of Christian thought allowed for non-literal accounts as far back as the first century A.D. ~~~ mattkrea Believe me I'm aware of that. I always sort of felt that picking and choosing the parts of a religion in which you believe is almost worst, however. ~~~ xherberta The Hebrew term "Yom" translated "day" is mentioned before the sun and moon. Also, there's an unspecified amount of time between Genesis 1:1, when "God created the heavens and the earth" and 1:2, which says "But the earth became waste and emptiness." These two clues tell me the text is not meant to offer any information about dates and times. ------ al1x This post is absurd. People attack religion "to feel superior than others and therefore feel better about themselves"? What about the fact that religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity? What about the "minor" fact that the religious majority control politically the largest superpower in the world? What about the fact that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? What about the fact that religion encourages ignorance and complacency and opposes the idea of self reliance? What about the fact that it lacks any form of empirical evidence despite making claims to? But I'm supposed to forget about all of that because of "community". It's somehow a GOOD thing that ignorant birds of a feather flock together? It's somehow a GOOD thing that the scientifically illiterate majority control the public policy of the largest superpower in the world? But I'm supposed to forget all of that because it "makes them happy"? That their ignorance is bliss? That simpleminded people don't suffer existential angst? That having a book that makes up answers to all of life's questions instead of providing anything remotely approaching anything empirical is somehow "comforting"? But I'm supposed to forget all of that because religion has been around since all of recorded human history.. and that that is somehow significant? Go ahead max, dismiss the critics by forgetting that the Crusades was entirely motivated by religion, dismiss the philosophical problem of evil because you think you've found a satisfactory answer to it, dismiss the fact that the Bible is riddled with factual and historical inaccuracies, dismiss religion's blatant disregard for Science Fact because "people are inconsistent about their beliefs all the time" (because that's such a good reason). ...and by all means, continue making spectacularly ignorant blog posts and don't both enabling comments because, heaven forbid, someone might call you out on your nonsense and set you straight. Stay in school, Max, and keep thinking through these things. You've got a ways to go. ~~~ Kapura I don't know your first name, but I'll call you Alex (al1x ~= alix ~= Alex). Thanks for responding Alex. I'm glad that you have. You've brought up a number of points which I'd like to address. 1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of proportion. In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first paragraph. I struggled with getting the right balance between outside sources and personal stream of my own thoughts, but I think if you're going to categorise faith as an existential threat to humanity you're going to need to prove it a little bit more than just, you know, fearmongering. 2) If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you. To me, the happiest people have always been in a supportive group, generally focused around central beliefs. Whether it's groups of coders hanging out after work or weeaboos watching new animes together, a community seems a core component of happiness, and I view more people having a deep, personal happiness as more important than crushing faith. Then again, I don't see religion as a threat to the human race, so if you can prove (or argue compellingly) for your first point, I may have to reconsider this one. 3) Everybody always says that The Crusades were entirely motivated by religion. That is foolish; I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every war has ever been fought: for power. But in this war, one of the parties was behind a flag of religious righteousness. I will again point to the fact that a bunch of people have killed, many, many more people in cases entirely devoid of religious ideologies. How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn. 4) I didn't disable comments. I don't know if Medium has comments, but this is the correct forum for airing comments; that's why I posted it to hn in the first place. I've also written about the folly of allowing comments, but given your reception to this piece, I'm hesitant to link something else that might raise your blood pressure even further. Regards, -max golden ~~~ al1x > 1) You say "religion is a dangerous evil whose existence threatens the very > future of humanity." This seems, at best, blowing something way out of > proportion. You must not live in the US, must not be aware of how religion influences scientific research, and must not pay much attention to the news. > In fact, you make a whole shitload of biased, uncited claims in your first > paragraph. ...fearmongering. This is so typical of HN. Disagree? No problem. Dismiss everything said with a "citation needed". Your entire blog post was an uncited claim. But I'm not going to even bother making that a point of contention. This game is juvenile, especially on matters of common knowledge. Only a jackass walks around saying "citation needed" to every claim someone makes. Re: fearmongering, is this some kind of joke? Are you really questioning that the religious majority controls politically the United States? Are you really questioning that religion shapes public policy in ways detrimental to scientific advancement and societal progress? Do you really think the ideas behind the second coming of Christ encourage self reliance as opposed to say extreme apathy, since their Lord and Savior will soon descend from heaven to judge, condemn, and then magically fix all the problems of the world for us, creating an eternal paradise for all believers? Are you really unaware of the common objection to climate change among Christians in America that climate change is bogus because "God wouldn't let that happen"? Do you really contest my assertion that religion lacks empirical evidence? Have you yourself seen signs, wonders, and miracles on the order of Biblical proportions? Do you often see water turned to wine, great waters parted on command, the sick healed and the dead raised? Because those are the claims of Christianity. > If you don't see the power of a community, I cannot help you I never said community wasn't a great thing, I only said, in so many words, that a community based on ignorance and nonsense is not a net "good". Do you argue that the "community" created around Hitler's ideologies was a net "good"? That's absurd. Not everything that unites is good. > I would argue that it was another war fought for the same reason that every > war has ever been fought: for power Right. Except, of course, that you're wrong. > How many people died during the crusades? Was it less than 40 million? I did > a little bit of googling, and it seems to be way less than 40 million, so it > still pales in comparison to Mao or Genghis Kahn. Do you really think it somehow makes what happened during the Crusades any better? Your point is completely irrelevant. If religion did not exist those tens of millions of people would not have been killed. That's the only thing that matters. ------ fein "But ultimately, I feel, there is no satisfying answer to this question outside of religions." *in regards to the "What is our purpose" question. This has always been why I've been guilty of treating religious folk like special needs children on occasion. I don't think that religion's answer for that question is any more satisfying than ignorance. It feels like a huge life shortcut that doesn't help with the problem. Any time the answer is "Because God", it just means that the buck stops there, and no more thought occurs. How are we ever going to answer any of these important questions if we never devote time to thinking about them? ~~~ Kapura That's a more than valid point. If you allow your faith to stifle scientific thought, you are at fault. But I truly feel that there are questions that tear at the heart of a person, like "what is my purpose" that no amount of science can answer. If you're able to answer that question internally, that's wonderful, but not everybody can. I think that if we can get past this question, we can get onto more important ones (or at least ones we are better equipped to answer). In essence, though, you are correct: a person who allows their beliefs to stifle acquisition of further knowledge is not a person deserving of respect. ------ xherberta I commend you. Thank you for the large-minded, logical, and compassionate analysis. I get what divinedefault meant about thought crimes. I think (s)he refers to Jesus' bit about lust in the heart being equal to adultery, and calling someone a fool being equal to murder. I think Jesus was pointing out that there are crimes in everyone's thoughts. He was talking to ultra-religious law-keeping bigots who thought they were better than everybody. ------ hsmyers Reasonable article. In support: Joseph Campbell: "These bits of information from ancient times [myths], which have to do with the themes that have supported man's life, built civilizations, informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage. And if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way you have to work it out yourself. " See [http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html](http://www.pbs.org/moyers/faithandreason/perspectives1.html) ~~~ ada1981 Came here to reference Campbell as well.. Campbell said the problem is that most people don't know what a metaphor is. Myth is metaphor -- so they don't understand it. Theists read the bible and say this is literally true. Atheists read it and say this is false, it's a lie. Agnostics read it and say, not sure.. But the transcendent perspective is to see that "God" is a Myth, not a lie. God is a myth that represents the unknowable ground of your being, and the religions are a mythology designed to aid your ego on it's journey of self discovery and guide society. Myth is a mirror for the ego with a schedule on it - it shows you where you are. The literalists will be hard pressed to have the spiritual salvation they seek without knowing what a metaphor is -- they will be stuck looking outside themselves when the God they seek is within -- the mythologies are designed to help find it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Always be the new user - f055 https://medium.com/@f055/what-the-new-iphone-taught-me-about-the-most-important-business-practice-for-your-company-or-f72756e4187#.a16j0ah3s ====== dang Sockpuppet votes and comments will get your account banned on Hacker News. Please don't do this again. ------ taninhabib Good job ------ saifurbd likes this site ------ saifurbd saifur ------ MANMAUJI Just for my best to do better. ------ MANMAUJI It is opportunity to take challenge.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Java 8: Replace traditional for loops with IntStreams - mariushe http://www.deadcoderising.com/2015-05-19-java-8-replace-traditional-for-loops-with-intstreams/ ====== cousin_it Maybe a heretical opinion here, but I like writing loops much more than using higher order functions like map/fold/filter, even though I have quite a bit of experience with ML family languages by now. These are my reasons: 1) The automatic parallelization opportunities of HOFs don't happen in practice nearly as often as you'd expect. Sorry, but it's true. Haskell's "map" doesn't parallelize automatically. 2) Loops are a single construct you learn once and apply everywhere, while HOFs are a huge and bewildering zoo. 3) Loops can do many things that HOFs cannot. You can do break/continue/return in the loop body. You can iterate over two collections at once, skipping elements of one collection depending on what you see in the other. And so on. 4) Loops scale to from simple use cases to complicated ones gradually and continuously. With HOFs, when your use case changes slightly (e.g. you add a counter), you often need to go all the way up and use a different HOF. 5) Loops make the time and space complexity much more obvious. With HOFs, you often get nasty surprises. For example, see the tail-recursive vs non-tail- recursive implementations of "map" in OCaml, or the foldr vs foldl vs foldl' situation in Haskell. 6) Loops are much easier to understand from a machine point of view. For HOFs, you need a language with closures, and in some cases GC as well. Loops, on the other hand, can be done in C. In a nutshell, loops are easier to learn, easier to read, easier to write, and easier to execute. ~~~ michaelfeathers The problem I have with loops is that they are like fly-paper. Once you have a loop iterating over a collection it's tempting to add more and more to it, mixing responsibilities in run-on code. This isn't theoretical, I see code like this all of the time. It's nearly impossible to abuse HOFs that way. ~~~ cousin_it Yeah, I agree. "Fly-paper" sounds a bit judgmental though. For a more neutral metaphor, we could say that HOFs are like Lego bricks, and loops are like clay. Both have their benefits and drawbacks. I've been fascinated by HOFs for many years, but my personal projects are filled with "loop abuse" and mixed responsibilities, all soft and malleable, just the way I like it. If I had to dismantle half the thing just to change the color of one brick, I'd give up pretty quickly. ~~~ michaelfeathers That sort of change is easy - at least you have bricks. Clay just oozes all over itself. Whatever works for you. If it's just your code, you have enough control to keep loops from going bad. Large multi-programmer projects seem far more prone to that problem. ------ Monkeyget The next step is to realize that you can use streams to communicate between processes. Stream parallelization is used not just to speed things up but as an easier way to write massively parallel programs. Instead of bug inducing mutexes and semaphores, you write a series of threads who are only able to communicate between themselves through streams. Each thread possesses input streams to receive data from other threads and output streams to talk to other threads. Each thread is idle until it receives an input from one of the streams. It then performs some processing which can include sending messages to output streams before going back to sleep. A system may possess a large number of threads and I wrote a pacman this way where interactive object was a thread: the pacman, ghosts, bonuses,... Even the score was in its own thread. Since the game was real time there was a special clock process to generate the ticks to advance through each frame of the game. Except for the initial wiring up and flow control (when the emitter of the stream is faster than the receiver), the system is easy to reason with and debug. By looking at the stream you can get a high level of visualization. I guess the next step after that is to realize that you can apply this to the entire system and replace messy one-to-one ESB RPC calls with something like Event Sourcing. ~~~ visarga Standard unix programming with streams and pipes is quite functional-ish. The auto-pausing of pipes and lazy infinite streams it makes possible are quite useful. ------ adamc I was thinking "this is cool" \-- a more functional style of iteration for Java. But then it occurred to me that now you will need to know yet another style of writing the same thing. That brought up (bad) memories of Perl, where the problem of "there's more than one way to do it" was that you had to be comfortable with _reading_ all of them. (And, much as I love Lisps, that's the problem with macros in Lisp -- they create a semantic burden on new readers of the code.) ~~~ vitalyd One of the hotly debated aspects of java is that even with java 8 additions the language is fairly simple and there really aren't that many ways to express the same thing. ~~~ sacado2 Hmm... Java's reference manual is about 800 pages long. That is close to Ada's reference manual, and Ada is quite a hard to grok language, and its reference very exhaustive, by design. It is bigger than C++14's ISO reference, which is fun considering Java was marketed as "much simpler than C++". Overall, Java is not an arcane language, but it has many, many gotchas and mixing new concepts with old design decisions only increases the number of gotchas. ~~~ pron The spec is long because it's very, very detailed (probably more than any other language spec out there). Also, Java doesn't allow any undefined behavior under any circumstance. It is much, much simpler than C++. ~~~ lmm There are also lots of awkward edge cases where Java specifies something just as complex as a more general language feature, that's then only used in one tiny case. E.g. Java has a specification of type inference - that's used only for anonymous classes. And another, more limited form of inference that's applied to generics. Java has a syntax for union types - that can only be used in catch clauses - and generic type bounds have their own parallel syntax and rules. Language constructs are inconsistent (braces are mandatory around the body of a try or a function, but not an if or while). A lot of parts of the specification need special-casing for primitive types and/or arrays, which most languages handle in a more unified way (e.g. accessing the length of an array via reflection is unlike any other method or field access). ~~~ pron So what? A language's complexity is measured (by developers) as the mental effort required to learn and read it -- not by the regularity of the grammar. Java is a relatively very simple language (for a statically typed one) -- even with its corner cases. It's certainly more complex than C and a little more than Go, but it's much simpler than C++, C#, Scala, Ada, Rust, Haskell, OCaml and pretty much every other statically typed language out there with more than 1000 users. ~~~ lmm These aren't just theoretical grammar issues. Every beginner struggles with when you use == and when you use .equals(), or the differences between casting primitives and casting objects. I've witnessed even very experienced developers get confused reading generic bounds, or fail to take advantage of multi-catch or generics inference. All I can say for your comparisons is that I disagree with many of them. ~~~ pron > Every beginner struggles with when you use == and when you use .equals(), or > the differences between casting primitives and casting objects. I actually agree with those points (though Java is still very simple), but there's an obvious reason: that's the exact same behavior as in C++ (unless you start playing with operator overloading), and any other behavior would have looked surprising or strange to people coming over from C/C++, which was basically everyone who learned Java in its first 10 years. The same goes for the fallthrough switch statement. Generic bounds indeed completely go against the language's design goals, but failing to take advantage of multicatch or generic inference (or lambda inference) is not a problem[1]. Java is a language designed for ease of reading (it says so right in its design documents), and for large teams/project, so code is made to look uniform, with all "advanced" features being local and obvious to anyone reading them. The goal was to make every new developer on your team (people working on large projects move around a lot) immediately able to read the code and not have to learn the team's DSL or coding style. Those were the problems that plagued C++ (alas, they only became apparent years after C++ had been in widespread use, and cost the industry billions), and Java very successfully avoided. Go has adopted the same design philosophy. [1]: Not that it's important, but every Java IDE would automatically suggest the shortened syntax. Java IDEs even automatically convert loops to streams. ------ c-rack Interesting approach. It would be nice to see some benchmarks of IntStream vs. traditional loop. I would expect that IntStreams are slower if it does not use the parallel execution, see: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22658322/java-8-performa...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22658322/java-8-performance- of-streams-vs-collections) And even parallel execution might be tricky: [http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/java-parallel-streams- ar...](http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/java-parallel-streams-are-bad-for- your-health/) ~~~ Karunamon A coworker and I tested this out when the announcement was originally made, at least in the use case of iterating a massive array. (Insert 100M trues and one false at the end, and find me the false) Code is here: [https://gist.github.com/Karunamon/abc6483ac1d08f6cc137](https://gist.github.com/Karunamon/abc6483ac1d08f6cc137). The result was that streams were roughly 4x slower. Still, I really like some of the new constructs that Java is getting - they make the language a bit more expressive, lack of which has always been my main gripe with the language. ~~~ RandomBK Write code to be as clear and expressive as possible, then optimize for performance when you know performance is a problem. This is why I don't mind the performance cost of new language features like this. 90% of the time it won't matter, and you can optimize the other 10. ~~~ sacado2 These constructs don't always make code any easier to understand / maintain. I have played a lot with NetBeans' feature that automatically translate loops with their "functional" equivalent. Sometimes the code was so clever I couldn't understand what was happening. Sure, code is more compact, but compactness is not an end in itself. ~~~ justinhj Compactness is more of a side effect and can be a detrimental one. Personally I find that this kind of code is more declarative of intent than the more imperative for loop. By using particular functional tools for the job you're avoiding any possibility of a bug in your looping construct and making your purpose explicit. I also like how it removes boiler plate to handle different container types making it easier to switch to different ones. ------ btilly Iterators are an interesting addition to Java 8, but a bigger change is what they had to do to enable iterators to exist. What they did was allow interfaces to provide default methods. They then added stream() and parallelStream() default methods to the Collection interface to generate streams and start all of the iterator goodness. The result is that in Java 8, an interface now behaves like a Ruby mixin. It is a way to do multiple inheritance in a language that officially does single inheritance. I'm sure there will be some disasters before the Java community settles on best practices for this feature. :-) ------ michaelfeathers The idea that you can replace nearly every loop with functional constructs really clicked for me when I saw that you can use zip in Haskell and each_cons in Ruby to see each element and its successor at the same time. [10,11,2,3,4,5].each_cons(2).map {\|curr,succ\| succ - curr } => [1,-9,1,1,1] ~~~ gd1 Or just: (-)':(10 11 2 3 4 5) ...in K. Or: (-) prior (10 11 2 3 4 5) ..in Q, if you feel more comfortable with words than symbols. ------ peter303 Just write functional programs in a legible manner for understandability. I've seen people write five functions on a single line and takes me a while to figure out what is going on. They should be on separate lines with a possible tail comment. ------ tsmarsh I know backward compatibility with Java 5 is important for the clojure world, but I would love to see streams and invoke dynamic implemented in a "Clojure 2.0". I would love to do it myself, if someone would pay me to do it :) ~~~ WalterGR I know backward compatibility with Java 5 is important for the clojure world... Why is that? (I googled but didn't find anything relevant.) ~~~ djpowell Since Clojure 1.6, Java 6 is the minimum requirement. I'm sure there is a discussion somewhere, but I expect that there are quite a few people who run Java on commercial J2EE app servers and the like which don't officially support newer JDKs. ------ danceswthmngmnt Liking that java is getting nice now. But they need to get type inference next too. ~~~ RyanZAG Seems to be an unpopular opinion, but I don't like or want type inference. All that happens is instead of seeing int result = someFunc() you see val result = someFunc() Is anything really gained other than saving a couple obvious (and compiler checked) keystrokes? And you've lost the ability to see the type of each variable locally in the function. It's never seemed very useful to me. ~~~ unwind For your example, sure. But it's not uncommon (in my opinion) to write stuff like EnumMap<FooEnum, BarClass> map = new EnumMap<FooEnum, BarClass>(FooEnum.class); which to me ought to read something like var map = new EnumMap<FooEnum, BarClass>(); Of course, I don't do a lot of Java programming these days and perhaps my first example is simply broken due to ignorance. When I wrote something very similiar to that last week, I failed to figure out how to avoid repeating the type signature, and was annoyed. ~~~ michaelt It's not quite as short as you'd like, but since Java 7 came out in 2011, it's been possible to write: EnumMap<FooEnum, BarClass> map = new EnumMap<>(FooEnum.class); using the "diamond operator" [1]. In fact, my IDE even provides automatic hints to make use of it! With that said, I do think java has too much pro-long-method-and-variable-name culture. [1] [http://www.javaworld.com/article/2074080/core-java/jdk-7-- th...](http://www.javaworld.com/article/2074080/core-java/jdk-7--the-diamond- operator.html) ------ hoare cool article! parallel reminds me of C#'s Parallel.For/ForEach loop. Does anyone have experience of the performance of streams vs conventional for loops? ~~~ vitalyd Performance has been briefly mentioned in this thread; if you google you'll also see some empirical results. But really the best you can hope for, all else equal, is same perf as for loop. The JIT compilers have been taught about loop optos for a long time now, and the best you can hope for is the JIT removes the extra abstraction when using streams, but it can be brittle. ------ innguest Java needs to come out of the Ruby closet. ------ jebblue Not only do I wish for for loops to remain I would like to see the magical looking lambda crap removed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The most awkward 404 not found page on the internet - stuti90 http://visitsteve.com/404.html ====== bitslayer It would be great if after it is done, the video could be replaced with a still image of the same scene, so that it is not clear if the video is actually over or not. You could stay there for hours waiting to see if something cool is going to happen. ------ russell I bet you never spent 5 minutes watching a 404 page. Well I have now. I am probably going to get even by passing it on, like a chain letter. You know, bad karma if you don watch it and pass it on. ------ aorshan I can't believe that I just spent 5 minutes watching that. Yet I couldn't turn it off. ~~~ gbeeson And now I cannot un-see it either. Five minutes. Train Wreck principle? ------ cmsj Epic hipster beard :o	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
MOSH - cjr http://getmosh.io/ ====== mhax This is actually really well done. Nothing new technically, but presented really well. (I thought this was going to be another posing of [https://mosh.mit.edu/](https://mosh.mit.edu/)) ------ markild I was really confused about what this site had to do with mosh, the mobile shell[1]. It seems the answer is nothing, if anyone else was wondering. [1]: [https://mosh.mit.edu/](https://mosh.mit.edu/) ------ tempodox Another one of those obscure pointless sites with no explanation. Of course you're free to produce as many of them as you want but putting something like that on HN is just very bad style. Not everybody is comfortable using a crystal ball to find out what this diversion is supposed to be. It's just wasting everybody's time. ------ ahmedjhamid Really amazing !!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
eBay Horror Story - sirinath https://twitter.com/sirinath/status/1213690911798046720 ====== masonic Return shipping is covered by the seller only if the item listing says that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Howto setup vim for node.js coding - deedee Advice howto setup vim for node.js coding ====== threepointone <http://www.google.co.in/search?q=vim+node+js>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Profiling CPython at Instagram (2017) - mcenedella https://instagram-engineering.com/profiling-cpython-at-instagram-89d4cbeeb898 ====== sandGorgon this is a very interesting talk around the same topic - [https://lwn.net/Articles/754163/](https://lwn.net/Articles/754163/) > _But Shapiro may not be aware that the Python core developers have often > preferred simpler, more understandable code that is easier to read and > follow, over more complex algorithms and data structures in the interpreter. > Some performance may well have been sacrificed for readability._ > _Mark Shannon said that Python 3.7 has added a feature that should provide a > similar boost as the method-lookup caching used in the experiment. Shapiro > said he had looked at those changes but still believed his proposed > mechanism would provide more benefit. Attribute lookup still requires five > lookups in CPython, while it is only one lookup in the experimental version. > Shannon did not sound entirely convinced of that, however._ ------ munificent _> Roughly 85% of LOAD_ATTRs occured at monomorphic sites;_ This observation and the accompanying graph are, I think, the "generational hypothesis" equivalent to static types. The generational hypothesis says most objects are either very short-lived or long-lived and modern generation GCs very effectively optimize for that fact. A particularly pragmatic way to look at static types is that they optimize for monomorphic calls at the expense of polymorphic calls. For the latter, they require you to manually define interfaces, virtual methods, or some other explicit dynamism. In return, monomorphic calls are much faster. The 85% number is an indication that that's a good optimization, as long as the other 15% aren't too hard to handle in your statically-typed language. ~~~ xapata Or you can just do what Python 3.7 implemented (and Instagram seems to have separately implemented) -- cache attribute lookups and invalidate the cache if necessary. [0] The GC optimization, well, that'll probably be left up to other interpreters. [0] "Mark Shannon said that Python 3.7 has added a feature that should provide a similar boost as the method-lookup caching used in the experiment. Shapiro said he had looked at those changes but still believed his proposed mechanism would provide more benefit. Attribute lookup still requires five lookups in CPython, while it is only one lookup in the experimental version. Shannon did not sound entirely convinced of that, however." [https://lwn.net/Articles/754163/](https://lwn.net/Articles/754163/) ------ dmoreno > This suggested techniques to eliminate loads and stores (e.g. switching to a > register based bytecode) would be an effective optimization. Did anybody try anything in these line of work? ~~~ tyingq The Perl6 VMs (Parrot, MoarVM) are register based. ~~~ mschaef I believe Lua is as well. ------ sciurus This gives instagram ideas for how to improve the python interpreter for their workload. If instead you're interested in profiling to look for ways to improve your python code, check out [https://github.com/uber/pyflame](https://github.com/uber/pyflame) or [https://github.com/benfred/py-spy](https://github.com/benfred/py-spy) ~~~ gnufx To repeat [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17929621), there is Python support in several comprehensive performance tools with better visualization/analysis functions than flame graphs. I don't know how well the Python-specific instrumentation compares with the above, but it would be worth working on, if necessary, for what the tools provide generally.. ------ Alex3917 Is there any Python library for profiling or optimizing regex? E.g. for a given set of fixture data, see which order things inside each group should be in to get the fastest test suite times while everything still passes. ~~~ valarauca1 Optimal layout of a NFA-Regex is (I assume) an Hard academic Problem. Which means a library likely won't just be able to "do it for you". The CS-Fundamentals that underscore (Python, Perl, PRCE, and Java regexes) are the same. So this longer article may help: [https://www.javaworld.com/article/2077757/core- java/optimizi...](https://www.javaworld.com/article/2077757/core- java/optimizing-regular-expressions-in-java.html) as while the syntax of the regex may change, the side effects and performance implications of the individual operators will not. ------ datavirtue So stop using functions...got it. ~~~ nomel The Python Performance Tips [1] basically says this, along with many other helpful hints when trying to squeeze performance. They all boil down to: In a tight loop, don't do anything that triggers a lookup or function call. [1] [https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonSpeed/PerformanceTips#Dat...](https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonSpeed/PerformanceTips#Data_Aggregation) ------ yedpodtrzitko published at November 2017 ~~~ medecau Thought-bleach for yesterday's post? ~~~ mcenedella What’s a thought-bleach? ------ posharma Why not just use Java/C++? ~~~ xapata "Our most common success story starts with a Java or C++ project slated to take a team of 3-5 developers somewhere between 2-6 months, and ends with a single motivated developer completing the project in 2-6 weeks (or hours, for that matter)." [https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of- en...](https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2014/12/10/10-myths-of-enterprise- python/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
In Defense of “Mindless Rote” (2001) - rlvesco7 http://nychold.com/akin-rote01.html ====== sqrt17 The article shows a confusion between training (committing things to muscle memory, or to visual patterns that can be recognized or executed) and teaching (a deeper understanding of a thing). Training is always more testable than teaching, yet for the most part the things we test people on (e.g. multiplication of small numbers, solving quadratic equations) are only evidence that something like mathematical skill and understanding is building up rather than the desired thing itself. Rote memorization is a skill that's quite useful, but it's only one skill among many others that people should take away from school or university. And just as it's wrong to dismiss certain teaching as "just" rote memorization (e.g. knowing vocabulary in a foreign language) it's also wrong to just omit the teaching part altogether and train people to do well on standardized tests. ~~~ joe_the_user Even more, it confuses unconsciously learned skills and skills learned by repetition. Repetition is not always the best or the only way to learn those skills that get mastered at an unconscious level (though it's definitely an important way to achieve unconscious mastery at some things). These sorts of skills often involve physical activity, movement, writing and coordination generally. If a person begins with "poor form" in such a skill, repeating the activity only makes the poor form more ingrained. Alternative method include something directly guiding student physically and practicing in such a way that you get immediate feedback if you are wrong. ------ Gravityloss Related to Albert Wenger's "attention as the scarce resource" thinking. [https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2018/06/28/attention- scarcity/](https://thoughtshrapnel.com/2018/06/28/attention-scarcity/) ------ jammygit A perspective from Wozniak from supermemo: The core knowledge of intelligent thinking, in mathematics and beyond, is the rules of mathematical derivation in the most abstract and universally applicable form. Those rules can be applied in a myriad of daily situations. This universal applicability in problem solving makes the basis of what others consider an intelligent person. If properly formulated and represented for learning, these rules can be memorized in a standard way; in other words, memorization can be a way toward intelligence!" [https://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm](https://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/ks.htm) ------ ASipos But... you have to know what a derivative is _for_ in order to be motivated to learn how to do it. If it's all just mindless manipulation, how will one know whether to apply this or that mindless manipulation? ~~~ hnuser355 For me it was cause I wanted to beat the shit out of my curve and get scholarship money and letters for grad school. Similar sentiments are found in Hardy’s book I think. If you spend enough time around math professors you will certainly hear a story about so-and-so who is now an acclaimed mathematician who showed up for some undergraduate course when he was 17 or something extremely confused about what the “meaning” of the material was but figured out how to solve all the problems and get an A cause he cared about being good at it (and had the ability to do so). ------ andrewl I just want to note that the nychold.com site is new to me, and that there's a lot of interesting stuff there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beware the Pitfalls of Relative Benchmarks - lhartwich http://lhartwich.com/ ====== booyah123 Great point, it always good to have a level perspective when making a comparison.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Recommend a Technical Virtualization Reference - mattheww Hi everyone, I'm using virtual machines and the cloud as a resource for some of my work, and I'd like to have a better understanding how the virtualization technology works.<p>I'm looking for a book or review paper that explains the basics (trap and emulate, binary translation, shadow page tables, etc.). I don't have an EE/CS background, so the more basic, the better.<p>I googled around a bit, but there's a lot of noise, so I was hoping somebody could help me out.<p>Thanks! ====== subud <http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Technical_documentation> [http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Machines-Versatile- Platforms-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Virtual-Machines-Versatile-Platforms- Architecture/dp/1558609105) ~~~ mattheww Thanks, I checked the book out from the library; it's exactly what I was looking for.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: I talked to 917 ecommerce software users. Here's what I found. - steve-benjamins https://www.wisebuyer.com/ecommerce-software ====== pc86 Maybe I am too critical or just hyper-sensitive to this, but it's an affiliate site submitted by the creator almost identical to another affiliate site in his profile following a very similar formula - "social proof" reviews with ratings, and an affiliate link (if the company offers one). I get trying to make money online, I'm doing it too, but putting up a bunch of quotes (with no attribution) and screenshots and then trying to get an affiliate commission off of _Shopify_ just seems... too low-effort? I don't know. I'd be much more impressed with one person's in-depth review of the pros and cons of _each_ platform, with an affiliate link to whichever one they felt was the best, than from something like this. ~~~ steve-benjamins Did you look closeley at SiteBuilderReport.com? It's exactly what you've described- I take an in-depth look at every website builder... ~~~ pc86 Yes, and it's certainly more work on your part that your submission here, but you also clearly have no problem taking an affiliate commission for a product you don't believe in (or gave a poor review to). That's what makes people despise affiliate marketing, and have a visceral negative reaction to it. It's not about "hey, I really love _________, please take a look at them because I know you'll love them too," it's about "hey ______ offers an affiliate link so I'll throw them up on this site and try to pump as much traffic there as I can." ~~~ steve-benjamins Fair enough. Though I think websites like Site Builder Report and The Wirecutter can retain their integrity. I get emails every week from people who've found Site Builder Report helpful ([https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/p/testimonials](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/p/testimonials)). It wouldn't look great to have affiliate links only for highly-rated products— that would signal to readers that I only give good reviews to products with an affiliate program. (Which is certainly not true— websitebuilder.com pays twice as much as any affiliate program and I'm very critical of them: [https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/website- builders/review/we...](https://www.sitebuilderreport.com/website- builders/review/websitebuildercom)) ------ anilgulecha I don't see the reason for the critical review of this. It's a helpful site that runs through data and pulls out useful/actionable information. As someone who has also considered creating a static site builder, my (hypothetical) service would benefit from such a lookup. IMO, An affiliate link is not an AD, not tracking me, and is probably the least intrusive way of monetizing a useful service.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Amazon Lobbied More Government Entities Than Any Other US Company Last Year - symisc_devel https://www.axios.com/amazon-lobbying-washington-wide-reach-0f7253e4-234e-462a-aca1-ca19705b9c39.html ====== Shivetya Isn't this the point of politicians pressuring corporations? I remember back, way back, when Apple was caught off guard and "appropriately" stepped up with lobbying and political contributions. It is hard for me to find fault with any company which lobbies the government because they have no choice. If they don't play the game someone else will and use their influence to get the power of government applied to their competitors directly or indirectly. One way to fix it is not to prevent anyone from spending money on campaigns but to instead prohibit politicians, their immediate family, and relatives, from participating in any position that may have influence over a regulating body. It is very common to have family of politicians benefit by either getting jobs directly with a lobbying company or lobbying firm but the other method is through PACs which pay them huge salaries for part time work. I could care less what they do before they are in office but once in it needs to be clamped down. congress and their relatives are more likely to increase their wealth by magnitudes than lose it, the reason is simple, they structured the rules to benefit them and make it nigh impossible to unseat them ~~~ darksaints I'm of the opinion that the effect of lobbying is tiny. Lobbyists are communicating with representatives about policy...something that every organization should attempt to do. Politicians rely on lobbyists to inform their decisions. The real culprit in the pervasive corporatism in the US is campaign finance. Quid pro quo is the name of the game here. Politicians know that if corporations aren't helping them get elected that they will be helping their opponents get elected. It's a hell of a lot easier to say no to a lobbyist than it is to a campaign donor that could easily turn on you. If we banned corporate lobbying, Congress would simply make more uninformed decisions, but banning corporate campaign finance would eliminate an incentive for deliberately bad decisions. ~~~ btilly It looks to me like your opinion is based on drawing an artificial distinction between "real lobbyists" and what real lobbyists actually _do_. It is the job of lobbyists to get politicians to do what the lobbyist wants. Campaign finance, job offers, favors for people the politician cares about, status symbols such as honorary degrees - all are normal stock in trade for a lobbyist. That said, I agree. Lobbyists who do none of the things that are known to be effective, are ineffective and do not have an impact. They also do not deliver results and do not tend to get happy clients. ~~~ andrewla Lobbying has a real and narrow legal definition, and it does not include the other things you list there. It sounds like you're agreeing with GP and that you don't think that lobbying is that effective. ~~~ btilly Given sites like [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobby_contribs.php](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobby_contribs.php) that document the campaign contributions of lobbyists, I'm going to want a reference to the legal definition of lobbying that excludes campaign contributions. ------ justaguyhere I honestly don't know who is worse these days - wall street firms or big tech companies. These (Google, Amazon ... ) were the same companies that we looked up to, just a few years ago. How much things can change in such a short time :( ~~~ jeletonskelly I, for one, still look up to them. I don't completely understand where the negative views started, but I suspect it was with Facebook, fake news, and the election or maybe the Amazon HQ2 disaster. Now, for some reason, they are being demonized for being large and participating in a system that has existed for centuries. They got large because they built things people wanted. What's wrong with that? I just don't get it. It's like a mob with pitchforks is forming to break-up "big tech" and they won't be satisfied until they've slayed the giants whether it's justified or not. ~~~ techsupporter > Now, for some reason, they are being demonized for being large and > participating in a system that has existed for centuries. I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's because we weren't supposed to just "participate" in that system. We meant to improve it, to make it more fair, and more useful for all people. To improve lives and do no evil, as it were. Instead, we've wound up with the exact same robber barons of old. This time, instead of trains or oil or telegraph poles, we've created behemoths that actively try to spy on, categorize, and monetize people to extents never before dreamed possible. Worse, lots of the people around us--people who claimed to be interested in the same things we were--are now demonizing us for our long-held views, "privacy obviously isn't that important because people so willingly give it up just read the terms of service" and "steady jobs with benefits stifle innovation being paid by the piece as a transient worker with no employment protections is the new hotness because people so willingly sign up for it just read the terms of service." Lots of people lined up to take hatchets to Microsoft twenty years ago but now Google and Amazon get away with much worse far more often and they're deemed untouchable. That baffles me. I can't "look up" to those companies who came after and trampled over the imperfect vision of people who came before, especially when they started out trying to build the vision we thought we said we wanted but then turned to the path that makes the most money in bulk even though it compromises almost all of those beliefs. ------ vicpara You either allow lobbying or ban it. Amazon used a legal process to tip the balance in their favour. The entire lobbying thing does sound to me like a hack in the entire democratic process. People should vote not companies. ~~~ afarrell Lobbying in some form is explicitly protected by the 1st amendment. The question is: If you form a contract for someone else to petition for a redress of greivances on you behalf, is that contract void? ~~~ snarfy 1st amendment rights apply to people. They should not apply to corporations. ~~~ solomatov And what about NGOs? What's the difference between NGOs and corporations? ~~~ vonmoltke NGOs _are_ corporations, legally. ~~~ solomatov Yes, they are :-) And forbidding them from lobbying will prevent people from organizing groups protecting their interests. ------ noobermin Remember when internet companies were supposed to be disrupting the system, not co-opting it and making regulatory capture favor themselves? ~~~ mattferderer Lobbying itself isn't bad & is needed to help disrupt things. Politicians require lobbyists & experts to explain different sides to them. ~~~ rchaud You make it sound like they're lining up to have a moment with their local representative like the rest of us. As if there's not thousands in campaign contributions and in-kind gifts hinging on the politician swinging their way. ------ paxy If you think they are lobbying now, wait till their Virginia HQ opens up. ~~~ YeahSureWhyNot I am really worried that once it becomes a major employer in Virginia area Amazon will actually stop spending money on lobbying and start using layoffs and other muscle moves on their VA area workforce to pressure public officials into caving in to their demands. It probably was the main reason why they 'decided to split' the HQ2 between NY and Virginia. Virginia was in play all along because of its proximity to DC and New York was their main choice because of many reasons that dont need explanation. The whole casting cities and states was a shitshow put on to get New York and Virginia states/cities to give as big tax breaks as possible. So glad New Yorkers didnt play into Amazon's greedy game. ~~~ stone-monkey Even if they flexed their employer muscles, that would only affect local officials. Why would a republican senator from Kansas care if they're going to cut jobs in Virginia? ~~~ YeahSureWhyNot because he doesn't want local families protesting in front of his local residence embarrassing him in front of all his other big shot neighbors? ~~~ stone-monkey I'm sure politicians get as embarrassed as the next person by public shaming, but forgive me if I'm inclined to believe they won't act much on complaints by non constituents. ------ god_bless_texas Amazon's reach into the FAA is particularly hysterical. Given that Amazon would like to do drone deliveries and has pissed off the FAA in some regards in the past - specific regulatory language confirms this - they have a huge footprint and open door policy in the DC offices. Companies competing in the delivery space like WalMart, UPS, etc should be very nervous about the drafting that goes on now at Amazon's becking. ------ jimmy1 I think sometimes people assume that x amount of lobbying dollars = y influence, but it's not a linear equation at all. At the end of the day, it is still people you are dealing with, and sometimes people can happily take your money, make you believe they are going to do what they said, and then not do it. Source: family members are lobbyists. ~~~ YeahSureWhyNot so what you are saying is its possible that poor Amazon wasn't able to get all the political influence it paid for and we are should not be angry at it for trying to buy itsel support that it otherwise would not have ~~~ jimmy1 I think it's not as black and white. Amazon has all of that money because we as a society supported it's growth. We like Amazon, and we gave them our money. If the tables were turned, and you were a billionaire altruistic philanthropist, would you not attempt to do the same thing with your money? It's the same concept, just different side of the coin. Lobbying is not an exclusive concept. I could right now pay someone to go lobby the government for me. Obviously I wouldn't get very far, but what if my neighbors and I pooled our money together? And their neighbors? And so on and so forth and indeed that is how many lobbying arms are formed outside of industry. Ultimately at the end of the day, Lobbying is viewed with contempt because we have corrupt officials that weigh the opinions of certain lobbyist who are looking to corrupt the law for their own interests more than what is good for the general public. If you took out lobbying right now, you would still be left with corrupt officials that weigh the opinions of people with money more than the general public. But here is the kicker: you would do more harm than good, because now advocacy groups do not have a way to influence officials. Lobbying, however contemptible it seems to most people, exists because it does serve a purpose. Your elected officials cannot possibly keep up with the sea of issues in their constituencies. Lobbying provides a sort of self-selecting way for the more important issues to "bubble up to the top" What is always missing from conversations on lobbying is the hundreds of other lobbying groups that have as their mission to serve to improve the general good or public and how eliminating it would impact the good that is done by them (as evidenced by sibling comment by mtgx). ------ dgzl Jeff sure does love operating at scale. ------ duado They have the most diverse set of businesses of any company, so this makes sense. ~~~ smt88 Why is product diversity a driver of lobbying? Does Amazon have to lobby anyone at all? There are institutional investors who have stakes in a much wider variety of companies than Amazon. Why aren't they at the top of the list? ~~~ afarrell The headline says “more government entities”, implying diversity of regulations-they-care-about. ------ deytempo Interested in learning how to count how many times each company lobbied... ------ MrBuddyCasino Amazon is also larger and more diversified than most other American companies. Is suspect their lobbying dollars per revenue hasn't hanged all that much over the years. ------ distant_hat Maybe they are diversifying into government now. ------ maxk42 And they also own a major national publication. ------ r_singh I wonder if this has anything to do with Jeff Bezos being from Wall Street? ------ TheLuddite Break-it-up ------ dang Url changed from [http://fortune.com/2019/03/13/amazon-lobbying- washington/](http://fortune.com/2019/03/13/amazon-lobbying-washington/), which points to this. ------ blablablabla991 It's also bigger than any other US company, isn't it? (Head to head with Apple) ------ crb002 Thats because every Govt entity uses compute, and every govt entity needs a office goods supplier.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is Arm ready for server dominance? - PeterCorless https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server-dominance/ ====== walrus01 My concern about this is that with the failure of Qualcomm Centriq, there is no industry standard/affordable/easy to buy ARM based server platform ordinary persons and small/medium sized businesses can acquire. It's great that Amazon has ARM based stuff, but it's something proprietary they're purchasing in large quantities from a manufacturer they have a very close relationship with. Undoubtedly the physical hypervisor platform and motherboard these things are running on is something totally bespoke and designed to Amazon's unique requirements. I can't pull out my visa card and go buy a (atx, microatx, mini-itx) format motherboard for an ARM CPU, the CPU itself, RAM, etc, and build a system to run debian, centos, RHEL, ubuntu whatever on. This means that, sure, you can get an EC2 ARM based server, but it's something you can't physically own and you'll be paying cloud based service rates forever if you want to keep running it. There are some categories of business and government entities where not having things on-premises, or fully owning and controlling the hypervisor all the way down to the bare metal, is a non starter. If the ARM platform Amazon is buying becomes truly price/performance competitive with a single/dual socket xeon or threadripper/epyc, it also gives a possible competitive advantage to Amazon over any medium-sized cloud based VM provider out there currently selling (xen, kvm) based VMs on x86-64 hypervisors. Based on what's available on the market right now I see no signs of there being a viable hardware-purchasing alternative to Intel or AMD based motherboards and CPUs. ~~~ derefr > I can't pull out my visa card and go buy a (atx, microatx, mini-itx) format > motherboard for an ARM CPU, the CPU itself, RAM, etc, and build a system to > run debian, centos, RHEL, ubuntu whatever on. The difference between ARM and x86 is that there's no standardized ARM interface between the motherboard and the CPU—no ARM equivalent to ACPI. Every integration of an ARM CPU into a board is bespoke. So you have to buy "a board with an ARM CPU on it", not just an ARM CPU and board separately. But, if you relax that restriction, it's not like it's hard to acquire "a board with an ARM CPU on it." 80% of single-board computers (e.g. the Raspberry Pi) are "a board with an ARM CPU on it." You can wipe pretty much any Android device (not just phones, but also HDMI "streaming boxes", which are a convenient form-factor for basing a workstation on) and install Linux on them. There are also some higher-end development/SDK boards for ARM embedded systems, like the Nvidia Jetson. What more do you need? ~~~ walrus01 My first question would be, why has no industry trade group attempted to define a standard socket, or use an existing physical socket pin-out. It's not hard to acquire something with an ARM CPU on it, but at prices an ordinary person can afford, they're all in the category of toy computers. Try to find an affordable ARM system with a M.2 2280 NVME SSD slot on it like you can find on a $100 desktop x86-64 motherboard. Or multiple PCI-Express 3.0 x8/x16 slots. I've previously spent many years working for a hardware manufacturer. Personal theory is that this is a real example of a chicken or egg problem related to economies of scale. Nobody wants to spend dozens of millions of dollars tooling up to produce ARM socketed CPUs and motherboards and stuff, which may or may not be price/performance competitive with current-gen Intel and AMD stuff by the time it's ready for release. And there's a huge risk in manufacturing something like that and then discovering that the sales volumes are really low. Look at the sheer massive quantities that the top-ten Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers churn out every year. > You can wipe pretty much any Android device (not just phones, but also HDMI > "streaming boxes", which are a convenient form-factor for basing a > workstation on) and install Linux on them No you really can't, and phones aren't servers. Take any modern $600 smartphone and try installing something very close to a stock debian or centos on it. Being able to maybe boot a Linux kernel on something doesn't mean that there's anything like the market demand for that particular hardware platform target for a _whole distribution_. ~~~ mattl These have an M.2 slot. [https://www.seeedstudio.com/ROCK- Pi-4-Model-B-4GB-p-4137.htm...](https://www.seeedstudio.com/ROCK- Pi-4-Model-B-4GB-p-4137.html) [https://www.youtube.com/explainingcomputers](https://www.youtube.com/explainingcomputers) is a good YouTube channel for reviewing these types of single board computers. ~~~ a012 Has a M.2 slot doesn't mean you can put any M.2 ssd in it, especially M.2 2280 is the most common size and easily can buy on store/online, smaller than that is mostly for OEM devices and you don't have many choices available. ------ PeterCorless An important update has been made to the microbenchmarks to this page. I will quote for you my editorial comment: "Editor’s Note: The microbenchmarks in this article have been updated to reflect the fact that running a single instance of stress-ng would skew the results in favor of the x86 platforms, since in SMT architectures a single thread may not be enough to use all resources available in the physical core. Thanks to our readers for bringing this to our attention." You'll note that the newly-used stress-ng command is: "stress-ng --metrics- brief --cache 16 --icache 16 --matrix 16 --cpu 16 --memcpy 16 --qsort 16 --dentry 16 --timer 16 -t 1m" The count on the flags under the old numbers was 1. This update shows even better numbers for Arm than we originally produced. Thanks to our assiduous readers for pointing this out. [https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for- server-...](https://www.scylladb.com/2019/12/05/is-arm-ready-for-server- dominance/) ------ RcouF1uZ4gsC I think one of the big issues may be with high performance multi-threaded code. x86(I am including x64 in this designation) is a lot stronger memory model than ARM. This has two implications. First, x86 is a lot more tolerant of data races, and missing explicit memory fences. When you port server applications that have been running well on x86 to ARM, you may be in for some surprises as data races and missing fences now manifest as data corruption. The other implication is that on x86, the gap between a sequentially consistent memory order and a relaxed memory order is not that great. Thus, many programmers may use atomics with sequentially consistent memory order to reduce the complexity. On x86, this will generally yield decent performance. On ARM, that gap is much bigger and you are liable to have severe performance regressions. ~~~ dman One upside of code increasingly being written in languages that are predominantly single threaded like Python/JS is that these issues do not matter as much. ~~~ anonuser123456 If you want to exploit parallel execution for performance, not having parallelism is not a benefit. ~~~ PeterCorless We do parallelism _across_ CPUs and nodes. We run single-threaded to get the most out of a CPU in a shared-nothing architecture. Many single-threaded apps aren't written to really take advantage of all a CPU has to offer. But there are also prices to pay to run multi-threaded; context switches, etc. ------ MrBuddyCasino "AWS, the biggest of the existing cloud providers released an Arm-based offering in 2018 and now in 2019 catapults that offering to a world-class spot. With results comparable to x86-based instances and AWS’s sure ability to offer a lower price due to well known attributes of the Arm-based servers like power efficiency, we consider the new M6g instances to be a game changer in a red-hot market ripe for change." I'm not sure how that conclusion follows from the numbers presented? Yes, the new ARM processor has become much faster than the older one, but clearly looses against x86 in cpu-heavy benchmarks. Might be a good option for I/O limited workloads, as the NVMe storage is newer and therefore faster. ~~~ aloknnikhil Exactly. In fact, I'm sure there will be newer x86 instances paired with the new NVMe storage and the advantage is lost. Perhaps, the power saved is translated to cheaper instances. But I don't think it's worth the performance penalty. ~~~ PeterCorless Much of this depends on whether an app has true linearity in scale-out. If you can use horizontal scalability, you can get the same (or better) aggregate performance while, as you note, still reap savings both in power and dollars. Similar by analogy to how SSDs allowed you to get "good enough" performance for a database compared to all-RAM instances. You could still meet your SLAs and pocket the difference. It's a game changer in that way. ------ magriz ARM has recently made some real progress into HPC. HPE is delivering ARM clusters in Europe. Fujitsu has developed a "optimised" ARM CPU with SVE and it will power Japans exascale HPC system[1]. [1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_(supercomputer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugaku_$supercomputer$) ~~~ petschge And Cray will happily sell you an XC50 with Arm cores inside if you want that. ------ iagovar I tried ARM servers in Scaleway and honestly, unless your profile is sort of a sysadmin or you're motivated, it's just dealing with some issues and less power overall. Also, AFAIR they were around the same price of X86 instances. But then again, I have almost no sysadmin skills, so maybe it was my lack of knowledge. ~~~ bisby My experience with ARM (locally anyway, raspberry pi's and pinebooks) is that everything works great, if it works. ARM binaries available? Great. You're all set. (hopefully its for the right generation of ARM though, I can't get SteamLink software to run on my pinebook because it does raspberry pi hardware version checks that obviously fail). Not available? You're gonna run into one of two scenarios: Closed source app? Sorry. Just never going to get it (unless you want to run it through qemu at a huge performance hit and YMMV). Open source app? Compile it yourself! Which takes noticeably longer than x86 for me. Maybe in server this works out. For desktop, compiling st myself was actually the path of least resistance to getting a terminal I liked. I wouldn't have wanted to compile firefox on ARM though without some serious server horsepower. When I used to build docker images they would sometimes take hours, for things that were less than a minute on x86. ~~~ qxnqd >Open source app? Compile it yourself! Which takes noticeably longer than x86 for me. Heh, it's funny, right? I switched from an x86 server to an arm server and now it takes seconds and seconds to log me in using ssh. It's like the server really struggles when crunching numbers. ~~~ bisby If fairness, I tried a raspberry pi cluster. and it was much slower than my xeon server. and i was insanely slower. but i could run the entire pi cluster off a 6 port phone charger, instead of an 800w power supply. Power bill was one of my driving motivators. but ultimately i went back to x86 for performance ------ tombert I don't know much about the cloud hosting for ARM stuff (since I don't work in that space), but I have been extremely happy with my ARM home-server setup in my basement. Docker swarm has been extremely nice on my ODroids, and I recently upgraded to the Nvidia Jetson Nano, which has perfectly fine Kubernetes support. I'll admit that maybe I'm not doing the most elaborate stress tests, but I mostly use them for my video transcoding and my (very) recent interest in machine learning, and I haven't had much issue. The thing that's given me the biggest headache is older versions of Ubuntu's mediocre support of ZFS, which has largely been fixed. ~~~ syntheticnature I've been thinking about moving my home server to an ARM-based setup to reduce power consumption/fan noise. My situation is closer to 'glorified NAS' that runs a few additional oddball things, though. Are you just using USB 3.0 to SATA in the cases where such is needed? ~~~ rb808 I have a Pentium NUC which works fine for this and no noise and still x86. ~~~ tombert I've debated buying a NUC, but at least on Intel's website, buying just the board cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 500 USD; for that price I can buy 10 Raspberry Pi 4's or ODroid XU4s. Granted, in order to use them to their full potential, you end up having to learn a lot about distributed computing (which is a bonus for geeks like me, but maybe not most people), but if your goal is to use it as a server, the NUCs seemed a bit overpriced to me. That said, if anyone _is_ looking to stay within the x86/x64 family of CPUs, I actually recommend looking for a used Wyse/Dell thin client on eBay. You can often get a decent quad-core system with USB3.0 and 4-8gb of RAM for around a hundred USD. ~~~ henryfjordan That NUC is still going to have more computing power than your 10-node RPI cluster though. By a lot. ------ microcolonel I bought an AArch64 desktop board based on one of the newer NXP manycore CPUs, because it seems to be the first of its kind. Every SoC vendor should sell an mATX or Mini-ITX board compatible with PC components, if they want server adoption. That goes especially for any vendor facing the even harder uphill battle of bringing RISC-V to servers: the server was dominated by PC clones for a reason. ------ bob1029 I don't think quite yet. As others have noted, porting x86 apps to ARM can be fraught with issues concerning memory models and concurrency. Especially apps written using unmanaged languages. Newer apps written in things like .NET Core (especially if you can keep any native dependencies out of the equation) are probably going to be a lot easier to port when the time is right. I think we'd have to be at a point where the ARM server is <50% the cost of the x86 server while offering equivalent real-world performance to make the jump worth it for the average shop. You'd also have to have a very accessible ecosystem of reliable ARM machines that developers could purchase and hack on. There are many businesses that will happily incinerate millions of dollars to keep x86 around just because changing things is frowned upon or otherwise scary. For some applications ARM is today and it's an excellent approach. But, for most it's still somewhere on the horizon. ------ rwmj Can you meaningfully benchmark stuff in the cloud? It seems to make any claims on price/performance you'd want to use two local servers dedicated to the benchmark, with as near identical hardware as possible (apart from the CPUs of course), and you'd want to know the full cost of both servers. ~~~ jafingi If you run things in cloud it makes sense to benchmark that? ~~~ rwmj Sure - you're benchmarking something a bit different from whether ARM is ready for "server dominance". You're essentially benchmarking Amazon's prices to early adopters of ARM vs the cutthroat x86 cloud marketplace. That may be interesting for many people but tells you little about ARM hardware. ~~~ glommer You can't benchmark "server dominance". You can benchmark what you just described, plus piece other pieces of the puzzle together, like Nuvia Series-A, and then extrapolate from that. At the end it's still my opinion, I don't have a crystal ball =) ------ emmanueloga_ Question for Common Lisp hackers: I'm curious how good is the quality of the most popular CL compilers on ARM. The table of support for ARM of sbcl [1] and ccl [2] shows only Linux is supported on ARM (versus all sorts of OSs for x86/AMD64). I imagine the Intel targets of these compilers are a lot more widely used and hence had had more opportunities for bug ridding. [1]: [http://www.sbcl.org/platform-table.html](http://www.sbcl.org/platform- table.html) [2]: [https://ccl.clozure.com/](https://ccl.clozure.com/) ~~~ aidenn0 ARM64 Linux on sbcl is okay, and steadily improving. IIRC there's a port to one of the BSDs (Free?) that is almost done. Obviously there's no ARM64 windows or solaris port in the works. ~~~ mugsie There is a port of windows already out and running on arm - MS even released a laptop running it ... [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface- pro-x/8vdnrp2m6hhc...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/surface- pro-x/8vdnrp2m6hhc?activetab=overview) ~~~ aidenn0 I guarantee you no SBCL devs have one of those. ------ Tepix I'd like to see cheap ARM server hardware for small servers _available for purchase_. Something relatively low power (also power efficient) that can replace an entry-level Intel Atom server like those offered by Kimsufi (OVH) and Online.net. The Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB RAM is getting close in terms of performance but it lacks some things I'd like to see in a server, i.e. at least two SATA or NVME ports and two LAN ports. ~~~ 8fingerlouie Depending on your preferences, the Helios4 might do the trick ([https://kobol.io/helios4/](https://kobol.io/helios4/)). Only 2GB RAM, but 4 SATA ports. Otherwise, Hardkernel.com might have something in their Odroid lineup you might like. ~~~ Tepix It lacks a second LAN port but I guess you could use USB 3.0 for that. But the CPU with its Dual Core Cortex A9 (2011) is probably really slow. ------ contingencies If you want to acquire large numbers of ARM boards for servers, our neighbours in Zhongshan are Firefly. They make a cluster server capable of 11 x their own RK3399 6 core 64-bit 'core boards', so 66 cores in total. It's cheap. [http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=111](http://shop.t-firefly.com/goods.php?id=111) ------ birdyrooster At Kubecon this year, there were three different vendors doing ARM based storage. Two were capable with NVMe and one only with SATA/SAS. I am sure the answer to the article's title question is a no for right now, but in terms of disaggregated storage, I think the answer is yes! ------ luord The fact that ARM is written as Arm really threw me for a loop here. At first, I thought they were talking about a new programming language or something. ------ pnako Yes. ARM and MSP430 will surely dominate servers anytime soon. ------ techie128 Comparing EBS backed instance performance with an NVME backed x86 is plain wrong. I agree with the rest of the benchmark though. ~~~ glommer That comparison was never done. All CPU tests are on EBS backed instances, and in the end the I/O subsystem is compared in isolation for NVMe-backed instances in both cases.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Economics Has a Math Problem - gedrap http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-01/economics-has-a-math-problem ====== ThePhysicist I was always interested in both Physics and Economics and did studies in both disciplines. As a physicist, the models that I encountered in economic theory always left me quite disappointed. The main reason for this was that -like the article says- most of the models used in Economics are based on abstract reasoning about "ideal" markets and actors (or more recently on game-theoretic ideas) instead of experimental data. One reason for this is of course that when many of those models were developed (in the 50s or earlier) there simply was no reliable (micro-)data available that one could develop a theory against. Another big problem that kept Economics from taking a more experimental stance towards model generation is of course that until recently it was very hard or outright impossible to conduct large-scale experiments, which are the main instrument to validate (or better, not falsify) a given theory in other disciplines such as Physics or Biology. That said, the recent computerization of all aspects of business and the creation of virtual economies -like Eve Online, World of Warcraft- and "transparent" markets -like Bitcoin- should provide ample data to develop "real" models of economic behavior against, and I think that many researchers actually already make use of this data. The theories that will result from this will probably be more like those developed in statistical mechanics though -i.e. making statements about the aggregate behavior of the system- rather than those developed e.g. in electrodynamics, where we usually can predict the behavior of even a single particle. Would love -and be at bit scared- to be proved wrong about this of course :) ~~~ TheSpiceIsLife Great comment. Incidentally, have you come across Deirdre Mccloskey, I've been reading her book 'Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World' and finding it really interesting. Economics is a social science, taking measurements / accumulating data and theorising on that data causes changes in behaviour. Just sitting around talking about economics, or your weekly budget, drives changes in behaviour. As a layperson with a bit of an interest in economics I don't really see how, as the article says "econ is now a rogue branch of applied math". More like economics uses applied maths, or something like that. It's a 'social science', we can't reveal the laws (let's call them 'habits') of economics like we do The Laws of Nature, because circumstances change -both globally and locally (macro / micro)- and new economic phenomenon emerge. It'd be interesting to see what future historians have to say about present day economics. ~~~ asgard1024 > Economics is a social science, taking measurements / accumulating data and > theorising on that data causes changes in behaviour. Just sitting around > talking about economics, or your weekly budget, drives changes in behaviour. Funny - you could say the same about physics. For example, knowing that the coming car may kill a person causes the human behaviour to change, namely the driver will stop the car. Does that invalidate Newton's laws? Yes we probably cannot predict universe totally. But we can do scenarios (of complex emergent systems of interacting agents with bounded rationality), just like in physics. In fact the whole point of doing that analysis is to change behaviour of people, one way or another. ~~~ dragonwriter > Funny - you could say the same about physics. For example, knowing that the > coming car may kill a person causes the human behaviour to change, namely > the driver will stop the car. Does that invalidate Newton's laws? The difference is that whether a person will try to move out of the way of an oncoming car is _not_ considered within the domain of physics (so them using their knowledge of physics to predict that a car is a danger may change their behavior, but not the accuracy of what physics predicts within its domain), but whether or not a person will try to move their money out of the path of a predicted stock market collapse _is_ within the domain of economics. This doesn't actually make empiricism any less applicable to economics, but it does compound problems in the empirical study of economics. ~~~ asgard1024 No, it's an artificial distinction (or perhaps better would be to say, there is an artificial distinction where you decided that physics is not a social science). In both cases, you can analyze two scenarios: 1\. Car continues and hits the person / investor won't move money out before stock market crashes 2\. Car is stopped / investor will move the money out In both cases, the physics or economics is no less applicable whatever the circumstances of the actual decision. And just like physics cannot tell you whether the car stops, economics cannot tell you whether investors will actually move the money out. But what economics can tell you, under certain assumptions, say, investors want to make money with this and this horizon, whether or not are they likely to move out. Let me give another example. Water flows downhill due to gravity. Yet, people can decide to build water pump and aqueduct to get water uphill. In doing so, they didn't break any physical laws. But if you ignore the pump, it may seem that the water flow downhill anymore and so the laws are incorrect. What happened is that now our model of the situation should include the pump, and within the expanded model, physical laws are again preserved. Similarly for instance, if the society decides to regulate markets, the behaviour of the people can be changed, but they don't necessarily have to break some universal economic law. The new behaviour can have a perfect economic explanation, it's just that the frame of the model changed. It seems that this "infinite regress" confusion (also called Lucas critique, if I am not mistaken) is caused by ignoring the fact that every model of reality only includes a portion of it and is never a perfect description (for example we ignore the physics of human brain when we model the car hitting the pedestrian). Also, you should note there are situations where knowing more doesn't actually change the behaviour (under assumption of certain rationality) - for example, getting to know the exact odds of casino wins won't entice me to play. ------ atmosx There are several problems with social sciences not just economics. Recently, I've read an interview by Yanis Varoufakis[1]. Here's an interesting excerpt: \--- _Mariana Mazzucato, University of Sussex – How has the crisis in Greece (its cause and its effects) revealed failings of neoclassical economic theory at both the micro and the macro level?_ _Varoufakis_ : The uninitiated may be startled to hear that the macroeconomic models taught at the best universities feature no accumulated debt, no involuntary unemployment and, indeed, no money (with relative prices reflecting a form of barter). Save perhaps for a few random shocks that demand and supply are assumed to quickly iron out, the snazziest models taught to the brightest of students assume that savings automatically turn into productive investment, leaving no room for crises. It makes it hard when these graduates come face-to-face with reality. They are at a loss, for example, when they see German savings that permanently outweigh German investment while Greek investment outweighs savings during the “good times” (before 2008) but collapses to zero during the crisis. Moving to the micro level, the observation that, in the case of Greece, real wages fell by 40% but employment dropped precipitously, while exports remained flat, illustrates in Technicolor how useless a microeconomics approach bereft of macro foundations truly is. \---- I really don't know at what level of complexity someone must settle, in order to have a viable mathematical model to predict financial crisis... How many variables do you need? Then again a lot in economics depends on 'perception'. A FinMin will never discuss devaluation of his currency, the moment he does... The currency will drop. How can a mathematical model 'predict' such behaviours? [1] [https://theconversation.com/varoufakis-in-conversation- with-...](https://theconversation.com/varoufakis-in-conversation-with-leading- academics-as-syriza-splinters-and-election-beckons-in-greece-35861) ~~~ yummyfajitas This interview is almost incoherent. Note the contradiction: "no involuntary unemployment and, indeed, no money" followed by "real wages fell by 40% but employment dropped". The latter statement only contradicts Keynesian economics, which don't have relative prices (Keynesian economics has only real and nominal dollars of GDP) and uses money combined with sticky prices to explain involuntary unemployment. But although in one sentence he seems to think the Greek experience contradicts Keynesian economics, he turns around and appeals to Keynesian economics a few minutes later: "the 3.5% primary target for 2018 would depress growth today". ~~~ yk Actually, Keynes called his book _General Theory_ precisely because it included unemployment, in the context of Keynesian economics usually called the output gap. So "no involuntary unemployment and, indeed, no money" is a insult from a Keynesian against neo-classic models. Second, "real wages fell by 40% but employment dropped," this is precisely what a Keynesian expects. The core insight of Keynesian economics is, that the employees are also the consumers, so that falling prices lead to falling demand. ~~~ yummyfajitas No, Keynesian economics proposes that high real wages are what cause unemployment - if an employee's real output drops but his real wage stays flat, he might become unprofitable to employ. Since nominal wages are the real sticky quantity, Keynesians propose inflation as a sneaky way to reduce the employee's real wages. ~~~ yk Usually Keynsian economics is understood as economic thought that is based on aggregate demand, this is for example the view Wikipedia takes. [1] From there it is straightforward to argue that higher wages lead to higher employment, a view that makes Keynsian economics popular on the left. The view, that too high wages cause unemployment, is a staple of supply side economics, the view that the economic process is driven by the supply side. Krugman argues a lot about sticky wages recently, but not because this is a central tenet of Keneysian economics. Krugmann argues about sticky wages because it is a good argument against the troika's handling of the Greek crisis, since the internal adjustment in the Euro area would either mean inflation in Germany or deflation in Greece. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics) ~~~ yummyfajitas Did you read the article on wikipedia? Start from the heading "Concept". [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Concept](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics#Concept) Supply side economics is not based on wage levels at all, but rather based on tax-based disincentives to employment and investment. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply- side_economics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply-side_economics) ------ pjc50 Economics has an honesty problem. Financially motivated obfuscation is a problem in other sciences: global warming denialism, sponsored studies claiming that cigarettes aren't carcinogenic, all manner of food health and safety claims, and so on. Generally the evidence is overwhelmingly against them and the battle is mostly over PR and communicating to the public. Economics is different; arguments that are very convenient to people who are wealthy under the status quo are very difficult to challenge, resulting in failed austerity programmes, "trickle down", and so on. ~~~ toyg I partially agree with this view; however, to be fair, this is not a problem with academic economics, but rather with "pop economics". There is no lack of academic economists who can (and do) prove how austerity programs and trickle-down are wrong; in fact, they're the only ones really leading the charge on this matter in the political world at the moment. The problem is that policy leaders not trained in advanced economic studies (most of them lawyers by trade, as you would expect in the business of writing laws) are awash in "pop economics", cheap literature peddled by suspect gurus sponsored by interested parties. This creates a hegemonic but distorted view of the field that is then very hard to shake. ~~~ pjc50 It's not just lawyer-politicians, but economic organisations like the IMF and the ECB. Stiglitz' book on the subject is excellent, including the anecdote about how we know that their advice is the same whatever the country and situation because someone once forgot to search-and-replace the country name before sending it out. Then there's the Rheinhart-Rogoff excel error: [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the- excel-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel- depression.html?_r=0) ~~~ toyg Those organisations are sclerotic because they ultimately answer to politicians, not to academics; they are political constructs first and foremost, serving specific national interests, with heads nominated by political leaders and (surprise) often lawyers themselves (e.g. Lagarde). In fact, during recent events in Greece it became clear how their own researchers disagreed with the policies being pushed from the top. It's like developers were forced to write websites in PASCAL because their employers told them to. The Excel error is also exemplary of what I referred to as "pop economics": a single argument was "divulged to death" and transformed into mainstream orthodoxy even though it was still being confuted in academic circles. ------ twitchard I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is theoretical economists are doing. A medical scientist runs experiments on rats, to gain insight into what the effects of a certain phenomenon might be on humans. Rats aren't humans, of course, but we think they share important characteristics with humans. Of course, human trials would be better---butbecause there are ethical and practical difficulties in performing human experiments in controlled environments, we are happy to accept the insights that come from studying rats. Theoretical economics studies the interactions of idealized 'rational' actors. These aren't humans, of course, but like rats, we think they might share important characteristics with humans. Like rational actors, humans have things they want, and do respond to incentives. Economics is largely the study of systems of incentives. You can gain insight into the systems of rational actors---and insofar as you believe the analogy between rational actors and humans, into human economic systems---by writing equations and proving theorems. I'm sick of this theme that theoretical economists are these dogmatic lunatics who write equations on the board that have nothing to do with reality. They are in the business of crafting powerful arguments about human nature by analogy, which yes, aren't always accessible to those of us who haven't steeped ourselves in the math, but I think that is no reason to dismiss their insights as nonsense and saying they have a 'math problem'. ~~~ jal278 The issue is that assumptions such as perfectly rational actors can diverge so far from reality that it renders the resulting idealized conclusions meaningless from the perspective of actual human economies. The abstract study of incentives is of course interesting in its own right, but may have little to do with economics in practice -- i.e. the important practice of how actually should we run an economy. What theoretical economists do is not 'nonsense' but can become nonsense when it naively forms the rationale for real-world policy. ~~~ twitchard Rats are, in some ways, very different from humans too. But if it's impossible to run human trials, or there are severe deficiencies in the way we are able to execute them, studying rats is still the best argument. If there is a convincing empirical economic study that widely contradicts a theoretical consensus---yes, that evidence should be preferred. But that is not often the case, and otherwise the theoretical argument is simply the best argument there is. What drives me bonkers, though, is the people who dismiss the math and its conclusions as being 'meaningless', but then what they substitute is not superior empirical arguments of their own, but their own emotional sentiments and undisciplined intuitions (typically decorated by cherry-picked historical observations). ~~~ jal278 The "rat is to human" (from a pharmaceutical perspective) as "rational actor is to human" (from an economic perspective) I think is a very fragile analogy. Rats and humans are very similar in their response to pharmaceuticals (and so serve as reasonable first model), but the difference between rational actor and human is so vast (at least in terms of how the real world works) that it calls into question the value of rational actor models for real-world policy. In that case, the "theoretical argument is simply the best argument" is wrong; we should study economic history and human behavior rigorously and let that inform our policy. Theory can serve as a useful model when it is validated by some sort of observation and data -- but even when we cannot perform controlled studies there is not a knock-down argument that "theory" must be our best guess. I agree that a person's interpretation of economics is very likely to be influenced by their idea of how the world _should_ work; but this is more a problem of our characteristic lack of critical self-reflection. And of course, we should have cogent arguments for our interpretation of economics, ideally rooted in objective evidence. ~~~ endzone mathematical formalism was introduced precisely to allow the formulation of "cogent arguments". you can't evaluate the evidence without economic theory ------ DanBC One real world example is whether there are educational benefits to deworming a child population in developing world countries. If you use economist math you see a benefit. If you use epidemeologist math you don't. [http://www.cochrane.org/news/educational-benefits- deworming-...](http://www.cochrane.org/news/educational-benefits-deworming- children-questioned-re-analysis-flagship-study) [http://www.cochrane.org/CD000371/INFECTN_deworming-school- ch...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD000371/INFECTN_deworming-school-children- developing-countries) [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/23/research- glob...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/23/research-global- deworming-programmes) [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0659q1f](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0659q1f) ------ RA_Fisher Meanwhile machine learning is the high interest credit card of technical debt, what could go wrong? [http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43146.html](http://research.google.com/pubs/pub43146.html) I entered stats through econometrics. I love econometrics. Econometrics is seriously hampered relative to other applied math fields by the inability to apply large scale casual experiments. For this reason parsimony is soooo important in modelling. Machine learning is the opposite of parsimony. Machine learning is wonderful for many applications, it lets us shrug off a first error of model selection, but it's not a panacea to the math problem and I think it actually might make it much worse. ------ dovereconomics While pursuing PhD in Economics, I've supported myself working as a data scientist and, like ThePhysicist says, it's fairly disappointing that many are oblivious of datasets, APIs, libraries,.. A good example of what can be done ([http://econprediction.eecs.umich.edu/](http://econprediction.eecs.umich.edu/)) On the other side, the claim "literary types who lack the talent or training to hack their way through systems of equations" is groundless and mostly fallacious. The "literary types" have grasped many politicized inconsistencies and dedicate their research by deductive reasoning. Most of them are not 9/11 truthers. ------ WorldMaker My insight in college taking some economics courses side by side higher level physics and engineering courses was that economics has mostly gotten stuck in algebra and has thus far failed to develop its calculus. The easiest analogies for me to make are to electronics. Talking about cash/debt is like talking about instantaneous voltage. It's sort of interesting, but it isn't doing any actual work. In electronics it is the flow of that voltage, the current, that is more often more important and more interesting and more directly applicable to the "work" of a circuit... I think you get a very different view of economics if you model it more like electronics circuits than just about any of the other economics models I see discussed. I've often wondered what would happen if someone actually bothered to attempt such a model and apply some deep scientific rigor to it. ~~~ nobbis Economists were modeling the economy using circuits in 1949 (see MONIAC), before the Integrated Circuit was even invented. ~~~ WorldMaker Thanks for the interesting reference to look up. I had not heard of the MONIAC before. Looks like this is also a sideways referent in Terry Pratchett's Making Money which draws in some interesting dots in that book. ------ crdoconnor >That would make the techniques less interesting to many economists, who are usually more concerned about giving policy recommendations than in making forecasts. Therein lies the real reason for the panoply broken economics models. They are more often used for the purpose of lobbying rather than for impartial prediction. Much of the profession (particularly the elites) only exists as an intellectual pretext for maintaining and perpetuating existing power structures. It's about as scientific as the departments of Marxist economics were in the former Soviet Union or the Vatican in 15th century Italy. ------ chrismealy If economists could manage to get themselves thought of as humble, competent people on a level with dentists, that would be splendid. ~~~ Gibbon1 My beef is when I read economists claims about perfect markets I think, 'Wow! With markets I should be able to solve the traveling salesman problem in polynomial time' ~~~ dmichulke Well, I am not a big fan of today's "more debt, more gov't spending = more prosperity" but markets only parallelize a process and the best ones at this process survive while the worse ones drop out of the market. So, in a sense, if you assume ideal markets to have an "infinite number of participants", then yes, you can solve TSP in polynomial time but otherwise they will just evolve like bitcoin miners which as of yet still didn't solve the "find a decent hash" problem an order of magnitude faster even though there are many of them. My beef with economists is that they themselves are not subject to markets so the bad ones and the good ones survive and you end up with lots of noise. ~~~ crdoconnor >Well, I am not a big fan of today's "more debt, more gov't spending = more prosperity" Because austerity is working out just brilliantly everywhere it's been tried? What people tend to forget about government deficits and debt is that it is just one side of the economic coin. It's exactly the same thing as saying "the private sector saves too much". ~~~ vixen99 'Because austerity is working out just brilliantly everywhere it's been tried?' Measured on what timescale? ~~~ crdoconnor Well, the IMF and ECB's time scale for predicted recovery in Greece has been 18 months ever since austerity was implemented in 2009. So that's roughly four complete and total fuck ups in a row. How much more time do you need? There's always a chance, of course, that austerity is utterly destructive towards the Greek economy but very good for German financiers (with the ear of the ECB) who would like to pick up a port or state electric company on the cheap and who like the flood of cheap labor the austerity crisis has instigated. ------ georgeglue1 Pure economics should be about applying abstractions to help us understand the world. The world is pretty sophisticated, so I'm fine with mathematically sophisticated abstractions. Even when those abstractions fail intuitively, they _can_ be useful and extended for other subareas of economics or are simply philosophically fascinating. More often than not though, a lot of prominent theory seems impracticable or intractably limited. This is a valid criticism. Noah Smith is slightly misdirecting his complaints though. If we're looking at applied economics or policy, the amount of math is not intimidating to anyone who has taken a couple of years of non-introductory statistics. The most important econometrics papers of the past few years apply basic regressions with only a few additional valid statistical techniques. ~~~ runarberg I'd think economics should be about describing systems in terms of cost, and finding how much a certain action will cost or profit the system. There is tons of economy to be found in the natural world, and it is mostly shunned by economists, and left to the naturalists. I don't know of any other science that ignores the natural world like that. And yes I see a problem with that. The probability of being wrong becomes huge. What good is an abstraction if it's wrong? ------ endzone reminder: noah has never published an academic paper in economics and it looks unlikely that he ever will. he is simply not a competent guide to the field. this entire thread is a perfect example of the blind leading the blind: a journalist (noah) presents an entirely one sided view of the field, and intellectually lazy posters take it as a cue to dump on an entire academic field while freely admitting their ignorance of any of the details. newsflash: most economists are acutely aware of the imperfections in their models. sure, you can find the blinkered and dogmatic, but that is unsurprising in such a large and varied field. the subject encompasses a serious variety of subjects and methods you (the hn poster) simply know nothing about. for example, machine learning techniques are really nothing new. theorists have been aware of the kahneman/tversky result for decades. please bear this in mind before you lazily declare the intellectual bankruptcy of the entire field. p.s so-called econophysics was a direct attempt to apply models from hard science to economics and it has been a complete failure, since it lacks an underlying model of human behaviour. turns out this is quite important... ------ clavalle I find it interesting that many economists tend to ignore the limits of their own theories. For example, the dogma that markets tend toward efficiency. This is true -- as long as certain axioms are not violated. But they seem to forget about the axioms on which their conclusions are built and march forward as if their conclusions are _absolutely_ true and apply that assumption to problems where they simply do not hold because the axioms on which they are built are violated. To continue with the 'markets tend toward efficiency' conclusion: it does not hold when there are negative expectations for a party for _not_ making a transaction. And they invented a fudge factor to get around this a bit (that still doesn't work for all cases) which is to make sure the equations when taken in aggregate do not _generally_ lead to negative expectations for not making a transaction. This holds in many more cases but still not all. Where does it fail and why does it matter? Well, the axioms underlying the 'markets tend toward efficiency' work great in capital markets. They tend to completely fail when pain or death is potentially involved in a transaction (severe negative expectations) but they may look like they _should_ work and you can find limited cases that _do_ work. So, basically war or crime or relationships or corruption or or poverty or healthcare or any other of those human interactions pain or death tend to come into play. A huge swath of sectors where politicians and special interests and the economists that inform them try to craft policy to fit a misapplied theory. Yet, economists march on pretending the theory holds from the axioms to the conclusions and on to the further conclusions built on those hold because 'mathematics' \-- who can argue with mathematics? ------ im3w1l I don't think a model based purely on empiricism will work. Because people will read about the model and try to correct for their biases. On the other hand a purely game theoretic model is not satisfactory either because a lot of people wont read about the model, and wont act optimally. Maybe a two-tiered model, with "fish" and "sharks" could be a solution. ~~~ ancap Your comment demonstrates beautifully how economics is not an empirical science. Much of what is taught in economics is founded on a flawed premise. ------ Mikeb85 This is really the important part of the article: > Their overview stated that machine learning techniques emphasized causality > less than traditional economic statistical techniques, or what's usually > known as econometrics. In other words, machine learning is more about > forecasting than about understanding the effects of policy. And it's true. Economists care more about forecasting than 'understanding the effects of policy' because the money is to be made forecasting while working for a bank or a large corporation. Economics can't be codified the way physics can because economics models human behaviour (which is constantly changing), not physical laws than can be tested and retested. ------ HSO I shouldn't even comment on this BS article but here we go, duty calls ( [https://xkcd.com/386/](https://xkcd.com/386/) )… 1) First of all, let's make clear that there are no "the economists" and there is no "economics" that could be identified with whatever peeve _du jour_ of "the journalists". Economics as a field, understood as the study of exchange between decision-making agents in more or less large systems[1], is marked by an extreme diversity of approaches and opinions on even basic questions. From my superficial understanding of other fields, this seems to be a big difference between economics and the sciences, and on the other hand rather similar to the humanities. If you're going to criticize something, better make it specific and name names. 2) It is fashionable for "technical" people to scoff at the mathematics used in economic theory (basically, analysis, optimization, linear alg, and measure-theoretic prob), pretending that the problems arise because the tools are too primitive. First, perhaps they should remember that a lot of the foundations of mathematical economics were laid by people way above their paygrade. I'm talking about von Neumann, for example, or Fischer Black. Usually, when smart people do something that does not make sense to you, you take a step back and ask what _you_ might be missing, and usually there is a nontrivial answer to that question. Paul Romer, sorry, is a good economist but he has a BS in math. I would say that's my definition of a "lightweight when it comes to equations". That's not to say he shouldn't criticize, he should! But let's not pretend that there was no reason to "go formal" in economic theorizing or that there were/are easy modeling choices. 3) In my experience, most of the criticism of economic models comes from ignorance of the goal and context of a model and a too literal reading of the math. For example, if you take Markowitz's portfolio optimization (mean vs variance of a linear combination of a multivariate normal), it is correct that individual returns have non-exponentially decaying "heavy" tails, the copula is not (unconditionally) Gaussian, and risk is therefore not captured in variance and correlations (not least because they may in fact be undefined). But that is completely beside the point of the model, which is simply to express the idea that the risk of a portfolio is not necessarily additive and that there is a tradeoff between risk and return. The point being, although it is expressed in mathematical language, it is actually a qualitative model. Once you realize this difference to more descriptive models in the sciences, economic theory starts to make a lot more sense. 4) The real problem of economic theory may be the disconnect between how many people have a stake in it and how many people have the time and leisure and inclination and background to understand what the theorists are actually saying. 5) Side comment and half-reply to _ThePhysicist_ 's complaint: The reason to go with the "perfect gas"-type models in economic theory, I think, is that you are dealing with self-interested, utility-maximizing particles or "agents" -> acting particles. The thinking being that if you put in constraints of some form, say a short-sales constraint in a financial market model, you make the model very special. But in the messy real world agents would find a way around this particular constraint eventually. So the unconstrained general equilibrium models are trying to give you a big picture, "this is where the market tends to" type of result. There is so much more to be said on this point but I'm already way above my allocated time for this "duty call"... 6) Last but not least, let me state my opinion that there is nothing inherently noble about science. It is a method to gain knowledge, and it is contingent on the affordances of the field to which it is applied. In economic theory, your basic problem is lack of data. Now that may change in some subfields, and that's great. So the scientific method can be applied in those subfields eventually. But we need answers or opinions today for practical problems. I see economics as akin to philosophy how Russell [2] understood it. Let me quote him: _“Philosophy, as I shall understand the word, is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters as to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge—so I should contend—belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science there is a No Man’s Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man’s Land is philosophy. Almost all the questions of most interest to speculative minds are such as science cannot answer, and the confident answers of theologians no longer seem so convincing as they did in former centuries.”_ One should be aware of the limits of this approach but one should also not assume that there was a choice between science and this. If there was, it wouldn't even be a contest! The realm of science may get bigger over time, as more and more data is gathered, but again, we need answers today and in real time, not in 100 years, to decide on regulations, interest rates, portfolios or budgeting decisions. In almost all the big economic questions, your sample size is one and the possibility to experiment is nil. The world is arguably nonstationary on time-scales that matter, economic mechanisms change, and every statistical test and computational experiment is always a joint hypothesis test of your assumptions, about which I said in (1) above that there is and perhaps can be no consensus. In short, it's not that people don't know there is a problem. It's that there has so far been no better solution. ______________________ [1] I'm just making this definition up on the fly but if someone has a better one, I'm all ears. [2] B. Russell. A History of Western Philosophy. George Allen & Unwin, 1945. ------ _pmf_ Economics is like fantasy football league. I predicts the future based on isolated personal preferences and ideologies of the "scientist", optionally sprinkled with small scale observations of data with dubious accuracy. ------ Vagelis Considering financial policies are the de-facto social discussion around the Globe, and progress of the human species is being discussed and perceived in financial terms, it is no wonder the role of philosophy has fallen to economists. One can hope that data-driven economics could improve predictions, but keeping the theory discussion alive is vital, if we are to ever understand our goals as something more than increasing production and consumption (quantitative). Using the correct set of data, has long been the main issue with economic theory conflicts, and data-driven economics can only make a difference (and a huge one) if that changes. ------ hrzn The maths models used in economics are rarely checked against real-world data, but when they are they often turn out to be wrong. A major instance of this problem comes from models used for trading, which often assume Gaussian distributions and Brownian-motion behaviors. According to those, extreme moves such as the ones occurring during economic crises such as the one of 2007 are several sigmas away from the mean -- making them supposed to happen perhaps once every 10^10 years. Yet they happen every 20 years. Taleb's book "Black Swan" is an interesting resource on this topic, for those interested. ~~~ endzone gosh, i wonder why those traders use those simple, outdated models to make extraordinarily expensive decisions every singly day when they could just read the "black swan" ------ pdkl95 I like Mark Blyth's brief summary[1] of this problem. Not only is it important to base your theories on _actual data_ , it is also vitally important to remember that the map is not the territory. All models are an imperfect representation of reality, so they should always be viewed with appropriate scepticism, even when the math seems to work out elegantly. [1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWbkPezgtU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmWbkPezgtU) ------ NumberCruncher There is a main difference between Physics and Economics. Physics tries to explain the laws of nature which do not change over time. But Economics tries to explain the laws of a system based on human knowledge and believes which is anything but robust. Using modeling techniques borrowed from Physics/Mathematics in the field of Economics can work very well but only if the laws you are investigating are robust over a given period of time. Edit: typo ------ k2enemy If anyone is interested in something other than shitting on economics... The other half of the article seems interesting. Does anyone have handy references (besides the Athey and Varian papers in the article) to how machine learning is being used to establish causation rather than focusing on prediction? I've heard several places that there have been big strides lately in this area, but I'm not sure where to look. ~~~ marketforlemmas Here's a link to the slides that she used for the NBER talks. I've flipped through them and there seems to be some references to working papers (that Googling should be able to surface): [https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=351055fdce7d0ff1&id=351055FDC...](https://onedrive.live.com/?cid=351055fdce7d0ff1&id=351055FDCE7D0FF1%21330395&ithint=folder,pdf&authkey=!ACqeqfcqAxdediE) ------ qewrffewqwfqew Doesn't (over-applied) machine learning just lead towards a variation of exactly the same problem? Instead of "this model fits the curve and sounds attractive and sciencey" it becomes "this model fits the curve and was done by computer!" Not really the "empiricism coming to economics" that the author claims, but I guess it could support better outcomes. For a while. ------ igravious Economics is fascinating because it is where ideology meets math. Economics has a math problem only if you're not honest about your mathematical models reflecting an ideological position rather than "reality" (whatever that's meant to mean in the context of economics). ------ DanielBMarkham I love watching smart people argue, so I love economics. Economics is a great source for jokes. "Economics is astrology for people who know calculus", "How many economists does it take to reach a conclusion?", and so on. As much as I like picking on economists and watching them bicker, there's actually a method to the madness. (Except for the shills, I'm looking at you, Krugman[1]). When done correctly, economics becomes kind of a cross between a courtroom and a bullshitting session. People present various theories and sets of measurements. Lots of discussion around instrumentation and epistemology takes place. At the end of the day, the discussion wraps up to be something like "Given that most of us agree that these kinds of initial conditions mostly lead to these kinds of results, do most of us think that these kinds of initial conditions currently exist?" (Note that the "most of us" can very well be different sets of folks) Oddly enough, it turns out that this kind of discussion has lots of real-world value. Machine learning and deep learning especially has a pretty cool new role here, but it will never take of this dynamic ongoing discssion. So no, economics doesn't have a math problem. It doesn't work like that. Perhaps a better way of putting is this: people who expect the world to be deterministic have a problem with economics. That situation is unlikely to change. [1] I pick on Krugman because his shtick is already knowing the answer, no matter what the question is. He also likes showing us his Nobel. Somebody said once that every Krugman column should begin with "Damn fools!" In this way, this isn't economics; as far as I can tell it's personal aggrandizement using economics as a prop. A huge ego is a terrible thing to waste. But damn, it sure is entertaining! [Several edits for clarity] ~~~ brc Good comment - I remember while studying economics (a subject I have always enjoyed) I got into an argument with some fellow students who felt that it was too 'fluffy' and 'not enough meat'. They wanted to do equations and get hard answers. The truth is that Economics is the study of choices in a world of limited resources, and that the process is exactly as you have said : observing initial conditions, material decisions and subsequent outcomes. It is, as laid out by Adam Smith, also dependent on certain initial inputs (theory of moral sentiments) which produce rational actors. The amusing thing for me is that, despite repeated tests and outcomes, people continue to think that they can wander off the reservation and get better outcomes with the same humans by trying different things to try and control the flow of limited resources. The results are rarely pretty, but the siren song of being able to improve things and be hailed a hero draws people into thinking the rules do not apply. Krugman wandered off the reservation a while back and hasn't been worth reading since at least 2008. The point is, you don't have to agree on economic policies to agree that it's not a hard science and shouldn't be treated as such. ~~~ igravious 2008? That's a coincidental year. Around about the time of the last crisis and the beginning of austerity politics. The worst economic period since the Great Depression arguably. The rich getting ever richer. Real wages for most people stagnating or falling. Massive unemployment and under-employment. Quantitative Easing not creating real jobs and fixing infrastructure. Low interest rates (still!) Multinational corporations with so much money through tax evasion schemes that they literally don't know what to spend it on. The ongoing privatisation of public services which rarely if ever benefits the public. Essentially, ongoing class warfare and levels of inequality not seen in practically a century. Regulatory and political capture and political collusion. Trade agreements on the horizon being negotiated in secret that would exacerbate every issue already mentioned. And you say Krugman has wandered off reservation? Rubbish. He's got to keep banging the same drum because nothing's getting fixed. ------ tim333 The use of machine learning seems promising. One of the troubles with using regular mathematical equations is that at the end of the day economics is about human behaviour and that doesn't fit. Take a recent phenomenon like the 2008 crash. Banks increased lending, bankers made big bonuses while passing the risk on to various other parties and used some of the money to lobby politicians and keep the whole thing going until it suddenly collapsed leaving the other parties with the bill and the bankers with their bonuses. You're not going to capture that in a simple equation but running machine learning on say 50 previous crashes might get wise to what's happening. I'm guessing you could run something like face recognition software but instead of faces it could recognise effects like the above and flash some politicians being paid off to turn a blind eye to high risk - give 'em a kick, warning or similar. ------ gooseus I feel like Nassim Taleb (Fooled By Randomness, Black Swan, Antifragile) has been making a similar point for years now. Unfortunately I don't know enough about economics to comment any more than that. ------ amelius Any recommendations on economics books with just the right amount of math, for non-economists with a college degree? I'm looking for the economics equivalent of Feynman's lectures on physics. ~~~ asgard1024 The book I got recommended from Steve Keen, when I asked him a similar question, was J.M.Blatt: Dynamic Economic Systems. Although he has beautifully simple approach, it is really outside the standard economic theory and apart from Keen and perhaps few other individuals, sadly no one really follows in Blatt's footsteps. ~~~ endzone keen is a complete charlatan and the laughing stock of the economic world. he doesn't even understand the basic economic theory he attempts to criticize ~~~ asgard1024 Are the believers in so-called "economic theory" so desperate that they have to resort to name calling? I sincerely hope someday you would read Blatt's book with an open mind. It has _nothing_ to do with Keen, and on few pages with a bit of matrix math he obtains far better model than economists with their supply and demand curves can ever hope. (In fact, John von Neumann apparently had fingers in it too - shame he didn't live longer, we could have a proper economic theory today.) ------ mamon Capitalism is a greedy and cruel system where 2 + 2 = 4. Socialism is a a blessed system claiming that in a name of social responsibility and justice 2 + 2 should equal 7 (at least)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What are (y)our ethical stances in software? - Zaskoda I believe in and support some fundamental things like open source, decentralization, creative commons, and net neutrality. Sometimes I feel like I fall into some kind of hacker news stereotype and other times I feel like I am an oddball idealist with nobody to relate to. So I would like to ask HN to share your foundational ethical stances of software issues. I'm curious to see how homogeneous we are or if there are distinct groups of thought among us? Do we have some shared vague sense of a "best practice"? Is there an area of study around this that already exists? ====== yesenadam I like the question! Maybe it's too big? (There are no responses yet.) If I asked "What are your ethical stances in life?" ..it's hard to say exactly. But if you asked about, say, the arms industry, animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, pollution, lawyers, bullying, tax rates, lobbyists etc etc, it's easier to say something, talk about relevant factors, and then listen to differing views. And then explore why we hold those, what deeper principles lay underneath. What are some equivalent specific questions in the software realm about which you think people might have diverging views? (I'm no expert. Perhaps some are around things like...advertising, working for evil-doing employers, monetization, rent-seeking, who ultimately your duty is to - self, family, friends, country, world, god etc.) ------ codingdave As others have said, I won't support a company that goes directly against my personal ethics. I also hold to a bare minimum that the product we product has to have a net positive benefit on society. It doesn't need to be world changing, but as a few examples, I'm happy to work in health care and education, but do not work in social media or on advertising or sales-focused apps. Currently, my SaaS is focused on education, so have one added layer of ethics, which is that our pricing has to save money for the school systems. I'm fine being a for-profit company whose profits come from bringing home a portion of the savings our tools bring to school districts. But I will be out the door if the PTB increase pricing so that our profits take the entire savings and then some, so we start taking dollars away from students. ------ trumbitta2 I choose Open Source over anything but my own productivity (and that's why I moved from Linux to Mac 7 years ago after my first 13 years in software development). I don't work for online gambling / porn / weapons / alcohol / tobacco companies. I try not to mansplain. ------ keyle I'm a contractor (10+ years now) and I will work where the money takes me I will however: \- never work in weapon systems or targeting systems of any kind, and \- unless I'm strapped for cash, my field of work helps make a positive change, as opposed to getting some rich guy richer. That's all. Do no evil and try to help a good cause. ------ dev_north_east I wouldn't work for a company involved in the deliberate taking of human life. There's a lot of big gambling companies near me that have me conflicted. I enjoy a flutter and all, but you hear of some people and how they're addicted to it. I dunno, I just stay clear. There's other jobs out there ------ decasteve I point people to “Human Values, Ethics, and Design” by Friedman and Kahn, as a starting point for ethical computing or ethical HCI discussions. It had a big impact on me when I first read it and it still shapes my ethical lens many years later. ~~~ yesenadam Download link [https://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications/Human_Values...](https://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications/Human_Values_Ethics_Design.pdf) Ohh.. "hints" is the Human Interaction With Nature and Technological Systems Lab, directed by Kahn. Lots of fascinating-looking papers there [https://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications.shtml](https://depts.washington.edu/hints/publications.shtml)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GitHub Flavored Markdown - chaostheory http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/ ====== angelbob This does a fine job of address Jeff Atwood's criticisms of Markdown. Yay for GitHub stepping up where Markdown's author isn't. This also vindicates the "OSS authors don't owe nobody nothing!" crowd, as GitHub steps up and fixes the problems in question without requiring any participation by the original author of Markdown. ~~~ steveklabnik GitHub did this a while ago, actually. ~~~ gry Aye. Seems like this was submitted in response to the dead post calling out Atwood. The two months since Github forked Markdown suggests to me Markdown isn't at critical mass, ergo Atwood's stewardship criticism seems misplaced. If he argued it could become _something_ beyond a better humane markup than those in the know, then he has a more valid criticism, and picking a fight. Seems underhanded to me. Best I know, Gruber didn't intend for it to become something. It has only because it is more humane than most, and yet, it is pales in adoption compared the dearth of Word toolbar knockoffs. ~~~ blasdel It's at least 8 months, not two. The problem is that Markdown is far past critical mass, and is well into denouement. Everybody has the same major issues with its design, and are dissolutioned by the same outright bugs in Gruber's crap implementation. It doesn't help that the language is designed to be implemented as a regex substitution shitpile, as Gruber doesn't know the first thing about grammars. He's been sitting on a pile of bugfixes for years that he refuses to release under his imprimatur. He hasn't blessed or even mentioned any of the dozen superior reimplementations of his spec. A few months ago he mentioned that he likes the idea behind Github's behavior-modifying patch for RDiscount, but not for his own use. He really needs to post a new version of Markdown.pl with a disclaimer about its poor quality, and explicitly bless several of the reimplementations for actual use. ~~~ gry I went by Gruber's post for the timing. I didn't click the GitHub gist history [<http://gist.github.com/118964>], which confirms you. Everybody? Denouement? Critical mass? Please cite. In one day on news.yc, I've seen two Markdown critiques, which is two more than I've seen, ever. This is a new development to a Markdown user. Please note the bugfixes he sat on. And why this needs to be argued anymore: The BSD license gives you freedom. DVCS is about politics. Do what you need to do. If they don't like what you've done, fuck 'em you've voted in code, theory and premise. ~~~ blasdel Some Outright Bugs in Markdown.pl simply described with examples: <http://code.google.com/p/pandoc/wiki/PandocVsMarkdownPl> \-- He doesn't even mention the hilarity where if you mention the MD5 hash of a token in the document, the hash will be replaced with the token, as Gruber's code uses that as an escaping mechanism! "PHP Markdown" started as a straight transliteration of Markdown.pl, and he lists 123 user-visible changes that he made. The few of those changes that add features were to deal with warts in Markdown's design that made it impossible to not fuck things up: <http://michelf.com/projects/php-markdown/> The PHP Markdown guy called out Gruber over this same bullshit 3 years ago: <http://michelf.com/weblog/2006/state-of-markdown/> The bugfixes Gruber's been sitting on were mentioned on his stagnant mailing list: <http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/markdown-discuss/> The BSD license does gives you freedom, but not authority or the name, and Gruber spent years being hostile towards forkers/reimplementors, and then spent years simply ignoring it. Besides, the only thing the license would give your freedom regarding is Gruber's code, _and you really don't want that_. ~~~ gry Thanks. ------ pyre I'm not sure about the 'newline-is-linebreak' idea. I can see how for user- submitted content it's there for people that have never used Markdown before, but I like to wrap my text to 80-characters when I'm composing so that it's not stretched across the screen _. _ I do this because I don't know of any way in vim to set a 'soft word wrap' so that lines are soft-wrapped at a specific column instead of just at the max width of the buffer. (Creating a fake vertical split is not what I want.) ~~~ jcw I do the same thing. Markdown lets you do this already, you just have to have two spaces at the end of each line. One thing that I feel like Markdown is sorely missing is the ability to link to anchors within the same document. It would be nice if each heading had its own anchor tag. ~~~ godDLL Yeah, anchors would be great. They aren't really any different from a hyperlink, they are hyperlinks fare and square, they just refer to the same document. If only there was a way to refer to `self` in Markdown… ------ jpcx01 I wish they would enable this on their own wiki. Markdown is great, but they force that textile crap on everyone. ------ anotherjesse Be careful of most JavaScript markdown implementations! Their live preview (showdown-based) JS has XSS holes. Their ruby version seems to much better! Perhaps it should be renamed "developer markdown" - DMD - and then github/stackoverflow/... should all have a standard markdown fork? Also having a standard test suite that tests for XSS and other holes would be nice :) ~~~ kneath The only XSS vulnerability in the code is the ability to XSS yourself, which you can do with any browser with a javascript console. Unless of course you're using Javascript to parse user generated markdown instead of doing it server-side, which is just silly. Markdown is a formatting language, not a method to protect against XSS. It belongs in a different tier of your code. ~~~ anotherjesse If you were to take the GFM that was implemented on top of showdown and use it for something like a wiki (ala stackoverflow's wiki-fication of questions), then currently you have XSS holes. I love GFM. I've been using it on userscripts.org for months. But the JS version at [http://github.github.com/github-flavored- markdown/preview.ht...](http://github.github.com/github-flavored- markdown/preview.html) has holes that their ruby version does not have - [http://github.com/mojombo/github-flavored- markdown/issues/#i...](http://github.com/mojombo/github-flavored- markdown/issues/#issue/1)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Robots Are the Next Revolution, So Why Isn't Anyone Acting Like It? - eguizzo http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/robots-are-the-next-revolution-so-why-isnt-anyone-acting-like-it ====== ChuckMcM I agree its a pretty weak article but its a blog, not a paper, so I would not expect it to rise to the level of rigor for something intended for one of the IEEE journals. That being said, if you've ever heard of 'charity burnout' there is something similar called 'robotics burnout.' You discover it, you engage in excitement, but nothing happens, you can only be excited (or charitable it seems) so long before you need to take a break. But lets start at the beginning shall we? So in 1985 the Homebrew Computer Club was waning, it had been the center of attention between 75 and 85 but with people like IBM in the game and Apple going much more 'corporate' it was more of a users group than the folks who were changing the world. One of the special interest groups from that meeting was the Robotics SIG. A guy named Dick Prather who was active in that SIG decided that even if the computer group was dying, robotics was just getting started and so he did the SIG equivalent of a setsid(2) call and made the Homebrew Robotics Club an independent organization. It has met continuously since then (yes 26 years). One of the things about 'robots' that most people don't get, is that fundamentally a robot is any machine that has some level of program-ability that does one or more tasks while adapting to its environment. Your dishwasher is a good robot, it washes the dishes for you, or the pots and pans, or the stem ware, it uses a variety of sensors to decide if the dishes are clean yet and it dries them afterwards. If you didn't have it you would be getting a sore back moving dishes from the counter-top to the sink, to the drying rack. Folks have argued that to be a robot it would have to do it like humans do, but that is an angels-on-pins sort of argument. Generally robots are the expression of automation, and they have (as a market) been growing where ever it makes economic sense. As processors get cheaper and more powerful more and more things make economic sense. Of course for things that are really expensive or really dangerous its really easy to justify the cost. So for things like disarming bombs, or hunting people down in a country you are not technically at war with and killing them are both easily justified costs if you can automate them. ISRobotics, the guys who make the Roomba, make most of their money selling robots for things like mine clearing and recon, and yes shooting people. Founded in 1990 they were making $1M/yr in 1996 with 16 employees[1], that wasn't particularly sustainable but in 2001, with 9/11 they demonstrated the value of their packbots. And now at $401M/yr they are doing quite well except that over 60% of their revenue is "G&I" which is code for "Government and Industrial". Now that isn't all bad, its just that instead of comparing the robotics revolution to the 'PC' revolution you have to compare it to the 'computer' revolution, which is to say that a whole lot of investment and development is focused on corporate and government use until the the industry can supply enough automation to slake their thirst and to give some time to 'regular' folks. So in the 80's we had companies like Androbot and Heathkit approaching mobile robotics as gimmicks/educational, in the 90's we had a lot of toys and the start of robot (really armored R/C vehicles with minimal automation) combat. And now in the second decade of the 21st century we're seeing prototype self driving cars, a number of walking designs, and energy systems that can sustain things for more than a couple of minutes. Bottom line, things are going along, and getting better, and in many ways getting better faster now than they have in the past, but there is so much eco-system that has to develop around building mobile robotics that can do useful work that the rate of change feels much more evolutionary than revolutionary. When we look at robotics startups today, places like Willow Garage and Anybot you can get a good feel for how cool things _could_ be and how far we are from seeing the kind of uptake like we did with personal computers. [1] [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1996/07/08/214354/index.htm) [2] [http://investor.irobot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=193096&p=irol...](http://investor.irobot.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=193096&p=irol- newsArticle&ID=1527102&highlight=) ~~~ MaysonL War and toys, the best drivers of technology. ~~~ pstuart Sex too: VCRs and AOL definitely benefitted. ------ robotresearcher This is a weak article. First, it ignores the existence of commodity robots. Something like 4 million Roombas have been sold. They are easy to use commodity robots that sell in volume from Best Buy. Second, many people, going back to the early 20th century, have imagined buying cheap general purpose robots, just as they have imagined buying jet packs and holidaying on space stations. Just because I imagine it doesn't make it feasible. The reason there aren't many autonomous-robot startups is that no one knows how to do the AI. It may make sense to you that you ought to be able to put together robots like you put together a spreadsheet, but that's not how it turned out to be. The article admits this, describing day to day tasks as "incredibly complex". Yet then asks us to imagine the cheap, capable robot. Third, the "mysterious" capital behind Willow Garage is Scott Hassan, an early and thus very rich Googler. It says so on the WG web page [<http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/about-us/history>]. Fourth, Microsoft has Robotics Studio, a package that competes with ROS in many respects. It is exactly a "robot operating system" on top of Windows. Researchers pretty much ignore Robot Studio, but why does this journalist do so when he says that "what we need Microsoft [...] to do is build an operating system....". It has been trying for years. Thanks for the advice, though. A low-quality piece for Spectrum, picked up from a blog. ------ noonespecial I'm thinking it has something to do with the fact that they have been the next revolution since Karel Čapek gave us the term in 1920. If you haven't read R.U.R. you should. It feels like it belongs in last weeks Wired. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karel_Čapek> ~~~ zeteo After reading R.U.R., it's amazing how many themes of the subsequent 90 years' worth of dystopic literature it predicts! Robot rebellion, androids, human fertility crisis - it's all there, and more. It's also kind of ironic that the same piece of literature that introduced the concept of the robot also introduced the perennial concept of the coming robot rebellion. ~~~ skermes It's not actually that ironic. Robots tend to be symbols for an oppressed underclass - their masters have (or think they have) a high degree of control over their every thought and action, they're often tasked with menial or dangerous labor, and frequently considered 'other' and 'less' than their squishy human overlords. And what's every slave driver's worst fear? As literary devices, robots don't have much to do _besides_ rebel. If they just did what we told them to do, there wouldn't be much story to tell. (Note that that's part of why _I, Robot_ was so mind blowing - a lot of it was about things going wrong when the robots did _exactly_ what we told them.) ~~~ zeteo I think it had more to do with Čapek subscribing to Marxist theories about historical inevitability and such. His robots are in fact a mental abstraction, a caricature of early 20th century proletariat that was supposedly bound to revolt, sooner or later. Čapek is taking this to extremes, purporting to show that even a race that was bred especially for labor would inevitably revolt, if only they were afforded the modicum of intelligence that was needed for that labor. Of course, we now know that Marx's inflexible theories were wrong, and proletarian revolution is by no means inevitable. We are, however, still stuck with a half-baked idea of the inevitable robot revolution, which tinges the whole field of robotics research, at least as seen from the outside, with a subconscious bitterness of fear. ------ huxley If you were thinking multipurpose C3P0 style robots, then the revolution has been 5 years in the future for the last 30 years. However single-purpose robots have become part of the fabric of most industries. Heck, most people don't even think of them as robots. So the revolution happened, it is now the new normal. ~~~ msluyter I had a similar thought the other day while using an automated paper towel dispenser. "Isn't this primitive robot?" Yet, I'd never really thought to apply the term "robot." It'll be interesting to watch the evolution from dumb/single-purpose robots to smarter/multi-purpose ones. ~~~ Semiapies If that's a primitive robot, we've had primitive robots since the first push- button elevator or automatic door, many decades ago. It's like the defining-down of AI. Proponents promised strong AI Real Soon Now for decades; now they say that we're just being unfair if we don't count email filters as "AI". ------ johngalt Two xeon server class machines in the robot? 16 cores?! That's a lot of horsepower to carry around. Amazon Robot Brain anyone? $0.25 per robot hour. Or cheat the system with Mechturk? ~~~ tkahnoski A mechanical turk powered "machine" sounds like an absolutely fascinating experiment. The tricky bit would be designing an interface for turkers to manipulate the robot. The other complicated bit is making sure the turkers can't cause serious harm. (We don't want turkers controlling UAVs...) ~~~ skidooer That is actually something I have been thinking about recently. People spend hours upon hours playing games that resemble, to some degree, real jobs. (Think FarmVille, CafeWorld, etc.) If you could craft the game in such a way to provide the control to the robots for things that are not easily automated, people's entertainment would provide the labour required to control the operation for free. A capitalistic dream. ~~~ noonespecial Sorting recycling comes to mind. The manual labor version of it involves standing over a slow moving belt of stinky trash and picking out the valuable recyclables. Seems like a Fanuc with a suction gripper and a hires web cam is all it might take to get a little "trashville" going. Give the housewives who collect the most alu while the kids are away at school day passes to local spas as prizes and you've got a win. ------ secretasiandan Because there's much lower hanging fruit. Extracting information and optimizing actions based on it via purchasing/timing decisions. Requires much less capital commitment and potentially much higher ROI. ------ andrewtbham FTA: "Buzzing you in when you get locked out, signing for a package, taking that frozen chicken out of the freezer while you’re at work, feeding your pet, and of course the veritable classic of robo-problems: getting you a beer." - imho these are terrible examples of what a robot could do... there are much simpler solutions for most of these problems than buying this: <http://www.willowgarage.com/pages/pr2/overview> ~~~ spitfire I thought that was so cool, until I got the price - $400,000 Something makes me think they're aiming for the useless academic toy market. ~~~ forensic Once the software gets better the hardware can be made far less robust - and therefore cheaper. PR2 is a good start. ------ danboarder Looking for general purpose robots misses the evolution in home robotics already in progress. I've used a iRobot Roomba for vacuuming our home for about two years now, it works great. I expect future versions will be able to do more tasks. Consider the progression of the iPod as a music player to a general purpose touch computer (running iOS apps of all kinds) that is is today -- this is perhaps a good picture of how home robotics may progress from single purpose to multi-purpose household machines. ------ b_emery Here's a group aiming to be the Arduino of robotics with a $1000 iRobot, ROS and Kinect based robot platform: <http://www.bilibot.com/about> I guess this still goes into the 'Homebrew Computer Club' category, but now all we need is a Wozniak-Jobs-like pair to take it to the next level. ------ endergen It's the term robot. For most people that means human like machines. Making human like machines is a terrible waste of energy compared to just making the form of a machine match it's tasks. If you instead say machine automation rather than robot, well then you see that we probably are in that revolution. ------ hunterp I've been working on a theory on this one. In the most abstract sense, computers are an extension of the human self. Cave Paintings, Papyrus scrolls, Guitars, Printing Presses, Pens, Televisions, Computers are all an evolution of this. You can think of a mobile phone as a inanimate (non-sentient) robot that lacks the ability to self-ambulate. There is a distinction between sentience which has not yet been achieved, and partial autonomy. There simply is not a mass market use case that makes small scale robots like the finch popular enough. Instead, I believe that mobile devices will continue adding new and interesting features. NFC will be the big thing next. After that, some new pathways will be: printing from mobiles, and possibly some of them will have movable parts that developers can program. Eventually, the mass market appeal of mobile devices will combine with the usefulness of a physical manifestion of our ideas into reality. You need to make a cheap robot USEFUL. Ultimately, it is the person that controls the robot that will get the most use out of it. Just like a master craftsperson can use his or her tools far more effectively than any random person. So...in one idea, the reason robots are not really here is that there is no mass market appeal to justify the hundreds or thousands of dollars that they cost. ------ zafka I have been thinking about this a lot lately. All the parts are laying around, and I just need to start putting them together..literally, I have steppers and servos, and some DSP test boards. I am getting de ja vu all over again. When I was finishing up school, i commented that if I had a little more sense i would just quit, and make web pages. Here it is 15 years later, and about time to close up the pottery shop. Zafka Robotics does have a nice ring to it. ------ cellshade There's _is_ a very successful consume robotics product that everyone knows about. I have one, and it's fantastic. It's called Roomba. ~~~ lwat iRobot is amazingly successful not just in home robots but also in the military and public sectors. I love my Roomba and I'll be purchasing the Scooba 230 too. ------ ziadbc The phenomenon that the articles title refers to is caused by something simple. The tech world got into media, and since then media related technologies get a sizable chunk of the attention. ------ ivankirigin There are very real technical limitations that make the kinds of robots available limited. Tele-operation is ok for the military, but interfaces aren't good enough yet to, say, enable a human size robot to open a door quickly. Automated driving is up and coming, but still a few years away from being a real product. This is a combination of perception and manipulation problems. There is only so much that can be done by a robot moving from point a to point b, and we're seeing products that leverage that. Roomba, toys, packbot, grand challenge bots - none of them really see, touch, and grab things. This isn't a matter of some discoveries in a university that are waiting to be productized. No one has found the right answer. I left a job in robotics to work on more interesting products, but I hope to return when the tech is real. ------ ccarpenterg Is there a HN-like community for Robotics/Satellite stuff? ~~~ tezmc There's a Robotics subreddit. It's not super-busy but it seems to get a couple of submissions per day. <http://www.reddit.com/r/robotics/> ------ ecuzzillo Nobody ever acts like the next revolution is the next revolution. If they did, it would be the current revolution, or at least the current fad. ------ melling I almost got a Roomba but I went with a Dyson instead because all reviews said you still need to vacuum. I'll probably get the next generation, which should be out in a year or so. Moore's Law is a bit flat at the beginning. For example, only 1% of the human DNA was sequenced at the first half of the project and the other 99% during the second half, if I remember the story correctly. We need a few more 18 month periods before robots start to become more useful in a non-controlled environment. My money is on 2015-2018. ------ giberson It's all about price points. The crux of the problem is glanced in the last paragraph of the article "Imagine a robot that you could buy at Best Buy for somewhere between $2k and $4k." Right now, that just isn't feasible. For autonomous mobility you need components that qualify the following criteria: fast, quiet, safe, and precise. Unfortunately, such components just aren't affordable yet. The revolution frenzy won't hit until your upper middle class income family can afford it. ------ anonymousDan It seems to me the problem is that there is so much variation in the underlying robotics hardware that it will be difficult to come up with a 'one- size-fits-all' OS. ~~~ VladRussian the hardware, as usually, is abstractable into drivers. Take for example hand movement - you may have the model of the robot's hand including actuators' input/output abstractions, length/weight of the arms, etc... It is common for all the robots with arms and very mathematically- mechanically complicated task to calculate the dynamic of the hand from current position, at current speed to another position with another speed, including recoil on the rest of the body, ... Mathematically it is a complicated smooth manifold in the high dimension space and various analyses and optimizations on such objects have been a very fruitful source of many Ph.D.s and articles :) Though on practice any "good" suboptimal solution would do. The 3D orientation and environment sensing is also abstractable - here again the calculation and effective algorithms (which are really hardware independent - for example stereo analysis is dependent basically on the resolution and the speed of the input sensors and teh CPU power and effective algorithm - sounds familiar?) is the heavy part. The [speech] command processing - has been also abstracted into input devices and processing core algorithms. ------ ahuibers One big reason robots aren't very good is because actuators are not very good. There are no good artificial muscles. Motors are great to power wheels and propellers but not much else. On the sensor side, robots can see, hear and even touch quite effectively. I think the software is slowly making progress, as is the # of computations we can do per watt. But lack of actuator progress severely hampers the future of robotics IMO. ~~~ billswift Hydraulics and pneumatics work pretty good, but they are really tedious to work with, especially for people used to electronics. Their biggest problems are cost and seals, especially seal durability. And of course the cost in energy to keep them powered - when I get around to it, I expect to need to use a IC powered version out in the garage. But then energy budget is a problem with all mobile robots. ------ rsaarelm I figured robots haven't gained momentum at anywhere the same rate as personal or distributed computing since robust sensing and interaction of the physical world is still mostly an unsolved problem. Robots are useful in carefully physically constrained areas like industrial assembly lines and can be finicky toys that are too limited to do much anything useful, and there are things like Roombas that are somewhere in between the two. A solution to the robust physical interaction thing sounds like something that would be pretty much AI-complete and would imply a lot bigger changes than housecleaning robots. This would just get you the science fiction humanoid robot that can walk into a house and start cleaning up and renovating the walls, but given the amount of flexible smarts and learning ability a general solution for being able to pull that off involves, it could probably start doing your job for you as well. I'd guess there is also a less scary technology branch, where the current limited scope robots become somewhat more feasible with better manufacturing, materials, computing and communication technology, taking use of things like human telepresence and heavy duty data mining that have become easier due to just plain Moore's Law instead of groundbreaking AI research. These kind of robots are going to require environments tailored to their limitations, like the existing assembly line robots, as well as doing the R&D on figuring out just what kind of robot and environment combinations are going to do useful stuff, so it's not going to be the sort of lightning-fast development we saw with personal computers. More like the gradual development from 19th century homes to late 20th century homes full of electrical household appliances. In fact, electrical household appliance probably is the metaphor for thinking about these sorts of robots, not a metal man walking about and enslaving humankind. That might explain why people aren't vastly enthused about them, even though there's probably a market for them. ------ mmcdan Robots are the next revolution, but not because of the examples listed in the articles. I don't get that excited to hear about robots getting my packages, cooking my dinner, talking to my (future)wife, etc...I think the real revolution is with robots that can provide oxygen to people in burning buildings, locate/extract people under debris after a natural disaster, and find my lost car keys. As for the robot in every home, I think a cheap, easy-to-program home automation processor that connects wirelessly to custom hardware is more appealing. That way I could set my bird-feeder, alarm system, and central- heating to "vacation-mode" and leave with peace-of-mind. ------ yters Robots don't have true intelligence, that's why. However, if someone could create a general way to power robots with intelligence, i.e. plug a robot into the intelligence grid and there it goes, they'd be billionaires. Anyone figure it out? ------ BoppreH Comparing the software revolution with a robot revolution is just unfair. The hardware part that fueled the software revolution was multi-purpose, so there was a fixed initial cost while the cost to develop the subsequent (amateur) programs was negligible. The develop-test-debug cycle is also much faster in the software industry. But I do dream of a world where Lego Mindstorms are widely available and used as any other toy. ------ barrkel Seems to me that until we have robots that collect energy and resources and build other robots - or alternatively, some kind of programmably reconfigurable substratum like a low-tech T-1000 (Terminator 2) - the capital costs are hard to overcome. ~~~ FEBlog Exactly! that is why I am so interested in Self-reconfiguring modular robotics, there are several companies that are starting to offer modules to the general public, although all but one are for manually reconfigured system. But I see a lot of movement in both business and research over the last years. I think that it is likely that you will be able to buy reasonably priced Self- reconfiguring systems in 5-15 years. and in the meantime you can play with cublets :-) <http://www.modrobotics.com/blog/?p=187> more on SRCMR [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- reconfiguring_modular_robo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self- reconfiguring_modular_robot) ------ mitko what about the robots in people's pockets. iPhones and Androids can do so many things and have so many sensors. These are robots, just not in the shape we imagined they will take. And they are not yet in the autonomous decision level we imagined they will be. Disclaimer: I'm a masters student in robotics and don't use iPhone or Android (yet) ~~~ wladimir How are phones robots? Doesn't robot imply that it has actuators as well as sensors? ~~~ mitko Actuators in phones include - playing sound, displaying images, connecting to networks and other appliances, vibrating... etc. ------ mildweed Standards-compliant hardware and software platforms. Community documentation. Publicity of successes. ------ Apocryphon I wish someone would revive the cyberpunk-prophesied revolution from the '80s: Virtual Reality. ------ Ben_Dean Because robots have been the next revolution for at least 50 years. ------ jasongullickson I am :) ------ phlux They are! but the ones who are, are looking for way to kill you with that robot. ------ matthewslotkin Really interesting idea. While I know nothing about robotics, this makes me wish I did. Does anyone know the startup costs of building a robot vs. making a computer in the 70s? My guess is the cost and complexity of building a robot far exceeds that of building your own computer (even from just a # of required parts perspective). Then again, a walking robot like the one Honda has dumped millions into may just be the wrong way of thinking about it. Perhaps a rumba- esque creature is a better indicator of what the first PR (personal robot) will look like.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: Which looks better? (Website design feedback) - yourmomis1337 We're trying to figure out a good way to list items on the 'browse' page of our site... the problem is that there is a lot of info we want to display for each item, and it gets pretty busy. We've been playing with different solutions, and we want to know which one looks best. Or maybe we need something completely different.<p>The comment below has the live links, basically they are all of the form http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style= and then a number between 0 and 4. ====== yourmomis1337 These are all variations on the same thing. Notice in particular what happens when you mouse over one of the snippets. <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet> <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style=0> <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style=1> <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style=2> <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style=3> <http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?style=4> ~~~ SwellJoe s/These are all variations on the same thing./These are all the same thing./ Fixed that for you. The differences between them are close to irrelevant. Though I find the mouse following a little irritating, so the last one is a wee bit better. But, the things I think are wrong: Too much. Over overwhelmed. The Filters interface is horrible. I couldn't find what I was looking for at all. Sliding through the list looks awesome...but it's really time-consuming to use. A dropdown would have been faster, and would be what users expect. A simple textbox with auto-complete might also be a way to go about it. There are too many types of filters for a front page. Make it keywords by default, and hide the rest on an advanced search page. Or, simply get rid of "filters" and make search work really nicely. That'd remove a huge amount of the confusing stuff on your page...but maybe filters are worth having, regardless of clutter...you can decide that. But you definitely need to do something about those filters. The rest of the page might be a bit busy...but it looks pretty nice. One thing you might consider is making a bunch of language specific versions, e.g.: perl.siafoo.net python.siafoo.net java.siafoo.net Or siafoo.net/perl, /python, etc. Most people looking for a snippet of code will need it in their own language. Sure, a lot of developers are happy to learn new techniques in many languages, but if it's a "here's where you go to find the bit of code to do this tiny thing" kind of site, then you probably want it to be obvious how to find the right language. The "Languages" filter obviously already provides the functionality...so maybe a direct link is trivial to add. ~~~ stou I made the filters interface and I agree that its horrible. Maybe only the keywords and languages filter should be shown by default with a small '\|> more filters` link that expands the rest of them. We could have an autocompleter for all the different filter types but then one can not 'browse' things when bored... but I guess if it's a drop-down box it may work as well. Also making the search 'really nice' would be awesome but it's the same problem as above... there's no way to randomly browse for stuff. Although having the search nice and the filters hidden would allow people to find stuff and also browse for things. The search is currently 'not so bad'... it takes into account language, keywords, license etc. So you could do 'Python UTF-8' and it will return the correct things. Having language specific versions is a good idea, and it would be fairly trivial to add. ------ pg That's a very busy site. That problem is shared by all the snippets. Start deleting stuff that doesn't change (e.g. the icons), till what's left is mostly stuff that does (titles, usernames). ~~~ stou But if all that's left is the title and user name how would someone know what language or license the thing is under? Or if all the icons are deleted how would you know that 'Python' is the language and not the license... Also stuff kind of gets deleted as you apply the filters: [http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?owner_id=5&language_id=59&...](http://www.siafoo.net/snippet?owner_id=5&language_id=59&license_id=0&owner_gid=2&keyword_id=266) But it is true that most people will not care who owns something or what the license is... so maybe that sort of thing should only be displayed in some kind of 'advanced view' ~~~ pg I didn't mean only leave titles and usernames, just to cut everything you can.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017) - sturza https://danwang.co/why-so-few-computer-science-majors/ ====== ghaff One possible theory that's not mentioned in the article is that CS has probably become less approachable for those who don't enter college already somewhat versed in at least the basics. Something that is pretty much not true at all for any other STEM major. I don't do a lot of programming myself, but I took an intro Algorithms in Python MOOC from a top school a while back. I think it's fair to say that, had I no appreciable programming/using a computer background, the class would probably have been impossibly difficult for me. ~~~ friendlybus It's also less approachable for those that do know more than the current class being taught. I had been privately and self taught, going to a CS degree and learning the professor's dry and mangled way of teaching client-server architecture was like derailing a train I had been building for years and trying to drag it all the way back to the start. ~~~ imedadel Did you finish though? I've got a year and a half remaining and I'm working on some side projects and thinking about not finishing the remaining year... PS. We have to study PHP and "AI" next year here. And the final semester is an unpaid project at some local company. ~~~ friendlybus No I quit and moved to the other side of the world for a woman. Do the side projects pay and have a future? Otherwise enjoy graduating with connections. You can quit future jobs to start a side project anytime (assuming no responsibilities). ------ xyst I’ll be honest. CS doesn’t teach you how to program (anybody can learn that). CS teaches you how to think critically and analyze problems. Also CS is just very difficult, especially with all of the theoretical courses. At a certain point, it becomes a test of your resolve as a person vs your ability to program. ~~~ Cu3PO42 > CS doesn’t teach you how to program (anybody can learn that). CS teaches you > how to think critically and analyze problems. And in my opinion that's perfectly fine. On the other side many jobs that are "just" programming really shouldn't require a CS degree. It should be up to the job market to come up with reasonable requirements, not the Universities to churn out graduates with a different skill set to comply with the market. > At a certain point, it becomes a test of your resolve as a person vs your > ability to program. I feel like this sentence goes somewhat counter to what you said before. If CS isn't primarily about programming, which I agree that it isn't, why should it be a test of my ability to program? I disagree that it's merely a test of your resolve, however. Sure, you need to have resolve to complete a hard degree, but the same applies to many other subjects. I'd much rather say it's a test of your ability to think abstractly, generalise and recognise patterns. ------ bobbyz Having completed most of CS undergrad, I can think of a reason that would discourage people to transfer into CS. Programming assignments usually take the most time to complete by far. As much as half of that time is wasted trying to decipher ambiguous requirements, unclear source code, or some other symptom of careless design and what seems like a total disregard for the student's time. ~~~ Jorge1o1 Very much agree with this. In some ways it appears intentional. To avoid “giving away the answer” professors will sometimes hand you a very fuzzy set of loose rules, perhaps 2 example test cases and you’re off to the races. It’s funny because you can read about the same exact algorithm in Sedgewick or CLRS anyways, so I don’t know who they’re trying to fool. ~~~ bobbyz Every time it happens it feels like my productive work hours are being stolen from me and there is no recourse. I'm considering (am going to, haven't had the time yet) billing my professor for time wasted. ------ coretx Algebra is just math, and information sciences entail more. People go to university while they should go to school instead since universities are primarily about the progress of science while schools are not, but do primarily cater to the desire to have a job. At the end of the day, the desired output of both institutions suffers. In Japan, what many people would call basic "CS" is being taught at elementary schools in order to prepare the youth for the future... And in case my argument is still not clear, they don't receive a CS degree for their accomplishments as its nothing but yet another basic prerequisite fulfilled. ------ jedberg Previous discussion with 600+ comments (which is linked at the bottom): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14440507) ------ netsharc A CS prof of mine said studying CS to later do programming is like studying architecture to later be a house builder. I find it an apt comparison. ~~~ musicale Many (FAANG and other) companies interview with algorithm puzzles that are fairly well aligned with undergraduate algorithms courses. Perhaps one purpose of such interviews is to select people based on how recently they took an undergraduate algorithms course or equivalent. ~~~ fredley This is the only reason I can think of for still using this interview technique. ~~~ username90 They use it since it correlates better to later performance review scores than anything else they have tried. ~~~ jedberg The only way they could know that is if they occasionally hired someone who failed the interview to see if they also fail at the job. ------ tropo People hit calculus, which is almost never needed in the job market, and they give up. Lots of math and hard science is in the major. It's not an alternative to the humanities and liberal arts and languages. It's done in addition, which just isn't fair at all. Students take two or three semesters of calculus-based physics, three semesters of calculus, two semesters of discrete math, engineering statistics, linear algebra, differential equations, and often even more science. A person majoring in education could skip all that, even if intending to be a math or science teacher. ~~~ aphextron >People hit calculus, which is almost never needed in the job market, and they give up. This. I tried going back to school for a CS degree at 26 after 5 years of professional experience in the bay area as a developer. The CS classes are trivially easy, but I simply could not do the math. I paid for tutors. I lived on Khan Academy all day long. I tried three semesters in a row to pass calculus and just couldn't do it. The vast majority of people simply cannot pass the math classes required for an engineering degree. ~~~ abdullahkhalids How many questions did you do with pen and paper, without access to any outside help (book/tutors/videos)? If you start with trivially easy questions (d(x^2)/dx = 2x) and do 1000-2000 questions with very minutely increasing difficulty level, I am sure you would ultimately pass the course. Questions you do with others, or examples from the book are useful for conceptual clarity, but that clarity can only be guaranteed to be solidified if you successfully do questions without help. People often think you don't need practice to master math, but don't bat an eye when they see professional football players passing the ball to each as warm up before a big game (after having played the game for 20 years and passed the ball 100k times already). Fundamentals are important. I just started learning drums, and my music teacher has been making me practice the same beat for the past 3 months over and over again till I absolutely master it. Me and every other student is happily doing it. ------ Antoninus I graduated in CS. The education helped me in two ways: 1\. Getting an internship and then a job at a large enterprise company right after graduating. 2\. About 5 years in professional software development, I was starting to be included in architecture and system design discussion meetings with key decision makers on large projects. Where my non-cs colleagues with the same skill level could not keep up with the conversation. During the time in the between, what helped the most was having the discipline to follow through on finishing small projects that would fill the gap in areas of software development that I didn't understand at the time. I can see why most would be programmers would not want to study CS as it won't immediately help them become better programmers. In the long term, I feel that its worth it to have a grounded education in the industry that you work in. After a recent trip to the Bay Area, it doesn't feel that many new grads are about that dev life. The sentiment is get that 4-year, 1-year cliff and FIRE([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRE_movement)) ~~~ scarface74 There is absolutely nothing about modern system design that my CS degree from close to 25 years ago would have helped. Anyone can learn proper system design by working in the field and being exposed to proper design first hand. ------ sammyh One theory could be that people do not simply have the previous experience in CS the same way they have it from physics, biology, chemistry and math from college or even before. I for once was interested in physics, started in electrical engineering but transferred quickly to computer science just after few mandatory courses I had taken. ~~~ ghaff As I wrote elsewhere, my money would be on the opposite if anything. Yes, there are base level science courses in high school. But you can sign on as a chemistry, physics, or mechanical engineering major with very little beyond some basic aptitude and interest. At many schools, on the other hand, if you're following the CS curriculum you're starting off with topics like algorithms and effectively teaching yourself programming and maybe even how to use computers in parallel. This has changed a lot over time. When I got my non-CS engineering degree way back when, the one computer course I took was really a programming (FORTRAN) course that assumed zero prior knowledge. ~~~ sammyh My point was perhaps more on how much you actually get exposed CS as a subject before deciding it as something you would like to pursue in the future, unrelated to actual skill or interest in it. As an oversimplified analogy, in general, would anyone consider becoming a professional musician without having being exposed to instruments or music as a creative art form i.e. something you can actually learn and do? A hypothesis would be that if CS curriculum would be added more heavily to prior education, the amount of people majoring in CS would also rise. ~~~ ghaff Yes, in music (and much of the arts), there's an expectation that if you're enrolling in a program at school you have some degree of prior exposure. But mechanical engineering? Chemical engineering? Economics? I'd argue that kids going into those fields may have read a bit and maybe tinkered a little at the periphery. Maybe in the case of ME they were in a robot competition. Etc. But, in the case of pre-calc physics in HS for example, it barely gives a hint of what being a physics major would be like. I actually don't know how much exposure to programming there is in HS. I assume essentially no "CS" per se but then, they wouldn't have the math for the most part. But I'd argue there are actually a lot more opportunities to get exposure to computer-related stuff than there is for other fields. (To the degree, per my other comment, that there is something of an expectation at many schools that incoming students, like music majors, will have done so.) ------ salawat My CS degree if anything gave me a solid understanding of the line between problems you can solve with a computer, and the ones where you _could_ throw technology at it, but you'll inevitably create more problems than you'll solve, because the real problem is a socio-political one. It also gave me the framework of understanding to be able to reason about what is actually going on, and how. Being fluent in the major abstractions of a computer system allows you to more easily skip around between working in different real world contexts without getting flummoxed at your lack of knowledge on how that particular field does things. You know and can recognize the problems that you can best solve with a computer; so you just go ahead and fill the niche when necessary, and try to avoid the politics if you can/value your sanity/conscience. ------ musicale Unsurprisingly, CS is a very popular major (if not the most popular major) at schools near Silicon Valley. People major in it because they can get jobs. And sometimes due to it being well taught and/or fun. ------ devmunchies Anecdotal, but I minored in CS so I wouldn’t be counted, even though I took the core algorithm courses and have continued studying since graduating 5 years ago. I don’t see how one would know what they needed to interview at a FAANG without taking data structures and algorithms courses. ------ uncletaco I skimmed the article so tell me if I'm missing something here but in my experience computer science isn't the major of choice to become a "programmer" anymore. Having gone through the hiring process at three different companies focused on both desktop and web based software, computer science majors were an extreme minority. Most people had a business degree with a programming component attached like Management & Information Systems. Maybe it its worth looking into how many would be CS majors choose to do the less math intensive but more industry relevant business school option. ------ alistproducer2 CS grad here. It was a difficult major and I used very little at work. It did, however, change the way I think about everything and im glad I did it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A model for using equity as compensation in the early days - grubhubmike http://www.grubhubmike.com/2011/03/overcompensating-with-equity.html ====== nabraham The real question is how far above market do you want to go and what should the equity/cash split be. If you pay 20% cash + 80% equity to employee, the wage has to overcome stock liquidity issues, and control issues. 5% after 18 months may not be motivating to someone early on who's taking you at your word your map is correct while they do all the driving.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Homeland Security: Requirements for Security Decision Support Systems (2004) - vs4vijay http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA465876 ====== UVB-76 This doesn't appear to have much, if anything, to do with the so-called 'PRISM' everyone is talking about at the moment. Also, the presentation has been freely available online for some time: [http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA465876](http://www.dtic.mil/cgi- bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA465876) ------ InternalRun I cannot read it on this site, readable version on cryptome: [http://cryptome.org/2013/06/dhs-prism.pdf](http://cryptome.org/2013/06/dhs- prism.pdf) ------ danso Question for those in defense contracting: is there a style guide for writing such proposals and does one of its tips include: "Refer to 9/11 as often and as early as you can"? ~~~ ims This paper was apparently written by an Army officer, not a defense contractor (although he may work in acquisitions). Believe it or not, many people who work in government and the defense industry spend a lot of time thinking about 9/11\. Not so outlandish that this would show up in their writing. ~~~ danso Thinking about 9/11 and being concerned about 9/11 is not the same as using it as a rhetorical device four times in the first four paragraphs of the introduction. He's writing to a military audience, not to an audience who is unaware of 9/11's significance and how it may compare to Pearl Harbor ------ gluecode The screenshots in the documentation have IE browser with non-SSL URLs. Really shitty looking apps. ------ hannibal5 This is not the PRISM/US-984XN. This is decision support system for DHS with same name.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
San Francisco, Seattle included in list of "at risk" cities for DTV transition - ilamont http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/16/high-tech-cities-included-risk-list-dtv-transition ====== yan I'm amused at the phrase "at risk" being used to refer to people losing TV signal, akin to some disease, where I view it as completely the opposite. ~~~ cpr Those poor people are "at risk" of escaping the mass mind control that our overlords expect to maintain. ~~~ cpr Interesting. Downvoted because someone thinks that TV is a net positive for the people addicted to it... ------ ninjackn I require more data! So San Francisco/San Jose/Oakland and Seattle/Tacoma is on the at risk list because: "relatively high numbers of residents who watch analog over-the-air television broadcasts and relatively low participation in the NTIA's TV Converter Box Coupon Program." but how many of them don't need the converter box coupon? The Bay Area is home to Silicon Valley, would it be safe to say that a large number of them have purchased HDTVs and don't require a converter box? ~~~ wmf In general, people with HDTVs also have cable or satellite and people with rabbit ears have old tube TVs. ~~~ erickhill I have a Sony Bravia HDTV plugged into my house antennae. No cable. The reception is better than cable, and I get an array of HD-only channels I never even knew existed. For example, in the Bay Area, I can get a weather-only channel from ABC (7.3), a weird traffic channel that shows 4 camera views poised at different highways, and a multitude of PBS channels (9.1, 9.2, 9.3, etc.) all with a picture better than you would believe possible. I don't need all the infomercial channels cable provides, nor the sensationalist "news" channels. Sure, I miss ESPN from time to time, but thanks to my father-in-law's Slingbox, I can get my fix when I need it. You'd be surprised how easily it is to ween yourself off of cable TV. As long as I have my cable Internet connection, and my FREE HD channels - sorry, and Netflix - I'm good to go. ------ coliveira I am surprised that they were not in this list already!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Do you learn a lot from IRC? - joeclef I just set up an IRC and I was curious to see what you guys think of it in terms of learning opportunities? Would you say that Stack Overflow is more useful and/or better? Thanks ====== theGREENsuit I've used IRC a handful of times and the greatest benefit is having instant answers to a problem that may be very specific to my environment. I try not to use IRC unless I'm stuck on something I can't find in SO first. The only times I'll try IRC is when I feel I've tried hard to solve the issue without success. Most of my issues have been solved by SO. I could be missing out on a great way to learn but I feel if I was on IRC I'd be asking too many questions and not digging for the answers myself. ------ SEJeff Most all open source developers are on IRC. I find my productivity goes WAY up when I can talk directly to the developers of some software I'm trying to use or extend. ------ chippy All new users to IRC need to understand that there is a loose etiquette to asking questions. In general for help this may assist someone: [http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart- questions.html](http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html) and for IRC - this may help: [http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxHelpAsk.html](http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxHelpAsk.html) In my experience the two main points 1) "Don't ask to ask, just ask". Which means don't type "can I ask a question about Hacker News please?" just go ahead and type your question! 2) Don't ask if someone is there to help. Instead of typing "Can someone help me with a bug about Hacker News?" just go ahead and type about the bug! and a lesser point, now that many IRC rooms are less busy than they once were, is to wait for an answer. If need be, repeat your question in a few hours. Now - the benefit of IRC in asking questions is the rapid narrowing down of what the question actually is. This sounds simple, but it's a crucial part of bug finding, and help giving, the helper has to know what you are asking. ~~~ Rainymood The two main points sound counter-intuitive to newcomers (like myself). You think it's polite to ask 'Can I ask you a question' and you get a 'rude' reply with 'Geez, just ask the question'. I just want to add 3) IRC is not like whatsapp/fb chat, you are allowed to ask longer sentences. The instant replies are also nice and feel more human. ------ ErikRogneby Stack overflow I think of more as: "I have this piece of broken code and can't figure out what's wrong". IRC is great for "how would I go about doing X". ------ matthewarkin I've learned quite a bit from IRC (mostly in #stripe). Though the learning has been way more indirect since I spend most of my time helping others. So people would ask "how do I do X?" and the learning comes from researching ways to do that and evaluating the pros and cons of each. The second way that I've just learned is by getting exposure to how a ton of people have integrated certain aspects. Stack overflow is great for solving individual bugs (which definitely works in some IRC rooms), while IRC is more of a "how to do something" or "why should I do it this way" type of environment ------ hoverbear IRC is central to my development as a _companion_ to searching the web. In IRC you can have real time discussion and get good, immediate leads on problems too arcane for Stack Overflow et al. ------ spdustin IRC has definitely been a great place for me to learn from and interact with the developers of OSS. Not too long ago, I had a strange un-googleable (that's a word now, I insist) error in Canvas LMS (an open source learning management system), and ended up in a dialog with one of the developers. Turned out to be an obscure (to me, anyway) 32/64-bit bug that I wouldn't have ever figured out on my own, and I contributed a patch to fix it. A great experience. ------ jpgvm If you are interested in contributing to OSS then IRC is basically a must. Get yourself connected to freenode.net, irc.mozilla.org and irc.oftc.net to start with. Join channels related to your operating system, programming language and frameworks of choice. Just lurking will probably teach you a bunch but you should try to interact and become part of the community. ------ nso95 I've personally never found IRC useful for learning. People seem generally uninterested in helping with problems. ------ soyiuz I have been using IRC on and off since the nineties. In the past few years, I usually enter a channel, ask a question, wait to make sure no one answers (nobody does), then move on to stack exchange or reddit to actually get some interaction. ------ spacemanmatt Sometimes SO has the answer, but I can almost always get a better discussion of the answer and surrounding topic on IRC. I can also get help on IRC when I don't know how to search for the solution or evaluate multiple solutions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Introducing SPDY - jgrahamc http://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-spdy ====== joubert _SPDY is built on top of TLS, which means it requires a site to have a valid SSL certificate in order to work. This, unfortunately, limits SPDY only to CloudFlare's paid customers who have enabled Flexible or Full SSL support. Microsoft is working on revised IETF proposal that is SPDY-like, but removes the requirement for SSL/TLS. If the TLS requirement is removed in the future, we'll make SPDY (or whatever it comes to be called) available more broadly._ Can SPDY theoretically be transitioned to not be built on top of TLS, or is the MSFT work a more likely solution? ~~~ mdwelsh SPDY does not technically require TLS, but It's the Right Thing To Do [tm]. According to Mike Belshe, there are two reasons that SPDY was designed to use TLS. The first was pragmatic: Middleboxes on the Internet wouldn't be able to pass through non-HTTP traffic, so unless a different port was used, the only way to punch through the various proxy layers was to use end-to-end security. But the other reason is just as important: It's 2012, folks. It seems insane that most Web traffic goes in the clear. Browsers are fully capable of doing the SSL handshake without incurring a major performance cost - even on mobile devices. Finally, we may not get another chance to change the web protocol stack for another 15 years, so it's best to get it right now. ------ septerr "By gathering all scripts, regardless of where they're hosted, into a single HTTP request, Rocket Loader limits the number of HTTP connections that are needed. This also means that even third party scripts that appear on your page are requested under your site's domain. " How do you do that? ~~~ mbrubeck CloudFlare's server acts as a proxy. It downloads each resource over HTTP from its original location and caches it, then delivers all the resources to the client over SPDY. The preceding paragraph explains it: _"For SPDY support, CloudFlare acts as a gateway... We handle the multiplexing and begin sending down objects we already have in our cache. The request to the origin server for non-cached objects is sent over standard HTTP/S."_ This is similar to the proxy mode in Amazon's Silk browser for Kindle Fire. ~~~ igrigorik Do you rewrite the hosts on all third party sites to be the site domain? I'm still not following this setup. Silk is an entirely different setup. Silk (a) manually sets their SPDY gateway as a browser proxy, which is a system level setting, and (b) silk does not tunnel HTTPS requests. CloudFlare obviously doesn't have control over my browsers proxy settings, so if the page I'm loading is abc.com/page, and that page has a request to twitter.com/widget.js, then the browser _should_ open a connection directly to twitter.com to fetch that resource. P.S. SPDY does allow tunneling HTTPS, but once again, that requires a system level proxy setup. ~~~ moonboots To use cloudflare's "rocket loader", the host domain dns record must point to cloudflare instead of the origin server. If abc.com were using cloudflare, a user's request to abc.com/page would first hit cloudflare's server. Cloudflare would then proxy the request to abc's origin server, rewrite 3rd party urls, and return the modified content to the user. I'm not sure how well cloudflare handles http vary headers, e.g. 3rd party resources that serve different content depending on cookies or user agent. An example could be google web fonts which serves different css and fonts to different browsers. ~~~ igrigorik Looking through CF's own site, plus a few of their "case study" links, I don't see the domain rewriting happening on these scripts. And as you indicated, with additional complication of user cookies / HTTP vary, I'm not sure that's necessarily a good idea either -- if either of those in place, all of your cache optimizations go out the door. Best gotcha example: ads. Seems like there is a bit of false advertising going on here. ~~~ eli That doesn't seem like a big deal. If you have requirements that every request hit your server then, duh, you can't have a caching proxy in front of your pages. I think _very_ few ads work that way, though. It's almost always a javascript include (often from a 3rd party ad server). ~~~ igrigorik I'm saying the oppposite. I have no reason to proxy twitter.js or other ads scripts on my site. If CF is taking the step to rewrite those to the same domain, then they also have to guard for respecting all the cache implications of that. ------ nemo1618 Interesting. I wonder if moot will adopt this for 4chan. Recently he's seemed interested in optimizing the site (most notably by cleaning up the HTML/CSS and adding mobile support). ~~~ sirn 4chan is already using CloudFlare Pro (you can check by visiting their SSL url, they're using CloudFlare cert), so it should be easy for him to enable SPDY support. ------ grandalf Is cloudflare mainstream? Any testimonials? Sounds pretty cool.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Software Architecture Patterns [pdf] - pykello http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-architecture-patterns.pdf ====== markbnj As someone who has the word "architect" in his software job title I feel like pretty much everything I read on the topic only serves to confirm that nobody knows exactly what software architecture is. I felt that way after reading "The Architecture of Open Source Software," which was essentially comprised of a set of discussions of how various popular applications were put together at varying levels of abstraction and without unifying themes of any kind. I feel that way after browsing this PDF of architectural "patterns" too. When "layered" and "event driven" are presented as sibling patterns at a common level of abstraction I don't think there is any underlying principle at work that makes sense. Or at the very least, if there is someone will have to point it out to me. ~~~ userbinator The one thing that I think everyone can agree on about software architecture is that it involves abstraction - and often copious amounts of it. I've heard "the job of architects is to add abstractions to a design; the job of developers is to remove them"... possibly in reference to this article: [http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000018.html) ~~~ fsloth That's a horrible description. The best people with "software architect" in their title that I have worked with have focused on total system quality through striving towards simplicity mainly by focusing on development _and_ tooling _and_ using their position as the arbiter of technical decisions to guide the system under development to coherent whole that fullfills the business requirements in a technically sound way. The most complex design tool outside of an IDE I've seen these guys use is plaintext and simple diagrams. They grok the thing that is being built in their heads from the CPU caches to the end-user abstraction. The most horrible architects I've observed deliver UML:s, search for the most complex technical thing their mind can think of to solve a problem and then after saving the UML to disk think their job is "done" and hand-wave through the rest of the development pointing to the UML boxes. The mediocre architects are a mix of these two. An architect who is not participating in hands-on coding is a serious red-flag about the quality of the development organization in most instances to me. I'm sure there are counter-examples :) ~~~ ahawkins > That's a horrible description. The best people with "software architect" in > their title that I have worked with have focused on total system quality > through striving towards simplicity mainly by focusing on development and > tooling and using their position as the arbiter of technical decisions to > guide the system under development to coherent whole that fullfills the > business requirements in a technically sound way. Thanks for the this. This paragraphs sums up perfectly what I strive for in my day to day work. It's clear and concise. ~~~ markbnj Agreed. That is as good a description of the architect's role as I've read. It is certainly what I try to do on a daily basis. ------ petercooper I definitely support direct linking to things on the Web, but since O'Reilly probably meant for this to only be grabbed via an initial landing page, I figured I'd link to it too in case anyone wants some background separate to the PDF: [http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/software- architectur...](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/software-architecture- patterns.csp) ~~~ nofinator Yes, although it's a free eBook, O'Reilly wants you to register with your name and e-mail address. If you do that, you can also get the book in ePub or Mobi format. ------ Zigurd It's a good overview. But you can only touch on things at an introductory level in 45 pages, so don't expect all the issues to get explored. I had one of those "So THAT'S what he was trying to do" moments when I realized that the architecture of an Android API layer that a client was having trouble with was attempting to be a microservices architecture. Instead it bollixed up the way Cursor objects work by trying to pass them across an AIDL-based remote API. I bet that's not the last time I see that misapplication of a pattern. ------ emrox epub: [http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software- archi...](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-architecture- patterns.epub) mobi: [http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software- archi...](http://www.oreilly.com/programming/free/files/software-architecture- patterns.mobi) ------ yodsanklai Software architecture is difficult to learn. Unlike "small scale" programming, you don't have instant feedback on the validity of your solution and you can't easily experiment with different solutions. Actually, as a student, I don't think I ever had a class on this topic. I think what could be great is to have a tool that allows you to "program" and analyze architectures. And then exercises to experiment with varieties of architectures. ------ userbinator A little offtopic, but does anyone else think a 5MB+ PDF for 55 pages of mostly text is unusually large? I was expecting somewhat more content for that size... it also doesn't appear to be of the "every page is an image of the text" type. ~~~ zerocrates It embeds 12 fonts. I'd assume that accounts for a somewhat significant amount of that size.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Are Programming Languages Sites So Ugly? - sgdesign http://sachagreif.com/why-programming-languages-sites-are-ugly/ ====== olalonde > [...] PHP is an old language [...] More modern languages like Python or Ruby > have somewhat decent sites. Just a nitpick but PHP (1995) is not older than Ruby (1995) or Python (1991). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHP> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_(programming_language)> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Python_(programming_language)> ------ hermanhermitage I think its in the eye of the beholder. The Go site looks fine to me, whilst <https://github.com/404> is downright ugly. EDIT: I notice how the OP link is a horrid design too. This has to be a troll. ~~~ sgdesign Would love to know what's so horrid about my site's design. ~~~ hermanhermitage Hopefully you'll ignore my opinion - its all in the eye of the beholder from my perspective :) (The basis of that not being UX - thanks to whomever raised that random distraction, but about Beauty / Ugliness as cited in your headline). You aren't going to please everyone all the time, and certainly your design gets a reaction from me. My assessment is made in the context of you assessing other designs - hoist with your own petard if you will. This heightens the situation - that is I'd expect an exemplary design on a page willing to comment on others. The number one turn off for me would be the choice of font. It certainly comes of as playful and dare I comment on Mark's work (for I shall) - I do not think that quality of font is suitable for body text. No it's not in the comic sans league, but it evokes unpleasant sensations. This could be the font itself or font rendering on Chrome on the Mac. Quite frankly I find it horrid. Next for me is the typographical structure. The spacing is aggressive and draws attention to the font - which is undesirable for me given my reaction to the font. All your headings have what appears to be the same amount of white space above and below. It feels rather generic and rushed. Finally the elements on the right hand side are too dominant for my liking and draw focus away from the article. Perhaps as they contain advertising material that is the intent. But it doesn't do much for me. Take it all with a grain of salt, I think it was Keith Richards who had a comment about opinions being like... :) ------ anigbrowl They're a reflection of the people who create them (rimshot). Honestly, I blame Unix/Gnu (<http://www.gnu.org/>). Most programmers are command-line oriented and think GUIs are a distraction. It doesn't bother them that most newbies have no means of discovering features absent menus and suchlike, and that means design takes a backseat on their websites too. I personally thought the go website was a lot better than most; at least it's (semantically) accessible, even if it's cartoonish. ~~~ k3n I agree with you, and would add that the precursor to the modern full-featured browser-based WWW was a CLI-based web (Lynx et. all), whereby the only means of formatting text were akin to what you get out of a word processor (linebreaks, bold, italics, etc.). Also, most programmers (like those making the languages) aren't designers, and when they try to be, very bad things can happen[1]. Could they hire a designer? Probably not, seeing as most of those projects are FOSS, and the maintainers get paid nothing for their efforts. There's also the fact that the maintainers of those languages, and likely a majority of the users, would prefer development efforts be focused on the language itself and not its website. [1] [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/this-is-what- happen...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/11/this-is-what-happens-when- you-let-developers-create-ui.html) ------ Detrus The current Go homepage is surprisingly good functionally and aesthetically. PHP, Clojure, Haskell sites look like monolithic corporate website templates aesthetically. The main problem is with the author who can't appreciate good design when it doesn't fit his trendy aesthetic sensibilities. ------ archgoon What are the problems with Go's website? If the website appeals to the target audience, than it's designed correctly. ~~~ sgdesign Maybe the problem is precisely the target audience. The current site only appeals to a very specific kind of people. ~~~ archgoon Let me rephrase: What are some specific objections that you have with the Go website? ~~~ sgdesign If you can't compare the Go site and, say, <http://git-scm.com/> and see which one is better designed, then I don't think anything I can say will change your mind. It's just a general feeling, specific objections are not important. But here are a few anyway: -There is no logo to establish a brand identity \- The mascot looks amateurish \- There is no thought given to typograph or colors. Contrast this with the Git site where, for example, body copy is not pure black to avoid a harsh contrast. \- The documentation uses a fluid width layout which hurts readability on wide screens ~~~ simanyay Why don't you link to git-scm circa 2009 (when Git started getting popular): [http://web.archive.org/web/20090303081943/http://git- scm.com...](http://web.archive.org/web/20090303081943/http://git-scm.com/) No brand identity? Mascot (or whatever it is in the header) looks amateurish? No thought given ot typograph? And somehow Git managed to kick everyone's ass. Here's a hint how: by being better than all other version control systems and not by having the prettiest website. ~~~ minikomi I love the old git site to be honest. Less eye candy but far more direct in achieving what it does. Hard to knock the domo-kun-esque mascot - with a "you'll get it when you're ready" in-joke to boot. ------ zalew > Having the PHP site in your design portfolio would open doors with a lot of > people. That's true for beginners with a weak portfolio. Experienced ones don't care about php, they have commercial projects in there. > Plus, a lot of designers are already spending their time working for free > anyway. If you don’t believe me, just look at the number of Instagram > redesigns or iTunes icons on Dribbble. Hey, let's try to find a programmer who will code your website for free. Lots of them do stuff for free anyway, just look on github and bitbucket. Now seriously (I am aware there are a lot of generalizations in there, but I think they are not far from the most common): The thing is, just like coders publish opensource, designers publish icons and redux because it's their cause, their branch, their market. And just like you wouldn't code a random designer's project while publishing lots of libraries for other programmers, he won't design yours while publishing fonts and icons elswhere to prove something. Second, while programming in commitee works (in general), webdesign by commitee doesn't and always results in crap. And experienced designers have the 'my way or the highway' approach anyway. Third, most designers just don't get opensource quite well, while most opensource gurus just don't get design quite well. The former ones don't feel why they should do it, the latter ones don't feel the need to make use of the ones who would even if they are there. If a designer finds a programmer who will work for free, 99% chance he's very unexperienced. The same comes to getting a designer for free. ps. let's see how the Django redesign works out [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- de...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- developers/2Xy7SZAOc7E) ~~~ sgdesign I would love to prove you wrong, so let's hope somebody contacts me to redesign their site through this article. ~~~ zalew It would be even better if you started up a trend of designers making cool websites for opensource projects, for free. A gang of opensource designers, that's an awesome idea. I'm really surprised reading a lot of comments about not seeing what's wrong with php or golang sites. Ugh. ------ twog Sacha, If you are interested, I would love to team up with you to contribute an open source design and I will do the markup. As a developer, I have long hated the design of many sites. After the awesome redesign of <http://git-scm.com/> I wanted to make contribute another design to one of the terrible OSS sites that are out there. What do you say, are you interested in teaming up? ~~~ twog My portfolio is at <http://twogiraffes.com> ------ halefx Just FYI, PHP has had a redesign in the works for a long time. <http://prototype.php.net/> ~~~ sgdesign Much nicer! ------ Alexandervn It's not about being "ugly" and needing help to become "beautiful". It's what you are trying to tell people. Partly, it's a good thing if these sites look a bit amateurish, because they should look grassroots. It should look like: wow, I can join this. It should look authentic. A nice example of this is www.drupal.org (where you can join) versus www.drupal.com (where you should "buy"). The new Git website is very nice. But is also a very mature project. It doesn't need help from thousands of people. It needs a lot of consumers and maybe some brilliant minds to share their ideas. What the Go website tells: this is a very young project (not even a logo), we have some backing from Google (hence the name and the colours), we have something good (by calling it "easy" and "reliable"), but we could need your help (by still calling it "The Project") and you might want to _try_ (look you can even try it top-left on our homepage) this if you are curious and want to have fun (see our goofy, eye-rolling, mascot). ------ k3n It's like an unwritten maxim: the more technical a site is, the more basic its design. A corollary might be: the more in-demand (famous) a person is, the more basic their site will be. Here's some "homepages" from programming gurus: Dennis Ritchie: <http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/who/dmr/> Brian Kernighan: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/> Bjarne Stroustrup: <http://www.stroustrup.com/> Richard Stallman: <http://stallman.org/> ~~~ minikomi Don't forget <http://norvig.com/> ~~~ k3n Hah, yes, there's tons out there. ------ luriel I think the main Go site could be improved, but i quite like the new version of the Go tour: <http://tour.golang.org> ------ melvinmt Sorry, your active link colors distracted me. What were you saying? Ergo, I can't be bothered to look at funny 404 cartoons when I'm trying to read documentation. ~~~ saiko-chriskun active link colors distracted you? what? so.. you don't use syntax highlighting in your editor? and what exactly does a 404 page have to do with a page with actual content. ------ the_cat_kittles It kind of reflects the aesthetic of the given language itself, to some degree- for instance, <http://docs.python-requests.org/en/latest/index.html> <http://flask.pocoo.org/> both seem clean in the way python is, visually. ~~~ yen223 That website for Requests to me is a great example that you don't have to choose between being beautiful and being functional. ~~~ kenneth_reitz <3 ------ geoka9 There's another reason, I think. Making a site look fashionable (and web design is really like the clothes industry in that sense) will require the authors to revisit it avery year or so, whenever the design fad du jour changes. While black text on white background is like jeans and t-shirts - not too hip, but always acceptable. ------ laumars What a stupid article. Looking pretty is far less important than being functional. And his site is the perfect example of that; it looked pretty, but the content only took up a 50% column of the total viewable space (and that's without having my browser window set to full screen). His site would be terrible for productivity driven sites like PHP's manual. Also I reject his premiss that language sites need to be pretty to attract developers. You pick a language based on it's suitability for a project, not whether it has lashes of CSS3 and bespoke type-faces. To even suggest otherwise is painfully superficial. There's an old adage: less is more. And I think that's very true when discussing sites that are designed to serve content rather than sell content. ------ maratd > PHP is an old language, a relic of a bygone era! > And there’s some truth to this. > More modern languages like Python or Ruby have somewhat decent sites. Ruby and Python were both around way before PHP. Get your story straight, Mr. Hater. ~~~ sgdesign I'm confused if you're accusing me of hating on PHP, or Ruby & Python, or all of them. In any case I'm sure you know what I mean, there's clearly a move away from PHP and towards Ruby & Python, at least in these parts. ~~~ ChiperSoft Ruby & Python are growing, but not at the cost of PHP. New developers are choosing non-PHP languages when moving into the market. ------ ChiperSoft How can you give the PHP site a hard time for looking old and then praise Python's modified WikiMedia layout? The point of all of these sites is to maximize functionality and make language information easy to get at. All that maters is UX, graphical niceties don't improve on that, and no one serious about learning a new language is really going to be dissuaded by "ugliness". But the real answer to the title question is simple: They're made by programmers, not designers. ~~~ yen223 PHP's main page is a good example of how _not_ to design a main page. \- The first thing the user sees is a _massive_ wall of text. The whole site looks visually cluttered. Everything is arranged haphazardly. \- The more useful parts (e.g. the introduction, documentation links, download links) are hidden away in small corners of the site. \- The relatively useless Events and News sections take up >80% of the site. Python's site looks slightly better, but not by much. ~~~ Akram Because the best way to browse the enormous PHP site is via Google search. Type in your query and Google will point you to the specific page you are looking for. ~~~ ryankey The PHP site doesn't need a massive facelift, but honestly, this is actually a bit of a problem. The site is basically just a hosting of the resources already, why not make it easier to find things from inside the site? ------ freestylesno I think a big part of it has to do with the fact that a lot of the people using the languages are engineers or like minded people. ------ samrat I think the Python Software Foundation was asking for redesign proposals for the Python site a while ago; so we might see some improvements for the Python site. I don't find the Python site particularly ugly, but I think the docs could improve a lot. Same goes for a lot of other python frameworks that use the default Sphinx template. ------ Akram Design is irrelevant when it comes to programing sites. We programmers want to get straight to the code and some times design becomes a distraction. I have no issues with the Go site and even the PHP site. It is great until I can quickly find what I'm looking for. ~~~ frechg If the design is a distraction then it is bad design. Good design would help you easily and happily "get straight to the code". ------ geoka9 Because they contain documentation and have to be fast and readable. While modern web-design, it seems, is bent on creating slow sites with barely readable gray letters on off-white backgrounds. ------ sgdesign Note: this post was inspired by this discussion on the Go thread yesterday: <http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=4548144> ------ labizaboffle A lot of Ruby sites are nice, like: <http://guides.rubyonrails.org/getting_started.html> ------ simanyay Look at this site: <http://kernel.org/> Design is plain, the mascot looks amateurish, there is no logo to establish brand identity. They don't know how to sell anything, this will never catch on. ~~~ sgdesign Perfect example of a strawman argument. Nobody said that bad design was preventing something from catching on at all. I said that good design would _help_ something catch on. ~~~ simanyay Except that you did: > I know you pretend like you don’t care, but I’m sure that down deep you’re > wondering why NodeJS is getting all the attention instead of you. ------ Daniel_Newby But! but! but! Django has a pony!!! <http://djangopony.com/> ~~~ zalew the actual django page is being redesigned [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- de...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/django- developers/2Xy7SZAOc7E)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What is that one deciding factor that makes a website successful? - ziggystardust I have known a lot of people who have ventured into the 'website' business and found the initial success and disappeared after a while.<p>I'm curious about what makes the successful ones successful . I've seen beautifully designed, high quality content sites fail.<p>so I've come to the conclusion that the key factor is scaling. even if you've programmed your site to scale, unless you pour in the dough to scale your servers and allow more people to come in you're gonna fail. Is this the deciding factor? what according to you is that one deciding factor? ====== afarrell This is like asking "what is that one deciding factor that makes a small business successful?" It is too broad and so there is no one deciding factor. You don't even have a clear definition of success. Is [http://lawcomic.net/](http://lawcomic.net/) successful? It has a loyal following, but it doesn't update that much, or earn much money for its creator. ~~~ grecy > _" what is that one deciding factor that makes a small business > successful?"_ Actually, there is an answer to that, and it's the answer to OPs question. Customers. It doesn't make a lick of difference how well (or how badly) you do anything else - you might have great customer service, a slick UI and ready to scale to millions of unsers instantly. Without customers, you have nothing. ~~~ brianwawok I think that is 1 step too far. Why does a site have customers? Not because it has customers. But something else. And I think that something else is usefulness. Look at any busineas or site that is successful. To someone, it is useful. ------ emilyfm The one factor: meet a need. If you're selling something, make it something that people want at the right price and make it easy for them to buy. If you're selling advertising (you're a decade late on that one...), give people a reason to come back to the site - make the site sticky or have network effects. Scaling comes later (assuming your initial design isn't a complete resource hog). It literally follows the money. ~~~ Lordarminius > The one factor: meet a need. One answer that captures the essence of the issue and provides the correct answer is downvoted. Honestly I do not get HN members at all ------ id122015 Niche is one of the main one. Most people have limited time and limited memory and wont use more than a dozen sites every day. Even though I use to bookmark thousands of websites, when Im bored I dont find it easy to remember more than 5 sites that I'm interested in. ------ armini Like everything else, I look at nature for guidance. In this case the Epidemiologic Triad ([https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/node/25](https://onlinecourses.science.psu.edu/stat507/node/25)). My understanding (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) of it in the context of good websites is Host: You need a great host/site, something stable & something people want to use Agent: I consider agents as internal factors like technical, sales & marketing, They help you grow & the ensure stability. Environment: Environment is pretty much your jurisdiction, you need to make sure that your solution is legal & your environment is supporting of you growing. Another fascinating theory to study around that is the Overton window ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window)). Vector: A vector, an organism which transmits infection by conveying the pathogen from one host to another, with the most powerful agent been word of mouth. I guess if you have these 4 components structure well, then you have a pretty good chance of having a successful website according to the Epidemiologic Triad. Now if you're question is more around business models, then heres also another good resource to look into by HBR ([https://hbr.org/2016/10/the- transformative-business-model](https://hbr.org/2016/10/the-transformative- business-model)) ------ unimpressive From what I've observed of my own behavior, the way to get me to consistently check back on a blog is to let me know the blog exists, be in my general category of interest, _and then consistently update with impressively good content_. I first got hooked on slatestarcodex ([http://slatestarcodex.com/](http://slatestarcodex.com/)) when the author hit a five post homerun streak and he was just too good to not check in with. When I'm evaluating whether to follow a tumblr I can see the process unfold in real time, where I scroll down and finally think to follow after I see several really good posts at once. The moment I stopped and saw myself doing that I realized if I ever wanted to get followers on tumblr my blog would probably need to have the same kind of five-post punch to get people interested. So. 1\. Update often. 2\. Make it easy to find your new stuff, or display your archive proudly and live off the interest. 3\. Keep a high quality bar. It might even be useful to take your absolute best and put it in one place so you can show people your better side. 4\. Market aggressively or be prepared to wait a while. ------ prawn I would've thought that scaling was a fair way down the list. Don't scale prematurely is one mantra commonly mentioned. It's also question that needs to be better defined. What sort of site? What definition of success? For many sites, the biggest pieces are having something that people want or need, then consistently providing it. Of that pairing, having something people want is the absolute core. ------ WheelsAtLarge Very generally speaking, fill people's needs.. Look at maslow's hierarchy of needs, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs). You'll get some ideas. More to the point, making sure people know about it and the site is easy to use. Beautiful design is nice but if it gets in the way people will admire it once, twice... and finally give up. Don't let content get stale. ------ z3t4 Content is king, don't worry about design or scalability. Just look at HN <grin> ------ Mz I think you need to specify here what you mean by _success._ It sounds to me like you mean something like "made someone rich," which is a far cry from what I was thinking when I came here intending to try to articulate something only to realize it is almost certainly wholly unrelated to what you are talking about. ~~~ ziggystardust by successful I mean a useful site that its users (hopefully lots n lots of them) use on a regular basis. revenue is not the success deciding factor for me. its one way to look at it.. another way is something so useful that it eventually becomes synonymous with its domain. I hope you're getting where i'm going with this :) ------ lgas Having a good mix of other factors. ------ timehastoldme The site owners not expecting there to be one deciding factor that would make it successful. ------ adamqureshi What is the one deciding factor that makes a business successful? Swap out website for business. Revenue. If your business makes money therefore it's successful. Swap out users if your website / business earns ad rev. ~~~ ziggystardust wouldn't you agree that craigslist was successful before even it made a buck ? ------ hasanzuav Kind of the YCombinator mantra: "make something people want". Talk to potential/existing users often and use that information to be laser focused on product building. ------ xapata That's like asking what the one deciding factor for cancer is. ------ zerognowl Make your site work in any browser, and make it accessible. The sheer volume of useful sites that break because of poor accessibility and design antipatterns is astonishing. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- pattern](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern) The audacity of webmasters who think all their users have JavaScript enabled is quite cruel and shows that this problem is endemic of lack of education about who your visitors _are_. Infact your visitors could be anybody and they could have any configuration. ------ threesixandnine The deciding factor that makes a website successful is offering info or tools that people look for and need. ------ garethsprice It meets the needs of its users while fulfilling the objectives of its creators. ------ erikpukinskis Does what it says. ------ atultherajput Its all about marketing strategy. ------ estefan Satisfying a need. ------ gjolund Accessibility. ------ Gustomaximus Profit. ------ gcatalfamo Speed. ------ ttam its purpose ------ probinso hyperlinks	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is This Economist Too Far Ahead of His Time? - Hooke http://www.chronicle.com/article/is-this-economist-too-far/238050 ====== philipkglass _The book’s premise is that in about a century, it will be possible to scan human brains at "fine enough spatial and chemical resolution," and to combine that with good-enough models of signal-processing functions of brain cells, "to create a cell-by-cell dynamically executable model of the full brain in artificial hardware, a model whose signal input-output behavior is usefully close to that of the original brain."_ Like Bostrom and Kurzweil I think this guy is seriously underestimating the difficulty of biology. I don't believe in souls or non-computable woo going on in our brains. I do believe that biology is _insanely_ complicated compared to computing or physics; physicists, engineers, and people from a computing background who've never worked in biology tend to handwave incredibly difficult problems. See also: the long and mostly-unsuccessful history of people who thought that they could replace animal/cell culture drug testing with models in silico. On top of the sheer audacious difficulty of creating whole brain emulations, there's the problem of competing with boring old "narrow" AI. Surely an economist of all people should recognize the feedback loop that makes narrow AI profitable first, which attracts more investment, which unlocks more capabilities without biological emulation... how many of today's jobs are going to be left un-done by narrow AI a century from now, even if whole brain emulations are finally practical then? ~~~ SubiculumCode I attended a primer lecture on tbe immune system. Holy hell. At least 200 different types of T cells. At least 200 other types of immune cells. Then there are all their interactions, signaling, locating, memory functions. I honestly dont know if one can ever get a handle on the complexity. ~~~ AstralStorm It is not complexity, but diversity. The functions those cells perform are mostly understood as are most mechanisms by which they work. There are many variants of a similar function and mechanism. That said, immunology is still quite young too, but compared to it neuroscience is not even born. ~~~ SubiculumCode For a large part we understand how two particles can interact. Simple rules. Put together 200 of those particles, predictions become very difficult and complex. ------ mentos Anyone that hasn't yet, check out Black Mirror on Netflix. It has a lot of ideas in it that I am surprised to see in a show in 2016. I love Elon Musk but I think he is solving the wrong problem when it comes to making human beings a space faring species. The fragility of human flesh is the barrier to colonizing space. You can try to solve this problem by wrapping it in a contained atmosphere or wait a thousand years and send humans to Mars in a different kind of space ship. One made of metal and silicon that can recharge its batteries so long as it has a line of sight on a distant star.. maybe as the article says: "a robotic body [standing] roughly two millimeters tall" The greatest challenge we face is keeping this incubator called Earth alive long enough for us to develop the technology to abandon our flesh. But I imagine if that day ever comes what it means to be human will have been destroyed in the end anyways. ~~~ the_duke I recently discovered Black Mirror. It's a great and fascinating series. Finally something other then the mind numbing pabulum that is most TV. I especially loved season 1 / episode 2. \--- The way our brain works, all experience, self consciousness and awareness is intricately linked to physical perception. If we were to go the 'brain in a petri dish' route, we would have to fake all those signals a body would send to the brain. If we just start emulating the brain physiology digitally, that is easier of course. But I would not call the result of either method a 'human being', but something inherently different. ~~~ internaut Watch Utopia. [http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia) I judge it better than Black Mirror. Don't google any information about it because it will sound stupid, just watch it outright. ------ Animats Living in VR, and the implications thereof, have been written about in SF for decades. The earliest work is "Simulacron 3", from 1964. It's been done to death in anime. "Sword Art Online" is probably the best known stuck-in-VR anime, but "Log Horizon" deals with the philosophical aspects in more depth. Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. Read Hanson's list of "wild ideas".[1] "By 2100, the vast majority of "people" will be immortal computers running brain simulations." (And the rest will be keeping the server farms going?) "If we keep writing down common sense datums until 2100, we can make computers as smart as people." (After 30 years of Cyc trying that, that's probably a no.) "If we allowed complete freedom of contract, law could be privatized, to our common benefit." (He's at George Mason University, which is a right-wing think tank, and has to say stuff like that to get tenure.) [1] [http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html](http://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/wildideas.html) ~~~ nhaliday > Hanson is not breaking new ground; he's recycling SF as economics. World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with successful prediction. Hanson has made this point in a few places, eg, [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is- fan...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2015/11/science-fiction-is- fantasy.html). I'm not sure if you've read Age of Em but it didn't feel like reading scifi, so much as reading an encyclopedia. RE: the list of "wild ideas." He estimates that maybe a third of them are true. Quoting a few and acting shocked that that's the case is not a very epistemically hygienic criticism. BTW if anyone wants to read a summary that carries some of the tone and emphasis of the book itself, [https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age- of-em-summar...](https://casparoesterheld.com/2016/08/30/the-age-of-em- summary-of-policy-relevant-information/) is pretty good. ~~~ nitwit005 > World-building for purposes of entertainment generally has little to do with > successful prediction Do you have any evidence that that's true? A decent number of ideas portrayed in science fiction have come true, so clearly successful prediction is going on. Ultimately, economist or author are both using imagination and extrapolation. I don't see any particular reason to expect better results from the economist. ~~~ inimino > clearly successful prediction is going on. Throwing out all possible wild ideas, some of which happen to come true, isn't what "prediction" means. ~~~ nitwit005 Given the poor prediction reputation of Economists, their attempts probably match your description as well. ------ JamesBarney My favorite writer wrote a great book review of Robin Hanson's seminal work 'Age of Em" here [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of- em/](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/05/28/book-review-age-of-em/) ------ emblem21 I once wrote a book in 2005 about the inevitable fusion of central banking theory, economic psychology, and "good-enough" artificial intelligence. Whole brain emulations weren't required. Instead, mass expansion of mobile devices and the consolidation of civil behavior into those devices (purchasing, voting, socialization, documentation, research, institution interactions, welfare benefits, etc) allows a sufficiently powerful enough AI to read an NSA trunk and be able to create a model of the "animal spirits" of the individual constituents of markets. It couldn't model human behavior accurately, but that wasn't required. Instead, it could create a chaotic chain of events between all actor demands and capabilities via small actions that would result in massive economic policy enforcement. Instead of invading Iraq, the machine predicts a convoluted path of investment schemes that ultimately bankrupt the dinar, the ruling party, and the entire nation. No bullets fired. No soldiers deployed. To economists, it would look like normal macroeconomic activity. I never released the book because I realized I was writing a business proposal. ~~~ dxg732f That sounds really interesting. I have also thought about how "good-enough" AI could get a lot more done than many predict. I also like the idea of a Rube Goldberg equivalent of investment schemes and options to achieve certain objectives. Write a fun versions of it first, then do the business proposal. Good luck :) ------ reflexive > You are beautiful, intelligent, and charismatic, as are your friends, co- > workers, lovers. Aren't all of these qualities measured relative to our neighbors? I.e., each of us is a genius compared to our ape forebearers, but if everyone around you is beautiful, intelligent, and charming, then no one is. > You feel no hunger, no cold, no heat, no pain. Again, isn't discomfort relative to what one is prepared for? Under such circumstances, wouldn't the slightest dip or peak in subjective well-being feel like a life-altering crisis? "Connoisseur" is relevant [https://xkcd.com/915/](https://xkcd.com/915/) Am I missing something, or is this just another economist who understands nothing about human desire? ~~~ oldmanjay You can make a case that charisma only matters in contrast to its lack, and perhaps beauty is the same although I'm not as certain, but intelligence has an intrinsic value that ought to be evident by the fact that we built a technological civilization with it. ~~~ reflexive That's a good point, I'll just say that no one will _perceive_ themselves or their friends as intelligent, except relative to their competitors. ------ ikeboy Hanson's thoughts on the profile: [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2016/10/profile.html) ------ Paul_S The Age of Em can be read in two ways. One is to treat it like an RPG setting book. An imaginative world with highly detailed descriptions, complete with cool potential plots for your campaign. The second way to read it is as a book trying to predict the future in much the same way as The Flintstones is recording history. Everything is strange yet it's all mimicking the current world with superficial differences. The chapter about computational reversibility was really annoying - good luck with it if you're not a CS academic. I'm a software engineer and I only have a vague idea what it is and unless you know already you're out of luck as the author will not explain anything. The rest is ridiculously specific descriptions of a future world - a bit like trying to forecast weather 20 years in advance by trying to get the exact temperature, rainfall, etc. on a particular Thursday in March, in your back garden. This is why I'm going with the former way of reading this book. Maybe someone will write a fiction book based on this setting - could be interesting. One last thing: the author mentions that economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational^H^H^H^H^H^H^H uncoordinated populace fails to realise the correct prediction (a comment I've read before made by other economists), implying that the only way he can be wrong about his predictions in this book is if we all somehow conspire against him, at which point it's all our fault. AI research must be a traumatising field. ~~~ freshhawk "...economists often predict the future correctly but the irrational..." This is the Overcoming Bias/Less Wrong community worldview basically, and I find your RPG setting reading works well for understanding them as well. From now on I'll think of them as writers who are predicting the future of an alternate universe where humans think fundamentally differently than in our reality. It's a hell of a lot of fun, if you model homo economicus instead of homo sapiens it actually is possible to reason about large societies and at least attempt to predict far future outcomes to some degree. Plenty of ways to hand wave away the reasons that you can't "predict" historical events or the present with these models, that's boring anyway, the future has cooler toys. If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way. The aversion to history makes a lot of sense, my own interest in history and sociology is what showed me the holes in this worldview and now I can't play this fun game with the same immersion they do. ~~~ eli_gottlieb >If you accept that a chaotic soup of memes can, at any time, combine to form an idea that becomes a popular ideology that prompts a bunch of clever apes to act anywhere from irrational to completely insane for arbitrary amounts of time ... well that's impossible to model in any meaningful way. I think it's pretty silly to accept _homo economicus_ as an actual definition of rational behavior, since nobody really wants to live like such a creature. ~~~ freshhawk Really? I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Also, I'm not sure how the quoted part relates, that was my facetious description of how Homo Sapiens act, in contrast with Homo Economicus. ~~~ eli_gottlieb >I think we must have different understandings of the term, it just means that people decide what they want and then act in the way they think will get them that. Quite the opposite, actually. Homo Economicus has two things homo sapiens does not, and _cannot_ : * A fixed-a-priori "utility function". Things it wants before it has experienced life at all, with those "things" being linearly convertible into money. * Model certainty about the transactions it enters: risk is accounted for using probability, but the model structure is, again, known a priori. When you weaken these two restrictions in econometric and psychological experiments, you recover useful descriptions of actual human behavior. But those restrictions were ridiculous and unrealistic in the first place, _unless_ you pull an economist's typical move and assume that a person operates like an investment bank with a fixed charter (ie: the fixed goal of accumulating capital) and a fixed set of actions (ie: available equity investments). ~~~ freshhawk Yup, although that seems to be a very specific version of the general Homo Economicus term. Do you think I find the idea of Homo Economicus convincing or valid? I was arguing the opposite. ------ lr4444lr Is anyone else having a hard time disambiguation which of his models and predictions he holds genuinely, and which are merely exercises in _reductio ad absurdum_ attacks on the dysfunction he sees in the establishment? I'm all for free thinking, but this seems all too convenient to hedge his bets. ------ dxg732f I like the main point he is trying to make (which I see summed up by the cliche "think outside the box") but most of the ideas in this article are such stereotypical notions of turning everything on it's head: Aliens? AI taking over? Robots taking over? Us living in a simulation? Challenging the concept of rape? Can we stop pretending these are cutting edge and out there? Can we stop pretending these ideas don't have very old precedents? He has come up with unique ideas on these themes, but no he is not "ahead of his time" I would argue in many ways he is stuck in the past. ------ cmrdporcupine Let all of these people 'transcend' their minds into computers, I will go the other way, and go immanently into my body. "Behind thy thoughts and feelings, my brother, there is a mighty lord, an unknown sage—it is called Self; it dwelleth in thy body, it is thy body." \-- Nietzsche [http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake- zarathu...](http://www.philosophy-index.com/nietzsche/thus-spake- zarathurstra/iv.php) Or Deleuze summarizing him: As Nietzsche would say, we stand amazed before consciousness but the truly suprising thing is the body. To feel a raindrop on the skin, to look out on a surprising sunrise, to lie on one's back in the grass at dusk while bats fly overhead. I would not want to live 1000 years without this. I'd rather the lights go out and have it all end and gone forever than live only in a simulation, to no longer feel the randomness, the intricacy, the depth, the richness of what is happening now. You're welcome to all the virtual you want. But no thanks. ~~~ Houshalter Your preference is irrelevant. Many people will choose to be uploaded, and those people will inherit the Earth. As the uploads will be able to think, work, and multiply much faster than normal humans (among other possible advantages.) Hanson imagines that fleshy humans will be left behind by the future, perhaps continuing to exist by investing in the em economy and living off the interest, but otherwise not participating in the system at all. I don't know why you think an upload's experience would be worse than a fleshy human's experience. With such advanced technology in the far future, virtual reality and simulations will probably be indistinguishable from the real world. They will feel rain drops and see sunrises. But also they will probably be able to experience so much more. As virtual worlds do not have all the limitations the physical one does. They won't have to age or experience pain or discomfort, sickness, etc. They can walk on distant planets or swim in deep oceans, or fly through the air effortlessly, and without mechanical aid. ------ dschiptsov Cosplay (role-playing) of intelligence (acute hipsterism) at its best. ------ carsongross He's not an economist, he's a futurist, and not a particularly interesting one. For an actual economist ahead of his time, I recommend Steve Keen. ~~~ duckkg5 Hanson is a professor of economics at GMU [http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson](http://economics.gmu.edu/people/rhanson) ~~~ vannevar For folks who may not be familiar with future studies. It's a genuine academic discipline, when we say that Hanson is a futurist, it's not an insult. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_studies) ------ rafaelvasco You can't hope to "scan" a human brain and make a virtual clone of a human being or any being, because life and conscience is much more than a brain. So that future he describes , at last functioning the way he thinks is impossible. Until we understand 100% of what we're made of, no one can even think of anything like this. ------ davidgerard JETSON, Bay Area, the future (H Minus) — Scientists, or self-taught philosophers who’ve heard of science anyway, predict a dazzling future for humanity — in which our computer-augmented future selves, in a world of endless plenty, keep being shits to each other. An advanced computer-managed economy will do all the jobs, building our homes, 3D-printing our iPhones and nano-assembling our food. Wanting for nothing, people will at last be free to assert their essential humanity and complain bitterly about everything. Genetic engineering will give us new bodies and an indefinite lifespan. Whole- brain emulation will let those who would have died go on as personalities living in computers. In the future, fuckwits will be with you forever. We will live in fabulously diverse harmony and break the cycle of every new technology first being used to murder each other. This will include those thoroughly deserving of murder, particularly the endless identical instances of irritating hippie emulations blathering about cosmic oneness. Cryogenically-preserved humans from the twenty-first century will have their frozen brains read by nanobots so their personalities can be run as programs. To avoid future shock, they will be put to work in a computer-simulated office job, and be reset each morning. For comfort and familiarity, each person- emulation will be given a helpful companion program, called “Clippy.” A benevolent artificial superintelligence will run the world, for the good of all humanity. To maximise utilitarian value across the quantum wave function of the universe, “Roko’s femilisk” will regrettably have to punish emulations of those who complained that they found Tumblr social justice warriors’ intolerance of intolerance “triggering.” Please donate to help achieve this. Given the opportunity for a world of unlimited creative freedom and enjoyment, we can be certain that humanity will not rest until it has turned this infinitely bountiful paradise into something even pissier than modern-day capitalism. The Singularity will elevate the human condition to nasty, brutish and long. An emulation of Thomas Hobbes will, however, buy that for a bitcoin. ------ meira No. ------ wimgz His book is not available on Kindle, so no ~~~ ikeboy It used to be (see [https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth- ebook/dp/B01...](https://www.amazon.com/Age-Em-Work-Robots-Earth- ebook/dp/B01FHNFAVS?ref_=mt_kindle) and [http://ageofem.com/](http://ageofem.com/)). I don't know why it was pulled or who was responsible. ------ cynicalBit If people can be convinced that their simulated virtual self is actually them, overpopulation will be solved by mass suicide. Sorry if that's too dark for you guys, it just has to be said. All these "live inside a computer people" are just a modern Jim Jones cult. ~~~ Houshalter A copy of you is you. Literally the atoms that make up 'you' are replaced all the time, by biology. And the atoms themselves aren't real. Like some models of physics suggest that physical things are constantly being copied and deleted already, like how objects in a cellular automaton universe are "destroyed" every time they move. But how the universe actually works is irrelevant even. Other people can have a different definition of 'death'. If the information in my brain is preserved then that's all that matters to me. If I had to get my neurons replaced, one at a time, with 'artificial neurons' that would contain all the same information, then i would do it. Surely you would to. And you wouldn't even notice any change I bet. It wouldn't change anything observable at all. So how can it possibly matter? ------ crimsonalucard Far ahead of his time? No. This overwhelming optimism for technology is a very mainstream attitude you see among millennials and a lot of HN commenters. ------ buro9 Yet another person who has read too many of the Culture Series books by Iain M. Banks and thinks we are close to achieving a lot described within those books. I do think it is achievable, but even the books acknowledge it takes thousands of years to get there. ~~~ OscarCunningham I don't think the books do "acknowledge" that? I mean in particular there's that nice short story where the Culture visits Earth. So the books are set in our present and not the future. ~~~ wavefunction "Consider Phlebas" takes place in 1331CE whereas "Surface Detail" takes place between 2700 and 3000CE, with the other books in the "series" taking place at different points within that range.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Cheap and fast (just CPU) dedicated server? - tlogan We need a server to do some very CPU intensive data processing and we are looking for provider which has the best CPU/cost ratio.<p>The server does not need to have a lot of memory, fast disk or anything like that: we just care about CPU speed.<p>The data is public so security is also not a issue. ====== pella see "Hetzner Online Server Auction!" [https://robot.your- server.de/order/market/sortcol/cpu_benchm...](https://robot.your- server.de/order/market/sortcol/cpu_benchmark/sorttype/up) from 81-140 EUR / month \- 24 GB RAM \- Intel core i7 990x ( CPU-B 10599 ) \- Intel core i7 980x ( CPU-B 10237 ) Setup (once): 0.00 € No minimum contract period Cancellation period: 30 day to month-end ~~~ tlogan Excellent. I was not aware of this. ------ benologist Are you looking hourly or monthly? For either: <http://stormondemand.com/> or <http://softlayer.com/> bare metal instances For monthly: <http://hivelocity.net/> ~~~ pella for monthly: [http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver- pr...](http://www.hetzner.de/en/hosting/produktmatrix/rootserver- produktmatrix-ex) ~~~ benologist The only problem with hetzner is they don't do multi-cpu machines. ------ pella maybe "Amazon EC2 Spot Instances" <http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot-instances/> #"Cluster Compute Eight Extra Large" 88 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon E5-2670, eight-core "Sandy Bridge" architecture) \--> variable price - now $0.75 per hour = ( US EAST ) #"Cluster Compute Quadruple Extra Large" 33.5 EC2 Compute Units (2 x Intel Xeon X5570, quad-core “Nehalem” architecture) \--> variable price - now $0.208 per hour ( US EAST ) ~~~ pella \- [Dual CPU] Intel Xeon E5-2670 @ 2.60GHz = 28,459 CPU MARK from : <http://www.cpubenchmark.net/multi_cpu.html> ------ reiz Try this one here: <http://www.yunicon.net/> It's a medium size company in Berlin with awesome customer service. ------ dholowiski Check out the datashack dedicated server Page. The out of stock servers are great deals that pop up for a few hours at a time before selling out. ------ cmer Hetzner hands down.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Redundancy vs. dependencies: which is worse? (2008) - ripitrust http://yosefk.com/blog/redundancy-vs-dependencies-which-is-worse.html ====== d--b This article is very important. I encourage everyone to read it, as it raises a lot of good points. In my opinion, the problem it describes come from the vagueness of the concept of elegance, and how counterintuitive it is. It doesn't even have to imply modules or anything like that. In the simplest form it boils down to: Would you rather write: if (a) { doSomething(); if (b) { doSomethingElse(); } } or if (a && b) { doSomething(); doSomethingElse(); } else if (a && !b) { doSomething(); } Of course, there is no true answer to that question, and it always depends on the context. But many programmers will never ever consider option 2. And that is for two good reasons: 1, you make one more test, and 2 you duplicate the function call do doSomething(), so your program is larger. So mathematically speaking option 1 is more elegant, it's shorter, it's faster, it's lighter, what's not to like? Well, multiply the ifs and the elses, and you will soon find out that option 2 is much more readable and changeable, which is the more elegant solution to anyone who's an engineer rather than a mathematician. The tension it describes is that in every programmer is a mathematician and an engineer endlessly conflicting. This should be a good guidance for which style to use. Is this code a math code, or is it engineer's code. When you can answer that question, you can decide which style to write your code in. ~~~ MrPatan I completely agree. It's _vital_ to know what a, b, doSomething and doSomethingElse actually stand for, and what is the context. This is not a technical problem, it's a people problem (like almost all problems). Take this, for example: if (userLoggedIn) { setCookie(); if (itsANiceDay) { tellUSerToGoOutAndPlay(); } } And this: if (itsSunny && itsCold) { putOnSunglasses(); putOnCoat(); } else if (itsSunny && !itsCold) { putOnSunglasses(); } They both kind of make sense! Now let's see the other way around: if (userLoggedIn && itsANiceDay) { setCookie(); tellUSerToGoOutAndPlay(); } else if (userLoggedIn && !itsANiceDay) { setCookie(); } This one is just silly. We are mixing logic about two completely different things. Nobody would do that (many people would do that, I know. Too many) if (itsSunny) { putOnSunglasses(); if (itsCold) { putOnCoat(); } } This one seems ok. Until you wonder what happens if it rains and/or it's windy. Then you'll refactor it to a "switch/case" for clarity. And it's all about the domain specific content! You cannot reason only about the syntax tree in isolation and come to a meaningful conclusion! ~~~ jessaustin The problem with these examples is that _putOnCoat()_ should not depend in any way on _itsSunny_ , so there should just be two separate _if_ blocks. We should be discussing a scenario in which one condition is a subset of the other. ~~~ JustSomeNobody Why not? I've been on Rainier when it's cold and sunny. ~~~ denis1 I you didn't understand what the GP said. You can certainly have a day when it is both sunny and cold, but the checks would look like this: if(isSunny){ putOnGlasses(); } if(isCold) { putOnCoat(); } ~~~ Retric Depends on context, in a game you might only send someone outside if it's sunny. So if it's !sunny your staying inside and you don't need a Coat. ------ rsp1984 The article makes some very important points and it's certainly worth a read for every programmer. What the article misses to address explicitly however is that the whole redundancy vs. dependency conflict is caused by modularization. Without modules there would be no conflict. So the real questions to answer here are: When do you need modules or do you need them at all? What should be modularized? And, most importantly, how to choose smart boundaries? Good answers to these questions will save a project from a world of pain down the road. The classic OOP / software engineering education these days lacks critical debate about software modularization. Modularization is almost always presented as a good thing. What nobody tells you however is that in real world engineering, on real world teams, modularization can cause _a lot_ of trouble if not done the right way. ~~~ loup-vaillant Code is basically a dependency graph. Each piece of code depends on a number of other pieces of code. (Dead code is an isolated island in this dependency graph.) You want two things out of that graph: less nodes, because less code is simpler, better, cheaper. And less _edges_ , because understanding, modifying, or troubleshooting a piece of code requires knowing about its dependencies (hopefully, only the direct ones). When the unit of organisation is the function, you kinda state that each function is a node, and the call graph are part of the edges (the call graph would cover everything in a purely functional settings, but side effect produces implicit dependencies). Trouble is, in any significant system, you're gonna have a _lot_ of nodes and edges. How to make sense of that? That's why we have module. When you look at your dependency graph, you will most certainly note that parts of your graph are denser than others. Those clusters are the natural modules. If you formalise that, and draw module boundaries around those clusters, you can now have a two-level view: inside a module, you have a _small_ dependency graph, with a few outbound edges. Outside, you can visualise a coarser graph of module dependencies. Again, fewer nodes and edges, because you have grouped them. Now the _real_ benefits of module is, once you start drawing boundaries, you have an incentive to make small interfaces, to minimise inter-module dependencies. Additionally, visualising the module dependency graph directly helps you spot spooky dependencies that probably shouldn't be there. You can then cut some dependencies out, simplifying your graph in the process. Without modules, I don't see how you would manage this kind of scale. Oh and by the way, some monstrosities are so big that they effectively requires a _third_ level. But I've never worked on such beasts. ~~~ rsp1984 Yes, that's a very good picture of things. Now the dependency vs redundancy issue comes in when two clusters are made modules. If they are _mostly_ separated but still have some connections to each other the question is what to do with these. Cut them off means having to replicate so ultimately redundancy. Leaving them in means dependency. I guess the way modularization should be done is therefore as a min-cut through the dependency graph. ------ tel It's kind of funny how, rightfully, the author paints a picture where the "horrible, enlightened external dependency" itself is antimodular to the T. Given that all modules supposedly have stable interfaces, documentation, tests, reasonable size, yada yada then one might expect that each of their dependencies takes advantage of these properties to maintain light and wonderful themselves. Of course, this is a situation that's highly incompatible with C. Let's ditch that. In ML modules are king. You probably make hundreds in any non-trivial program and the compiler will beat your ass if you muck up their interfaces. Anywhere. Packages are just sets of 3 public modules wrapped up in twine and a README file (coincidentally this is where "ownership and lifecycle" are managed, but, sorry, I'm going to ignore those for a moment). This could be every bit as bad as I described before, but ML also realized that modules which just form a big dependency tree are actually quite annoying. The whole reason we define public APIs is so that there can be multiple satisficing inplementors, but this cannot be in 99% of module technologies today. So ML has functors (not Haskell functors, certainly certainly certainly not C++ functors) which are "parameterized modules that actually work". One could distribute their command line parsing module with a pluggable serialization and a pluggable help display. See MirageOS for a giant example of this kind of system working out. Does it really work? Probably not. It's not in most maintainers DNA to functor-ize everything. It's even a significant challenge to do so since you need to define sufficient external _and_ internal public APIs and it's a significant community effort to standardize these sufficiently so that there is significant chance of re-use. But at least it's a way forward. Fight the heavy module trees. Let's use some higher order reusability. ~~~ bunderbunder I've had some success with the object-oriented equivalent of the pattern. Perversely, I find it to be most effective as a political tool. It's useful when someone doesn't like my minimalist solution to some problem, and starts peppering me with feature requests that will complicate the module and which I perceive to be of marginal utility. So I make that chunk of functionality pluggable, keep my minimalist implementation as the default, and publish some instructions for how to drop in a more complicated behavior. Then all I have to do is sit back and watch the original requester realize that they only think the stuff they were asking for is worth the effort if they can get someone else to be the one putting out the effort. ~~~ megaman22 Love to see an example ------ sbov I generally agree with this. However, sometimes using a module is not adding a dependency, it is making an already existing implicit dependency explicit. E.g. we have client and server code. Serialization configuration between the two is implicitly dependent upon each other - if the client expects dates in a different format than the server, things don't work. To make that implicit dependency explicit, we use a module, which also has the affect of making sure the two don't get out of synch. ------ tempodox A very good article that aptly shows (some of) the hard & sticky questions we are confronted with all the time. How you answer these questions will determine the quality & stability of your code to a large extent. I agree with the OP that commonly, “ _dependencies are worse_ ”. Redundancy will increase the quantity of your code, but dependencies increase its complexity. And quantity is always conquered easier than complexity. ------ guard-of-terra This depends greatly on your platform. Java projects accept dependencies much easier than C++ ones because in Java it's much harder to cause trouble and also coding styles aren't radically different for different dependencies. Perl&Ruby are even more eager, which should be strange since they're actually less safe. ~~~ Sirenos Less safe? How so? ------ rwallace Excellent article. Just one quibble: he claims a module shouldn't be over 30k lines. Counterexamples: Linux, Postgres, Boost, LLVM, V8, all in the million line range. To be sure, each of these has an internal module structure, but that's irrelevant from the perspective of someone deciding whether to incur a dependency on one of them - the answer to which may very well be yes because they do enough to make it worthwhile. If anything, larger modules like the ones I listed are more likely to be worth depending on because they do more. It's no coincidence that the author chooses command line parsing as a negative example - something trivial enough that the overhead of tracking a dependency may well outweigh the effort of implementing it yourself. ------ michaelfeathers It's interesting to read this with micro-services in mind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The tiny Wyoming creek that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans - bane http://twentytwowords.com/the-tiny-wyoming-creek-that-connects-the-atlantic-and-pacific-oceans/ ====== te_platt I seems like a bifurcating stream would be unstable. Does anyone here know how common they are and how long they last?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Using Cloudflare Gateway to Stay Productive (Turn Off Distractions) While WFH - eastdakota https://blog.cloudflare.com/using-cloudflare-gateway-to-stay-productive-and-turn-off-distractions-while-working-remotely/ ====== jeffshek I've had a really great experience with using [http://nextdns.io/](http://nextdns.io/) for this purpose. It comes with a lot of pre-defined things to block (Social Media, Advertising, Genre of Distractions ...) that can be helpful especially when working from home. ------ ThePowerOfFuet What a terrible hack... and I'd rather not give Cloudflare any more of my traffic than I already do.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Weaver, the Princess and Goldman Sachs - abhinav http://in.news.yahoo.com/265/20100501/1705/top-the-weaver-the-princess-and-goldman_1.html ====== swombat Excellent story. The world is full of wisdom in the form of myths and stories. Those who know how to learn from this immense repository of human experience are a step ahead of the rest. ~~~ mixmax Very true - and even more so if you're able to tell these stories in an engaging way to make a point. A good storyteller beats powerpoint any day. ------ fnid2 I suspect that the show put on by Congress and Goldman Sachs will end up a wash for the banks and the people. No one will get punished and Congress will say, "See, even the worst of the bunch -- Goldman Sachs -- was within the law, so all the other banks must have been too." At that point, all cases against the banks will be dropped and we will happily return to the status quo. ~~~ SandB0x A large part of the "show" is to increase public support for financial reform. ~~~ jfornear Financial 'reform' _is_ the status quo: _> So Congress is in a lather working on a new set of regulations that will prevent problems like this from ever happening again. Really? Ask yourself these questions. > Did the government sanctioned ratings agencies prevent the meltdown? > Did the voluminous disclosure laws already on the books prevent the > meltdown? > Did vigilant SEC inspectors prevent the meltdown? > Did a well financed FDIC prevent the meltdown? > Did Sarbanes Oxley laws prevent the meltdown?_ [http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/04/28/did_you_...](http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2010/04/28/did_you_hear_the_joke_about_goldman_sachs_98436.html) (GR BTW) No matter how hard we try, we simply can't regulate greed (esp. not when the regulators are paid by the banks!). Plus, no one in Congress even understands finance! ~~~ r0s The bank bailouts _could_ have come with regulatory measures attached. Was this an intentionally overlooked opportunity? ------ nandan Interesting. Although how much of this debacle can we attribute to conscious thinking along the lines of "we know this is high risk - high reward stuff, but let us do it to a point till we are too big to fail"? I am more inclined to think this is a structural phenomenon - something that occurred because the incentives available at each step along the way were structured in a manner that allowed this to snowball. ~~~ jordanb I think Goldman ignored the counterparty risk they had with AIG because they knew it was systematic, and that the government would bail AIG out and protect them. I think that the stage for this collapse was set with the collapse of Long Term Capital. That's when all the banks learned that if the bets were big enough, they couldn't lose. ------ mendriacus Reserving judgment about the other merits of this article - it's sad to witness again how simplistic, shallow generalizations are the norm when discussing financial matters: "Another thing which is crucial to the financial services industry is the concept of being too big to fail, which has been put to good use by Citigroup, Bear Stearns, and Goldman Sachs over the past few years in sucking money from American taxpayers." While this may be true in some sense for Citigroup, applying that to Bear Stearns is dubious, and it's plain wrong for Goldman Sachs. Banks like Goldman and JP Morgan Chase were basically forced to take TARP investments: [http://www.businessinsider.com/uncovered-tarp-docs-reveal- ho...](http://www.businessinsider.com/uncovered-tarp-docs-reveal-how-paulson- forced-banks-to-take-the-cash-2009-5) Several of those banks didn't need the forced investment, didn't want it, and thus strove to repay it as soon as possible: [http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/27/news/economy/tarp_takeback/i...](http://money.cnn.com/2009/03/27/news/economy/tarp_takeback/index.htm) Goldman in fact repaid the investment in full on June of last year, with a hefty 23% interest: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#TARP_and_Berkshir...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldman_Sachs#TARP_and_Berkshire_Hathaway_investment) In other words, Goldman didn't want or make any profit from the TARP investment - the American taxpayer did. GS didn't want that investment at all - it took it to comply with the wishes and policy of the American administration. The current Abacus scandal is occurring not because, but despite the fact that GS collaborated with the administration and took the TARP investment. In fact, this scandal is mostly about how GS foresaw the collapse of the housing bubble, and set up positions to profit from it - thus absolving itself from any need for taxpayer assistance. If anything, the American administration and public opinion seem more forgiving toward institutions that played the "too big to fail" card, taking too much risk and heavy loses as a consequence. Those institutions were bailed out, and are currently seeing nothing like the penalties and negative attention that GS is suffering. If the SEC's portrayal of the Abacus deal is accurate, GS should be punished - but the "too big to fail" approach is vastly more dangerous and damaging. Either way, the discussion isn't served by over-generalizations and lumping everything together. ~~~ trevelyan Goldman received over $12 billion directly from the AIG bailout. Perhaps it could have survived without TARP, but almost certainly not without both TARP and the AIG bailout. Would Goldman Sachs have crumbled if AIG were allowed to default? The company claims it was properly hedged, but it stretches credibility to believe this given (1) its massive exposure to AIG and (2) the state of the financial markets at the time. ~~~ mendriacus This is valid point, but its implications are limited: you're basically saying that if AIG collapsed, it would lead to further collapses (due to "the state of the financial markets at the time") and that could very well lead to GS suffering as well. This is true, not just for GS, but for almost any other financial firm and bank in the United States. In that sense, we all, including end consumers, enjoyed the benefits of TARP bailouts - assuming that without them and policies related to them, the entire financial system would collapse and drop the US to something like the great depression or worse. ~~~ pak Those closest to the bailouts got the most milk in their pails. Maybe the consumers got a dribble, but that doesn't disqualify criticism of those who got a whole bucket, especially if they stole the cow to begin with. GS practically set up AIG to collapse. You might say that's just business, but you have got to be kidding me if you think GS _didn't_ see major ramifications for the economy and predict some kind of governmental assistance. (Normally, if AIG was less entangled with all of the Street and had failed on its own, GS would have have simply lost a bundle on all of its credit default swaps). ------ byrneseyeview I wonder if myths like this explain some fraction of a country's economic growth. I suspect that in Europe, this kind of myth would end with the perpetrator being executed for lying and committing heresy; even the Geek myths wouldn't have a god show up to make good on someone else's bogus promises. ~~~ jplewicke Eliezer Yudkowsky also suggested this, at least regarding this African myth: [http://robinhanson.typepad.com/overcomingbias/2009/02/an- afr...](http://robinhanson.typepad.com/overcomingbias/2009/02/an-african- folktale.html) . I'm a little unsure about how much is the myths and how much is just survivorship bias. A lot of old gruesome European fairy tales stopped getting told after the rise of liberalism and the free market, so it may just be that the myths reflect the current status of society. ~~~ byrneseyeview "Bias" is not the only kind of survivorship out there. If these myths keep people alive, the cultures that follow them will stay alive. I suspect that the story mentioned above is part of a larger group of stories with healthier morals. The Grimm's fairy tales you mentioned are similar: some of the older, gruesome ones have morals like "Don't travel alone if you're a young woman, or you'll die," or "Don't convince people they're in danger when they're not, or everyone you love will be killed." Those are healthy myths; a village that believed in them would probably be safer than a village that didn't. And once those myths were no longer necessary, they'd disappear, along with some of the more noxious stories. ------ katovatzschyn What is good collection of these Indian myths? Is there one akin to One Thousand and One Arabian Nights; with more focus on India? ~~~ edj The Panchatantra: a collection of ancient Hindu tales [PDF] <http://books.google.com/books?id=jB0YAAAAYAAJ> This one is "Weaver as Vishnu" on page 46. Note: the HTML version is in Sanskrit, the PDF in English. Edit: Of course, there are many other works of Indian mythology. The big two being the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which if you consider it a single work, is the longest text ever written. The heart of the Mahabharata is the Bhagavad Gita. ------ stcredzero Winston Zeddemore from Ghostbusters: "Ray, when someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!" _awesomely enough, this too is a criminal offence under Section 508_ Come to think of it, a lot of India's "God men" could conceivably be prosecuted under that law. ~~~ vsync But it's against my programming to impersonate a deity! ------ sman The full panchatantra story is here: <http://www.gaudiyadiscussions.com/topic_908.html> ------ ww520 That's a good tale. I wish there's website with parables and tales like this. ------ garply I would like to know what kind of factory the author works in. ~~~ rglovejoy As for me, I'd like to know if anyone has ever been convicted in India for impersonating a god. ~~~ stcredzero If it was ever convenient for the government, then it has happened. ------ akshat now if only I was smart enough to figure one out like this. ------ korch Is it just me, or is it pretty funny that "pretending to be a God" is illegal under section 508 of the Indian penal code?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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