text
stringlengths 44
442k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
Is gitlab down for anyone else? - aidos
https://gitlab.com/users/sign_in
======
iriche
GitLab is the new GitHub
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Your Programming Language Sucks - tlong
https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks
======
kafkaesq
Many valid points in there, but many weak arguments also.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Probable Cache Poisoning of Mail Handling Domains - jgrahamc
https://www.cert.org/blogs/certcc/post.cfm?EntryID=206
======
danyork
There is a longer discussion of this post in another HN submission:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8304756)
------
danyork
Good to see someone documenting a situation where DNSSEC would help if: 1) the
mail servers were performing DNSSEC validation (as postfix now does); and 2)
the DNS zones were signed that included the MX records.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Top Trends of 2010: Growth of eBooks & eReaders - _grrr
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ebooks_ereaders_top_trends_2010.php
======
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The future of front-end development is design - prostoalex
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/29/the-future-of-front-end-development-is-design/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook&sr_share=facebook
======
seattle_spring
They said this back when homestead.com was a thing. 15 years later, FE
engineering is stronger and more in demand than ever.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
One Hero - Parallax scrolling comic - joeblau
http://onehero.ca/
======
joeblau
The sound in this comic EPIC!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LilyPond ... music notation for everyone - afics
http://lilypond.org/
======
nodata
Nice! Got any screenshots? Examples?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Organized Resources for Deep Learning in Natural Language Processing - ghosthamlet
https://github.com/astorfi/Deep-Learning-NLP
======
minimaxir
Mostly a dupe (with a slightly narrower focus) of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17750791)
I'm surprised this submission made it to the second chance pool.
~~~
dang
Not everyone sees the same threads so occasionally we miss a dupe. HN itself,
however, misses nothing :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Having Trouble With Your iPhone 4? Solution... - dell9000
http://gizmodo.com/5573179/the-semi+solutions-for-iphone-4-reception-problems-so-far?skyline=true&s=i
======
watmough
Luckily, there's an easy solution for all these anti-iPhone articles from
gizmodo:
127.0.0.1 gizmodo.com # screw you gizmodo
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Julia IDE work in Atom - tokai
http://julialang.org/blog/2016/01/atom-work/
======
niutech
Dupe of:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860633](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10860633)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stories from "The Launch Pad" - frankdenbow
http://blog.startupthreadsmonthly.com/post/33903868385/interesting-stories-from-yc-book-launchpad
======
zacharycohn
I've given the same advice as PG in regards to massive, macroeconomic stats
before during Startup Weekend events.
"The food industry is 10 trillion dollars, because everyone needs to eat! If
we could carve out even .1% of the industry, that would be 10 billion
dollars!"
Judges, investors, audience, whoever is listening to you pitch that will just
roll their eyes.
~~~
jasonshen
Good call Zachary =)
To be fair, we had trouble finding stats on how much people spent specifically
on driving long distance and threw the trillion miles in knowing it wasn't
ideal. That's why there's a prototype day! =)
------
taskstrike
“Sam (Altman), you know what my biggest, overused, meaningless tech lingo is?
On-boarding….It’s driving me bananas”. -Jessica Livingston
Great quote
------
blizkreeg
31 is older entrepreneurs? :-)
~~~
mrkurt
I have 4 kids and a mortgage, which seem to signify "old" more than actual
age. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A curious result hints at the possibility dementia is caused by fungal infection - edward
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21676754-curious-result-hints-possibility-dementia-caused-fungal?fsrc=scn/fb/te/pe/ed/fungusthebogeyman
======
cpncrunch
Already discussed a week ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10401344)
~~~
privong
And this Economist article had its own previous HN discussion, too:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10446411)
------
natvod
Horribly misleading headline as well. It clearly states in the article that
it's most likely having dementia makes the brain more susceptible to fungal
infections, not that dementia is _caused by_ them.
While in an ideal world, people should not trust headlines alone, a lot of
people do scroll and skim. And just merely being exposed to something could
leave a mark in their memories. I'm pretty sure this is how a lot of
misconceptions start.
~~~
gojomo
The article does _not_ "clearly state" reverse causality as "most likely"; it
mentions that as a possibility.
It's a fair, well-qualified headline – "hints at the possibility" –
summarizing the new evidence.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Angular is unable to build large applications - gregorymichael
https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/5618
======
abhisuri97
Does anyone know if this issue appears with React?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quiz: What Type Of Entrepreneur Are You? - motoko
http://idiotstartup.com/what-entrepreneur-are-you-test
======
jwecker
The Geek. Figures.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nushell – a modern shell written in Rust - bryanrasmussen
https://github.com/nushell/nushell
======
obituary_latte
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20783006)
------
pcr910303
While I fully appreciate & support the structured shell approach (I believe
it’s the future), I wish the efforts in making a mew shell should be more
directed to a small selection of projects.
elvish[0], uxy[1], ngs[2] and basically all shell projects that allow other
languages(e.g. python: tako[3], racket: rash[4] janet: janetsh[5]) are all
similar attempts; and there are numerous more alternative (non-structured)
shells like fish[6], and a whole lot more.
As a daily user of fish and a person hyped by elvish (but not using it as a
daily driver :-(), I hope some structured shells get at least some traction,
but there are too much approaches.
Well, I didn’t start as a rant but it became one anyway.
[0]: [https://elv.sh/](https://elv.sh/)
[1]: [https://github.com/sustrik/uxy](https://github.com/sustrik/uxy)
[2]: [https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs](https://github.com/ngs-lang/ngs)
[3]: [https://takoshell.org/](https://takoshell.org/)
[4]: [https://rash-lang.org/](https://rash-lang.org/)
[5]:
[https://github.com/andrewchambers/janetsh](https://github.com/andrewchambers/janetsh)
[6]: [https://fishshell.com/](https://fishshell.com/)
------
e2le
Nutshell looks like it's shaping up to be the new hotness in shell land.
------
ertucetin
It looks great!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Transcribing Piano Rolls, the Pythonic Way - gcardone_
http://zulko.github.io/blog/2014/02/12/transcribing-piano-rolls/
======
eliteraspberrie
The faster way of doing this:
def fourier_transform(signal, period, tt):
""" See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_transform
How come Numpy and Scipy don't implement this ??? """
f = lambda func : (signal*func(2*pi*tt/period)).sum()
return f(cos)+ 1j*f(sin)
is using the FFT.
What you want is the _power spectral density_ in the discrete case, called the
power spectrum. It can be calculated by multiplying the discrete Fourier
transform (FFT) with its conjugate, and shifting. NumPy can do it. Here is an
example: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15382076/plotting-
power-s...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15382076/plotting-power-
spectrum-in-python/15388340#15388340)
~~~
zulko
I knew I was going to have this remark :) Now correct me if I am wrong, but I
think the FFT (which computes the __discrete __Fourier transform) cannot
replace the continous fourier transform in my case, because the optimal
periods I find are non-integer values. In the first case, the holes are
separated by 7.5 pixels. The FFT could only have told me that they are
separated by 7 or 8 pixels, which is not precise enough. Same thing for the
tempo, a beat corresponds to 7.1 frames of the video, and a FFT would have
told me 7.
If someone knows a way to use the FFT to get non-integer periods (apart from
oversampling the signal) I'll gladly change the code.
~~~
peterwoo
The maximum frequency you can detect is limited by your sampling rate, but
there's not a limit on the precision with which you can break those
frequencies up.
It's controlled by a parameter NFFT -- the PSD will compute (NFFT/2+1) values
evenly spaced between 0 and the Nyquist frequency.
So say the frame rate is 15Hz and you compute with NFFT=2048, then PSD[970]
contains the amplitude at 7.09Hz.
This was a really cool project by the way!
~~~
zulko
Thanks, I learned something. I will try it and amend the blog when I have
time.
~~~
Serow225
Forgot to say, great post! :)
------
rfleck
See a master at work making original rolls at QRS.
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3FTaGwfXPM)
If was a fun place to see in the 70's after watching my father rebuild our
player piano.
~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Interesting that they used computers to make them. It seems obvious in
hindsight; player piano music is digital!
~~~
userbinator
Also interesting that we had digital data storage, in the form of punched
cards and tape, decades before digital computers.
~~~
vajrabum
Longer than that. The Jaquard loom was invented in 1801 and the player piano
was first demonstrated in 1876.
------
msvan
What a fascinating convergence of math, music and Python. Many people I meet
who don't specialize in math but have taken university-level courses in it
seem to remember the Fourier transform as a highlight, probably because of its
many applications.
------
kbd
I love the abundance of Python. For those unaware, even the youtube-dl command
line utility he used to download the video is written in Python.
~~~
w1ntermute
And in contrast to what its name suggests, youtube-dl supports 150+ different
services: [http://rg3.github.io/youtube-
dl/supportedsites.html](http://rg3.github.io/youtube-dl/supportedsites.html)
------
stevetjoa
Very cool!
Relevant: Zenph makes "re-performances" of old piano recordings. They take a
recording, do music transcription magic to get the exact timings and
velocities of each note event, and then feed that into a player piano. So it's
as if you are listening to the ghost of Rachmaninov sitting at the piano, as
shown here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevzbV6Hkkk&t=28](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eevzbV6Hkkk&t=28)
(music starts at 0:28)
(I just visited [http://zenph.com](http://zenph.com) for the first time in
about a year, and it appears that they've pivoted into a music education
company.)
------
nanidin
Interesting question - is the author's transcription a derivative work of the
video? And if so, is he actually allowed to release his transcription into the
public domain (without the permission of the author of the video)?
~~~
shakethemonkey
No, it's only derivative in the sense of process. The video lacks originality;
for the musical notes it is merely a mechanical reproduction of the punched
holes. Similarly, a photograph of a public domain painting is also in the
public domain. See: Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191
(S.D.N.Y. 1999). At least this is the law in the United States, which is
sensible; absurdity of other jurisdictions may vary.
~~~
nanidin
It's nice to know our system accounts for cases like this. Thanks for the
detailed info!
------
ntoshev
What if you tried to transcribe the music solely from Fourier transform of the
audio source? I expect the piano has an abundance of harmonics, but there
should be some way to distinguish them from the keys. Hasn't someone done it
already?
~~~
gtani
i've seen NNLS/chroma referenced in a few places, like the chordify papers:
[http://isophonics.net/nnls-chroma](http://isophonics.net/nnls-chroma)
Here's chordify:
[http://ismir2012.ismir.net/event/papers/295_ISMIR_2012.pdf](http://ismir2012.ismir.net/event/papers/295_ISMIR_2012.pdf)
That conference has great references but unfortunately hasn't been repeated
since 2012
[http://www.ismir.net/proceedings/index.php](http://www.ismir.net/proceedings/index.php)
------
selmnoo
That was a lovely read, thank you so much for writing and sharing it.
------
elwell
Really fantastic hack. Now try transcribing with just the audio track.
~~~
anigbrowl
That's a hard problem. If you have some material like that with a clear
recording, the only good commercial solution that I know of is Melodyne, and
he's not saying how he does it. In theory you just look for multiple peaks in
the FFT, but this is much easier said than done.
~~~
d_loemax
i built a plogue bidule patch before melodyne rolled out "dna" and it is
extremely difficult to get the optimal fft parameters to get an accurate
conversion. i cant imagine an algorithm that would get it right from analyzing
the sample would be any less difficult. ableton's and cubase's options are
pretty rough too. i am a drummer though, i am just trying to make up for my
ears.
------
bede
My favourite blog post of 2014. Thank you for sharing.
------
analog31
I think this is a nice solution because it takes care of the hardware side of
things by making use of a garden variety video camera.
------
StavrosK
This is beautiful, it's one good idea after another, good job!
------
peapicker
This is really nice, thanks for sharing it with us.
------
cdelsolar
So, so cool. I love posts like this.
------
evidencepi
Nice post, thanks for sharing!
------
smortaz
fantastic. with your permission, i'd love to use this to demo python!
~~~
zulko
Yeah, sure.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EEVBlog analyses the Banksy shredder prank [video] - okket
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdKdQWhlNTY
======
coolspot
Those blades that have no way to be shredding mechanism made me wonder too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bathroom hand dryers may leave your hands dirtier than before - kimsk112
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/bathroom-hand-dryers-may-leave-your-hands-dirtier-than-before-gross-new-study-says/ar-AAvPtOr?OCID=ansmsnnews11&ffid=gz
======
MajorSauce
At this point we should soon see recommendations to insert our hands in
sterilized Ziploc bags after having washed them.
I fail to see why so much concern is directed toward this instead of door-
knobs, workplace keyboards, payment PIN entry pads, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My idea on connecting job seekers to companies - fivesquare
http://vamshisuram.blogspot.in/2014/05/connecting-job-seekers-with-companies.html
======
jsphdnl
you rock
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study confirms that ending your texts with a period is terrible - KerryJones
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/12/08/study-confirms-that-ending-your-texts-with-a-period-is-terrible/?tid=ss_fb
======
DrScump
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10703303)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
German police raid homes of Tor-linked group's board members - jfreax
https://www.zdnet.com/article/german-police-raid-homes-of-tor-linked-groups-board-members/
======
merricksb
Heavily discussed 1-2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17456289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17456289)
(333 points/130 comments)
------
n1231231231234
another example of tried overreach: a branch of the federal police,
"staatsschutz", raided the posteo office in 2013 and claimed to have a warrant
to seize _everything_. posteo immediatedly pushed back and it turned out that
the police only had a warrant for a single document [0](in german, tho). like
the investigating officers wouldn't be aware of this. it's their modus
operandi.
what they also like to do is to adjust events in hindsight such that it suits
their story. the case I have in mind concerns the NRW state police, but that,
too, seems to be common strategy. in this case, which is very recent, a
protester was arrested and police claimed, in their official report, that the
protester physically assaulted the officer and resisted arrest. the protester
disputed this, but without evidence would not have stood a chance in court.
moreover, the protester was badly injured during the whole ordeal. now a video
turns up and what do you see?: no physical assault, no resistance [1](also in
german). in such cases, i am glad that we live in the age of mobile phones,
where anyone can take recordings.
[0]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posteo](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posteo)
[1] [http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wuppertal-fall-von-
polize...](http://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/wuppertal-fall-von-
polizeigewalt-erregt-nordrhein-westfalen-1.4040203)
------
anoncoward111
Wow, imagine being raided by police and having all your stuff stolen, just
because the police allege that you helped someone do something "anti-
government".
Tor board, I would offer you my help, but I'm an American, so we would
probably all be sent to Guantanamo
~~~
superkuh
I don't have to. It happened to me in 2010 in the middle of the USA. 6am no-
knock raid by regional FBI agents with guns drawn. They stole all of my
computer equipment and my flatmate's computer equipment too.
There were never any charges brought. We never got our stuff back. The local
police were brought in to try to charge me with something, anything, and the
best they could come up with was a city ordinance called "Maintaining a
disorderly house." \-- yeah, it tends to be a bit messy after the feds have
trashed it.
Of course back then the feds were really up in arms trying to squash any and
all grassroots political organizations (ie, wikileaks + occupy). Even more
than now.
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Police raided my home in South Australia. It was drug related, and I was
dealing, so fair enough. They later dropped the charges, _nolle prosequi_.
But did they have to make such a mess? I mean, they had had my keys and still
busted open locks, pulled everything out of everything and threw it across the
room, upturned everything that wasn't bolted down. And they still didn't find
some of the drugs in plain sight, and a substantial amount of cash that was
barely hidden.
More recently they forced their way in to my home Sunday night at 12am and
dragged me off before I had a chance to get out of my pajamas to charge me
with assault on allegations I pushed someone over in to 2 feet of fresh snow.
Held me till midday Monday forcing me to miss a day at work and appear in
court in my bed clothes. Yeah, they dropped those charges too.
The police are _the enemy_. And an incompetent, gun wielding, violent enemy
immune to the law.
~~~
anoncoward111
The government quite literally hires goons to be... well... armed goons.
I am so, so sorry to hear about what you went through. These guys are overpaid
thugs with a lot of public support shockingly
------
CBLT
I guess a big lesson here is: keeping the data on paper made it less secure.
The police made overreach on top of overreach and grabbed as much as they
could, far exceeding their warrant. They now have historical donor records for
an unrelated organization, when the warrant should have limited them in scope
and history. But the police can't compel them to unlock their encrypted hard
drives. If they kept that info on encrypted disk it would have been safe.
------
forapurpose
I'm not speaking about the events in the OP, but generally I think people do
their cause harm when they say things such as the following (there are several
more examples in the article):
_After the raids, Bartl was forced to take a break from work. He said that he
assumes, given his work on digital rights issues, that he may be under
surveillance. Bartl also expressed concern that future donors may also face
scrutiny, financially hurting the group 's projects._
Sometimes (I know nothing about these incidents), some of the reasons for
these actions are to intimidate you and disrupt your work. Letting them know
you are intimidated and disrupted not only encourages the bully, it spreads
those consequences much more widely than just you: It demoralizing people who
follow you, who depend on you, and who are in similar positions; and via the
news article it spreads the intimidation and disruption to a much wider
audience. How many on HN will now have second thoughts? The better response, I
think, is _f- that; we won 't be stopped or intimidated_.
------
mindfulhack
This law enforcement overreach and breach of civil freedoms is fucked up.
How is it fair to just sit back and not wage war after persecution like this?
If I were in the CCC I'd be fuming and scheming right now. Not sure what sort
what the war would look like exactly, but I'd be thinking of something.
------
hh3k0
> But, under pressure from tax authorities, the organization had compiled
> paper receipts with names and passport numbers of those the project had
> reimbursed.
> Bartl said those records have been compromised, putting the identities of
> those involved at risk.
Pretty sure those records have been compromised the moment you handed them
over to the tax authorities.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gauge blocks, a system for producing precision lengths - camtarn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_block
======
Obi_Juan_Kenobi
If you're interested in precision machining, Robrenz is a good channel to
check out:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/ROBRENZ/videos](https://www.youtube.com/user/ROBRENZ/videos)
He demos a Brown & Sharpe electronic indicator here, showing how sensitive
they are, even to errant breaths:
[https://youtu.be/UG6LV8v8W-0?t=25m15s](https://youtu.be/UG6LV8v8W-0?t=25m15s)
------
imglorp
AvE did a few vids on the "wringing" phenomena.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbsd2OpPOMw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbsd2OpPOMw)
------
curtis
Having now read the whole Wikipedia article I can say it was way more
interesting than I expected at first.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Natural Language Processing for the Working Programmer (online book, Haskell) - SkyMarshal
http://nlpwp.org/
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1907825>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Finally Know How Wombats Produce Their Distinctly Cube-Shaped Poop - kw71
https://gizmodo.com/we-finally-know-how-wombats-produce-their-distinctly-cu-1830414749
======
lysp
Dupes:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wombat&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=wombat&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1542499200&dateEnd=1543017600)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Solyndra (SV Solar Startup that got $535m guarantee from govt) fails - pitdesi
http://www.forbes.com/sites/toddwoody/2011/08/31/what-solyndras-bankruptcy-means-for-silicon-valley-solar-startups/
======
salemh
Wow..Last year they were hiring ~200+ engineering types of roles (our firm was
trying to "get in" with recruiting for them). They were sort of a "standard"
of "do you know Solyndra?" or "where do you see yourself in Solyndra's space?"
re: EnPhase, a few manufacturers FOR solar tech, etc.
Solyndra's gig was commercial flat-root tech for solar.
"Solyndra could not achieve full-scale operations rapidly enough to compete in
the near term with the resources of larger foreign manufacturers,"
[http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&i...](http://www.google.com/search?gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=has+china+won+the+green+tech+race)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Are Senior Female Scientists So Heavily Outnumbered by Men? - bootload
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/05/why-are-senior.html
======
Tichy
"It is not acceptable if women are forced to choose between a family and a
career in science."
Why not? Since family has a price, how else could it work than having to make
choices?
I don't want to pay for other people's children, cute as the little things
are.
~~~
Retric
I could not help but thinking is she really that bad at logic and math, or
does she think so little of her audience that we would let it pass?
Microscopic sample + delayed effect = no meaningful data.
PS: My sister was working as a plant geneticist for a while until she quit
teaching yoga. Their might be an ongoing disparity but guessing from small
samples is not enough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker News currently not accessible in China - null_undefined
http://www.blockedinchina.net/?siteurl=news.ycombinator.com
======
mckee1
Seems okay to me
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My "Chrome to Phone" knockoff app for iOS - checker659
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jumping-url/id388521070?mt=8
======
checker659
Link to website : <http://www.jumpingurl.com>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Surprising effect of light could change solar power generation - merijn481
http://smartenergyshow.wordpress.com/2011/05/06/surprising-effect-of-light-could-change-solar-power-generation/
======
dhs
Source paper: “Optically-induced charge separation and terahertz emission in
unbiased dielectrics”
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&v...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCkQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.eecs.umich.edu%2F~scr%2FFisherJAP2011.pdf&rct=j&q=%E2%80%9COptically-
induced%20charge%20separation%20and%20terahertz%20emission%20in%20unbiased%20dielectrics%E2%80%9D&ei=g6vTTeiFG8_Tsga3mv3dAg&usg=AFQjCNHhDNA0v13PZ-
bzYTGjzH_ksOUicA&cad=rja)
------
jerf
This doesn't actually sound promising at all to me for solar power generation.
In the original press release [1] they _speculate_ that they may _eventually_
reach 10% efficiency, which we _already have_. Given that the effect requires
stupefyingly absurd amounts of light and that they're going to have to improve
by _several_ orders of magnitude to harness this effect to do real work
without causing the medium to explode due to a sudden influx of a huge amount
of light, all to obtain an efficiency we already can, I do not see this as
likely to be useful for solar power generation.
I criticize the need to try to attach every bit of research to the buzzword
_de jour_. This is legitimately interesting on its own and the odds of it
having some further use either scientifically or for some other engineering
purpose is quite good. They've established a new boundary condition on some
very venerable equations, which can't hardly help but be useful at some point.
Tenuous connections to an application that it probably won't be useful for
weaken the point, not strengthen it.
[1]: <http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=8368>
------
dhimes
The authors argue that, in a dielectric medium, light can induce an electric
dipole moment _in the direction of the light propagation_ by shifting the
average location of atomic electrons in that direction. This moment becomes a
means of storing energy, and they expect that heat loss would be much less
than in traditional semiconductor solar cells.
------
dylanrw
Is it just me or does the Smart Energy Show logo look like:
[http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Billy2600/512px-
Apertur...](http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a56/Billy2600/512px-
Aperture_Sciencesvg.png) :D
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The problem of China's huge bike graveyards [video] - heshamg
http://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-asia-china-43999482/the-problem-of-china-s-huge-bike-graveyards
======
stephengillie
This is a failure of collection because buying new bikes is apparently cheaper
than the cost of collecting and repairing existing bikes. [0]
It's reminiscent of glass bottle deposits in the USA and other places.[1]
Should municipalities charge a mandatory $20 bike deposit? If nothing else, it
would incentivize beggars and others looking for a quick buck - they could
collect rogue bikes and return them for a deposit.
Not sure how to incentivize fixing bikes over replacing, short of a tax or
regulation on new bikes. Especially in cultures where even cell phones and
computers get replaced instead of fixed.
[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16964298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16964298)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_deposit_legislation)
------
dang
Related recent discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16961726)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reusability and NIH - ColinWright
http://irreal.org/blog/?p=982
======
ColinWright
This is an alternative viewpoint to that in the article here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4360345>
In that article it is suggested that it's better not to call out to the
operating system to perform tasks that can be re-implemented in your own
program, thereby reducing dependencies and preventing context-switches in
future readers.
But sometimes using well-known, well-tested, long-standing existing code
really is better than re-implementing basic operations in your own code. Yes,
if it's just "rm" then perhaps write it yourself. But when it's more
substantial, and someone else has already done it, and it's there ready to be
used ...
Use it.
~~~
EvilTerran
My go-to example these days is the `find` utility. Sure, you could try to
recurse through directories yourself -- but links (both sym- and hard) make it
surprisingly non-trivial to get right.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How E-Books Make (A Lot Of) Cents - newacc
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/21/ebook-iphone-oreilly-technology-breakthroughs-ebook.html?partner=contextstory
======
HoneyAndSilicon
O'Reilly talks about success of "iPhone: The Missing Manual" as an iPhone app.
The app has outsold the book, and O'Reilly explains the business model
validates as, " the data suggests that they have created growth without
sacrificing print market share. "
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon to Build Second HQ in North America - blasdel
http://www.amazon.com/amazonHQ2
======
Johnny555
This is a dupe of this post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15190555)
Same title, same source link.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On Task Systems - evantahler
http://blog.evantahler.com/blog/on-task-systems.html
======
roskilli
Looks similar to what Kue <http://learnboost.github.com/kue/> already does. I
wish node had less fragmentation and more consolidation on these types of
libraries/frameworks.
Nice article breaking down the features and patterns of queue/task engines if
nothing else!
~~~
evantahler
Cool! I haven't heard of Kue. I'll take a look!
Source for the curious: <https://github.com/learnboost/kue>
------
nolliesnom
The article's statement "Putting them within a transaction is also no good, as
you can't read and make decisions on the result (is the result of the select
null?)" is not correct. You can implement task assignment in a SERIALIZABLE-
capable RDBMS using a single "UPDATE ... SET assigned_to = 'me' WHERE
assigned_to IS NULL" statement, or the equivalent of "SELECT FOR UPDATE" at
the beginning of a transaction in order to examine the row in advance.
~~~
evantahler
good call, I'll update that.
I generally assume mySQL's feature-set, which I probably shouldn't do without
clarification.
------
SeoxyS
In my experience, I've found that it is much more reliable to use message
queues instead of databases as the backing for job scheduling.
Learning a complex but powerful MQ like Rabbit can be a little bit of a chore,
but it more than pays off in the long run.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is JavaScript the Future of Programming? - clwen
http://mashable.com/2012/11/12/javascript/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+(Mashable)
======
trimbo
All linkbaity headlines posed as a question are answered should be answered
with "no", but I'm going to make the "yes" argument.
Right now, Javascript is the most comprehensive, accessible, documented
environment for someone who is, say, 12 years old. When I was that age, it was
BASIC or Logo. Then it was Turbo Pascal / Turbo C. Next it was PHP. Right now,
it's Javascript.
And someone can grow with that. Chrome and Firefox are on the verge of being
(if not already) IDEs for Javascript. There's of course node.js. Anyone can go
into the code from websites and pull it apart (see Hanselman's post [1]).
Codecademy is based on Javascript, and so on.
That's my argument for "yes". Not because Javascript is at all good, but
because it's the most ubiquitous and accessible language for the next
generation. And on top of that, more energy is being poured into it than
anything else.
[1] -
[http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheInternetIsNotABlackBoxLookI...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/TheInternetIsNotABlackBoxLookInside.aspx)
------
mansoor-s
As a JavaScript developer who loves JS, I really hope not!
Its a great and fun language but it has far too many flaws. Updates to the
language specs aren't coming fast enough.
------
xentronium
Are Linkbaitish Titles the Future of Journalism?
~~~
nine_k
Why, they are the present.
------
kls
Despite the lack of love by many of those that consider themselves to be
"true" or "hardcore" programmers or developers, JavaScript much like VB before
it has a place and it does a good job at what it is designed for. JavaScript
much like VB serves the purpose of gluing together apps that are close to the
user and doing so rapidly. There is no denying that developing an app on a
HTML/CSS/JavaScript front-end and a Node.js back end is fast probably one of
the fastest stacks to develop in that I have seen in my career. Probably the
only thing that was faster was back in the days of CGI/Perl but that is
comparing apples to oranges as back in those days interactivity was minimal.
It is almost as fast as building a traditional VB desktop app, which is pretty
amazing given the infrastructure needed for web apps. There is definitely a
place in the mainstream for JavaScript but it does not get all the credit,
projects such as Node, Modernizr and Dojo have done just as much work to make
JavaScript a rapid development choice as the core language guys have.
------
shaydoc
Javascript is certainly addictive and fun to program with. Obviously the
driver is, that it is part of every browser, and now the server. While flawed,
it is so very expressive as a language. I think now that we are seeing some
serious architectural concepts implemented and documented in the various
libraries, it is making development much easier and faster.
I recently discussed this with a colleague, and we agreed, that the ability to
do JavaScript client and server (node) side has made it a no brainer, end to
end javascript over RESTful services is the best way for "us" to go.
I like that in windows 8 you can reference class libraries written in c#
directly in your is project also.
So I see a bright future for JavaScript :-)
------
nicholassmith
I'll throw in with "Please no, never", but if we continue the expect trend of
shift towards web apps over the next 5-10 years then obviously JS is going to
become a defacto tool, unless something else takes off but I can only think of
Dart which compiles to JS anyway unless it's that build of Chrome with the VM
in.
So what's next, an attempt a making a wide reaching client side language to
usurp JS, or more languages that just compile down to JS and we treat it much
like assembler gets treated now?
------
benhoskins
Wow; node.js comes along, and its like there's a hole in collective memory.
Both Netscape and Microsoft had javascript rocking serverside late nineties /
early 2000's (the same time as VBScript and CGI). Also, other language
interpreters ran code client-side (IE ran VBScript as I remember). It would be
nice if history was as clearly delineated as stated, but it isn't. The jist of
the argument is accurate tho; even people writing VBScript thought js was
'hacky' on the server :o)
------
eli_gottlieb
God I hope not.
------
taylodl
Maybe we need to think of 'JavaScript' as a term representing a set of
uncompiled languages targeting the browser runtime environment. With that
definition I would say, sure - 'JavaScript' has a very bright future.
------
alter8
No, it can't be the future because it's already the present. The future comes
when something else replaces it.
------
SenorWilson
JavaScript is useful for some things; it can be used for all things, but that
doesn't mean it should be.
------
swalsh
Whenever I see a headline such as "is x the future of z", the answer is almost
always "not exclusively".
------
arikrak
News titles exaggerate. They just mean that Javascript is growing in
popularity.
------
skrebbel
Can every tech mag article that ends with a question mark be answered with
'No'?
~~~
tsahyt
I like to be careful with forall statements but in this very case, yes.
------
general_failure
Sure, why not. It's better C++ and STL.
------
anonymouz
No.
~~~
ubersoldat2k7
+1
------
drivebyacct2
That a language is usable on the server and client is cause for it to be the
"future of programming"? What an unbelievably outlandishly over simplification
of everything that is part of this implication.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why We're All Shy Sometimes - dwynings
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703315404575250350893404916.html?mod=dist_smartbrief
======
rcfox
"...Unlike introverts, who prefer to be socially withdrawn, shy people want to
be social. Making matters worse, shy people are often misunderstood—thought to
be snobby or aloof."
I wish people would do some research about introverts before labelling us all
as social outcasts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Insane "underwater" startup. - noonespecial
http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/13/smallbusiness/subprime_sub.fsb/index.htm
======
mixmax
Either this is nothing special or I just hang around a weird crowd. I know a
some guys that made three submarines, and they go to 1500 feet. The biggest
one is the largest amateur submarine in the world. See pictures here:
<http://www.submarines.dk/>
They are currently working on commercial spaceflight: The goal is to make a
rocket that will get one person suborbital but weightless and back down. They
expect to do it within a couple of years. They just had their first public
motor test, you can see a clip here:
[http://ekstrabladet.dk/nationentv/klip/?clipid=17454&cli...](http://ekstrabladet.dk/nationentv/klip/?clipid=17454&clipfra=1)
. (links are in Danish)
And they're just a couple of guys with no money to speak off, but they are
crazy and they believe they can do it.
So do I.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
I'm pretty sure you just hang around a weird crowd...
_pages through Facebook to see if anyone's status is building submarine or
hobby rocket_
Yeah, just a weird crowd :-)
~~~
mixmax
Looking forward to a trip on top of their rocket though :-)
------
sspencer
Is there a particular reason underwater is in quotes here? It IS an (insane)
underwater startup. The fact that it is underwater does not need to be quoted.
I think people have completely lost touch with what quotation marks mean.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but I am getting tired of seeing completely wrong uses
of quotation marks everywhere.
~~~
noonespecial
I used underwater in this case because it is often said that a startup is
underwater when they are in debt.
The quotes for the double meaning.
Apologies if I got it "wrong". :)
------
sfphotoarts
I wonder just how much of the world would have been explored had Shackleton,
Columbus etc worried too much about if their boats were insured.
Antarctica...ummm, that's all very interesting sir, but tell me again how much
personal accident liability you have on The Discovery... :)
~~~
hugh
Interestingly, googling "Shackleton insurance" gives this New York Times
article from January 16, 1914:
[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A07E6DC1730E...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9A07E6DC1730E733A25755C1A9679C946596D6CF)
It's not clear to me from the article who actually took out the insurance
policy, though.
------
bigthboy
I, like many of those who commented in the article, think the guy is pretty
smart. I mean he did build his own submarine from scratch and furthermore made
it profitable. However, I also agree that the bull headed and risky approach
he has with the whole thing is a bit... unnecessary. I would like to see him
approach it not thinking he's better than everyone and that he can simply get
around the law. For as many dumb laws there are there are at least half as
many good ones. Not allowing people to take other people to dangerous places
without being certified and having insurance is one of those good ones.
~~~
noonespecial
The point he made was that the certification would have cost him more than the
sub. He is barely profitable as it is.
There are a whole set of laws in the first world that create an absurdly high
barrier to entry for certain activities. Instead of making the activities
safer, as intended, they simply make them impossible/unprofitable/implausible.
A soup kitchen that fed the homeless near me was forced to close because they
could not afford to install a centralized halon fire extinguisher system to
meet commercial kitchen code. Instead of making the volunteers and the
homeless marginally safer, the volunteers went home to watch TV and the
homeless were SOL. Law->Fail.
Different cultures experience risk/reward in different ways. Safety _above ALL
else_ is a distinctly first-world/western notion.
~~~
bigthboy
I'm not saying they all work out I'm saying that some are good. In your
example of the soup kitchen closed because it couldn't install some fancy-
pancy fire extinguisher system, yeah, that's a bad law and a bit of an
overkill. Telling someone that they can't legally take other people 700 feet
below the water in a sub that isn't certified is a bit of a different story.
He may have barely have been making a profit but the fact of the matter is it
would've cost him $100,000 to get papers/certified but he instead spent
$200,000 on a new sub. It just seems like the kind of thing that would
actually be considered an investment because it could make you more profitable
and definitely adds more credibility.
~~~
noonespecial
Eventually you end up with a choice. The older, smaller $100k sub with $100k
of permission seeking added on (and somewhat known risk) or the newer larger
$200k sub with somewhat unknown risk. In the first-world, that choice is made
for me (and likely results in no sub ride at all). I'm glad that there are
some places in the world where I can still choose for myself.
I'd take the sub ride.
------
josefresco
Would you trust/encourage a guy who shoots a horse in the head just to see
something on the bottom of the sea floor eat it?
~~~
rudyfink
Yes, while I don't see it as something I would do, I can't find any fault with
it. I'd guess it's probably just the cheapest price point for meat available
to him. If he bought a pallet of horse meat from a butcher, it would seem far
more ordinary I think? That said I can't fault the logic of just going right
to the source and saving money.
~~~
noonespecial
Its the same cultural problem that some people have with eating dog. Its just
a different world. The meat in this case even walks to the place where its
needed! If it was a cow or a pig, it would probably seem less objectionable.
Horse seems to ring up as "pet" in my mind and so colors the issue for me.
If you think about it, he doesn't _need_ to shoot the horse first. Dropping it
to the bottom of the ocean with cinder blocks attached would do the trick
while possibly attracting more sharks. It be cheaper and cleaner boat-side as
well. He would probably find it morally objectionable to do so though.
If more people had to kill their own meat, there'd be a ton more vegetarians.
~~~
reeses
> If more people had to kill their own meat, there'd be a ton more
> vegetarians.
For about a week until we got over the social conditioning. Then we'd start
wondering what else we've been missing all these years, and start killing and
eating koala bears, kittens, and people.
------
wastedbrains
I saw ads for this when I was scuba diving and Honduras, kind of funny to see
this story on CNN about a year later.
------
sireat
This sounds like a lot of fun, till someone gets hurt. Even in Honduras that
would spell trouble.
I would probably take the risk though.
------
Allocator2008
I am not an economist, but I think this is a lesson in the area of
risk/reward. Sure, as a tourist I might have qualms about taking a ride in an
unlicensed sub. However as a human being who loves knowledge, I would be
intrigued by the chance to see a 14-foot shark close-up. The risk involved is
offset by the chance for knowledge. Evolution hard-wires self-preservation
into us. But perhaps it also hard-wires a certain risk-tolerance for the sake
of a greater good. Put it another way: it is better for the gene to lose a few
gene-carriers along the way to aquiring a big new advantage, than to not lose
those handful of gene-carriers but also not aquire the big new advantage. So
businesses like this that understand the hard-wired tolerance we have for risk
when others don't understand that, have a competitive advantage - they can get
to work while their competitors are still worrying about paper work. In a
word, the selfish gene should be proud of this guy! :-)
~~~
seano
You could get the same knowledge from watching a video.
~~~
dmv
Knowledge, perhaps, but by no means the same experience (which is what the
commenter probably meant). There is no question that I appreciate how a shark
moves through the water far more from my experiences as a diver than as a
Shark Week viewer or aquarium visitor.
------
markm
Now that's a maverick.
------
mtw
killing the horse just to get tourists see sharks and other sea predators is
imo stupid and unelegant
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Outrageously Large Neural Nets: Sparsely-Gated Mixture-of-Experts Layer (2017) - msoad
https://arxiv.org/abs/1701.06538
======
merricksb
Discussion 2 years ago at time of publication:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13518039)
------
jcims
N00b here.
I can’t tell if this is primarily intended to provide effective sharding of a
largely homogeneous network, or if it’s intended to allow for incorporation of
diverse networks and use the gating to classify and route the inputs to the
appropriate networks.
~~~
hadsed
Heh. I'm not sure you're wrong to say it either way.
------
sgillen
This work uses conditional computation to allow for "Outrageously large"
networks which may work better in practice but which will be even harder to
understand.
I'm very interested in working on using this same sort of conditional
computation to make reasonably sized neural networks easier to understand. Has
anyone seen papers on this sort of work?
~~~
plutonorm
What is it with needing to understand NNs? Its the same thing as not trusting
a human to drive a car because you cannot understand every stage Of
computation happening in their brain. If a neural network learns a task, test
it well enough to know that it performs well enough in target domain before
using it. Don't expect to be able to understand how it works and from there
claim to know that it will work well and have more confidence in it. This
approach barely works in standard software, let alone a neural network. Stop
worrying and learn to love the NN, after all it is a mirror of your own
ineffable nature.
~~~
varjag
_" Those are scary things, those gels. You know one suffocated a bunch of
people in London a while back?"
Yes, Joel's about to say, but Jarvis is back in spew mode. "No shit. It was
running the subway system over there, perfect operational record, and then one
day it just forgets to crank up the ventilators when it's supposed to. Train
slides into station fifteen meters underground, everybody gets out, no air,
boom."
"These things teach themselves from experience, right?," Jarvis continues. "So
everyone just assumed it had learned to cue the ventilators on something
obvious. Body heat, motion, CO2 levels, you know. Turns out instead it was
watching a clock on the wall. Train arrival correlated with a predictable
subset of patterns on the digital display, so it started the fans whenever it
saw one of those patterns."
"Yeah. That's right." Joel shakes his head. "And vandals had smashed the
clock, or something."_
~~~
sgt101
To summarise: if a system is not understood there exists the possibility of
sudden, unexpected harm. The system is unsafe. This is (probably) ok if the
system is putting icing on donuts (you might get a bad batch) but is
definitely not ok if the system is deciding on dosing levels for drugs or
controlling machines that could suddenly smash into queues of school children.
~~~
varjag
Moreover, if (as customary in all technology) you build systems upon these
systems, even the low malfunction probabilities will multiply into nearly
assured failures. With a system you understand you can find the cause and fix
the issue for all: this what allows us to build ever more complex systems over
decades of engineering R&D.
But for a system you don't understand you are at whim of cascading patterns of
errors in underlying behavior.
~~~
p1esk
Two counter examples:
1\. A cpu you rely on is a well understood system yet unexpected failures do
happen (eg pentium bug, spectre exploits, etc).
2\. A human you rely on might fail unexpectedly (tired, drunk, heart attack,
going crazy, embracing terrorism, etc).
After testing reasonable number of things, if NNs perform more reliably than
those other systems we rely on currently, it will be increasingly harder to
justify using the other systems, especially when that means more people
accidentally dying every year.
~~~
varjag
I believe "With a system you understand you can find the cause and fix the
issue for all" covers the first case. The second case is applicable to both NN
and traditional control systems.
~~~
p1esk
So which system would you personally prefer to rely on in life or death
situation, the one that is well understood (accident rate 0.0001%), or poorly
understood (accident rate 0.000001%)?
------
p1esk
This is from 2017, so probably obsolete by now.
~~~
sanxiyn
It is. For example, it uses LSTM, which is obsolete now.
~~~
currymj
People keep saying this with extreme confidence; I’m not sure I buy it.
Certainly recurrent networks in general are not obsolete, even if
attention/convolution works better for some applications.
Perhaps one ought to try GRU before LSTM but there’s no reason to suppose that
it would dominate in all cases.
~~~
terminalhealth
Indeed. Here is a very fresh paper finding that attention is certainly not all
you need as sometimes recurrence is necessary.
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01603](https://arxiv.org/abs/1906.01603)
This is also obvious: Without recurrence you cannot remember information that
is not externally visible, but it may be computationally very convenient and
often necessary to maintain information that is hidden.
The hard part is learning reps for hidden information as recurrences are
plagued by vanishing and shattering gradients.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intentional memory leaks - throwaway2048
https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=comp.lang.ada/E9bNCvDQ12k/1tezW24ZxdAJ
======
tjalfi
The previous discussion is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233542)
------
wyldfire
It's certainly a humorous anecdote and arguably a practical solution to the
problem.
But when the mission of the code expands beyond the original use case, this
element might be lost. It's best to encode these limitations/constraints into
the design of the program, whenever possible. However for this case I cannot
imagine how to do that. When that's impossible, it's ideal to advertise these
limitations as a design feature coupled with the intended use cases. Therein
lies the only hope of discovering this before it causes problems.
These days, the vast, vast majority of our code can and should undergo unit
testing and have sanitizer tests enabled for that unit testing. We should be
extremely cautious about whitelisting/bypassing those checks (but at least
those are more explicit signals).
~~~
beached_whale
I thought I remember reading this story in the past but it also talked to the
real time requirements and there wasn't enough time to free the memory. Not
sure if I am making this up or not though. Either way, it is a factor that
cannot be ignored
------
cpeterso
I would be very surprised if embedded missile guidance software actually used
dynamic memory allocation. It would most likely use static data.
~~~
vardump
Embedded dev here.
I concur. I've heard this story a number of times, and it smells like a myth.
Well, maybe terrain recognition navigation system might need to allocate
memory. Or perhaps a data link for processing commands. But probably not.
Funny, though.
------
stcredzero
I remember this kind of approach being proposed for a game debugging tool, and
for writing games in a managed language. Basically, everything you wanted to
keep or consider permanent was marked or kept in one part of the heap, and
everything that was allocated to execute a frame was implicitly thrown away.
(One way to do it would be to compact the heap before starting the frame, then
use the top of the heap as a barrier.)
I also saw this strategy used in coursework. I was in graduate school, and I
had just done the Compiler class the previous semester. My best friends were
taking the course, and the professor had concocted a home made leak checker
and foisted it on the class, declaring that no program with leaks would be
accepted for the final project. It was only a few weeks before the end of the
term, and everyone was demoralized. Jokingly, I suggested that everyone just
make their own mechanism of the same kind, which would track allocations then
release all of the program's allocated memory just before the prof's leak
checker ran. As it turns out, the whole class ended up implementing my idea.
The test data was small enough, that everyone's compilers could afford to
simply leak memory, then release it all at the end. Problem solved.
------
ysleepy
true stop-the-world garbage collection.
~~~
saalweachter
One of the anecdotes I keep in my back pocket about how _anything_ can be
funded by the military was a compilers professor whose research on real-time
Java was funded by the military. Apparently some drone control software was
written in Java, and having your drone use stop-the-world garbage collection
is bad in a number of ways.
------
zwieback
That's humorous but sad in so many ways. Regarding the original quote - if I
see a malloc for a bunch of memory intended for the lifetime of the app and
it's at the beginning of main and then it doesn't get freed before the end of
process execution it's not really a memory leak in my book. Still, I wouldn't
write code like that.
~~~
zlynx
A variant of that I've seen in many small 1990s C apps is create a huge struct
with all the program data in it, with fixed size arrays of things big enough
so that's all you ever need, and just declare one global struct.
It was one struct instead of separate globals because of some coding style
guide at the time.
"But what if we want to use this in a library?" "Here's all the data in one
container, malloc it and use that."
I don't think many of those programs ever did end up in libraries.
~~~
tempodox
The original yacc(1) was written with fixed-size arrays for the parser tables,
statically allocated. If the parser was too complex, the arrays would blow. To
fix that, change the DEFINEs and recompile yacc.
------
theandrewbailey
Missiles: for when you really want to outsource your garbage collector.
------
nikanj
In the good old 90s, we talked about improving reboot speeds by removing
destructors from software.
I don't think the project ever got anywhere, but back then, your KDE desktop
spent a good 15-30 seconds carefully deallocating all objects.
------
amelius
If rebooting requires less than a few seconds, then I'd say they could simply
do that, even while in flight, to collect the garbage.
~~~
brokenmachine
A missile will cover a fairly large distance in a few seconds.
In fact, it's entire flight time could be a few seconds. Imagine an air-to-air
missile fired by an aircraft at another aircraft.
------
jjdredd
So adding memory was cheaper than fixing the leaks?
~~~
matte_black
way cheaper
~~~
cbhl
I imagine this depends on how many missiles are being made:
adding memory: $xxx per missile paying a software engineer to fix a memory
leak: $x,xxx,xxx
~~~
nomel
> paying a software engineer to fix a memory leak: $x,xxx,xxx
Paying the software engineer would be a fraction of the cost to fix the memory
leak in software. Recertification of the software would blow it all away.
~~~
amelius
> Recertification of the software would blow it all away.
This makes me wonder, will self-driving cars need recertification if even one
line of code is touched?
~~~
matte_black
Let me put it this way, if there is a car that doesn’t get its driving
software recertified even after one line of code is changed, you do not want
that car.
~~~
amelius
Yeah, ok, but what about the cars that drive around me?
------
vernie
Embedded, harm-critical applications.
------
anfilt
Why I normally would not reccomend such a thing. The punchline is funny.
~~~
tempodox
“the ultimate in garbage collection” had me almost fall out of my chair.
Memory management in embedded systems truly increases entropy in the universe.
------
JetSpiegel
Classic.
Missing (1995) on the title, and perhaps a [Usenet] tag?
------
Tommyatomic
Kaboom. Garbage collection handled.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Goldman Sachs: space-mining for platinum is 'more realistic than perceived' - ptrptr
http://www.businessinsider.com/goldman-sachs-space-mining-asteroid-platinum-2017-4
======
foxyv
"It used to cost $35 million (£28 million) to send one person up on a Soyuz
rocket. Today, Virgin Galactic hopes to get space tourists into space for
something like $250,000 (£200,000), Goldman says."
This made me wince. Suborbital is not anywhere near the cost of orbital
vehicles. Although the cost HAS gone down. A SpaceX Dragon 2 costs about $70M
with a crew of up to 7 reducing the cost to $10M a head. (When they start
manned flights.) But this isn't 3 orders of magnitude =/
------
boznz
I would hope SpaceX and Blue Origin would have think-tanks planning out these
things, after all once you have a shit tonne of re-usable rockets waiting for
customers you may as well put them to work.
Problem I see is robotics, nobody wants to go to the effort to put up a space
miner with all the human problems so all the work is focusing on robotics that
could do this, however this is something that could ramp up quickly into a
race once someone starts making a concerted effort or books some flights as
the payoffs are enormous for the winner and Humanity.
~~~
netzone
Yup. All it takes is that someone starts the ball rolling making a serious
effort, then everyone will follow suit and we might see a new "space age".
------
payne92
The article highlights the problem: one asteroid would tank the entire
platinum market.
~~~
Arizhel
Yes, but the other factor is, with much cheaper platinum available, new
applications are likely to be found which were previously ignored due to cost.
Today, for instance, (this is an unrealistically simplistic example) if you
could make something out of either copper or platinum, with copper not working
quite as well but still fairly close, you're obviously going to choose copper
because platinum is so expensive. If platinum is now cheaper than copper,
you're going to choose that instead.
However, this does make me wonder: are there any applications where platinum
would actually make more sense than what we're already using? It doesn't
conduct electricity better than copper, for instance. So aside from catalytic
converters and jewelry (which we already use platinum for, so it'll just drop
the cost rather than expand the market), what is it good for?
Secondly, what about other metals? Surely these asteroids have other valuable
metals besides platinum, such as iron and nickel. Considering how much we use
copper, we could really use a copper-rich asteroid.
~~~
nickjarboe
Fuel cells are expensive due mostly to the cost of platinum.
------
placeybordeaux
It'll be very interesting to see the cost-benefit calculation of chucking the
raw materials down the gravity well vs parking them in orbit and waiting to
sell it at a premium as they could easily beat the price of anyone that wants
to fly something up.
------
bglazer
How does one go about getting a 500 meter wide asteroid back to Earth's
surface? It seems like there is a non-zero chance of accidentally creating
Chicxulub v2.
Or do you just leave it in low earth orbit and build a space factory?
~~~
Arizhel
Much of the asteroid is likely not that valuable; it's not like there's pure
ingots of metals floating around out there. So you'd want to have some kind of
refinery in space which can capture the asteroid and extract the valuable
ores.
Here's something helpful: [http://www.space.com/15391-asteroid-mining-space-
planetary-r...](http://www.space.com/15391-asteroid-mining-space-planetary-
resources-infographic.html)
------
Clownshoesms
So will it be "first in, first served" on all the roids/matter in the
universe?
A world where Goldman has first dibs on these resources, or any say in the
matter at all actually, is a grim one to me.
~~~
csense
The money has to come from somewhere. Why shouldn't private spaceflight use
our financial system's existing infrastructure for raising capital? In my
mind, spending tax dollars on space is fine for exploration and science. But
when it comes to industrial development, letting the free market sort it out
is a good thing -- if asteroid mining's profitable, this part of our space
presence can become self-funding.
As far as who owns what, I imagine the first successful exploitation of
extraterrestrial resources will quickly be followed by the governments of
countries with this capability hammering out some kind of international
agreement on who can mine where.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to make a product video for under $150 - dpolaske
http://polaske.tumblr.com/post/91289197615/how-i-created-a-professional-product-video-for-146-55?one=one
======
ttty
still something is missing to be professional. Anyway is a lot better than
other home made (:
~~~
dpolaske
Most definitely not quite pro. And thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PEP 380 ("yield from") is now Final - motter
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2012-January/115471.html
======
motter
Full details: <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0380/>
~~~
sp332
Talk about syntactic sugar :)
RESULT = yield from EXPR
_is semantically equivalent to_
_i = iter(EXPR)
try:
_y = next(_i)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
else:
while 1:
try:
_s = yield _y
except GeneratorExit as _e:
try:
_m = _i.close
except AttributeError:
pass
else:
_m()
raise _e
except BaseException as _e:
_x = sys.exc_info()
try:
_m = _i.throw
except AttributeError:
raise _e
else:
try:
_y = _m(*_x)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
break
else:
try:
if _s is None:
_y = next(_i)
else:
_y = _i.send(_s)
except StopIteration as _e:
_r = _e.value
break
RESULT = _r
~~~
motter
Kudos for typing that out for the purposes of illustration!
~~~
sp332
Well I just copy&pasted from the article :) But it's impressive! definitely
props to whoever came up with it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Error Leads to a New Way to Draw, and Erase, Computing Circuits - signa11
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/10/science/an-error-leads-to-a-new-way-to-draw-and-erase-computing-circuits.html?_r=0
======
AlbertoGP
TL;DR: they found that low-energy fluorescent's ultraviolet emissions allow
"etching" circuits in topological insulators (material that is insulator
inside, but conductive on the surface), and also deleting those patterns using
another wavelength. The pattern stays for 16 hours at low temperatures, and
"by refining the materials they might eventually be able to reproduce it at
room temperature".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing Google Cloud Bigtable - suprgeek
http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2015/05/introducing-Google-Cloud-Bigtable.html
======
mataug
I've been quite frustrated with the google cloud platform, Just take a look at
their APIs for AppEngine, CloudSQL, GCE and the sort, Its pathetic compared to
their direct competitor AWS.
Lets compare trying to do create an RDS instance on AWS vs Creating one on
CloudSQL
AWS:
1\. Get AccessToken and AccessSecret from IAM
2\. pip install boto
3\. conn = boto.rds.connect_to_region("us-west-2")
4\. db = conn.create_dbinstance("db-master-1", 10, 'db.m1.small', 'root',
'hunter2')
Done !
Google
1\. Get a Client Id and Client Secret
2\. pip install google-api-python-client
3\. Go through the OAuth Flow and run a server locally to capture the access
token
4\. Use the discovery api to generate a service object. Good Luck finding this
in the documentation
5\. use the uninspectable service object to create a cloudsql instance.
The reason I don't have code for steps 3,4 and 5 is because I gave up after
wasting time trying to figure this out.
My point is that they've gotten into the habit of doing half assed work so I
have no hopes that the've improved this time. Practically no way to automate
this The only way to use this would be from the horribly slow GUIs that google
provides.
EDIT:
I ended up using google cloud sdk cli and running the automations with
subprocess.check_output(['gcloud', 'sql', 'instance' ... ])
~~~
forgottenacc56
You missed the snakes and ladders game of following googles out of date
documentation.
"You're doing it wrong, we deprecated that last year, I know we haven't yet
updated the 4 separate places in which the same thing is documented all in a
different context and different way. We really should fix that but we're busy
coding. Did you know we're all PhDs at Google?"
What?!?!? You're using the Google console version 3? Why? That feature isn't
implemented there. Stupid you. You're MEANT to be using our new Google console
version X. Why are you using our old one?
Also you missed the 16 hours you'll spend trying work out why something isn't
working only to find it's actually been changed or taken out of the Google
developer console, without any trace or notice left in the code to say'we
moved/removed the feature that you expected to be here.'
Really you should ask Google for help on StackOverflow which is now the
official Google channel for ignoring support questions, and where your
question will within seconds be down voted, derided and deleted by the
StackOverflow Community,saving Google the effort of not reading and ignoring
your question about how to resolve the catastrophic failure of your software.
Seriously though, why not entrust your critical systems to such capable hands?
~~~
jjjjoe
(Google Cloud Support here)
The across-the-board guidance to go to StackOverflow is not working, and we
get that. It's not just that system administration questions get downvoted on
StackOverflow (which I think is the parent's point) but that StackExchange
isn't good for general discussion.
We (support) are trying to be much more clear that free support is not
"StackOverflow or nothing." We recently updated our "community" support page
at
[https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163)
to lay out all of the community support options in one place.
Bottom line: everything listed on that page has Googlers actively
participating. This includes groups, StackExchange, and issue trackers.
There's room for plenty of improvement, the intent is not to ignore you.
~~~
hoodoof
Google should have a central support forum and try to focus all the questions
into one place.
StackOverflow should not be on your support list at all, for the reasons
raised. Having said that, Google should still be on SO answering questions
that end up there.
What Google needs to understand is that its long standing public reputation
that it has built is an organisation that actively tries to avoid providing
support - ever since Google started it has tried to avoid support. That is now
the reputation that Google carries into its efforts to woo the developer
community.
Google has to be extraordinarily good at developer support to dispel the
baseline assumption that developers have that Google really (genuinely) wants
to avoid dealing with support questions.
There's a level of cluelessness to Google's support strategy that is
concerning. Why, for goodness sake, would it EVER look like a good idea to
push support to StackOverflow? Who is doing the thinking behind that sort of
decision? It is self evident that Google's support interests and StackOverflow
are not the same thing. It's the sort of decision made without really
considering the detail, and that is the point about Google's support - it's an
afterthought. Kind of like washing the dishes after dinner is eaten - has to
be done but we're not enthused about it.
And in the end, lack of support is a showstopper for using a cloud computing
platform. If the support looks sketchy then it just isn't worth risking your
business by using that platform.
~~~
jjjjoe
You make great points. I'm new and can't really speak to your rhetorical
question of "what were they thinking?!?" but I do hope for my own job security
that support isn't an afterthought :-)
First, I should point out that what we are talking about here is Google's
"Bronze Support." This is similar to Amazon's "Basic Support." In both cases
it's not what you should be thinking about if you need a case response time
SLA, or the ability to wake up engineers at midnight. If your business depends
on _any_ platform provider I really hope you buy a support plan which gets you
the ability to talk to support and engineering whenever you need. Google
definitely offers these. They start at $150 per month.
([https://cloud.google.com/support/](https://cloud.google.com/support/)) End
plug.
On StackOverflow: let's stop calling it "support." It's a Q&A site with good
SEO. If you have a question which "belongs" there it's a fine place to ask.
We're moderating our "go to StackOverflow no matter what" messaging, but I
can't see tossing it completely.
Anyway, when it comes to free support, I partially agree with your point about
a single forum, in that can be confusing. Again, keep an eye on
[https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3466163?hl=en&ref_topic=3340599)
To your point about a single forum for everything, I respectfully disagree.
Free-form discussion is different from bug tracking. Highly structured Q&A has
a place too. It seems to me that every product should have \- a discussion
forum where users can discuss the product and raise issues \- an issue tracker
to collect bug reports and feature requests \- a designated place for Q&A
On each of those three, support staff and (preferably) engineers should
participate daily. I think the situation with Compute Engine is closest to our
ideal right now: it has a lively Google Group, actively triaged issue tracker
and a sponsored tag on ServerFault (which I hope we can agree is a better
destination than StackOverflow)
~~~
nulltype
While StackOverflow has a number of flaws, it is pretty good for finding
things that I'm looking for. I've definitely found posts from the BigQuery
team on there answering my BigQuery questions.
As for Google's support plan thing, it might be a little odd that it costs
$150 per month, but if you're spending any significant money GCP, it's well
worth it. The support response times even at the lowest level are pretty good
and they sometimes fix bugs.
Of course, I think if Google employees use GCP internally, it will improve at
a much faster rate.
------
justinsb
I think using the HBase API is a very clever move. This means that the HBase
API is now supported on AWS (EMR), GCE, VMWare (Serengeti), OpenStack
(Sahara), and everywhere (Hadoop, if you're willing to run it yourself).
In comparing against DynamoDB (for example), you'll have to weigh a
proprietary single-vendor API against an API with a good open-source
implementation (that will get even better with hydrabase), yet that is also
available in managed-form on all major clouds.
Edit: although - ouch - the $1500 per month entry price-point does not compare
well to DynamoDB's $5 per month minimum.
~~~
turingbook
Where is $1500 per month from? I can not find it in the pricing page.
~~~
dudus
Cost per node per hour - $0.65; Minimum number of nodes per cluster - 3
0.65 x 3 x 24 x 30 = $1404 / month
And that's before any storage costs.
~~~
turingbook
Thanks!
------
obulpathi
Pretty impressed with the performance metrics: Reads/Writes 6ms@99% compared
to Cassandra 300ms for read and 10 ms for write.
------
wiradikusuma
How is it different than Datastore?
[https://cloud.google.com/datastore/](https://cloud.google.com/datastore/)
~~~
Goranek
datastore is a copy of Google Megastore service. It has indexes, sql like
queries, transactions.. and you don't need to run servers like with BigTable
(you pay for documents and api calls only)
~~~
SjuulJanssen
Why would I want to manage instances?
~~~
vgt
I don't believe you need to manage anything with BigTable.. "instances" is a
concept to describe iterations of scale only
------
bbromhead
So their benchmark of Cassandra against BigTable doesn't even match their
previous benchmark of Cassandra.
[http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/03/cassandra-
hi...](http://googlecloudplatform.blogspot.com/2014/03/cassandra-hits-one-
million-writes-per-second-on-google-compute-engine.html)
How did the latency for Cassandra on their cloud platform increase by 200ms
from a year ago?
~~~
ivansmf
I wrote last year's benchmark. The clusters are completely different, and so
is the workload. Last year's cluster had 300 VMs, which was a much higher
price point, and the workload was write only. This benchmark uses YCSB
workloads A and B, which we though matches the usage we'll have on BigTable.
The cluster is much smaller as well. I shared my scripts from last year, it is
pretty easy (although a bit expensive) to repro the numbers. Let me check if
we can share this year's benchmark scripts as well.
~~~
bbromhead
I'm pretty surprised about the difference in latency though, throughput as you
say will be different due to number of nodes.
For any given replication factor in Cassandra, overhead remains the pretty
much the same irrespective of whether you have 300 or 3 nodes. So should the
latency.
On top of that both BigTable and Cassandra use SSTables to store the data on
disk (with all the compactiony goodness that goes with them), so I'm even more
surprised that the difference in latency is so huge.
Would love to see the scripts for the benchmarks! I don't want to take away
from a great product launch and I'm sure BigTable kicks arse in certain areas
that Cassandra doesn't... I'm just surprised at the differences in latency.
------
StevePerkins
Any information on pricing? I doubt they'd have specific prices ready to
announce yet, but it would be good to at least know the DIMENSIONS by which it
will be priced (e.g. per read and write, storage, etc?). Will it be accessible
to "classic" App Engine front-end instances, or only meant for Compute Engine
VM's and "App Engine 2.0" Managed VM's?
The biggest pain point with the current Datastore is how difficult it can be
to predict your costs. Also, there are weird quirks in the pricing model (e.g.
"writes" used to cost more than "reads", it's more expensive to delete rows
than it is to flag them as tombstoned and continue storing them indefinitely,
etc). These quirks have left people with a lot of technical debt from having
designed around them.
If this is another database option (alongside the Datastore and CloudSQL) for
"classic" App Engine apps, which aren't likely to be re-written for Managed
VM's, then it might be interesting. However, if it's only for Compute Engine
or Managed VM contexts, where you're _not_ locked-in and are free to choose
any technologies you want, then at this point I would need to hear some pretty
amazing information on the pricing model before I could be bothered to even
test it out. Google lock-in is _painful_... once you've gone through the
trouble of breaking free from the App Engine jail, it's really difficult to
even consider adding new lock-in dependencies.
EDIT: Doh. You have to click through a couple of links from the original post
to find it, but they have indeed posted pricing specifics already.
[https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/#pricing](https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/#pricing)
Looks like it's priced by the number of VM nodes you want in your cluster,
storage, and network I/O if you're using it from outside Google's datacenters.
No metered pricing on "read ops" and "write ops". This model IS a significant
improvement over classic Datastore pricing. Unfortunately, it doesn't look
like you can use it as a Datastore-replacement on classic App Engine front-end
instances... and I'm not sure that I wouldn't just use Cassandra in other
contexts where I have complete control.
~~~
B-Scan
Cost per node per hour - $0.65; Minimum number of nodes per cluster - 3; SSD
storage (GB/mo) - $0.17; HDD storage (GB/mo) (coming soon) - $0.026; Source:
[https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/](https://cloud.google.com/bigtable/)
------
pdevr
"To help get you started quickly, we have assembled a service partner
ecosystem to enable a diverse and expanding set of Cloud Bigtable use cases
for our customers. "
Any idea how the service partners were chosen?
------
eva1984
Is this like a direct competitor to DynamoDB? How about open-source solutions,
like Cassandra/HBase?
~~~
Blackthorn
Bigtable is the original Cassandra/HBase.
------
sagivo
funny they call it "open source" just because it supports other open source
API.
------
nivertech
Interesting if there will be Cloud Bigtable to BigQuery connector, possible
using Cloud Dataflow.
~~~
michaelwsherman
Currently you can use the BigQuery Hadoop connector and write a MapReduce job
to scan Bigtable and write everything to BigQuery. Works quickly. I'm sure
dataflow support is in the works, since Google internally doesn't really use
MR and therefore likely has this on the back end already.
Source--I wrote one of the whitepapers on the BigTable homepage.
------
rplnt
Anyone willing to be dependant on this is honestly stupid when you take into
account Google's history in this area: unreliability, changes in offerings,
changes in pricing, discontinuations of services, hard lock-in, bad customer
service, ...
~~~
jpatokal
As the blog post says, Bigtable internally runs virtually all of Google's big
services. This means it's rock solid, and it's not about to get discontinued
anytime soon.
~~~
BinaryIdiot
> Bigtable internally runs virtually all of Google's big services
Are you sure? I'm not a Googler but have been told by other Googlers that
Bigtable has essentially been replaced internally (though heard it's still
similar). So I wasn't sure how much Bigtable is even used anymore inside of
Google.
~~~
jpatokal
The blog post says "the same database that drives nearly all of Google’s
largest applications", and I work at Google, so yes, I'm pretty sure ;)
Of course Google has a whole slew of other storage options optimized for
various use cases, but some of these are actually built on top of Bigtable.
~~~
BinaryIdiot
Haha okay fair enough. Thanks!
------
EugeneOZ
All is cool except one thing - it's vendor lock and vendor is known for
absence of customers support, often API deprecations and products shutdowns.
------
3lux
does anyone know of a Go client?
~~~
skj
[https://github.com/google/google-api-go-
client](https://github.com/google/google-api-go-client) is the code-gen Go
client for Google APIs.
It probably does not (yet) have the generated client for cloud bigtable
checked in (but I'm sure it will), but you can always use it to generate a
client. You pass it the API to use on the command line, it will go fetch the
docs it needs to make your client, and put its source where you tell it to.
~~~
kevinschumacher
This uses the HBase API. You just connect to it like you would any other HBase
cluster, using an HBase client. It's not like e.g., BigQuery or Datastore
where you need the API client. You include a JAR and then connect to HBase
like normal.
~~~
saurik
The website claims that you must use their customized version of the Java
HBase client library: it does not claim it is network compatible, and seems to
state it is API compatible with the Java API (but then describes numerous
subtle differences).
> To access Cloud Bigtable, you use a customized version of the Apache HBase
> 1.0.1 Java client.
------
amelius
Nice, but you still can't use this for your privacy-aware customers.
~~~
ImJasonH
Care to elaborate on why not?
~~~
amelius
Storing data in a database that is managed by a third-party is something that
some customers explicitly forbid.
~~~
hoddez
Wouldn't that mean you can't use any cloud data services with any company? Or
even cloud hosting? What kind of customers forbid this?
~~~
amelius
> What kind of customers forbid this?
Government entities, for instance.
~~~
icebraining
[https://www.google.com/work/apps/government/](https://www.google.com/work/apps/government/)
Google has a dedicated cloud environment for governmental agencies:
[http://googleforwork.blogspot.pt/2009/09/google-apps-and-
gov...](http://googleforwork.blogspot.pt/2009/09/google-apps-and-
government.html)
~~~
amelius
> We look forward to working with governments across the country on these
> exciting initiatives in the months ahead.
So what about foreign governments?
------
forgottenacc56
No Python 3? Not interested. All that BigTable development, pointless without
drivers. Silly Google.
~~~
estefan
Do you actually know what hadoop & HDFS are?
~~~
saurik
I am going to read your comment as "you should be able to use the off-the-
shelf drivers for HBase for Python" (I have elided the "3" as no one uses
Python 3: that must have been a typo for "2" ;P). The "APIs" that Google
describes as being compatible with are for Java, not the network: "To access
Cloud Bigtable, you use a customized version of the Apache HBase 1.0.1 Java
client.". So, no: it seems like if you are not using Java you will need to
pull apart their customized Java SDK and build your own driver.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's the logic behind Google rejecting Max Howell, author of Homebrew? - ziodave
https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree?share=1
======
byoung2
Imagine Guns 'N Roses rejecting Les Paul after an audition. The lead guitarist
in the band plays Gibson Les Paul guitars, but you're not what we're looking
for. Les Paul was an amazing guitarist in his own style but it would be a
question of fit, not ability.
~~~
umanwizard
Is creating homebrew really even that amazing? Seems like nothing too complex.
~~~
byoung2
Les Paul guitars are actually nothing amazing either, and suffered from poor
sales early on. Their success is mainly in the marketing, not in the
engineering.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fat that makes you thin - prat
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327211.200-the-fat-that-makes-you-thin.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=genetics
======
mhotchen
This is an interesting discovery, but I have a question about its uses for
anyone that knows more about nutrition and/or biology than myself: If Bob has
50 grams of brown fat in his body and John has 0, how does Bob have an
advantage over John? My perception is that Bob now has to eat 500 more
calories per day than John just to survive. That doesn't seem like an
advantage to me.
Am I missing something?
~~~
voidpointer
If we were still hunting for our food in the woods that wouldn't be an
advantage and that may explain why in the cause of evolution, getting rid of
brown fat with growing age, was a fitness criteria. In our "developed world"
however, there is such a large availability of calories, that some people get
more than enough. For those, being able to burn more, would be an advantage.
Unless they are planning to go on a polar expedition anytime soon :)
I agree with your general sentiment though. Whether you could burn 500
calories more or eat 500 calories less isn't much of a difference. However, a
drug that makes you burn 500 more calories and allows you to enjoy more eating
is probably something that you can sell to a lot of people. Telling them to
get their act together and eat right isn't that easily translated into profit.
~~~
mhotchen
I never thought about why people want to lose weight; I just assumed it was so
that they can be healthy, but I suppose it could be entirely superficial for a
sizeable crowd. Obviously, the health benefits of something like this would be
minimal, but it would be great if someone just wanted to eat more junk food
and not put on extra weight.
~~~
thasmin
The health benefits to losing weight could be incredible. For example, the
risk of a heart attack would drop and there would be less stress on the knees
and ankles.
------
prat
>A mere 50 grams of brown fat - well within the range of what some of us
already have - could dissipate around 500 calories a day.
Amazing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learn Morse code - daenney
https://www.morsecode.io
======
timonoko
I totally learned. What do I do with the skill?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Useful Emacs Hacks - dskhatri
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/60367/the-single-most-useful-emacs-feature
======
dskhatri
I have been a light Emacs user for a few years now. I was so thrilled about
discovering Org-Mode through an HN post [1], I went out looking for other cool
Emacs hacks and found this Stackoveflow thread that has a number of them.
Generally, I wouldn't link to a Stackoverflow question but this one has a
number of great tips.
[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=651459>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
San Francisco’s Dominance Over U.S. Innovation and Technology Patents - jseliger
http://www.citylab.com/tech/2016/05/san-franciscos-increasing-dominance-over-us-innovation/484199/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheAtlanticCities+%28CityLab%29
======
PaulHoule
People in Peoria pay into pension funds.
People in Wall Street invest that money in Silicon Valley startups.
Silicon Valley people get rich and look successful because money is being
showered on them.
People in Peoria lose their jobs because their own money is disinvested from
their community and worse, used as a weapon against them.
People in Peoria vote for Trump and say "burn baby burn".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Space and Human Survival: My Views on the Importance of Colonizing Space [2003] - billswift
http://www.sylviaengdahl.com/space/survival.htm
======
billswift
She also has a related Listmania! page "Why We Must Colonize Space"
[http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Must-Colonize-
Space/lm/15QM4CUB...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Must-Colonize-
Space/lm/15QM4CUBDSMAF/ref=cm_lmt_fvlm_f_2_rlrsrs0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur Blues - fazkan
https://www.indiehackers.com/@thwiv/writers-block-or-the-wantrepreneur-blues-76ab4a93b6?utm_source=Indie+Hackers+Newsletter&utm_campaign=indie-hackers-newsletter-057&utm_medium=email
======
pfisch
Quit your job. Make it real. Fear is one of the best motivators.
Unfortunately this is bad advice for most people, because the truth is most
people don't have the full skillset required to own a business. Maybe they
could learn it if they apprenticed under an entrepreneur or in an executive
role, but I'm honestly not sure.
I own a business with studios in New Orleans and Atlanta, but I worked in the
real world, went to grad school, and then came out and immediately went out on
my own which is easier for a lot of reasons.
I also think a series of fortunate and somewhat unreproduceable events led me
here, strangely enough involving Gabe Newell, though I'm sure he wouldn't
remember.
I honestly don't think reading a bunch of books telling you how to be an
entrepreneur are helpful or real at all. In fact I would describe them as more
of a stalling tactic.
~~~
flachsechs
> _most people don 't have the full skillset required to own a business_
i agree with your post but i never miss an opportunity to be pedantic --
reality is nobody has the full skillset to run a business -- in my mind it's
really just a bunch of intangibles like vision (goal setting), determination,
ability to take staggering amounts of abuse, ability to work insanely hard
when it's necessary, and ability to know how to hire an expert in matters you
are not skilled or experienced in, which means the ability to clearly
communicate and know what to ask for through deductive reasoning.
most people have NONE of those skills, because working a normal job doesn't
require any of them. zero, zip, nada, zilch. a high functioning professional
has like 2 or 3 of those things. i would guess less than 5% of the general US
population has those characteristics in the large amounts required to start a
business from scratch, and most of the time that talent is channeled into
something like e.g. investment banking or corporate law or being a surgeon.
on top of all that, the ability to take a financial and social risk is just
too much to handle for most people. they just won't do it. period. you might
as well ask them to sprout wings and fly.
but that's why starting a business has the potential to be so god damn
lucrative -- basically, nobody else is doing it relative to the demand the
overall economy generates.
i also agree that the only way you're really going to get anywhere is if you
quit your job, or were fired. the slow drip of a paycheck is the biggest
obstacle.
~~~
crush-n-spread
financial and social risk is just too much to handle for most people. they just won't do it.
nobody else is doing it
People tend not to try because they cannot embrace the intermediate feeling of
"I f __*ing suck at this. "
When you embrace that you are not very good, you become the master. It is a
tautology.
~~~
OtterCoder
I feel like that's the step I'm on, and I really hope you are right.
------
brian-armstrong
There's a really simple gimmick I use to get myself to do work. Set timer on
phone for 20 or 30 minutes. Until the timer goes off, I won't intentionally
engage in any distractions, just my project. When the time is up, I'm free to
go do something else if I want. Sometimes I will stop working. Many times I
will have got engaged by whatever I was doing and will keep going for a few
more hours.
Even if I stop, 20 minutes of undistracted work is actually pretty
significant, so it's win/win
~~~
thwiv
The pomodoro technique is very useful. Check out the app Forest, it's kind of
a cool app for this technique.
------
ThomPete
I have done a ton of successful side projects, one of them even turned into a
great and growing business for me.
As a former musician the concept of jamming seemed like a great way to think
about side projects.
In other words in my experience the best you can do is not even think about
your side projects as projects (as the require process) but rather as jam-
sessions.
Hopefully you have hundreds of little ideas to explore not just one (if you
have that one big idea you should probably turn it into a real business, quick
your job and maybe get funding)
The worst thing you can do is to worry about process (buy domain name, spend
time on logo etc)
~~~
jmiserez
Very insightful. Jam session also sounds better, less like work and more like
fun. Easier to justify (to yourself and to others) if it doesn’t go anywhere,
and less pressure.
~~~
ThomPete
Yes Side projects should normally be measured by you don't want to go to bed
because you want to do just one more thing rather than you can't go to bed
because you need to finish some thing. It should be purely driven by desire.
~~~
moretai
Jeez, I wish I could verbalize things like this because they are so
insightful. Thanks for that. It makes sense, but I'd never think to phrase it
like that, and hence it doesn't seem apparent that's what I want in my side
projects. But the abstract gut feeling is essentially that.
------
jonny_eh
Step 14: Find out in a couple years that someone else took the same idea to
fruition and succeeded.
When that happens I'm sad that I didn't fully pursue it, but happy that
someone did.
~~~
reificator
Back in high school I had an idea for a video game that I really wanted to
make, but didn't because I was focusing on learning to program instead. That
was probably the right decision, because that time investment I made during
those years has really paid off for me.
The game was a two-genre mashup between two _very_ different genres, that I
thought I could pull off blending together. (I still kind of think it could be
done, whether or not I still think _I_ could do it alone is a different
story...)
A few years ago, someone came up with exactly the same genre mashup, and in
fact the main character looked extremely close to what I had in my notes.
I was thrilled about it because I didn't just want to make it, I wanted to
play it. Someone else did the work and took the risk of making it for me, and
I get to fork over a few dollars and play it myself! Sure I wanted to be the
one to make it, but if it existed at all that was huge.
I'm a millennial, so the first thing I did was go look it up on YouTube. And
what I saw was incredibly disappointing, didn't do any of the things I was
hoping it would, and frankly I didn't even bother to go buy it and play for
myself. It didn't look like it had that fun factor, and it didn't do either
genre justice.
Still makes me sad, and if I were to go into game development as more than a
hobby, doing that game right is top of my list.
~~~
georgeecollins
In games ideas are almost never original. I used to work with a designer who
said if you think what you are doing is new you probably haven't been paying
enough attention. But ideas matter very little and execution is golden. So I
wouldn't worry too much if someone tried your idea.
------
aregsarkissian
The key is to reduce the friction of getting features out on the open web and
getting feedback from real users. have just one generic domain that can be
repurposed to any idea. Attach it to a static ip on aws do or up cloud as an
example. Use a rad framework like rails django or laravel and launch a
permanent hello world by pushing to github. Now find a small group of users
that have a problem you can solve. Spend an hour a night adding a page to your
site and gather feedback. Rinse and repeat. The key is to have a basic ci/cd
pipeline setup at the outset. Then iterating on ideas becomes much more easy.
------
ak39
Forgot to list:
"Tell your friends about your brilliant ideas."
~~~
zippergz
I'm at the point where I don't do that any more, to avoid the shame of being
asked about it later and having to admit I haven't worked on it in months.
Some people say they find having others know about it to be a motivator, but
that hasn't been true for me.
~~~
ehnto
I don't tell others either. Not right away. Telling someone is almost as good
as it being finished. You have gotten that sweet social reward and pat on the
head for being clever.
If I don't show anyone until it's real in some way then I have to make it
happen if I want that sweet social head pat. Obviously that's not the reason I
do things but I do find telling people can undermine my motiviation a bit.
------
DesiLurker
Serious question for those in software development, Have you ever had a
debugger/problem solver's block? how do you get over it?
~~~
gricardo99
I've been stumped countless times. It can be demoralizing at times, but I've
always found a way through. Some things that help:
\- Break the problem down into smaller pieces. Analyze/Attack each piece.
\- Try to attack the problem from a different angle.
\- Step back, explain the problem to someone. Sometimes just explaining
yourself helps highlight your assumptions, and can help you re-arrange your
approach.
\- Keep at it. Keep trying different things.
~~~
fazkan
I totally agree with this, the bug catching block, occurs because we are not
sure if catching this bug will solve our problem at all.
Also this helped me a lot in making things dirtier, use some form of version
control system (must). I cannot emphasize more on this. this is to bring you
back to the original problem state, which is most cases is simpler than you
think.
------
munificent
I like the triad he breaks it down into. Here's the tricks I try to get over
missing one leg of the tripod:
> Energy and Direction, No Time
I have a wife, kids, pets and work full time so this is my default state.
Things that help:
1\. Get off my damn phone / reddit / twitter / whatever. Consuming media on
the Internet is junk food for the attention span. I have had way too many
evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think, "I'll just unwind on my
phone for a few minutes and then work on something." The next thing I know,
it's three hours later, every animated GIF and cute kitten link on Reddit is
purple, and I'm filled with regret.
I trying now to break my habit of consuming stuff on the web. It's ultimately
not satisfying. A little news-reading is important, but any more than fifteen
minutes a day or so is wasted.
This frees up an astonishing amount of time.
2\. Get better at working on things in small pieces. I'm writing a book right
now that's projected to be about 200,000 words. It builds up two
implementations of the same programming language, and each implementation is
spread across multiple chapters, so the book is _highly_ intertwined.
You might expect that to require a ton of mental state and lot writing
sessions to work on. Nope. I usually work on it less than an hour a day
(which, granted, means it's going to take forever to finish). I rely on a test
suite, Git, a log, and notes to myself to make it easier to pause and resume
work on it and break it down into small pieces.
3\. Decide what _not_ to spend time on. Our natural tendency is to want to say
yes to things -- new projects, new hobbies, new outings, new toys to play
with. But since time is finite, each of those means cutting out something
that's already in my life. I try to be more cognizant of that and proactively
choose to _not_ invest time in things I don't want to be doing right now even
if I would like to.
> Direction and Time, No Energy
For me, this is usually laziness or analysis paralysis. Some amount of
laziness is OK -- nothing wrong with some chilling and self-care. Relaxing
feels good, but I find it doesn't feel as good as the satisfaction of
accomplishing something, so I try to remember that.
Analysis paralysis is my personal demon. I try to remember that anything is
generally a more productive path than getting stuck and doing nothing. If I'm
stuck because I don't have enough information to pick a path, walking down one
path is a great way to get that information, even if it requires some
backtracking later.
> Energy and Time, No Direction
For me, this is usually analysis paralysis at a larger scale. The kids are
finally out of the house and I've got four hours of free time. What project
should I work on? Oh, God, I can't pick. Again, I try to force myself to pick
_something_ because any choice is better than no choice.
I don't personally often have the vague "I don't know what I want to do at
all" problem I hear a lot from bloggers. I think many of those are coming from
people who want to _be_ a certain thing (author, entrepreneur, successful open
source project lead, etc.) and don't want to _do_ a certain thing (edit
paragraphs, make sales cold calls, reply to bug reports for five hours).
They want the reward of the cachet associated with the identity but either
don't want to or don't know how to do the work to get that. Personally, I'm
generally more motivated by the process than the product, so I don't fall into
that trap very often. I don't have enough self-discipline to spend time on
things when I don't enjoy the basic mechanical process of it.
~~~
eddy_chan
> I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think,
> "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something."
There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or 8:30pm
instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours
every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your
side project in the morning before your kids wake up.
Given the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the
choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if
reddit is more tempting.
In the morning you have 2 choices, reddit vs side project but you just
invested effort in waking up at 4:30am, side project it is...
Edit: I actually see sleep as a precondition of productivity so sleeping is a
'productive activity' for me.
~~~
tisdy
> eddy_chan 1 hour ago | parent | on: Writer's Block, or the Wantrepreneur
> Blues
> I have had way too many evenings after I get the kids in bed where I think,
> "I'll just unwind on my phone for a few minutes and then work on something."
> There's a hack for this which I find works, just go to sleep at 8pm or
> 8:30pm instead right after the kids. Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a
> full 8 hours every night, not negotiable), you'll have much more willpower
> to tackle your side project in the morning before your kids wake up. Given
> the choice between reddit and side project, reddit will win. Given the
> choice between reddit and sleep...it's much easier to pick sleep even if
> reddit is more tempting.
That's a great way of thinking about it.
p.s I think you mean 4am.
~~~
jansho
> Wake up at 4pm-4:30pm (yes I need a full 8 hours every night, not
> negotiable), you'll have much more willpower to tackle your side project in
> the morning before your kids wake up.
This is the exact tactic used by a friend studying PhD with five young kids.
She got the PhD in four years.
Also if you do a lot of manual labour - gardening, stacking shelves whatever -
sleep becomes the obvious choice.
------
sjcsjc
"3\. Buy a domain name (this step is crucial)"
Fantastic
~~~
moretai
This part is easy for me. I have a ton of dead domain names. The rule that if
you have skin in the game or money in the game, then you'd be motivated to
complete the task. That doesn't work for me. Maybe for a little bit. But
essentially stuff like this is a sale technique.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
It's easy for everyone. The "this part is crucial" was sarcasm :)
~~~
moretai
Ah, I didn't read the article. Probably should have done that.
------
dev1n
> _Energy and Time, No Direction_
I tend to just buy one of the books I have on my list and dive into that. Then
I don't need direction, I just keep turning pages and take notes.
------
fiokoden
I gotta say, I just bulldoze through and get the damn software built at great
personal cost in a whole range of ways. I always complete the project.
The hardest thing is not writing the code - although that is extremely hard -
the hardest thing is building something people want to use.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Merkel allows prosecution of German comedian who mocked Turkish president - doener
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/04/15/merkel-allows-prosecution-of-german-comedian-who-mocked-turkish-president/?hpid=hp_hp-cards_hp-card-world%3Ahomepage%2Fcard
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910).
~~~
frik
Why not move the upvotes too??
308 points!!
The other one has only 180 points and therefor will vanish from the frontpage
a lot sooner. It's already on 24th instead of 1th (as it would be otherwise),
so it seems like...
~~~
dang
If you think about how to do this in a fair or precise way you soon realize
that it's hopelessly complicated. For example, we can't just move the points
because some people will have voted for both.
The ranking of a story like that is determined by a lot of different factors,
not just points and timestamp, and I'm not sure that it's important for it to
stay on the front page for much longer than it has. But I appreciate that you
feel differently about it, so we'll roll back the clock on it a bit (easier
than adding points but will have a similar effect).
------
joesmo
If it wasn't clear before, hopefully it's crystal clear now from this idiotic
demand that Turkey is in no position to join the EU in its current state.
Erdogan is human scum and he's making sure of that in many ways these days.
------
hendricius
The reason - it is not because she agrees with the matter. It is because it is
not her job to decide. It is the job of the law to clarify if he is guilty or
not.
------
dijit
Other discussion;
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11503910)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Temperatures and Prime Numbers - elec3647
http://wareagleengineer.blogspot.com/2014/03/temperatures-and-prime-numbers.html
======
mooism2
Or if you thought for a minute before rushing to write code, you would reflect
that any temperature that is a prime number in both Celsius and Fahrenheit
must be an integer in both Celsius and Fahrenheit, and therefore must be a
multiple of 5 in Celsius.
Unless you count -5 as prime (and you don't, or you would have noted that -5C
= 23F is prime on both sides), there is only one prime number that is a
multiple of 5...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Vocab Watch – A simple vocabulary builder to improve your vocabulary - manibatra
https://itunes.apple.com/app/vocab-watch/id1393813585?mt=8
======
manibatra
I love reading and would come across words that I did not know the meaning of.
Hence, I built this simple app for iPhone and Apple Watch to help me improve
my vocabulary. My requirements were an app that notifies me and allows me to
create sentences using the words I want to learn.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
React-like RxJS-based framework (weird) - asimpledog
https://dev.to/kosich/recks-rxjs-based-framework-23h5
======
asimpledog
import { timer } from 'rxjs';
function App() {
const ticks$ = timer(0, 1000);
return <div>
<h1>{ ticks$ }</h1>
<p>seconds passed</p>
</div>
}
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AmazonBasics products are going up in flames, but are still on the market - jc713
https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/10/21431085/amazon-basics-amazonbasics-dangerous-flammable-products
======
greenyoda
Previous discussion of original source (CNN):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24431959)
------
Waterluvian
Is there a list of the accused items anywhere?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Formulita – a simple Formula 1 app - davidor
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.formulita
======
davidor
My objective was to develop an application that allowed me to check only the
most relevant information of the Formula 1 championship in a simple and fast
way.
This is my first Android application. It is free and it does not contain any
ads.
Any feedback is appreciated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Slideshow background image search - ibsufupu
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/backgroundimage-search/olemhlpdoebkeehhjgifmemjdafeikld?hl=en
======
ibsufupu
Not sure how to let people know about this besides Show HN. I made a
background image search extension to find images from the slide shows that try
and keep their images out of your grasp. It was annoying me this morning so,
yah.
The image on the crhome store is from Trulia. source code is here:
[https://github.com/ibsusu/BackgroundImage-
Search](https://github.com/ibsusu/BackgroundImage-Search)
Hopefully it's somewhat useful to others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Online hackathon weekends - jareddickk
https://www.pitcherly.con
======
gus_massa
Wrong URL. Try submitting again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
POV-Ray 3.7 is released under the AGPL3 - pwg
http://povray.org/download/
======
NonEUCitizen
What license did it use prior to 3.7 ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why HN has no visible upvote number for comments? - mlejva
======
CarolineW
You can track down the discussions from 6 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2435710](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2435710)
Some significant discussion was here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333)
And here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434975)
In short, it has been decided that removing the display of points against
comments has reduced some undesirable behavior. The issues are complex, the
arguments not entirely convincing, not everyone agrees, but the decision was
taken that behavior and comment quality improved.
~~~
brudgers
Anecdotally, it reduced the rewards I could receive for posting an early
snarky comment on potential front page submissions. Not that I did not work
hard enough crafting my snark to deserve upvotes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft’s rebranded Azure Container Service shifts its focus to Kubernetes - wstrange
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/24/microsoft-new-azure-kontainer-service-puts-its-focus-on-kubernetes/?ncid=rss
======
wstrange
Amazon is the last hold out here. What are the odds of a November
announcement?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CDC says coronavirus survived in Princess Cruise ship cabins for up to 17 days - tartoran
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/23/cdc-coronavirus-survived-in-princess-cruise-cabins-up-to-17-days-after-passengers-left.html
======
aschla
From the report:
“SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces in cabins of both
symptomatic and asymptomatic infected passengers up to 17 days after cabins
were vacated on the Diamond Princess...”
Presence of RNA does not necessarily mean it’s a viable virus.
------
cmurf
Source:
[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm?s_cid=mm...](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6912e3.htm?s_cid=mm6912e3_w)
_SARS-CoV-2 RNA was identified on a variety of surfaces ..._
I guess we don't know from this data whether these are fragments or are intact
and communicable?
------
robocat
Would asymptomatic crew be a more likely vector between the voyages?
This is a respiratory disease: don’t ignore touch as a vector but surely the
vast majority of transmission is via the air?
------
Havoc
Damn. That will significantly lengthen any sort of quarantine I suspect.
~~~
tartoran
This is not conclusive yet but yes, this is going to take more than a few
weeks and will be quite a disaster in some areas...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Following Code Causes Segfault in Clang - DaNmarner
http://llvm.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=20516
======
lindig
If your are looking for code to break a C compiler, you can try my tool Quest
[https://github.com/lindig/quest](https://github.com/lindig/quest). It tries
to to generate code that shows that a C compiler handles parameter passing
wrong. I usually run it in a loop, like here on Mac OS X 10.9.4 witch gcc:
:quest $ gcc --version
Configured with: --prefix=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.2.1
Apple LLVM version 5.1 (clang-503.0.40) (based on LLVM 3.4svn)
Target: x86_64-apple-darwin13.3.0
Thread model: posix
:quest $ while true; do
> ./main.native -test gcc -n 1 > foo.c
> gcc -O2 -o foo foo.c
> ./foo || break
> echo -n .
> done
................................................................
................................................................
.................................................
Assertion failed: (b32 == b43), function callee_b0f, file foo.c, line 128.
Abort trap: 6
This means the tool found C code where parameter passing is not compiled
properly. It took about 10 seconds to find this. The test case is pretty
small:
:quest $ wc foo.c
140 444 3485 foo.c
The generated code that where the assertion checks that parameters are
received correctly looks like this:
static
union bt8 *
callee_b0f(struct bt4 *bp7,
double *bp8,
struct bt6 bp9,
float bp10,
struct bt7 bp11,
double bp12,
short int bp13,
...)
{
va_list ap;
typedef int bd0;
typedef struct bt0 bd1;
typedef int bd2;
typedef union bt3 bd3;
bd0 b41;
bd1 b42;
bd2 b43;
bd3 b44;
/* seed: 2040 */
va_start(ap, bp13);
QUEST_ASSERT(b34 == bp7);
QUEST_ASSERT(b35 == bp8);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b18 == bp9.b24.b18);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b19 == bp9.b24.b19);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b20 == bp9.b24.b20);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b21 == bp9.b24.b21);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b22 == bp9.b24.b22);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b24.b23 == bp9.b24.b23);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b25 == bp9.b25);
QUEST_ASSERT(b36.b26 == bp9.b26);
QUEST_ASSERT(b37 == bp10);
QUEST_ASSERT(b38.b27 == bp11.b27);
QUEST_ASSERT(b39 == bp12);
QUEST_ASSERT(b40 == bp13);
b41 = va_arg(ap, bd0);
b42 = va_arg(ap, bd1);
b43 = va_arg(ap, bd2);
b44 = va_arg(ap, bd3);
QUEST_ASSERT(b30 == b41);
QUEST_ASSERT(b31.b0 == b42.b0);
QUEST_ASSERT(b32 == b43);
QUEST_ASSERT(b33.b10.b1 == b44.b10.b1);
va_end(ap);
return b29;
}
------
danieljh
While we're at segfaulting compiler's, here's what I found just a few days
ago:
python -S -c 'print("void f(){} int main(){return (" + "*"*10**7 + "f)();}")' | gcc -xc -
(This is legal C -- look it up. Don't argue with me over the practical
relevance of this please)
~~~
deathanatos
I will point out that there is a section called "Translation limits" that
discusses how compilers can't really be excepted to compile every legal
program, because they run in a machine with a finite amount of memory.
> Both the translation and execution environments constrain the implementation
> of language translators and libraries. The following summarizes the
> language-related environmental limits on a conforming implementation; the
> library-related limits are discussed in clause 7.
> The implementation shall be able to translate and execute at least one
> program that contains at least one instance of every one of the following
> limits:
> 4095 characters in a logical source line
Of course, it notes:
> Implementations should avoid imposing fixed translation limits whenever
> possible.
Note that these aren't strict limits, and don't really have an effect on the
legality of your program, I feel it's more of a discussion of the limits
imposed by reality, and what compilers must handle at a bare minimum.
And honestly, I would hope most modern compilers would do better than the
noted limits and I'd also hope for a decent error message, not "gcc: internal
compiler error: Segmentation fault (program cc1)" (which is what the program
generates).
Last,
> This is legal C
Is it? You're returning the result of a function that returns void in a
function that returns int (and even if main were void, I still don't think
that's legal). Were gcc able to handle the abusive number of stars, it would
say,
<stdin>: In function ‘main’:
<stdin>:1:23: error: void value not ignored as it ought to be
(which is what it says if you remove some of the stars.) Granted, this can be
corrected, and your example will still cause the same output. (Which doesn't
seem nearly as interesting as the linked C++ code. I'd _like_ to know why that
causes a segfault. With yours, I'd like to know why you were doing that.)
~~~
danieljh
You are right in that the return is wrong and accidentally stayed in during
example reduction down to a smaller version. Without it, the result is still
the same.
The reason I was testing this was a discussion on IRC about functions decaying
to pointer to functions, such that they are endlessly dereferenceable. The
snippet above crashes GCC -- hard.
So, while the implementation is free not to handle 10^7 dereferencing
operations, I'm not sure a hard crash is the right answer.
Here's a version without the return and using a lambda to shorten it further:
python -S -c 'print("int main(){(" + "*"*10**7 + "+[]{})();}")' | g++ -std=c++11 -xc++ -
------
archgoon
Hmm...
Unable to find instantiation of declaration!
UNREACHABLE executed at SemaTemplateInstantiateDecl.cpp:4384!
Not quite so unreachable...
[https://gist.github.com/cwgreene/d689f010619310dbbc77](https://gist.github.com/cwgreene/d689f010619310dbbc77)
[https://github.com/llvm-
mirror/clang/blob/b310439121c875937d...](https://github.com/llvm-
mirror/clang/blob/b310439121c875937d78cc49cc969bc1197fc025/lib/Sema/SemaTemplateInstantiateDecl.cpp#L4384)
------
udp
Something I found last week that crashes with clang-503.0.40:
template<class T> class foo
{
public:
~ foo()
{
}
foo &operator = (const foo &rhs)
{
foo::~foo();
new (this) foo (rhs);
return *this;
}
};
int main(int argc, char * argv[])
{
foo<int> a, b;
b = a;
}
~~~
archgoon
This is the same bug.
------
hamburglar
Is there some legitimate reason to want to have A's destructor called twice on
a single instance?
~~~
misnome
Probably not, but the compiler crashing isn't a good way of notifying the user
of that!
~~~
hamburglar
Ah, I didn't realize the segfault was in the compiler itself. The title
("segmentation fault on calling destructor in member function") made it sound
like the generated code crashed. Now that there's a gist of a callstack it's
clearer.
------
andrewchambers
Something tells me C++ isn't the best thing to implement a compiler with.
~~~
golemotron
I modded you up because clang is written in C++ and even if I didn't know this
I'd suspect it because segfaults in languages that are not weakly typed (i.e.,
C and C++) are incredibly rare.
There are better languages to write compilers in. OCaml is one.
~~~
nly
C++ probably isn't 'weakly typed', whatever that means.
~~~
yzzxy
You probably aren't "qualified to make that statement", if you don't know what
weak typing is and are too lazy to google it.
~~~
nly
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_and_weak_typing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong_and_weak_typing)
> In general, these terms do not have a precise definition. Rather, they tend
> to be used by advocates or critics of a given programming language, as a
> means of explaining why a given language is better or worse than
> alternatives.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AMZN is down 9% - azov
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAMZN&ei=-p1aU4C1GKaUiAKELQ
======
mercury888
Why?
~~~
acchow
S&P 500 and Dow each down almost 1% today. A down day, but high tech got hit
hard:
Facebook down 5%
Twitter down 7%
Tableau down 6.5%
Yelp down 7.5%
Reported earnings haven't been great, and the stocks are tumbling down in
reaction to the reports (or in preparation for upcoming reports).
~~~
hatred
Fb would be a notable exception to this theory though.
------
peterbraden
Or as I prefer to think of it: SALE! 10% off AMZN, for 1 day only!
~~~
dataminer
Still too expensive, FB, AAPL, are much better alternatives.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tilt Has Raised Around $30M at a $400M Valuation - jafallone
http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/08/tilt-raised-30m-at-a-400m-valuation-in-its-most-recent-funding-round/
======
pkrumins
Try Googling for "Tilt". Unexpected.
[http://www.google.com/search?q=tilt](http://www.google.com/search?q=tilt)
~~~
techwizrd
I wonder how Tilt, the company, feels about that...
~~~
jjb123
We dig it! I think it's a fun thing that many people's introduction to our
product via google will be unexpected/quirky.
------
jvrossb
I remember the very day that PG, Khaled, and James sat down in 2012 and
defined the future of Tilt. Amazingly exciting to see how it's grown since. I
love that the nicest founders in our batch are doing the best :)
~~~
jansen
Second that!
~~~
whatupdave
Third!
~~~
tbrooks
4th. I met James and Khaled in Austin pre-YC. Nicest guys in the world.
Couldn't be happier for them.
------
jakejake
A client came to me about 10 years ago and wanted me to build an app that let
individuals collect money from a group. (In their case for wedding gifts). I
told them they were crazy because it would get taken over by fraudsters trying
to cash out on stolen credit cards and PayPal accounts.
Another lesson for me I guess for being overly cautious instead of coming up
with solutions. I'm glad to see people have figured out how to make these
things work. Of course at the time you had to legally offer your right arm and
your first born to get a merchant account.
~~~
jackgavigan
Or just use WePay.
~~~
jakejake
This was several years before wepay or any service like it existed. These days
there are so many great choices - it's amazing!
------
garry
James and Khaled have been consistently executing. As with most overnight
successes, this one is years in the making.
------
mehuln
Congrats guys! Great founders, hustlers, and hackers == incredible team making
great progress. Super excited for you!
------
monksy
I was pretty close to making this. I'm glad to see this is out there, and it's
free for small groups.
------
ozgune
Congrats guys. Super excited for the team!
------
adomanico
Congrats to Khaled and the Tilt team!
------
ukd1
Love you guys!! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ARM Processor – Sowing the Seeds of Success [video] - tambourine_man
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOJl8gRPyQ
======
vegabook
I love arm and own a cubietruck and a Pi. But my initial hopes of clustering
up tons of arms together have been dashed by a very hard dose of reality: the
bog-standard core i7 in my Dell M3800 is _50x_ faster. Try this on your pi in
iPython:
import numpy as np
xx = np.random.rand(1000000).reshape((1000, 1000))
%timeit np.linalg.eig(xx)
67 seconds on my RPi B 2, 1.2 seconds on my i7 (admittedly, using MKL
optimizations but the factor would still be 15x without it, and arguably, MKL
is simply making full use of the Intel instruction set). I get 0.65 on my
desktop Precision Xeon. Fully 100x faster.
So yes ARM is great. But let's be honest, Intel is vastly, _vastly_ ahead when
it comes to anything that is not a toy.
~~~
danellis
> let's be honest, Intel is vastly, vastly ahead when it comes to anything
> that is not a toy.
That just shows a lack of understanding of the market. Not every application
needs powerful processors. Sometimes they need low-power or low-cost
processors. Something is not a "toy" when it is specifically engineered to
meet different but equally serious requirements.
ARM-based processors _vastly_ outsell Intel processors.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Latest figures I can find (2012) show Intel outselling all ARM/mobile by 5X.
That must have changed?
~~~
Veratyr
Intel during Q3 2014 set a record 100 million processor sales that quarter[1].
During the same period, ARM reports 1.1 billion "processors and smartcards"
shipped[2]. As for how many of those are in smartphones (powerful), ARM is
estimated to power 90% of smartphones[3], of which 326 million were sold
during Q3 2014[4].
If you're after dollar sales, Q3 2014 had them at $320m[2] and Intel at
$14.6b[5].
[1] [http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-finance-record-
revenu...](http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-finance-record-
revenue-3q13,27889.html)
[2] [http://www.arm.com/about/arm-holdings-plc-reports-results-
fo...](http://www.arm.com/about/arm-holdings-plc-reports-results-for-the-
third-quarter-and-nine-months-ended-30-september-2014.php)
[3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/darcytravlos/2013/02/28/arm-
hold...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/darcytravlos/2013/02/28/arm-holdings-and-
qualcomm-the-winners-in-mobile/)
[4]
[https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25224914](https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS25224914)
[5]
[http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014...](http://newsroom.intel.com/community/intel_newsroom/blog/2014/10/14/intel-
reports-record-third-quarter-revenue-of-146-billion)
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Why are smartcards conflated with processors, do you think?
~~~
danellis
[http://www.arm.com/markets/embedded/smart-
cards.php](http://www.arm.com/markets/embedded/smart-cards.php)
------
acqq
Also the parts of the interview of prof Furber:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y4WG549i3YY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=y4WG549i3YY)
"Building the BBC Micro (The Beeb) - Computerphile"
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izy6h_vvSxU](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=izy6h_vvSxU)
"The Path Towards ARM & BBC B - Computerphile"
------
todd-davies
I'm lucky enough to have Professor Furber as a lecturer at Manchester. His
insights into how mobile systems are designed and engineered are fascinating,
as is his work with SpiNNaker project.
~~~
danellis
Me too, in 1997! He often referred to his work from the 80s, and it was great
to hear it from the horse's mouth.
------
pjmlp
Back in the day I remember going through Computer Shopper (UK version) and
learning about the Archimedes in alternative computing section.
Sadly never saw one live.
~~~
danellis
I grew up with Acorn computers. The Archimedes was an amazing machine for its
time, and for an aspiring programmer, having a structured BBC BASIC (fastest
interpreted BASIC in the world) with a built-in ARM assembler made for some
quick learning.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Poison? Bacterium Uses Arsenic To Build DNA and Other Molecules - pama
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/330/6009/1302.full
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Requires a sign-in - does it add anything not already included here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962894> \- go.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962893> \- nytimes.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846> \- nature.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962696> \- longislandpress.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962386> \- gizmodo.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962200> \- gizmodo.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962110> \- google.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957823> \- skymania.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228> \- kottke.org
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The “No Poo” Method - mparramon
http://www.developingandstuff.com/2015/02/no-poo.html?h=n
======
_almosnow
You didn't have messy hair to start with. Try going "no poo" with long or
curly hair, see you then.
------
jezfromfuture
great post not worthless at all.
~~~
mparramon
Sarcastic?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Red Hat set to surpass Sun in market capitalization - peter123
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-10146879-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
======
peter123
Sun failed miserably in embracing Linux and cloud computing (as a service).
They hung on to their old business that was getting commoditized rapidly, plus
having huge dependencies on Wall St. customers didn't help.
~~~
gaius
I am pretty sure you could rent time on a Sun cloud long before there was EC2
or AppEngine. They were doing $1/CPU/hour back in '04. Except they called it a
"grid", not a cloud.
~~~
wmf
Yes, but then they basically never improved it. Hardware got dramatically
cheaper, but Sun didn't drop prices AFAIK. People started wanting to run Web
servers and databases in the cloud, but Sun did nothing. Now they are racing
to catch up by productizing Caroline and Q-Layer.
~~~
gaius
It's true they are focussed on compute, but it's also true that EC2 and
AppEngine are _not_. I'm not entirely sure how you'd, for example run an FEA
or CFD job on AppEngine.
~~~
wmf
I've heard that MPI works (granted, at 1Gbps speed) on EC2 and it's only
$0.20/core/hour. When EC2 is cheaper and strictly more flexible than Sun Grid,
it's hard to argue why Sun Grid exists at all. Maybe that's why Sun shut it
down.
------
byrneseyeview
"Set to surpass"? Market value is based on stock price, and stock price is, by
definition, the point at which there is as much demand for buying a stock as
for selling it. So it sounds like Cnet doesn't have an actual story until Red
Hat goes up, or Sun goes down. They're just pushing a fairly cheesy,
meaningless non-story to get in ahead of whoever is planning on writing the
slightly less meaningless non-story about when Red Hat's market cap _does_
surpass Sun's.
------
dimitar
What would happen to Java when/if Sun becomes bankrupt or irrelevant?
~~~
gaius
IBM already spend more on Java than Sun do.
------
jcapote
Sad; It seems the best product is not always who wins.
~~~
SwellJoe
I don't understand your meaning. Linux is a very fine operating system, and
for many purposes (like desktops and small servers) it is vastly superior to
Solaris. Red Hat has some of the most productive and important Linux kernel
developers (along with dozens of other developers working on Gnome, databases,
and a lot more) on their payroll, so they're definitely involved in the
making.
Solaris is so embarrassingly bad in a few areas that I get pretty angry every
time I have to use it. It makes it even worse when I use the stuff that Sun
has done _really_ well (ZFS, Zones, dtrace), that I then have to use their
stupidly bad package management tools, their neanderthal old UNIX utilities
(or install the GNU tools myself, and remember to use the g variants), and
their general disdain for anything not invented by Sun.
~~~
gaius
Red Hat have a luxury Sun have denied themselves: breaking stuff between
versions. Do you know they won't support you if you upgrade RHEL4 to 5 in-
place? They want you to start again from the bare metal. Sun hang onto the
legacy stuff because they _guarantee_ nothing will break when you upgrade.
Now fair enough, maybe that's not so important in a world where you have a
"cloud" of a thousand identical machines that you just build from gold master
images and throw away when they break, but Solaris is not like it is because
Sun doesn't know how to get new versions of their userland. Rather, they've
chosen not to.
~~~
wmf
Sun finally fixed this problem by forking. Solaris will remain crufty and
backwards compatible until the beginning of time. OpenSolaris supposedly threw
out all the cruft and has modern userland.
~~~
SwellJoe
By some definition of "modern".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dinner for One: New Year's Eve Sketch Beloved in Germany Finally Screened in UK - Tomte
https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/dinner-for-one-music-hall-sketch-beloved-by-millions-of-germans-finally-gets-uk-premiere/
======
em-bee
discussion here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794397](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18794397)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Deconstructing Functional Programming [video] - newgame
http://www.infoq.com/presentations/functional-pros-cons?utm_source=infoq&utm_medium=QCon_EarlyAccessVideos&utm_campaign=QConSanFrancisco2013
======
Peaker
Gilad Bracha sounds like he hasn't used a typed language long enough to stop
struggling with basic type errors.
As such, it is of a position of extreme ignorance that he speaks of the
uselessness of type checking and inference.
Claiming Smalltalk has the best closure syntax shows he doesn't understand
call by need. Haskell defines easier to use control structures than Smalltalk.
Claiming patterns don't give exhaustiveness, ignoring their extra safety shows
Gilad doesn't understand patterns.
Claiming monads are about particular instances having the two monad methods,
when they are about abstracting over the interface, shows Gilad doesn't
understand monads.
Claiming single argument functions have the inflexibility of identical Lego
bricks shows he doesn't understand the richness of function types and
combinators.
In short, Gilad sounds to me very much like a charlatan who'd benefit greatly
from going through lyah.
------
mafribe
I found Bracha's talk poor. That guy really has a chip on his shoulder vis-a-
vis functional programming. A lot of things he said were not well though out.
Here are some examples.
\- He claimed that tail recursion could be seen as the essence of functional
programming. How so?
\- He complained that tail recursion has problems with debugging. Well, tail
recursion throws away stack information, so it should not be a surprise. You
don't get better debug information in while loops either. And you can use a
'debug' flag to get the compiler to retain the debug information (at the cost
of slower execution).
\- His remarks about Hindley-Milner being bad are bizarre. Exactly what is his
argument?
\- His claims about pattern-matching are equally poor. Yes, pattern matching
does some dynamic checks, and in some sense are similar to reflection. But the
types constrain what you can do, removing large classes of error
possibilities. Moreover, typing of patterns can give you compile-time
exhaustiveness checks. Pattern matching has various other advantages, such as
locally scoped names for subcomponents of the thing you are matching against,
and compile-time optimisation of matching strategies.
\- He also repeatedly made fun of Milner's "well-typed programs do not go
wrong", implying that Milner's statement is obviously non-sense. Had he
studied Milner's "A Theory of Type Polymorphism in Programming" where the
statement originated, Bracha would have learned that Milner uses a particular
understanding of going wrong which does _not_ mean complete absence of any
errors whatsoever. Milner uses a peculiar meaning, and in Milner's sense,
well-typed programs do indeed not go wrong.
\- He also criticises patterns for not being first-class citizens. Of course
first-class patterns are nice, and some languages have them, but there are
performance implications of having them.
\- His critique of monads was focussed on something superficial, how they are
named in Haskell. But the interesting question is: are monads a good
abstraction to provide in a programming language? Most languages provide
special cases: C has the state monad, Java has the state and exception monad
etc. There are good reasons for that.
\- And yes, normal programmers could have invented monads. But they didn't.
Maybe there's a message in this failure?
~~~
the_af
Indeed, I found his talk pretty poor as well. A lot of it comes down to not
wanting to learn new terminology, and forgetting that a lot of "common sense"
terminology from, say, Java, is also learned. I don't get more insight from
"FlatMappable" than from "Monad"; in both cases I must learn about them first,
and neither is intuitive without prior knowledge.
It is instructive to read Bracha's blog too, mostly for the comments where
readers refute a lot of what he claims.
His argument against Hindley-Milner seems to be that "he hates it", and that
type errors are sometimes hard to understand. It is true IMO that they are
hard to understand (even though, like everything in programming, you get
better with practice), but what is the alternative? Debugging runtime errors
while on production?
He also presents Scala as a successful marriage between OOP and FP, but in
reality this is a controversial issue. Some of the resistance to Scala
(witnessed here in Hacker News, for example) is due to it trying to be a jack
of all trades and master of none. Scala's syntax is arguably _harder to read_
than that of other FP languages.
Some of his "funny" remarks sounded mean-spirited to me. Nobody in his right
mind claims that FP invented map or reduce, for example.
The only point of his talk I somewhat agree with is that language evangelists
are annoying. Oh, and that "return" is poorly named.
~~~
newgame
> His argument against Hindley-Milner seems to be that "he hates it", and that
> type errors are sometimes hard to understand. It is true IMO that they are
> hard to understand (even though, like everything in programming, you get
> better with practice), but what is the alternative? Debugging runtime errors
> while on production?
He pointed out that a more nominal type system is a solution. Because when you
give meaningful names to your types the error messages will become clearer and
not full of long, inferred types that reveal potentially confusing or
unimportant implementation details.
~~~
mafribe
Most programming languages with Damas-Hindley-Milner do not prevent you from
using explicit type annotation, and inventing semantically meaningful type
names.
More importantly, I think the reason why error messages are sparse and not
meaningful in languages with Damas-Hindley-Milner is that nobody bothered to
improve the situation. And the reason why nobody botheres is that it's simply
not a problem in practise. Any even moderately experienced programmer can
easily detect and fix typing errors as they are given in Haskell, Ocaml, F#,
Scala etc.
------
taeric
First, thanks for all involved in getting this posted!
I'm somewhat curious on why the industry has such an aversion to simulating
things in our mind. Especially when this seems to be one of the arguments
employed against monads in this speech. That it basically couches something
known in an odd name that is not known. Isn't this just stating that it is bad
_because_ it confuses the simulator that is the reader?
That said, the live coding aspect is something that I am just now learning
from lisp with emacs. Being able to evaluate a function inline is rather nice.
It is somewhat sad, as I still wish I could get a better vote in for literate
programming. (Betraying my appeal to the human factor moreso than the
mechanical one.)
~~~
catnaroek
Monads have nothing to do with simulating anything. They are just a commonly
recurring pattern of computational contexts (more precisely, functors) that
also provide two basic operations:
1\. entering the context (pure :: a -> m a) 2\. collapsing nested contexts
into one (join :: m (m a) -> m a)
Together with some coherence laws that ensure that these operations do
exactly, no more or less, than entering the context and collapsing nested
instances of it.
~~~
taeric
Did you watch the video? I'm not referring to monads simulating something. I'm
referring to the observation that when reading code you are simulating its
execution. My understanding of the video's complaint against monads is that
the signature of monads is actually quite simple and well understood in
different contexts _by different names._
The video goes on to display an environment where you do not have to simulate
the code in your head.
This progression seems somewhat interesting to me. As does the desire to not
have to simulate code in your head.
~~~
asdasf
>This progression seems somewhat interesting to me. As does the desire to not
have to simulate code in your head.
But none of that has anything to do with monads.
~~~
taeric
Ok... I think I'm getting trolled at this point.
I am taking issue with the video's critique of monads. Wherein it is claimed
that monads manage to take a common and understandable behavior and make it
laughably impossible to explain to people by giving it a weird name.
Essentially, the problem with monads is one of it being difficult to
"simulate" under the name "monad" for many individuals.
This part, I actually feel makes sense and resonates well. Simply follow the
progression in the video and see how "FlatMappable" becomes less and less
intuitive as it is given worse and worse names.
The part that is interesting to me, is how this then progresses into a point
on how programmers should not have to simulate the code in their head. Now, I
realize there is a big difference between "should not have to" and "is
difficult to intuitively do so". Still seems an odd progression, though.
~~~
asdasf
>Ok... I think I'm getting trolled at this point.
If you don't want to discuss something, then don't post. You are not making
any sense, and calling people trolls does not help at all.
~~~
taeric
I should have put a smiley on that, then. While feeling trolled, I highly
suspect this is just a rather amusing case of poor communication.
At no point was I trying to describe or discuss monads. That is something a
response to me thought I was trying to do. When referring to "simulating" a
system, I was referring to where the video refers to the process of reading
"dead code" in a text editor. There is a large rant on monads _in the video_
where the argument appears to be that the problem is strictly with the name.
The reason given that it takes something understood, and hides it behind non-
obvious names. I extrapolated this to be that it makes the program and the
idea "hard to simulate" for the coder reading the code.
------
bunderbunder
Great talk. Particularly the bit on the value of naming things - I rather wish
he'd flogged that a bit harder.
As time goes on I'm finding it more and more frustrating to try and maintain
code that relies entirely on anonymous and structural constructs without any
nominal component. Yes, I do feel super-powerful when I can bang out a bunch
of code really quickly by just stacking a bunch of more-or-less purely
mathematical constructs on top of each other. . . but as the story of the Mars
Climate Orbiter should teach us rather poignantly, when you're trying to
engineer larger, more complex systems it turns out that meta-information is
actually really useful stuff.
~~~
the_af
I'd say static typing and purity as advocated by FP are some of the tools one
wants when trying to engineer larger, more complex systems.
I wasn't familiar with the Mars Climate Orbiter case, but a cursory reading
suggests one of the causes was a type error (confusing newtons with pound-
force).
~~~
bunderbunder
As advocated widely in the FP blogosphere. . . not necessarily as commonly
practiced in FP programming culture, or supported by many FP languages.
For example, I strongly prefer F# to its cousin OCaml largely because F# uses
nominal typing and OCaml uses structural typing. I've also got some misgivings
about being overly reliant on type inference. Both structural typing and
advanced type inference are admittedly incredibly convenient. What worries me
is that they also seem to be incredibly convenient as ways to obfuscate the
programmer's intent w/r/t types and their semantics.
~~~
the_af
I'd say not so much as advocated by the blogosphere (which can be annoying, as
fans of almost anything often are), but by the people actually designing and
using FP languages.
In any case, there is certainly valid criticism of FP, but Bracha's just isn't
it. My impression is that the guy -- as clever as he may be in other areas --
barely understands FP, and makes disparaging remarks about things he isn't
familiar with. Read his blog; every assertion he makes is shown to be
incorrect or misleading by people who do understand FP, like Tony Morris or
(very politely) Philip Wadler himself.
------
vitd
I'm just learning functional programming with Haskell, and it was great to
hear him explain that learning Haskell is really hard because of the
terminology. I feel a little (just a little) less stupid.
That said, he's a terrible presenter. His smarmy style was really off-putting,
and his motives a little sketchy. He spends a good portion of the talk
slamming just about every language in existence except for the two he works on
(Dart and Newspeak). It seemed very disingenuous and I don't need another
ranting nerd spouting venom about why something's not very good in that
holier-than-thou tone. I would have rather had a straightforward talk showing
the strengths and weaknesses than the bitter tone this had.
------
agentultra
This is a brilliant talk. It's getting far too easy to annoy the FP cult(ure).
As an aside, Scala is not unique in marrying a FP approach with an OO system.
CL has had CLOS, IMO one of the better implementations of "OO" outside of
Smalltalk, for much longer than Scala.
Definitely watch this!
~~~
catnaroek
Scala and Common Lisp are not particularly functional languages. Functional
programming in Scala is doable, although it takes a nontrivial amount of
effort (see: scalaz), and it is outright impractical in Common Lisp.
As an aside, CLOS multimethods resemble Haskell's multiparameter type classes
(except CLOS is dumber: you cannot provide any guarantee that the same types
will provide two or more common operations) more than they resemble anything
else also called "object-oriented".
~~~
agentultra
It is a common mistake I've heard from many CL newbies that believe CL is a
"FP" language.
The best descriptor I can find to date (of CL) is, "programmable programming
language," which allows it to encompass almost every desired feature one may
need; including many that fall under the FP umbrella which may be where the
confusion stems from.
However one of the opening points of the talk was that, "FP," is not a
rigorously defined term and is subject to interpretation. Which leads to
bikeshedding over language features and a lot of hype.
I believe it also leads to a lot of misplaced faith in the purity and
completeness of mathematics (it's almost as if the popular notion of FP is
being reborn as a modern _Principia Mathematica_ ).
CL obviously cannot be called an, "FP," language since its inception seems to
predate the popular notion of the term. Scala may suffer in the same way due
to its reliance on the JVM and the expression semantics it has carried over
from Java. However many of the features one tends to associate with modern FP
languages (though not all) are present in both languages.
As for your aside, how so? Perhaps a discussion we can have over email if
you're interested. You sound smart. However I don't understand your statement
and would like to know more.
~~~
catnaroek
> As for your aside, how so?
CLOS multimethods do not "belong" to an object or even to a class declaration.
Particular implementations of generic methods are declared globally, just like
Haskell type class instances. Although, as Peaker noted, type classes can
dispatch on any part of the type signature. It is impossible to make a CLOS
multimethod with signature:
(SomeClass a b) => String -> (a, b)
> Perhaps a discussion we can have over email if you're interested.
Sorry, I never check email. But I am almost always on Freenode. My nick is
pyon.
> You sound smart.
Not really. The regulars in #haskell - now _they_ are frigging smart.
~~~
agentultra
I think the comparison to type classes is specious and ends there. They look
similar but they tackle very different problems. You've actually explained why
rather well.
> Not really. The regulars in #haskell - now they are frigging smart.
Don't sell yourself short.
~~~
Peaker
It seems to me type classes have a superset of the features of CL
multimethods. Why not compare them?
------
jstratr
Interesting talk! Bracha has some good arguments against features that I
generally enjoy in programming languages, like Damas–Hindley–Milner type
inference and pattern matching.
Regarding Haskell: The points he makes against obtuse names based in category
theory are valid, but then again, Haskell has its roots in research
programming languages. Math-based terminology makes more sense for an academic
audience.
~~~
asdasf
>The points he makes against obtuse names based in category theory are valid
No, they aren't. When you have a class of "things" that doesn't have a name
most people are familiar with, you are left with two options. Either choose a
name people are familiar with, but which is wrong and misleading. Or choose
the correct name and people have to learn a name. Are we seriously so pathetic
as an industry that learning 3 new technical terms is a problem?
~~~
thinkpad20
To an extent, I think it's a valid criticism. There are two main problems with
the mathy names that many concepts in Haskell have.
The first is that they hide the meaning. For example, "Monoid" is a really
scary term, and explaining it further as "something with an identity and an
associative operation" really doesn't help much either. Calling it instead
"Addable" or "Joinable", and explaining it instead as "things with a default
'zero' version, and which have a way to add two of them together", while
perhaps not a perfect definition, would be much more intuitive for the
majority of people.
That brings me to the second problem I see, which is that the esoteric
terminology in Haskell creates a barrier between those who understand it, and
those who don't, and contribute to a sense of Haskell culture being
exclusionary and cult-like, which discourages cross-talk.
Criticizing Hindley-Milner, on the other hand, I'm confused by. It's such a
useful and powerful system. I suppose it can make compiler errors more obscure
at times, but you get used to reading them and they aren't so bad. Hindley-
Milner isn't just a type inferrence system; it's a typing system which allows
for the most general typing to always be used, so that the functions one
writes are as general as possible, encouraging modularity and code reuse.
~~~
Peaker
"Addable" will not actually be more informative than "Monoid", to someone who
doesn't know "Monoid".
"Monoid" will be very informative to anyone who learned it from mathematics.
A "Monoid" is a type which supports an associative operation (`m -> m -> m`)
and a neutral element (`m`) which forms its identity element.
"Addable" suggests it is an "addition". Does this mean it is commutative? For
the sake of preciseness, I'd hope so! (Monoids aren't commutative). Does this
mean it has a negation? No. So it is not "addition", why use a misleading name
for the sake of some false sense of "intuition"?
The actual explanation of what a Monoid is _precisely_ is so short and simple,
it makes no sense to try to appeal to inaccurate intuitions.
~~~
thinkpad20
That's a completely valid point of view. You're not wrong at all. I'm
guessing, though, that you had learned it before from mathematics. My point is
one of pragmatic, not theoretical, distinction. To those without a
mathematical background (most people are not going to learn monoid unless
they've studied abstract algebra), or who are less interested in mathematics
in general, an obscure term like that is discouraging. I know that the Haskell
community is heavily mathematical, and have little interest in "dumbing down"
the language for the sake of those who are put off by theory, but it is a real
tradeoff and one of the things that is likely to impede the introduction of
Haskell into the mainstream.
~~~
Peaker
I've learned Monoid in Haskell, not maths. It's just so simple and easy that
there's really no dumbing down necessary.
Monad is simple and hard, but Monoid is simple and easy.
~~~
thinkpad20
With respect to monoid, you're right. It's really quite simple when you get
down to it. I don't have any arguments there. In fact, the fact that monoids
are really so simple is kind of my point. In almost any other language, were
such a thing to exist, monoids would not be called monoids but by some
descriptive term which conveyed an intuitive sense of their meaning and use;
it would be the purview of the mathematically inclined to write articles
explaining how "actually, what we call the Joinable type class is known in
abstract algebra as a Monoid, and its use extends beyond just joining things;
for example..."
My point isn't really specifically about monoids; they're just an example of
what often goes on in Haskell, which is that people put theory before
practicality and mathematical (and hence often esoteric) definitions before
practical, real-world definitions. Like I've said a few times, this isn't
incorrect at all. Nor is it surprising given Haskell's origins, nor is it
without purpose since it deepens your understanding of what's going on in the
language. It's just a simple fact that the mathematical jargon is a turn-off
to newcomers and those who don't feel they want to be forced to learn math
while they're programming, or might think they're incapable of doing so.
As it turns out, I'm not one of those people; I love the mathematical side of
Haskell and I love that I've learned what a Monoid is and developed an
interest in type theory, category theory and all kinds of other things. But
not everyone is like that, and that's the point I'm making.
~~~
jejones3141
Well, yeah, but... the term "monoid" already exists, and has a definite
meaning. A different name might give people an intuition for it--but it will
be a wrong one that they'll have to unlearn later, like the infamous burrito
(not that you or anyone has suggested that monads be renamed burritos, I am
happy to say!).
------
namelezz
In his talk on currying, he mentioned replying on type system to not be a good
thing. Does anyone know the reasons behind his view?
~~~
latk
Currying can obfuscate what is applied to what. Consider in any ML language "a
b c d" – we can see that "a" is a function, but we have no idea of its arity.
Uncurried, it could be: "a(b, c, d)", "a(b, c)(d)", "a(b)(c, d)", "a(b)(c)(d)"
(oh, that's the curried form again). Especially when function definitions are
implied through pattern matching, it is hard to understand the contract of a
function at a glance.
As a reader of that code cannot easily understand whether the number and type
of arguments is correct, one has to rely on the type checker that everything
will work out.
However, this is more of a criticism of ML syntax than of currying – all
things are good in moderation.
~~~
thinkpad20
It's actually simpler in some ways, because we know that "a" must have arity
1. What we know is that "a" should be a function which takes a "b", that "a b"
should be a function which takes a "c", and "a b c" should take a "d".
As a practical consideration, this rarely if ever becomes an issue, and if it
does, the type checker will tell you straight away.
Type annotations can make clear what isn't intuitively clear with a function's
signature, and since the correctness of the type checker is rigorously proven,
I don't see anything particularly wrong with "relying" on the type checker.
~~~
latk
The argument that every function has arity 1 is technically true (this is the
whole point of currying) but is not useful when definitions like "let a b c =
..." suggest other semantics. It's possible you've had a difference experience
with this, but I tend to get confused when the semantic argument list isn't
delimited.
There is nothing wrong with relying on the type checker, except that it tends
to add cognitive overhead.
~~~
thinkpad20
In my experience, the more you use currying, the more intuitive it becomes
(surprise, surprise). In any case, you very quickly develop an understanding
that `let foo bar baz = qux` is just syntactic sugar for `let foo = \bar ->
\baz -> qux`. Of course, if you want to simulate higher-arity functions, you
could just use tuples. It's perfectly acceptable to write `let foo(bar, baz) =
qux`.
------
delinka
Can we get an [audio] indicator?
------
kaeluka
YES, I've been waiting for this! Thanks so much! :)
------
DanWaterworth
TL;DR FP hater talks about FP.
------
RyanZAG
I'm going to save these HN comments for 5 years time when the hype on
functional programming has died down a bit. Will be very humorous to read this
again then.
~~~
jonsen
No chance. The hype will recurse forever. Even on stackoverflow.
~~~
platz
Deploy the canaries!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: DocuShow to search and read PDFs on mobile - ldenoue
http://docushow.com
======
ldenoue
Working on extracting images, tables and math formulas now...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DARPA Network Challenge - jballanc
http://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/
======
ivankirigin
They has as well have called this "facebook vs. twitter".
For the former, start a group, and build awareness. Direct the money to a
cause. Use the iphone app to post and get updates.
For twitter, post to and follow a hashtag. At least 50% of your human labor
will need to be dedicated to filtering spam if the tag starts to trend.
Definitely search on either to get random people on board
[http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp=&q=red...](http://www.facebook.com/search/?init=srp&sfxp=&q=red+balloon&gl=1&lo=en_US&sp=7)
------
tlb
How big a fleet of drone aircraft would you need search the US in a couple
hours? It'd be tens of thousands, but it might be doable for a few million
bucks. I think you could fly pretty high and use large telephoto lenses and
high-speed video cameras to see red dots while scanning quickly. That'd be a
more interesting project than trying to enlist a lot of volunteer spotters
with iPhone apps.
------
wmf
This sounds tailor-made for an iPhone app. Perhaps Foursquare could award a
badge for finding one of the balloons.
------
jballanc
I'm thinking the best approach might be an intelligent system to scape from
Twitter/Facebook and correlate location words with "What the heck is that big
balloon"-type phrases...would be difficult, but such a system could be really
useful for the next major disaster.
~~~
ErrantX
Id just take the risk and watch for the relevant hash tags rather than
filtering other keywords :)
Besides sounds like they want pretty specific lat/long.
------
MaysonL
Probably the best way to win is to deploy a couple dozen red balloons of your
own...
~~~
NathanKP
That certainly wouldn't be ethical (as it would cause havoc for the other
contestants) and it would be ludicrous (as DARPA would obviously know that
your balloons were fake).
~~~
nl
Putting up another 89 red balloons would be nice anti-war protest.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons> :)
Also, making the contest more hostile would arguably be very ethical given
that DARPA are funding it. It would presumably provide a better research
outcome if the winning method had to deal with bad actors.
It wouldn't be ludicrous, because it would force your competitors to deal with
the problem of fake balloon, presumably increasing your chances of winning
(assuming you have some method for determining what is a real balloon and what
is a fake one)
------
RedBalloon
There are a variety of different ways to try to win this competition but I'm
sure most of them leverage, in one way or another, having as many people as
possible know about the competition. Everyone should help spread the word!
We're trying to do that on Facebook and on our website:
<http://www.redballoonrace.com>
Check us out and shoot me an email! Tell me what you think!
------
nl
Here's a good interview question: The required accuracy is 1 arc minute, which
is approximately 1.86 kms. The area of the continental United States is
approximately 8080464 sq. km.
How many entries do you need to submit to guarantee one will contain the
correct answer?
Supplementary question for extra credit: Let the correct answer above be X.
Suggest a solution for finding the earliest correct answer from 10X entries.
:)
------
tybris
a.k.a. the biggest prisoner's dilemma competition yet.
------
ispyaredballoon
We've got a strong team that's going to give all the money to charity (Red
Cross). If you'd like to help, report your balloon sightings to
<http://www.ispyaredballoon.com/> or at facebook
<http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=201028633372>
------
memetichazard
From the rules.
Eligibility: The DARPA Network Challenge is open to individuals of all ages
irrespective of nationality or residency.
Prizes: The winner must provide a U.S. taxpayer identification number (e.g. a
social security number) to receive the cash prize.
So you can participate no matter who or where you are, but you can only win
the prize if you live(d) in the US?
~~~
gloob
Given that the balloons are in the US, I'm not sure that's much of a
restriction.
~~~
the_real_r2d2
Not necessary. If you assume that people is going to spread the news in
twitter (or blogs, facebook, etc.) when they find a balloon, the locations is
not a restriction. You just need a smart enough engine to search and find
those tweets. Now, the "smart engine technology" is the difficult task (and
for sure what DARPA is looking for).
------
XenonofArcticus
My team, DeciNena, will win because we have the best technology, the coolest
name, and are cupcake-free.
We are even offering to share some of the prize money with participating team
members who don't find a balloon themselves!
<http://decinena.com>
------
TrevorJ
An HN team anyone? I'd be interested to see how far our skills could take us.
------
protomyth
So, if it is known someone will pay $X per photo with embedded GPS coordinates
taken from under the ballon, then aren't we talking about how close to $4,000
a central gatherer is willing to go?
------
labria
I don't get it. Do you submit results once, or you can resubmit? Makes a lot
of difference!
------
jpwagner
now THAT is a cool competition
------
mjgoins
Help the best-funded and least accountable military on the globe with some
free intelligence work. How exciting.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
North Korea Government website costs only $15 - sonic0002
http://pixelstech.net/article/index.php?id=1334900614
======
kaolinite
Good for them! I'd much rather that than the budgets that the UK (and other)
governments blow on websites which often aren't too complex at all.
------
jonursenbach
Should link to the source instead of blogspam.
<http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/04/north-korea-website/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Morphic for JavaScript - sedachv
http://www.chirp.scratchr.org/blog/?p=34
======
stcredzero
What would it take to port Morphic directly on top of Objective-C? One could
keep all of the selectors around in a collection. One could also keep class
references. Not sure what to do about passing blocks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why is 911 so expensive? - mkovji
======
mtmail
Can you add relevant articles or statistics to your question?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple makes 23 different dongles – and it would cost you $857 to buy them all - djvdorp
http://uk.businessinsider.com/apple-dongles-2017-8?international=true&r=UK&IR=T
======
pmx
You'd never need all of these though, would you? There is a lot of overlap
between the dongles that unless you had a lot of devices you wouldn't require.
For example I can't see anyone buying an HDMI to DVI + a Lightning to VGA + a
Mini Displayport to DVI. Feels a little bit like saying ford make xx models of
car & it would cost you £1 million to buy them all.
~~~
spaceisballer
Title is very silly, just trying to jump on the dongle hate train. I don't
have or own any dongles despite my many Apple devices (technically I have one
for my iPhone 7 with headphones, but I have air pods if I ever need
headphones). I think Apple knows most consumers don't need dongles at all.
~~~
dismantlethesun
I actually have most of these because I tend to buy new Apple equipment, and
try to connect it to old non-apple equipment.
Something like a lightning to VGA adapter is a must have in my household.
~~~
undersuit
Why? What about your previous non-dongle needing equipment was so inferior you
replaced it for a new Mac and yet you didn't replace the VGA monitor? Some
kind of exceedingly rare edge case?
~~~
slededit
while VGA is getting quite old, generally speaking a monitor will outlive
several computers.
------
Fezzik
Personally, I would prefer the option for 23 dongles (most of which I will
never use, or buy) to a multitude of ports on my laptop (most of which I will
never use). The first seems like it provides me options, the second seems like
it adds unnecessary failure points and openings to a delicate machine.
~~~
GuB-42
You can think of extra ports as failure points but you can also think of them
as redundancy. Having a single port to connect everything causes a lot of wear
on a single point of failure.
~~~
photojosh
That's why there are 4 USB-C/TB3 ports on the new MacBook Pros (2 on the
cheapest one). The new iMac only has 2 USB-C/TB3 ports, but also retains all
the legacy ones.
So the only issue is with the 12" MacBook and its single USB-C port. Yep,
that's a point of failure, but for it's intended users it's alright. On
previous laptops you'd be screwed if you lost your AC adapter port anyway.
------
VeejayRampay
Note that for every single one of those dongles, there are a handful of
manufacturers that offer the same quality for half the price. It's not an
issue that they have such a large offering for connectivity, it's that their
items are overpriced, I mean $30 for a Lightning to 30-pin adapter, what a
racket.
------
plussed_reader
This reminds me of the dongle hell of the 90's; Apple had done so well once
Jobs got back onboard; it was at the end of his tenure that MDP took over, and
then Tbolt, that brought us right back into the nickel and diming, "we have a
$30-80 solution for your problem."
------
vivab0rg
First-world problems
------
nkkollaw
This title is ridiculous. I'm not even going to click on it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Public speaking for introverts - vanwilder77
http://danshipper.com/public-speaking-for-introverts?utm_source=Dan%27s+Blog+List&utm_campaign=718f71be14-Newsletter_nice_design_17_8_11_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c18fe7384e-718f71be14-40620601
======
patio11
Some kids grow up on football. I grew up on public speaking (as behavioral
therapy for a speech impediment, actually). If you want to get radically
better in a hurry:
1) If you ever find yourself buffering on output, rather than making
hesitation noises, just pause. People will read that as considered
deliberation and intelligence. It's _outrageously_ more effective than the
equivalent amount of emm, aww, like, etc. Practice saying nothing. Nothing is
often the best possible thing to say. (A great time to say nothing: during
applause or laughter.)
2) People remember voice a heck of a lot more than they remember content. Not
vocal voice, but your authorial voice, the sort of thing English teachers
teach you to detect in written documents. After you have found a voice which
works for you and your typical audiences, you can exploit it to the hilt.
I have basically one way to start speeches: with a self-deprecating joke. It
almost always gets a laugh out of the crowd, and I can't be nervous when
people are laughing with me, so that helps break the ice and warm us into the
main topic.
3) Posture hacks: if you're addressing any group of people larger than a
dinner table, pick three people in the left, middle, and right of the crowd.
Those three people are your new best friends, who have come to hear you talk
but for some strange reason are surrounded by great masses of mammals who are
uninvolved in the speech. Funny that. Rotate eye contact over your three best
friends as you talk, at whatever a natural pace would be for you. (If you
don't know what a natural pace is, two sentences or so works for me to a first
approximation.)
Everyone in the audience -- both your friends and the uninvolved mammals --
will perceive that you are looking directly at them for enough of the speech
to feel flattered but not quite enough to feel creepy.
4) Podiums were invented by some sadist who hates introverts. Don't give him
the satisfaction. Speak from a vantage point where the crowd can see your
entire body.
5) Hands: pockets, no, pens, no, fidgeting, no. Gestures, yes. If you don't
have enough gross motor control to talk and gesture at the same time (no joke,
this was once a problem for me) then having them in a neutral position in
front of your body works well.
6) Many people have different thoughts on the level of preparation or
memorization which is required. In general, having strong control of the
narrative structure of your speech without being wedded to the exact ordering
of sentences is a good balance for most people. (The fact that you're coming
to the conclusion shouldn't surprise you.)
7) If you remember nothing else on microtactical phrasing when you're up
there, remember that most people do not naturally include enough transition
words when speaking informally, which tends to make speeches loose narrative
cohesion. Throw in a few more than you would ordinarily think to do. ("Another
example of this...", "This is why...", "Furthermore...", etc etc.)
~~~
shawnee_
This is a great list. Another one to add: (8) Don't underestimate the power of
audience participation. Being attuned to opportunities for questions as they
come up makes for a much more interesting experience (both for the speaker and
the audience) than laying down some speech.
Introverts can be really good at the "solutions rather than sales" aspect of
interacting -- which is why we tend to do better 1:1 with people than in big
groups.
~~~
reuven
Audience participation is highly dependent on culture, I've found.
When I give a talk or class in Israel, I can be sure that people will
interrupt me, ask questions, challenge my assertions, and generally push me to
explain what I'm saying. These interactions make things more interesting for
me, always teach me something new, and (I believe) also make the conversation
more relevant for other participants.
By contrast, my experience with American audiences is that they're much
quieter and reluctant to challenge me during the talk. They'll wait until the
formal question time at the end, and then raise issues.
And during the two classes that I gave in Beijing, participants were even
quieter than Americans -- although the second group I taught (this year) were
far more vocal than the ones I spoke last year, so it might have as much to do
with corporate culture and their English level as anything else.
Bottom line, try to get a sense of the audience, and how they expect to
interact with you. Then you can prepare an appropriate balance of prepared
notes vs. discussion with the participants.
Over time, you'll get better at making these judgments and estimates; like
everything else, public speaking is a skill that takes years to improve. But
it's a real rush to give a good talk, and to know that you've taught others
something that they didn't previously know. So do your best, and know that
next time, you'll hopefully do even better!
~~~
jlgreco
> _and (I believe) also make the conversation more relevant for other
> participants._
I believe this is a crapshoot. Many times audience participation is more
accurately described as "audience interruption and diversion". If you let
them, a single audience member can easily derail a presentation in ways that
all of the other audience members are not interested in.
~~~
reuven
Yes, a good lecturer knows (hopefully) how to realize that you're spending too
much time on irrelevant topics, or that you won't get to all of the material
you've planned to cover unless you move ahead. But it can sometimes be
difficult to handle such people.
------
trjordan
I know it's easy to say this is for introverts, but this applies to everybody.
Public speaking is hard: it's not natural to get up in front of a group of
people who aren't going to talk back, and talk for far longer than you'd ever
have to in conversation.
I'm a consummate extrovert, and I recently started doing more public speaking,
both in front of groups of 20-60 and webinar-style, over the phone with 1-5
people. Both were terrifying, and it still makes me nervous. I've been doing
it for about a year, and I'm just now starting to overcome the "Man, I hope
something comes up and we have to cancel" feeling.
Practice is the only way to get comfortable, and practice will make you
better.
~~~
vidarh
Not only does it apply to everybody, but I strongly believe it has nothing to
do with whether or not you're an introvert.
I find public speaking "easy". As a teenager I spent a couple of weeks in
front of rowdy groups of hundreds of school students during school election
debates for a fringe party that made me an ideal candidate for mockery. Didn't
phase me. I held the commencement speech at my university my first year in
front of thousands of students and TV crews, and people couldn't believe how
relaxed I was, but I didn't understand why there was anything to be nervous
about; I knew the manuscript and was after all just going to stand there and
deliver it. I've spoken to quite a few very varied large groups of people. I
don't react to that at all.
Smalltalk with strangers, on the other hand, takes a lot out of me. It's not
just that it triggers anxieties in some situations, but even when it doesn't,
it is exhausting: I have to concentrate much more to actually listen and take
part in conversations that happens for "social reasons" as opposed to about
specific subjects, as otherwise I miss cues etc. or simply will go silent.
I don't mind getting up in front of a crowd of any size without a manuscript
and deliver my message, even if I know it'll be unpopular, but if I'm in a
store, for example, I'd rather spend a couple of extra minutes looking around
rather than asking someone who works there to help me find something, because
one on one interactions with strangers are draining. I even have to
consciously avoid taking steps to "bypass" people I only know vaguely but who
I expect might want to talk to me as if I just go on "autopilot" I'll pick the
route that leads to the least amount of words exchanged.
Perhaps the "aren't going to talk back" part is what makes public speaking
feel easier for me, even when they actually do.
To me, those two things are entirely separate. I'm sure there are lots of
introverts that _also_ have problems with public speaking, but conversely I
know plenty of introverts other than myself who doesn't have a problem with
public speaking, and lots of extroverts who do.
~~~
pessimizer
I agree with this. Introvert/extrovert is another one of those stupid linear
continuums (continuua?) that people get socially diagnosed into that don't
particularly explain, just label. As a painfully shy person who didn't have
any problem being a frontman for touring bands for years, comfort and
discomfort with social situations is a subject more complicated than _yes you
are_ or _no you aren 't_.
~~~
saraid216
Introvert/extrovert does have real meaning, but people generally use it as a
sophisticated synonym for "shy/outgoing", which is utterly false.
~~~
auctiontheory
Thanks for pointing that out. I am somewhat shy and quite extroverted.
------
auctiontheory
1) Toastmasters.
2) Tim Ferriss's advice is surprisingly useful:
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/04/11/public-
speak...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2010/04/11/public-speaking-how-
i-prepare-every-time/)
~~~
msluyter
Yes to point 1.
I did Toastmasters for about a year and it had a _huge_ impact. They have a
systematic way of developing your skills (a set of 10 speeches designed to
focus on various aspects, like structure, vocal presentation, gestures,
etc...) It seems quite sound, pedagogically.
Now, you do have to have a minimum of tolerance for getting up and doing a
first speech in the very beginning, but if you can do that, the rest of the
program ramps up gradually. As an introvert, I was never thrilled to be going
_in_ to a Toastmasters meeting, but I always felt really good (energized,
happy) going _out._
------
thejteam
Some types of public speaking are easier for introverts than others. Giving a
preplanned talk in front of a couple of thousand people? Pretend they aren't
there and that you're speaking to the air. Look at the audience as you would
look at a TV screen. It may not be the most spectacular or engaging talk they
have ever seen, but you will get through it. Very few people are so
interesting that you want to hear them talk for very long anyway.
A small interactive discussion group? That lasts all day? Now you are in
territory where being an introvert is deadly. And there really are no good
answers other than try to get some practice in small groups over short time
spans and work your way up.
~~~
vidarh
I think even that depends a lot of topic and format. I don't mind a technical
discussion group at all. A social group on the other hand makes me want to
just shut down. At parties I'll often just sit down somewhere and sit there
all evening (unless I'm at a club - I like dancing and happily use that as an
excuse for not talking), and don't mind talking if someone talks to me, but I
won't seek out conversations unless it's a group of geeks talking about
subjects I care about.
------
nollidge
Kind of nitpicky, but is there actually any correlation between introversion
and public speaking anxiety? I'm pretty introverted, but don't have much
difficulty with public speaking or job interviews or whatever. For me,
introversion is all about personal relationships - business conversations are
a completely different animal, at least in my brain.
------
snarfy
[http://www.toastmasters.org/](http://www.toastmasters.org/)
------
linuxhansl
Can't agree more. I actually have a stutter and avoided any public speaking
until a pretty ripe age.
At some point I just had to do it. I had nightmares, nightsweats, couldn't
sleep or eat. But that is not what mattered. What mattered was that I did it
anyway. I was nervous, wanted to run away, but I did it.
It was for small groups first, giving status updates to a few colleagues -
even those used to stress me.
Then after some speaking at conferences, I was surprised that these status
updates ever caused me any stress.
From there I went to a key note in front of 800 or more people (a few years
back I would quite literally preferred to die rather than doing that).
Suddenly the conference engagement became less daunting.
The funny thing is: On stage I do not stutter. I guess I'm too busy delivering
the message.
And what if I do? It doesn't really matter. Some people might find it funny (I
certainly had my share of that when I was younger, but those folks are
typically inferior on an intellectual level and are just looking for
compensation.)
And, yes, I am still extremely nervous before each public engagement and I
still not like it per se, but you know what? That's part of it.
------
dmitri1981
I would also recommend checking these slides from Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz fame.
[http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/making-presentations-
bett...](http://www.slideshare.net/randfish/making-presentations-better)
~~~
dshipper
Great presentation, thanks for sharing!
------
jcolman
Love this post. Great tips that are useful for anybody/everybody, introverts
and extroverts alike.
Just want to make the point that shyness/anxiety/insecurity != introversion.
They're completely separate spectrums. Sure, sometimes they cross one another,
but correlation of the two does not mean causation.
Here's a good post by Susan Cain (the author of Quiet) that gets at this idea:
[http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/07/05/are-you-
shy-i...](http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/2011/07/05/are-you-shy-
introverted-both-or-neither-and-why-does-it-matter/)
------
gadders
Interesting article, but can we get away from this idea that introvert = shy?
Being an introvert just means that you find different things interesting, not
that you're scared of groups.
------
mhartl
This article is based on a dubious premise, namely, that public speaking is
harder for introverts than for extroverts. Introverts are taxed by smalltalk
and the like, but they often have no trouble getting up in front of hundreds
of people and performing. Think Michael Jackson: painfully diffident in
private, but a monster on stage.
------
sethev
Toastmasters has been a big help for me. You get to practice speaking in front
of a group of people who are all there to practice speaking as well. Knowing
everybody is there to learn the same skills takes some of the pressure off.
Plus every time you give a speech somebody is assigned to evaluate it in the
same meeting. So you get instant feedback and constructive criticism.
Another big advantage of Toastmasters is that there are a lot of opportunities
for impromptu speaking. This made me very nervous at first but it’s incredibly
valuable to practice speaking for 1-2 minutes without notes.
------
demo9090
If you don't know how to speak publicly, what entitles you about writing a
post to give recommendations about that what you do badly?
This is something very common on the blogosphere right now, the kind of posts
that starts with a "I suck doing this, this are my 10 ways to do it better.."
There is a lot of interesting lectures out there about how to be better
speaking publicly, we don't need advices or recommendations from someone who
doest know about the topic.
The worst thing is that news.ycombinator keep bubbling this things up.
~~~
pitt1980
want to throw out a few links to what you consider to be the best of "a lot of
interesting lectures out there about how to be better speaking publicly"?
the beginner/"I suck at this" vantage point might be more relevent to a
paticular reader as the expert one
~~~
VLM
I'm guessing you want a curated list of something better than just google.
Some folks who consider this problem to be their hobby (there are also other
similar groups):
[http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp](http://www.toastmasters.org/tips.asp)
A non-obvious phrase to google for is "public speaking anxiety" which is more
formally the problem, not some INT/EXT thing or just simply being no good at
it which usually is just personality pessimism.
I remember I had to take a public speaking class at university a long time ago
and there is obvious some discussion and support; plus you get credit, plus
probably tuition reimbursement from employer.
Not having an issue with speaking, but experiencing one with heights, I know
that working as a team helps a lot. This seems to be a semi-universal human
trait, you put one redneck in the back country and he's fine, put two out
there and a bunch of "hold my beer and watch this" later, you need an
ambulance, its inevitable, not just rednecks in the back country. So I would
imagine a team public speaking presentation would be enormously easier than
going it alone. I know this helps a lot with being scared of heights, at least
for me.
(edited to add there's also two types of public speaking, the stylistic one
where you should use your hands while talking precisely this much in 2013 for
network TV but this much for locals, and make sure to blink on cue and use the
correct fake accent at the correct time, and the more concrete goal of giving
a speech to the public... make sure your teacher or information source is
aiming at what you actually want to learn. In a similar way WRT me and
heights, there's stylistic stuff like what kind of costume a trapeze artist
wears in 2013 (I have no idea) vs how to climb on roofs and antenna towers
which I can help a little with)
------
ctdonath
A quote that made a difference for me, addressing the paralyzing issue of
"what if I'm wrong? what if I make a mistake in front of all these people?":
_though it cannot hope to be useful or informative on all matters, it does at
least make the reassuring claim, that where it is inaccurate it is at least
definitively inaccurate._ \- Douglas Adams
If I'm wrong when speaking to a group, then by gum I'll strive to be
_definitively_ wrong.
------
simonebrunozzi
I am copying this from a recent blog post that I've written. Hopefully it's
good advice. Let me know what you think.
3) What did I learn? Now you might want to ask: after 500 talks,
presentations, keynotes and the like, what did I learn?
Many things, among which:
3.1) Somebody in the audience is smarter than you: no matter how smart,
focused, sharp you are, you’ll always find someone who is smarter, more
prepared, more skilled. Which means: be humble, and if you don’t know
something, just say so. People don’t pretend that you know everything; they
just want you to be honest.
3.2) Slides are only a small part of a presentation: you present to inspire,
and possibly to provide knowledge and details. Slides are not the main part…
The most important part is telling a story, involving people, showing passion,
making things memorable.
3.3) Always be listening. I mean it. Even when you’re on stage, speaking.
Don’t just listen to WORDS. Listen to feelings as well. I’ll tell you a little
story to explain this point. Late 2009. I was in France, and I was the last
speaker before lunch. I was supposed to speak at 12:30, for about 30 minutes.
However, previous speakers took more time than expected, and one of the big
sponsors pretended to have their CEO speak before me, unplanned, for more than
20 minutes, reading some text the entire time. READING. No slides, no
interpretation. Why didn’t he simply email all of us, instead?
His message was very boring, very corporate, full of vaporware. His last words
were about how customer-obsessed his company was.
He was using people’s time as he pleased, without even thinking about their
needs. When it was my turn, it was already 13:00, and people really wanted to
go to lunch. I was angry. I was in a difficult situation.
I introduced myself, and then told the audience: “My talk was planned to be 30
minutes long. However, we are late, and you are hungry. I’ll cut my talk down
to 15 minutes, and then we all go to lunch at 13:15. This is what I call
customer obsession.”
Big round of applauses. The crowd was mine. So, the lesson is: if you want to
deliver a message, the length of the message doesn’t count. Other things
count. Or, if you want to be a Technology Evangelist, don’t FORCE the message
to your crowd. Use empathy.
3.4) Get inspired. I have amazing colleagues that inspire me every day. Our
CTO, Werner Vogels, is one of the best public speaker I’ve ever seen, perhaps
second only to my all-time favorite, Matt Wood (a rare combination of
intelligence, humility, knowledge and a collection of PhDs), who recently
moved to a new role, Chief Data Scientist. Our most senior Evangelist, Jeff
Barr, is a walking encyclopaedia on all things AWS. Jinesh Varia is a
talented, super-smart producer of high quality content, and a good presenter
too. And there are other colleagues (like Simon Elisha) which, despite not
strictly being Technology Evangelists, are amazing speakers nevertheless.
There are also a lot of amazing Technology Evangelists out there, not just
within the Amazon Web Services team. I loved reading Kenneth Reitz’s blog post
about his experience at Heroku. So the lesson here is: get inspired, as much
as possible. Never stop learning and improving.
3.5) I’ve mentioned above that “It doesn’t necessarily make sense to travel
like this, though”.
In fact, after 500 talks, I think that I should focus on quality, rather than
quantity. Let me be more clear. At the beginning, you should do as many talks
as possible, simply because you learn a lot, and you mostly learn by doing.
After a while (500 is enough, but also 200 would be enough), you will notice
that you’re not improving so much anymore. It’s time for you to start focusing
on quality. Quality, in this case, means committing your time and energy to
events that matter. It could be a small user group, or a huge conference, but
as long as it matters, it’s ok. It will actually be easier for me now, since I
am focused on the Bay area, and therefore travelling time is not as much as it
used to be… Which means I can afford to do more events, while keeping the
“quality” high.
3.6) You’re a public figure representing your company, learn how to deal with
it.
This was a tough one to learn, and I admit it wasn’t easy for me, but
eventually I’ve learned it the hard way. Different companies might have
different policies, but in most cases you are not “just one employee”,
whatever you do online or in public matters a lot.
Ah, and by the way: Opinions expressed here are my own and do not necessarily
represent those of current or past employers. Just in case.
Source: [http://www.brunozzi.com/2013/01/04/500-times-on-
stage/](http://www.brunozzi.com/2013/01/04/500-times-on-stage/)
------
tlarkworthy
Indeed, slide transitions are an important polish
------
known
Practice, practice, practice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A story of "launch" disaster: fast-food style - icodemyownshit
http://andyswan.com/blog/2009/09/21/a-story-of-launch-disaster-fast-food-style/
======
andyswan
I'm the original author of this. And just to clarify a few points:
1\. This really happened. 2\. It was done on purpose by the owner. 3\. They
did normally close one day per year for repaving/repairs...and Wendy's did
announce their grand opening well in advance.
Thanks,
Andy Swan
------
davidw
Not the intended point, but it reminds me of the good side of living in Italy.
I just got back from lunch at a nice trattoria, where I had a plate of fusilli
with "speck" (like prosciutto), cream, and rucola (I think it's argula or
something like that in English) for less than 5 euros. There's a time and a
place for McDonalds, but every day at lunch is way too much.
~~~
jlees
Rucola = arugula in the US, rocket in the UK. Mmm.
------
louislouis
So if a competitor site is launching, shut down your site for the day and
redirect all traffic to their site in an attempt to flood their server?
Interesting tactic but I don't think it's gona work somehow.
~~~
johnrob
Forget redirecting traffic - just put an invisible pixel on your site that
hits the competitor. Imagine if google did this... they could kill any site!
~~~
JeremyChase
Yes; we should all DOS the competition. Brilliant plan.
------
launic
The two things I would learn from this story are: 1) to be prepared for the
success. As someone said, be prepared for the time when all your ten thousand
customers tell their, maybe, thirty friends about how good is your service. 2)
Find always the good side of bad things. For example a competitor can simply
emphasize your strong points and (as you said here) increase the market as a
whole.
I guess this is why we like this story even if we do not really believe it.
------
edw519
OP infers that McDonald's intended for Wendy's to fail on their first day.
Based upon my experience in foodservice (including 7 years with McDonald's), I
don't believe it. They never conducted business that way, and I doubt that
they do now.
Years of study have taught something counter-intuitive in the fast food
industry (especially in a small town where everybody knows everybody else):
the better Wendy's does, the better McDonald's does. With more choices
downtown, there will be more traffic.
The best food service organizations welcome others, not as competitors to
fight over a bigger piece of pie, but as "partners" to make the whole pie
bigger.
It's up to us to figure out how this lesson applies to our industry. There's
probably a symbiotic relationship out there for us to find as well.
~~~
yummyfajitas
McD's is a franchise, so why can't this simply be the action of one rogue
franchise owner?
~~~
edw519
It could be, but I still doubt it. McDonald's runs a very tight ship;
franchisees have little latitude to go "rogue". It's highly unlikely that a
franchisee could shut down one day without corporate approval. They have
traditionally welcomed others into their neighborhoods (while still
maintaining #1 position, of course).
[Little known unpublished McDonald's fact: Not sure if it's still true, but at
one time they honored all competitors coupons. Yes, they'd give you a free Big
Mac with a free Whopper coupon.]
~~~
joezydeco
They may have kept the restaurant open and just closed the drive-thru lane.
That's pretty much killing your lunch business, but the store is still
effectively "open".
[And yeah the coupon thing is still there. I once spent half an hour arguing
with a woman who knew about this fact and was trying to convince me a free
Strawberry Shake was equivalent to a free Slurpee coupon she was holding. Had
to say no to that one.]
~~~
andyswan
You may be right there....I don't know if you could park a block away and walk
into the McD's that day, but I do know no one would lol :)
------
vdoma
I don't know - it could backfire as well. Sometimes long lines in a new place
could give the impression that place is better, especially for people not in
line - people just driving through downtown. So, it might be an experiment
worth trying, but by no means guarantees success.
~~~
taitems
That would only apply to a highly competitive market. In this case, you have
one store with a long history of customer satisfaction.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Smart Luggage with built-in laptop tray, usb charger and location tracking - bhaile
http://barracuda.co
======
ohjeez
WANT.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
First release of LibreSSL portable is available - klapinat0r
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=140510291304119&w=2
======
erobbins
So, an audited port of openssl comes out and the discussion centers around:
1\. why CVS sucks and the openbsd team should spend 3 months doing nothing but
reworking their development processes so they can use git like all the cool
ruby hackers.
2\. Lack of formality in the release announcement
3\. Choice of font
wow.
~~~
stal
that's because CVS is shit and they should use git or mercurial.
and why should we trust an SSL tool that uses COMIC SANS on thier website.
these LibReSSL dudes sound like idiot hipsters
~~~
hobarrera
Honestly, if you're using windows (which, AFAIK, is the only OS that includes
Comic Sans), why the are you complaining about being unable to trust security
software from a certain provider?
------
agwa
Source is served from a HTTP website with no PGP signature in sight. :-(
Critical software like this should really be distributed more securely.
~~~
AlyssaRowan
It's a bit early to rely on as critical - this is serious work-in-progress.
I'm not sure I'd _use_ it yet, and I'm not sure you should either, but then, I
suppose I could say that equally well about the OpenSSL library it's forked
from.
It is nevertheless a bit weird to see test sourcecode for TLS support on a
site that _does not support_ HTTPS!
Maybe when the cleanup is complete and it's shored up, they might actually
_use_ it? :)
~~~
agwa
Yeah, a LibreSSL dev has replied saying as much. I did not realize this was
meant to be a preview release, or I would not have been so critical. (But I do
think they could have made this more clear in their announcement and/or
version scheme.)
~~~
AlyssaRowan
Interesting to compare and contrast the approach taken by lib _re_ SSL and
agl's BoringSSL (my own private fork is in the process of being replaced by
BoringSSL, because it's not as hacky as my solutions).
I think I prefer BoringSSL's cmake/make process, because OpenSSL's build
system is _simply horrible_ , I've never liked it. But it doesn't do shared
libraries yet, so I'm having to take the .a files and link them by hand (well,
by script anyway). Not optimal, but better than having to rebase my own
patches so frequently, and it's only a test box.
I love the sheer amount of renovation-via-demolition lib _re_ SSL's doing.
OpenSSL really does have a _terrifying_ amount of #if 0, crufty ciphers and
code no-one ever wants to use.
By the way, you may as well take RC4 out: it's about to get another
significant result...
~~~
mey
Taking out of defaults maybe, but people still need to be able to access
old/broken ciphers to do work. Maybe I'm mis-interrupting your meaning.
------
edwintorok
Where should bugs be reported? It doesn't build on Debian:
md5/md5_dgst.c: In function 'md5_block_data_order':
md5/md5_dgst.c:107:49: error: right-hand operand of comma expression has no effect [-Werror=unused-value]
HOST_c2l(data,l); X( 0)=l; HOST_c2l(data,l); X( 1)=l;
^
~~~
pyroh
Perhaps try #openbsd on Freenode.
~~~
tedunangst
definitely not. mail to [email protected]
~~~
mey
That is a little confusing to have on end point for openbsd, openssh and
Montreal.
~~~
gnuvince
And Montreal...
~~~
mey
Sorry that was a phone auto-correction. I typed in LibreSSL...
------
nayden
The github repo: [https://github.com/libressl-
portable](https://github.com/libressl-portable)
~~~
Kikawala
From the README:
Development is done in the upstream OpenBSD codebase. A github clone of the
official repositories is kept at: [https://github.com/libressl-
portable](https://github.com/libressl-portable) We update this repository from
the OpenBSD respositories semi-frequently, so changes may not show up in
GitHub immediately. The GitHub repository should be used for informational
purposes only.
~~~
raverbashing
Makes me wonder why is OpenBSD still using CVS for their things.
Really, not having atomic commits is a pain
~~~
forgottenpass
Works for them so who cares? No reason to bikeshed tools of a project you're
not sending patches to anyway.
~~~
Karunamon
Windows XP works for some people. There are legitimate costs to operating in
the past, moreso when it's a project other people rely on.
-2 for an absolutely true fact? Wow. I'm not normally one to complain about downvotes but.. seriously.
~~~
LukeShu
There are also significant migration costs.
They likely have a toolchain built around CVS that would have a very
challenging time being migrated to git.
They also have a workflow that involves tracking file IDs as the import/export
files from other projects. Git doesn't do this well.
~~~
Karunamon
Every change (for significant values of, err.. significant) breaks someone's
workflow.
Again, XP works for many. That doesn't mean there aren't vanishingly few
reasons to use it anymore. For CVS, there's the whole non-atomic changes
thing, the whole no renaming files thing, no binary file support, no amending
commits, no bisect (a feature which I believe sells the software even if
everything else sucked), it's harder to collaborate with other users..
Holding onto objectively inferior tools due to a lack of desire to migrate
because "it works for me!" is a huge plague on technology.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
You can't really compare Windows XP and CVS. It's disingenuous.
CVS isn't deprecated. You can't say that it's fundamentally obsolete, either.
It's just really primitive, compared to modern DVCS like Git and Mercurial.
But if the primitive functionality fulfills their use case, why should they
switch?
~~~
Karunamon
Why not?
* Both are perfectly working versions of software
* Both have been obsoleted by newer, more fully featured, and more secure replacements (git cryptographically hashes its commits, cvs does not)
* Both have users that refuse to migrate from them because "it works for them", despite the benefits and impact on everyone else.
~~~
_kst_
CVS still has its uses.
[http://stackoverflow.com/a/7871646/827263](http://stackoverflow.com/a/7871646/827263)
~~~
raverbashing
Humm, let's see
"Unlike Git, you can check out only a subset of the repository."
Maybe useful, you can do that in SVN, also checkouts in GIT are very fast, the
point may be moot.
"So I find CVS (and sometimes even RCS) convenient when the repository is a
collection of largely unrelated files, and I'm more interested in tracking
changes on individual files"
Ok, I guess it makes sense _in this strict case_ (for example, a collection of
config files). Apart from that, if you're wondering with version of file A
works with which version of file B you lost.
"At least once, I've had to manually reconstruct a saved CVS file that had
become corrupted. I'm not sure how I could have done that with SVN or Git."
They wouldn't have corrupted the file in the first place more likely... And
yes there are ways to recover it.
~~~
_kst_
Valid points; I never claimed that CVS is better than Git in general. I still
use it for some things mostly out of habit and the fact that it's not really
worth the effort of migrating (again, this is mostly for collections of files
that don't depend on each other).
As for the (rare) corrupted files, I don't know what caused that. They were
single-bit errors that I could correct by manually editing the *,v files. I
know of no reason to assume that such errors are more or less likely with Git
vs. CVS.
------
strict9
humor/irony or not, I'll never take a project seriously that has such
ridiculous typography for the project home page.
~~~
pjscott
Sure you will. It'll be bundled with your OS, or your browser, or just used by
web sites you visit that have "[https://"](https://") at the beginnings of
their URLs, and you'll take it seriously because you take _those_ thing
seriously.
By the same token, you're trusting OpenSSL unless you go to great pains not
to.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
3 New Elements Named - Darmstadtium, Roentgenium and Copernicium - llambda
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/science/3-new-elements-named-darmstadtium-roentgenium-and-copernicium.html?_r=1
======
Todd
I just watched an enjoyable BBC documentary "Chemistry: A Volatile History".
The last episode concludes with a visit to the Centre for Heavy Ion Research
in Darmstadt and talks a bit about these elements.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Meet the Maker of Apple's Other Tablet - mshafrir
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/jan2010/tc20100122_583507.htm?campaign_id=rss_topStories
======
Luyt
If Apple really launches the iSlate in about a week, the days for the modBook
might be numbered.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gamevenda – reddit for games. - xerxe6
www.gamevenda.com
======
xerxe6
[http://www.gamevenda.com](http://www.gamevenda.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s Rivals Gear Up to Make Antitrust Case - drkimball
https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601?mod=rsswn
======
seltzered_
Somewhat related, last month there was an 'antitrust and competition
conference' at chicago booth school of business, and their videos came up last
weekend.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu9q5fb6MO0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu9q5fb6MO0)
is one of the panel videos with some interesting arguments:
FB's free basics implementation in Brazil is free for facebook-owned
properties (e.g. whatsapp), but not for general website usage. Claire Wardle
argues this creates a problem where free basic internet users are less
motivated to fact-check things (
[https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1231](https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1231) ,
specifically
[https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1340](https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=1340)).
Barry Lynn of Open Markets had an interesting quote I'm still trying to think
about -
[https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=2523](https://youtu.be/Wu9q5fb6MO0?t=2523) \-
"The issue is not that the price is free, the issue is the price is imposed
outside the market. The issue that price is a function not of competition, but
a tool of power. Without a public price, you don't have a public. Without a
public, you can't protect democracy."
~~~
bduerst
Facebook Free basics also suffers the Tom's Shoes problem [1] - basically by
giving away the free service in a developing country, it kills the local
economy for the same service and sets it back, not forwards. By saturating the
ISP market, Facebook is hindering ISP development in Brazil.
This would be less of a problem if Facebook offered net neutral internet
service but they're not - FB is only offering free access to theirs and a
handful of partners websites. It's charity message of bringing "free internet
to people who don't have it" is a red herring to the problems it presents.
[1] [https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/one-one-
business...](https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/one-one-business-
model-social-impact-avoiding-unintended-consequences/)
~~~
z3t4
It's probably Hanlon's razor. But if FB have altruistic motives they should
only offer their service where no commercial alternatives exist.
~~~
zrobotics
If they were motivated by altruism, wouldn't they offer full web access
instead of limiting it to Facebook & Wikipedia? What motivates them is finding
their next billion users in any way possible.
------
sandworm101
Facebook. Google will point to facebook's news feeds and internal mechanism as
evidence that Google is not alone in terms of news and information linking.
Similarly, there are many legitimate competitors in search. DuckDuckgo is a
minor player, but microsoft's Bing isn't.
I think that Google is far too big, but I just don't see an antitrust case in
the areas of news or search. Oldschool advertising would seem an option but
that is a decreasing area, not the place to make real change going forwards
imho. I'd like them to break up youtube, but there too Facebook's video
sharing is a valid competitor.
~~~
loudtieblahblah
> DuckDuckgo is a minor player, but microsoft's Bing isn't.
DuckduckGo, Qwant, and Bing are all the same player.
DDG and Qwant just pull Bing results.
Bing is the only real competitor to Google.
>or search.
Erm. I think it's absolutely there on search. The existence of competitors
doesn't negate monopoly status.
And the accusation can be legitimately claimed, that they use their monopoly
status in one market (search) as leverage to give other services in different
markets a leg up over the competition.
MS can't leverage Bing for the same - no matter how integrated Bing might be
into other products.
If Google tells people to use AMP or be de-ranked, that's monopoly power. Flat
out.
~~~
mrweasel
>DDG and Qwant just pull Bing results.
It there a source for this? People keep saying that DDG is just Bing, but I
can't find any indication of that actually being true. Sure, they may be using
Bing results, but they're seem to be mixed with result from other sources.
The only post I ever found on the subject is Gabriel Weinberg saying that DDG
is not just Bing.
~~~
Yizahi
Yeas, for russian segment it is Yandex. There is basically 4 real search
engines left in the world - Google, Bing, Yandex, Badoo.
~~~
rococode
Baidu in China too, but like Yandex it's another region where Google has
struggled to establish a strong presence.
~~~
jefftk
I think "Badoo" above was a typo for "Baidu"
------
tehjoker
I think it's important to remember that when we talk about competition, it
doesn't mean pick between two companies, one if which is much stronger. Strong
competition would mean dozens to hundreds of sustainable entrants. The
competition in this (and many other) markets is anemic.
~~~
ucaetano
> Strong competition would mean dozens to hundreds of sustainable entrants.
Absolutely not, there is such a thing as minimum efficient scale. Some markets
might only have room for 2 or 3 companies to operate efficiently.
~~~
tehjoker
I agree with you, but this idea undermines the justification of the free
market.
~~~
ucaetano
Nope. It doesn't in any way.
A free market is one where prices are set based on supply and demand without
restrictions on competition due to monopolistic powers, market reserve
regulations, etc.
There are always limits to competition, some due to scale, some due to market
size, some due to availability of resources. None of those prevent a market
from being free.
Even antitrust regulation doesn't necessarily prevent a market from being
free.
~~~
joshuamorton
To add, Adam Smith's original postulation of a free market was an explicitly
regulated market (for example to prevent monopoly influence).
There are all sorts of ways we aren't in that world (for example a free market
requires a fully informed set of buyers, which practically speaking never
exists).
~~~
ucaetano
Exactly! Free market != laissez faire.
But a market where exorbitant costs of regulation drive up the minimum
efficient scale to the point that no new entrants are possible is also not a
free market.
------
drak0n1c
A Google whistleblower today released internal documents and helped Project
Veritas obtain camera footage:
> Google Exec Says Don’t Break Us Up: “smaller companies don’t have the
> resources” to “prevent next Trump situation”
If a single company believes they have the informational monopoly needed to
control national politics, isn't that an admission of anti-trust liability?
[https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-
whis...](https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/06/24/insider-blows-whistle-exec-
reveals-google-plan-to-prevent-trump-situation-in-2020-on-hidden-cam/)
~~~
jowday
I wouldn't believe anything coming out of Project Veritas.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O'Keefe](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O'Keefe)
~~~
grayed-down
Why? Do you think they're deep-faking their videos of people admitting to
nefarious things?
~~~
V-eHGsd_
they have a well documented history of releasing selectively edited videos
~~~
grayed-down
Do you mean like mainstream television news does? The reason I ask is because
I have not noticed any big or even significant shifts in context between
whatever snippets they release and any raw footage that makes it out
afterwards. That's just me, and I'd like to think I'm being reasonable in
looking at this.
~~~
bduerst
I don't think 'mainstream television' tries to bait staffers into committing
voter fraud, fabricates accusations of underage sexual assault, or dresses up
as Bin Laden to make some point about border crossing in Mexico. This
"whatabout mainstream media" falls apart as a deflection because the laundry
list of things that James O'Keefe has done puts him pretty far into his own
camp as being a professional troll.
~~~
grayed-down
Investigative journalists are ALWAYS trying to bait their targets. They
wouldn't have a job if they didn't!
~~~
bduerst
How is paying a woman to lie about being sexually assaulted as a teenager (and
getting paid to abort the following pregnancy) actually investigative
journalism?
~~~
splintercell
> How is paying a woman to lie about being sexually assaulted as a teenager
> (and getting paid to abort the following pregnancy) actually investigative
> journalism?
You do understand that on the other side of the political spectrum there are
people (in large quantities) who don't believe that the teenager who is
sexually assaulted should be directed towards abortion?
You're rhetorical statement is as ridiculous as someone saying "How is going
to baker after baker and trying to find a hard working god fearing Christian
baker and forcing him to bake a cake he doesn't wanna bake, investigative
journalism?"
------
asnack
Every time there's a discussion about tech antitrust (google, fb, amazon, ms)
people point to each of these as being their competitors, therefore, there is
no monopoly or antitrust issue.
Perhaps we need to rethink antitrust in the context of the internet however.
These laws were written in the late 1800, and early 1900s, long before Google
existed. I think there should be some evaluation on needing a new framework of
what is antitrust for tech companies.
~~~
fyoving
The laws are fine, what we need is to not tailor laws according to selfish
political whims or to the whims of publishers and all other inferior
competition.
------
threezero
It’s not just their enemies. We would have been happy to continue being a
customer of Google if they hadn’t massively jacked up prices with little
notice when they recognized their monopoly advantage in maps. So now we’re
happy to be on board the anti-trust train.
~~~
robertAngst
They do not have a monopoly in Maps.
Say what it is, you built your platform using google, and they changed prices.
~~~
pitaj
Yeah what is it with people throwing "monopoly" at everything? Just because
they're an industry leader doesn't mean they're anything close to a monopoly.
~~~
bduerst
Being a monopoly justifies action, hence people who want action against
popular companies will try to rationalize it being a monopoly as a premise for
their disdain.
This monopoly/monopsony misclassification is seemingly a bi-weekly occurrence
on HN with regards to FAANG companies. Don't get me wrong, there are reasons
to criticize these tech companies, but calling them monopolies in markets they
are not is not the right way to do it.
~~~
gamblor956
Antitrust law does not require a monopoly, nor is a monopoly a violation of
antitrust law.
The two are strongly correlated but they're not the same.
~~~
bduerst
Oh for sure. Antitrust law is very nuanced, even by geography (e.g. US
requires market dominance, EU does not) but GP claimed _monopoly_ in maps,
which is more to the point of miss-attribution.
------
thomasec
I do not think this will go well for Google. They are not dealing with one or
two companies going after them - we're talking about dozens companies building
out cases over years that show potential anti-competitive behavior. Google
will have to address each of these individually, and as long as one sticks, I
think the dominoes start to fall. Think about all of the industries Google has
entered over the years - travel, retail, real estate, news - these are all
industries that have players with deep pockets, and mountains of data. It's
totally worth the cost of going all-in if it means either they get a
settlement, or Google has to make fundamental changes to their products,
and/or ad network.
------
nerdjon
I have a lot of mixed feelings on what this could mean for the other tech
companies.
But I hope something is done about Google. While they have done some good,
they have too much power over the internet. Looking at AMP as a prime example
of something that seems universally hated, but basically forced on users and
publishers or risk your placement in Google.
~~~
wffurr
"Universally hated" only in the HN echo chamber.
And even then some AMP defenders show up in the comments. It makes the mobile
web suck less in a way marketroids can understand.
------
fybe
Seems like Google is starting to do some work on trying to fight it.
Few days ago went on Google play store and was greeted with a modal telling me
I can install other search bars and it gave a list of Google, Bing, Yahoo and
DDG.
After that it tells you there are other browsers available to download and it
gives a choice of Chrome, Firefox, opera and some others.
Good move but will it be enough in a high profile case? We shall see
~~~
apocalyptic0n3
Are you in Europe? They had to do this to comply with an EU antitrust ruling
last year. [1]
1: [https://9to5google.com/2019/04/03/google-play-europe-
browser...](https://9to5google.com/2019/04/03/google-play-europe-browser-
search-choice/)
~~~
fybe
Oh that explains it. guess they could add it world wide
------
mfer
Two questions come to mind...
1) Does Google have a monopoly sized market share in search or ads? People
argue it does while using metrics to show it.
2) Does Google use this position to suppress competition? It is often argued
they do. Sometimes with reasoned cased. I've heard there are data based cases,
too.
This second part is what's triggering a lot of people to not appreciate the
monopoly.
~~~
hrktb
They've already been sued by the EU and found guilty in the case was on Google
Shopping. The second part is not much hypothetical at this point.
I think antitrust is not just based on the principle of monopoly or not at
this point, if I'm not mistaken being in a dominant position is enough for a
number of cases.
~~~
londons_explore
The Google Shopping case was really nuanced. Google argued (with data) that
they took actions in the best interests of the public, both individually and
collectively.
The other side _didn 't contest that_, but instead argued that those actions
were not in the best interests of those spammy comparison shopping websites.
(you know the ones which always advertise what you're looking for for a really
low price, and when you go there they redirect you through about 30 banner ads
before finally telling you they couldn't find the price they advertised
earlier unless you get 30 friends to sign up to 10 credit cards each, but here
it is anyway for double the price on amazon).
While there are lots of things Google was doing wrong, not promoting those
scummy sites was 100% in the public's best interests...
~~~
hrktb
From the statement ([http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_STATEMENT-17-1806_en.ht...](http://europa.eu/rapid/press-
release_STATEMENT-17-1806_en.htm))
> Google has come up with many innovative products and services that have made
> a difference to our lives. That's a good thing.
> But Google's strategy for its comparison shopping service wasn't just about
> attracting customers. It wasn't just about making its product better than
> those of its rivals. Instead, Google has abused its market dominance as a
> search engine by promoting its own comparison shopping service in its search
> results, and demoting those of competitors.
While it’s nuanced, “instead” doesn’t feel like agreeing did a good job at
this.
Also I’m not arguing Google can design good services, more that they’re proven
to abuse their position in documented cases.
PS: to get back to classics, I feel like hearing back discussion about how IE4
was way faster than Netscape, and was arguably a better browser. Or that
windows was effectively better than the competion and they bribed vendors just
to get better numbers.
Sure, we could agree on the individual products merits. It still harms the
market as a whole, and the customer in the long term.
------
fyoving
Luckily for Google in the US the grievances of a company's enemies/competitors
don't count for much.
I'll credit the WSJ for counting themselves among those enemies, but what I
find vexing with all these reports is the constant and casual mentions of
"breaking up" these companies as though it's a viable and realistic outcome
which it isn't and any self respecting publication should present things in
the proper context.
~~~
ma2rten
The problem with breaking up google is that the vast majority of revenue and
profits comes from search ads. You can't break up search ads from search.
~~~
darkpuma
Is youtube still being operated at a loss? If google runs a video sharing
platform at or near a loss, funded by cash they get from search ads, then how
can any other company possibly compete with them? By also running a video
sharing platform at or near a loss? There is a very small number of companies
that could conceivably do that.
This is precisely why google needs to be broken up.
~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
By your logic there would be no YouTube. Or no user generated video at all. I
imagine most people (including me) wouldn‘t like that.
~~~
darkpuma
> _" By your logic there would be no YouTube."_
In it's current form, no, and I'm fine with that. I'd like to see what a self-
sustaining youtube alternative looks like. The status quo is not divine
providence.
~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
> I'd like to see what a self-sustaining youtube alternative looks like.
What does that even mean? Clearly another platform of similar popularity would
end up heaving the exact same problems.
------
crazygringo
The thing is, according to _current_ antitrust law, there isn't much of a case
to be made.
I personally do think the US should be more aggressive in reining in what I
personally consider to be certain abuses (e.g. using your leadership in one
area, like search or app store, to favor your own items over others,
regardless of whether you're a monopoly or not).
But the problem is there aren't laws against that.
If we want to change things, change the _laws_ first.
~~~
maehwasu
The “should we use the judicial branch to legislate” ship sailed a long time
ago, and it’s not coming back to the harbor.
For better or worse, the judiciary as legislators is our system now, may as
well acknowledge it.
~~~
crazygringo
As someone who majored in political science including constitutional law...
it's not that simple.
The courts have the ability to "legislate" via precedent when choosing between
different conflicting laws or conflicting rights, and have an extra-wide scope
when it comes to interpreting the constitution, because it is so short and
intentionally broad/vague.
But when it comes to non-constitutional issues (e.g. antitrust), and a
situation is clearly covered by existing law (not at the "boundary" of a law
or between conflicting laws), the judicial branch can't do anything.
I mean, that's just not how courts work. And if a court did, it would be
overturned in appeal.
So, no -- I absolutely would never acknowledge the judiciary as legislators
now. That would be a complete constitutional and democratic breakdown, so
thank goodness that's not the case.
Don't confuse gridlock (slow lawmaking) with an unconstitutional usurpment of
power.
------
convivialdingo
Things google has the power to do:
* Ruin or make a business
* Manipulate or exclude information
* Imprison or ostracise using law enforcement and/or access to confidential information or even inuendo based on stupid things you did as a teenager.
* Manipulate an economy by emphasizing or suppressing information
* Manipulate a Democratic election with a degree of immunity from prosecution
This is the ultimate, god-like power that no unelected group should ever have.
------
wil421
Why would the government allow Google to buy all these companies and then just
end up blowing Antitrust smoke everywhere?
It’s weird the Obama administration allowed them to buy so many companies and
the Trump administration’s DOJ is talking about antitrust. I would’ve thought
the opposite.
~~~
HillaryBriss
yeah, I agree. But, OTOH, Democrats portray themselves as the "party of
ideas," intellectuals and academics, and socially tolerant/liberal people and
that's who Silicon Valley and Google are, so there was a natural alignment
between Obama and Google/SV. Also, it didn't hurt that most of Google's
employees were relatively young and probably voted for Obama. And Obama was
younger and his organization was more internet-savvy. Also, campaign
contributions were no doubt involved.
------
seaborn63
If the breakup does happen, the internet will become a brand new place, but if
it doesn't happen, Google creates Skynet for real.
Kidding, but it is interesting to think about what would happen if the breakup
does or doesn't happen.
~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
I‘m probably wrong, but at this point only a real (benevolent) super
intelligence can solve our biggest problems and questions (climate change,
pollution, energy, deep space travel, chronic and terminal diseases, mass
scale decision finding, consciousness).
Futurism aside. The only thing that will happen happen if Google is broken up,
is Microsoft/Amazon/Tencent/Baidu taking over their share. The internet is not
quite like other industries. The biggest possible scale will eventually
assimilate almost everything.
------
ishan1121
It's about time they broke Google up. Google alone has too much power on our
news and information. How do we not know they are not abusing their power?
~~~
myko
Look into Sinclair Broadcasting if you want to see who is abusing their power
regarding news and information.
Google is doing everything they can to be neutral - arguably more than they
should.
~~~
v7p1Qbt1im
But Sinclair et al. preach the politics of the current administration, so
they‘re safe.
------
abfan1127
can't compete in the market so get the government to break them up?
------
awakeasleep
Enemies or victims?
------
marktangotango
_Google’s Enemies Gear Up to Make Antitrust Case_
So customers and users are "enemies"? That's quite and indictment of their
business model!
Edit specifically this part, which I read as "customers and users":
_News Corp, which owns The Wall Street Journal, and other publishers say
Google and other tech platforms siphon ad revenue away from content creators._
~~~
wstrange
The article specifically calls out competitors such as Yelp, TripAdvisor and
Oracle. I don't think these are Google's customers or users.
~~~
curt15
In which of Google's markets does Oracle compete?
~~~
GuB-42
Java.
Oracle and Google are currently what may be the biggest tech-related legal
battle of the decade. It is up to the supreme court now. To put it simply,
Oracle claims that Google hijacked Java for its Android ecosystem.
There may be some other areas where they compete, particularly when it comes
to cloud services, but I think Java is the big one.
~~~
curt15
But Google switched to OpenJDK a while ago, and since that has become the
reference Java implementation, how could Java be monetized nowadays for mobile
devices?
~~~
simion314
Weren't they in fact forked Java the platform? AFAIK you were not allowed to
create your incompatible Java version, Microsoft tried it withe their Embrace
Extend Extinguish tactics and lost in the courts.
What is weird in the Oracle vs Google is that they are debating copyright over
the APIs and that for me seems unrelated.
------
ycombonator
The Google exec Jen Gennai who was in the Veritas video just deleted her
twitter account
[https://mobile.twitter.com/gennai_jen](https://mobile.twitter.com/gennai_jen)
~~~
CapricornNoble
Archives of both of her known/suspected Twitter accounts:
[https://archive.fo/EwXSb](https://archive.fo/EwXSb)
[https://archive.fo/oWfPW](https://archive.fo/oWfPW)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Life on the B Ark: an interview with Ian Stewart - RiderOfGiraffes
http://home.earthlink.net/~douglaspage/id83.html
======
RiderOfGiraffes
This is the chap who wrote the article referenced here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1594496>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chris Cox, Zuckerberg lieutenant, to return to Facebook - dcgudeman
https://www.wsj.com/articles/zuckerberg-lieutenant-returns-to-facebook-a-year-after-departure-11591899761
======
Zaheer
The discussion when he left was that Chris did not agree with Facebook's
stance on the role / responsibility they have as a platform. I wonder if this
is a sign of further policy changes they'll make.
HN Discussion from when he left:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393018](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19393018)
~~~
GuiA
_" Look, I'm all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I'm being
paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued
loyalty more highly, I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most."_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'Female' hurricanes cause more deaths, because people don't take them seriously - edward
http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/2/5770778/hurricanes-with-female-names-deadlier-because-less-threatening
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7835925)
Other sources:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838123](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7838123)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837881)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837530)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7837191)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836509](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836509)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7839076)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hands-On with the $159 Google Pixel Buds - rbanffy
https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/04/hands-on-with-the-159-google-pixel-buds/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tcfbpage&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=facebook
======
axaxs
My opinion: Google is selling and pricing hardware based on software
capabilities. For a lot of people, myself included, some of these features are
amazing. That said, at the end of the day, it's still a $160 version of
something that are commonly broken, and have cheaper 'dumb' versions of for a
few bucks. This makes me really hesitant to buy.
Ideally, what I'd like to see to make myself, and I'm sure some others, a
buyer is a free replacement program. I'm more than willing to support awesome
software if I don't have to worry about it's backing hardware breaking so
easily, especially something a lot of folks jam in their pockets.
~~~
jib
I'm on the other side I guess, but with the same conclusion.
I can tell from the design that I will never wear those ear buds. There is no
way to create a decent seal in the ear using just hard plastic, so the sound
will suffer for music, and that's the main reason I buy earbuds.
I'm not a snob about music stuff, but for around 100 USD I get a decent pair
of earbuds that create a proper seal and gives me good music quality. I'd love
the features, but I'm not going to sacrifice the main reason I use in-ear
headphones in the first place - the ability to relatively cheaply have good
quality sound.
~~~
nvarsj
They can be a safety hazard. Pedestrians wearing them don’t pay attention to
their surroundings at all. The fact they are in ear means it’s hard to notice
when someone is wearing them. I view non isolating as a necessary feature for
earphones generally used on the go. I know people swear by them for long train
and subway commutes but I think it’s pretty stupid wearing them for walking
about, just like wearing headphones while cycling.
~~~
potatolicious
Agreed - I'm into these earbuds specifically because they _don 't_ seal. I
have nice headphones at home for "actual" listening.
When I'm out and about I have to balance sound quality with not getting hit by
a bus. For me anything I wear outside needs to let in outside noise.
------
dingo_bat
This is just google trying to be apple, except with shitty products. The $160
airpods actually bring something new and worthwhile to the market. This $160
"wireless" wired earbud brings nothing except inconvenience.
~~~
soared
Google's translate in real time, while apple's were a copy-cat of countless
other wireless headphones. I'd argue the opposite of your claim. (Apple did
make them smaller than usual though, which is new I suppose).
~~~
djrogers
Googles _don 't_ translate anything though - all they bring to the party is a
button that works with Google's translation software on your phone. Previous
HN threads included responses from googles who worked on the feature that
confirm this.
Also, which earbuds do you think the AirPods are copy-cats of? The only real
wire-free buds out when they were announced were the original Bragi ones which
were priced over $100 higher, had lower battery life, and were larger.
[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918)
~~~
connorl33t
I seem to remember FreeWavz & HearNotes before Apple's "AirPods"
~~~
allwein
You mean the FreeWavz that still aren't shipping or the HearNotes which ripped
off all their Kickstarter backers before getting sued into oblivion?
~~~
cptskippy
Earin actually shipped and so did Bragi.
~~~
macintux
Earin: no microphone. Bragi did ship first but with lots of flaws.
------
donald123
Do the earbuds actually do any of the translation work? I think they are just
bluetooth earbuds with touch control, all the real-time translations are done
in google's translation app. Google released this real-time conversation
translation to the app back in 2015. I don't see anything special to the
hardware itself that could justify the $160 price.
~~~
dharma1
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15404918)
~~~
euyyn
Thanks for the pointer! That explains it.
------
dorfsmay
Read the article because I thought google came out with a "light" version of
the pixel.
Given how fast phones become outdated, and battery life deteriorate, 200$ is
what I want to pay for a phone if I have to replace it every other year...
I lose and break headsets all the time. For me they are consumable. That's way
too expensive for consumable.
~~~
jsight
Just get a Moto G or something. They fit the price and function well as a
"consumable".
~~~
bronson
The G5 is dirt cheap at Costco. It's a great phone except for the camera.
If Moto could put a decent camera in there (go ahead and charge me an extra
$50), it very well could be my ideal phone.
~~~
intrasight
What is the G5 price at Costco?
~~~
maxsilver
The Moto G5 Plus is around $220 at Costco, but has been as low as $180
depending on sales that may be running in any given week.
~~~
puzzle
It should also have the same sensor as the Pixel 2, although not the same
software, OIS, etc.
------
vanattab
What I really want is a windows desktop version of the google translate app so
I can understand all the Chinese PUBG players who are playing on the NA
servers(For some reason I can't really wrap my head around the Chinese say
their own servers are unplayable do to latency). It's supper frustrating join
a 4 play squad game on the NA servers and discover you can't understand any of
your teammates in a game where communication is fundamental.
------
nunez
This is not a good review. It was a quick “I put them in my ears during the
event and wrote about it” article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Random password generator (cli app) - sepisoad
https://github.com/sepisoad/rpg
======
seba_dos1
pwgen?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In a fatal crash, Uber’s autonomous car detected a person, but chose to not stop - consumer451
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/611094/in-a-fatal-crash-ubers-autonomous-car-detected-a-pedestrian-but-chose-to-not/
======
privong
Lots of discussion here already:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17014807)
~~~
consumer451
Sorry, I looked but didn’t see it. Thanks.
------
natch
A while back some academics at MIT designed some surveys for probing what
tradeoffs humans would make if they had a chance to decide between bad
outcomes in a vehicle fatality incident.
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-
driving-c...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-
must-be-programmed-to-kill/)
This shows that the menu of ethical dilemmas posed at that time was not
complete.
In addition to "should I veer left, avoiding the grandmother and grandfather
couple, but killing the pregnant mother" the survey questions should have also
included some questions like "should I brake hard to avoid killing the
homeless person detected with 40% probability, or should I assume the
detection is a false positive, in order to maintain a smooth ride of luxurious
comfort for the occupants?"
------
consumer451
Many years ago I was coding the UI for one of the first touchscreen check-in
systems at an airline. The guy in the next cube was doing weight and balance
software for the actual flights. I realized that I could not handle the
pressure of thinking that a bug in my code could lead to a crash, no matter
how remote the chances actually were.
I'm sure that some of you work on code where lives are at stake, how do you
deal with the possibility of truly fatal bugs?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I2C in a Nutshell - fra
https://interrupt.memfault.com/blog/i2c-in-a-nutshell
======
inamberclad
Probably one of the least painful digital buses.
If anyone is wondering how to access an I2C bus from a Linux computer, say, a
raspberry pi:
int fd = open("/dev/i2c-1", O_RDWR);
ioctl(fd, I2C_SLAVE, [slave address here]);
Then you can read() and write() to the device with the kernel taking care of
all the transmission details. Usually all that's exposed is a few bytes for
the registers. To set a register, write two bytes: first the register address,
and then the value. To read a register, write the register address and then
read a byte. Most of the devices have linear address spaces, so reading out
multiple registers is as simple as reading multiple bytes.
The i2c-tools package has some very handy CLI tools for exploring an I2C bus.
Electrically, the bus is an open-collector design on both ends, so devices can
only pull the lines to low, and they release them to set them high. Don't
forget pull-up resistors!
~~~
inamberclad
A quick note: buy one of the really cheap (~$10) logic analyzers on ebay and
use Sigrok/Pulseview to to watch the bits get sent over the wire! It's an
absolutely invaluable tool for the price.
The hardware inside those logic analyzers is fascinating in its own right,
too!
~~~
hartzell
I've found the
[I2CDriver]([https://www.adafruit.com/product/4267](https://www.adafruit.com/product/4267))
device to be really useful with debugging, poking, and otherwise prodding I2C
devices.
------
Ives
I really don't like I2C. Yes, in principle it's pretty simple, but if you
consider NACKS, slaves holding SCK low, what happens if your master resets
while the slave is trying to send a 0 bit (hint: power cycle!), etc, it's so
easy for the peripheral to get stuck.
SPI is much easier to write correctly, and pretty much only has the extra wire
(usually not a problem) and the phase polarity issues as a negative point.
~~~
fra
I think I2C and SPI have very different use cases. Over I2C, you can interact
with 127 devices with just 2 pins. To do the same with SPI, you'd need 130 (4
+ an additional CS for every device on the bus).
You may think of the extra pins as not a problem, but on every product I've
worked on we've been pin-limited on the MCU.
~~~
clarry
> Over I2C, you can interact with 127 devices with just 2 pins.
In practice, I don't see that many chips offering 7 bits of address
configuration. You buy a chip, it has a hardwired address. Maybe a pin or two
for selecting another address.
~~~
danellis
That's still seven bits of address, though. If you're lucky, the hardwired
part will be different enough between chips that you can still have a
significant number of them on a bus.
~~~
rcxdude
I've yet to get above 4 devices without conflicts. Even with evenly
distributed addresses, you reach about 50% chance of conflict with 13 devices
because of the birthday paradox.
------
Isamu
Very nice! I especially like that it starts with a discussion of why you would
choose to use I2C, as well as why you may not, depending on your application:
>I2C is not appropriate for all applications however: When higher bandwidth is
required, SPI may be the right choice and can be found in many NOR-flash
chips. MIPI can go even faster, and is often used in displays and cameras. If
reliability is a must, CAN is the bus of choice. It is found in cars and other
vehicles. When a single device is on the bus, UART may work just as well.
~~~
_sbrk
Article misses two of the best features of CAN: Built-in, non-corrupting
collision resolution (lowest CAN ID wins) and CRC-protected frames. The latter
feature is usually done by hardware, just as in Ethernet.
~~~
bsder
CAN also autobauds so if you have frequency drift it compensates. That's why
it forces bit transitions via bit stuffing if it gets too many 1's or 0's in a
row.
~~~
PinguTS
I would not call bit-resynchronization as "autobaud". Because CAN has no
autobaud.
That said, with Classical CAN you can implement an autobaud (better: automatic
bit rate detection) like mechanisms when you can make some assumptions on the
used bit rates. With CAN FD and the upcoming CAN XL you cannot do that.
PS: Baud is a term specifically applying to communication systems that
transmit symbols and a symbol can represent more than a bit. That is why I2C,
SPI, LIN, CAN, Ethernet have a bit rate. While RS232 has a baudrate, which is
different from the bit rate depending on the type of symbol used.
------
linker3000
Here is a shameless plug for a build-it-yourself multi-function FT232H-based
(USB interface) board that can do I2C among other things (JTAG/SPI/UART/GPIO)
and has a few extras compared to similar commercial boards from elsewhere
(pullups and some blinkenlights).
The board works with various apps and frameworks, including OpenOCD and
CircuitPython.
Full build details and some other resources are here:
[https://github.com/linker3000/shukran](https://github.com/linker3000/shukran)
------
Zenst
Worth reading this afterwards: [https://hackaday.com/2019/04/18/all-you-need-
to-know-about-i...](https://hackaday.com/2019/04/18/all-you-need-to-know-
about-i2s/)
~~~
fra
Yes! I considered adding a bit about i2s, but since the article is already
clocking at ~2500 words I thought I'd leave it to another time.
I2S is everywhere in audio.
~~~
Zenst
Agreed, you can oversaturate the learning process and what you have is
elegant, laid out well and wonderful, also covers the subject and I2S would be
another subject.
~~~
fra
Thanks for the kind words! I was up late last night writing this up, it's
encouraging to see folks enjoy it.
------
imagiko
I just want to take a moment to thanks folks over at memfault for bringing us
in depth content from the world of embdedded systems. Be sure to check out
their articles on ARM, RTOS etx.
~~~
fra
Thanks! We've been writing all the content we wish had existed when we started
out as embedded software engineers. It's fantastic to hear from folks who
enjoy reading it as much as we do writing it.
------
metaphor
> _In doubt, go to 2K resistors._
I find handwaving recommendations like this rather pervasive and annoying,
especially in a professional setting.
If you're serious about I2C after gratifying yourself with this bootcamp-style
smashbang intro, I highly recommend reading the actual spec[1] (which is more
like a casual app note IMHO); the blog apparently doesn't link to it. It's
free, relatively short, and oh by the way, there's an entire section which
properly addresses pull-up resistor sizing and then some. You'll also be able
to spot inaccuracies like:
> _It has transfer rates up to 400Kbps_
[1] [https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/user-
guide/UM10204.pdf](https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/user-guide/UM10204.pdf)
------
skybrian
I wonder what people think about i2c connectors? I see that Sparkfun has Qwiic
and Adafruit has Stemma, and there are others like Grove.
I'm designing my first circuit board and I'm wondering if I should bother with
JST connectors or just use header pins.
~~~
kaik
This. I would also love to know what connectors I should use for my hobby
projects. I’m also designing my first PCB board and something as simple as
choosing connectors is daunting...
~~~
bsder
Through-hole .100 headers. Always. Unless you have a _REALLY_ good reason
otherwise. (weatherproofing, signal integrity, compatibility with existing
solution, etc.)
First, if you have a small number of pins (up to about 4-6), a 2x2 or 2x3 .100
header isn't that much larger than any alternative. Compare this:
[https://www.tag-connect.com/product/tc2030-fp-footprint](https://www.tag-
connect.com/product/tc2030-fp-footprint) to a 2x2 of .100 headers. It's
actually bigger, and now you need a special cable instead of that bag of .100"
jumper wires you have.
If you have something like 20 genuinely used pins (not 6 active and 14
unused), okay, you may need a different connector. But are you really sure
about this? 20 pins communicating simultaneously has signal integrity needs
and small connectors have _WAY_ more coupling than .100" spacing.
Second, through-hole is always way more stable than no-through hole. Once you
give your smaller pitch connector through holes, is it really smaller than
.100"?
Third, manufacturers have no problems with .100" headers. Smaller pitches may
increase the cost of your board. Try costing out a board that can mount and
route a modern USB-C connector which has both surface mount and through-hole
at small pitch. You're probably going to get a cost bump.
Fourth, you can buy _really_ long .100" headers which allow you to conect to
them _and_ put a scope probe underneath. That's really convenient for
debugging.
So, go through-hole .100" header until you've got a good reason otherwise.
~~~
nlfwhulsdhouv
I agree overall but that's a weird comparison with the tag connect. It's not
meant to be small, it's meant to avoid soldering a header down to the target
board for programming. It's useful for Z-height or cost savings, not for XY
savings.
~~~
bsder
Sadly, it's not uniquely useful for _that_ either.
I can solder a set of pins (or pogo pins) on a .100 spacing and mate into the
.100 header holes. Or I can offset the .100 holes very slightly so they
friction grab a .100 2x2 male header in the holes.
Or I can buy a breakout board that does the same thing for $7.00 for 2 rather
than $50 per cable like Tag-Connect:
[https://www.pcbway.com/project/gifts_detail/PogoProg_Model_D...](https://www.pcbway.com/project/gifts_detail/PogoProg_Model_D_Pogo_Pin_Programmer___2_Pack.html)
.100" headers are hard to beat for general effectiveness.
------
otterpro
I don't know if anyone else noticed, but the web page uses SVG for signal
graph, which I originally thought was an image. The way SVG is used is very
subtle but very nice looking.
~~~
metaphor
The right-click-to-save-as-PNG-or-SVG feature is quite nice as well.
------
bsder
I'm happy to see all the discussion against I2C in the comments here. I
thought I was the only one who loathed debugging I2C stuff.
The only things I take exception in the article to is:
> When a single device is on the bus, UART may work just as well.
The problem with UART is _clock drift_. It's remarkably easy for your two
chips to get out of sync if they don't use crystals and don't have autobaud
(normally rare). That is one thing that I2C, SPI, and CAN do better. They
either don't care as they have a single master clock (I2C and SPI) or they
autobaud detect and then adjust (CAN).
------
whalesalad
I've been having a lot of fun learning how to work with I2C on a Raspberry Pi
with the Nerves framework. tl;dr it's an end-to-end development framework for
deploying Elixir to embedded devices.
I2C was easy enough to understand, but understanding the obscure ways to
configure and speak to a device has been really challenging. Spending a ton of
time reading datasheets and experimenting with assembling binary messages.
The next time you are frustrated and unhappy with the state of modern web
development (REST and/or GQL) take a ublox GPS chip for a spin and try to get
it to give you high frequency location data. You will think, hey gee this
isn't so bad after all compared to encoding and decoding a binary protocol by
hand.
~~~
fpgaminer
> Spending a ton of time reading datasheets and experimenting with assembling
> binary messages.
That's embedded development in a nutshell. The only part you're missing is
wasting a week of your life tracking down a compiler heisenbug, because
embedded devices have niche, poorly maintained compilers.
Though to be honest it's a matter of taste; natural sadists tend to "enjoy"
embedded.
~~~
jlangemeier
Take the sadomasochism one step further; do FPGA programming, learn the joys
of properly enumerated case statements (or the hell of finding what one is
blowing up your flip-flop/latch diagram).
~~~
fpgaminer
You don't know true embedded BDSM until you've debugged incorrect timing
constraints on an FPGA ... with a customer on the other side of the planet ...
only to realize later that they have no idea how to design an HDMI compliant
board and none of it was your own fault.
Or spending three weeks trying to achieve timing closure on a design, only to
finally realize after much inspection of the routed designs by myself and an
IntelFPGA FAE that the router was smoking digital crack the whole time and had
no clue how to route their own divider units?
Or maybe the programming facility reversed bit ordering on a batch of the
FPGA's flash chips and you only learn of that after a very, very long couple
of nights of language barrier back and forth with a flummoxed customer.
The joys are endless.
------
jhallenworld
Here's an I2C to RS-232 serial converter for long term monitoring of an I2C
bus. I needed this at one point, and made it with the cheapest FPGA board
available on eBay:
[https://github.com/jhallen/i2cmon](https://github.com/jhallen/i2cmon)
------
TOGoS
I'd like to know why 1-wire isn't more common. It seems to me like a more
elegant protocol than I2C. Not least because every device has a unique baked-
in address so you don't need to worry about address collisions or dip switches
to alter them.
(Also: needs one fewer wire)
~~~
AWildC182
If I had to guess, using clock-less (serial) protocols like 1 wire and UART
requires some logic on each RX side to figure out what the clock of the
incoming signal is, usually a PLL of some sort, and you'll need lots of
crystal oscillators to ensure that clocks are sufficiently stable and accurate
as to ensure reliable communication.
~~~
andyjpb
1-wire is pretty slow (kbps max in normal mode) and very tolerant of devices
with a wide range of timing skew.
~~~
agapon
I wouldn't call it very tolerant. Some timings are pretty tight, like 1 to 15
microseconds, and every microsecond can count. And I am not talking about the
overdrive mode where the timings are much tighter.
~~~
andyjpb
One of the datasheets I have here says:
\----- During the initialization sequence the bus master trans- mits (TX) the
reset pulse by pulling the 1-Wire bus low for a minimum of 480µs. \-----
There is no maximum time limit for the reset pulse.
\----- The bus master then releases the bus and goes into receive mode (RX).
When the bus is released, the 5kΩ pullup resistor pulls the 1-Wire bus high.
When the DS18B20 detects this rising edge, it waits 15µs to 60µs and then
transmits a presence pulse by pull- ing the 1-Wire bus low for 60µs to 240µs.
\-----
A tolerance of 15uS to 60uS on the device side and 60uS to 240uS on the driver
side seems pretty wide to me.
Now, it's hard to actually get a good figure for these specifications because
different datasheets give different values, which further suggests the
tolerances are large.
Another datasheet that I have here says that the presence pulse should be
sampled after 72uS. This leaves at least 12uS slack for rise times, long
wires, etc.
To give an idea of whether 10uS is very long or not, remember that the cycle
time on, for example, an 8MHz AVR as you might find in an Arduino, is 125nS.
That gives you 80 instructions every 10uS (at the AVR8's advertised
1MIPS/MHz). This is plenty of time to implement the 1-Wire driver in software.
~~~
agapon
It seems that you didn't reach the part of the spec that describes how to read
and transmit data bits.
Also, even for simplest slaves there is still a need to keep track of time
which requires additional hardware (an oscillator or some such).
------
neillyons
This article has appeared at the perfect time for me. I was just trying to use
i2c with a BMP180 temperature/pressure/altitude sensor and a micro python
board and was rather confused. Love Hacker News
~~~
chasd00
hah i'm doing the same thing, building an altimeter for my son's model rocket.
There are altimeters out there for sale but i wanted to get into embedded
programming as a hobby.
~~~
neillyons
ha me too. I wanted to learn micro python and record the altitude of my
quadcopter.
------
vic20forever
Comparison of I2C and SPI:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9303405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9303405)
------
AceJohnny2
> _We’re partial to Saleae devices, which come with an easy to set up I2C
> decoder._
I can vouch for these. We have a couple for our team to debug HW issues, and I
was amused, once in a Chinese factory, to be handed one there when I asked for
a logic analyzer (I know Saleae had issues with clones in the past, and had to
implement countermeasures some years ago...)
------
shivji
[https://12minuteaffiliatereviews.blogspot.com](https://12minuteaffiliatereviews.blogspot.com)
------
thesh4d0w
FYI you're missing a word in "for pulse on the SCL line", I think is supposed
to read "for every pulse"
------
jgalt212
am I correct on the I2C use cases?
\- reduce number of wires / overall length of cable runs \- more
sensors/actuators than GPIO pins
------
nehagup
Was this a nutshell??
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The Node Handbook - flaviocopes
https://nodehandbook.com
======
imnicnic
Nice work good info
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Net neutrality fight is about to flare again - JumpCrisscross
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/15/net-neutrality-fight-is-about-to-flare-again-244912?lo=ap_c1
======
DataWorker
“is about to” meaning there might be something to read about in a few weeks.
This kind of preview-of-news-that-may-come-soon seems to be getting more and
more common. Tick tock as they say.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Principle of Incomplete Knowledge - MichaelAO
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/%5EINCOMKNO.html
======
brudgers
Recent, related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11544149](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11544149)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Code, Eval, Play, Loop – Common Lisp OpenGL Environment - joubert
https://github.com/cbaggers/cepl
======
raphaelss
Be sure to check out the videos of it in use [1] and the Lisp to GLSL
translator [2].
[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2VAYZE_4wRKKr5pJzfYD1...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2VAYZE_4wRKKr5pJzfYD1w4tKCXARs5y)
[2] [https://github.com/cbaggers/varjo](https://github.com/cbaggers/varjo)
~~~
baggers
Hehe looks like I need to get some visually interesting demos up, I've been
pretty lazy about that. I started looking to input and event propagation and
got lost in a sea of frp and data-flow stuff for a while.
------
zach
For Clojure enthusiasts, I highly recomment Zach Oakes' environment in the
same vein, Nightmod (his Nightcode IDE specialized with his play-clj library).
It's an experimental platform that is a tidy, simple way to experience game
programming in a functional style.
[https://nightmod.net/](https://nightmod.net/)
Also, here is his presentation on this subject at the last Conj (great talk):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GzzFeS5cMc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GzzFeS5cMc)
~~~
krat0sprakhar
My first question on clicking the link was - Does there something like this
exist for Clojure?
Glad to the have my question answered. Thanks for the links!
~~~
lynndylanhurley
Lol me too! I'm gonna check out Nightmod asap. Anybody here tried it yet?
------
orbifold
Not to take anything away from that, because it's awesome, but that can also
be accomplished in C. In fact pretty much any good game engine supports both
dynamic shader recompilation, hot swapping the renderer and dynamically
reloading the game code. A classic example where this technique is implemented
is Quake 2. Basically the renderer and game are linked into the client as
dynamic libraries and reloaded on demand or when a change is detected.
~~~
yarrel
Rebuilding those dynamic libraries requires external build system and compiler
invocation. In Lisp you just use the REPL.
~~~
orbifold
Of course, but in practice that doesn't really matter. Recompilation time for
small changes is negligible and if you have a sane build system setup is
pretty much invoked the same way you would load new code into a repl.
In the case of shader compilation, compiling and linking actually is exposed
as library functions, so you have complete control over how to do that.
Most of the dynamic features a repl provides, like introspection and so on is
also available with a good debugger, depending on the scope of the project you
can also just use Lua as a scripting language to get the majority of the
benefits that Lisp has.
Moreover nested parentheses sort of pale, if you can visualize most of your
state in much more powerful ways on the screen.
Since you have complete control over memory, you can implement time travelling
debugging pretty easily, you just need a good ordinary debugger, a way to
record all input to the game (easily done if you have clean separation between
game and platform code) and a way to snapshot the game state at some point in
time (also easy if you allocate all memory ahead of time and only let the game
code use your memory allocators).
~~~
malisper
Could you redefine a class/structure and update every instance of it at
runtime?
For example, let's say you are currently representing complex numbers in
rectangular form. Is it possible to convert every existing instance to polar
form, at runtime, without breaking any code?
~~~
yoklov
That's a pretty ridiculous use case. I'd think if you wanted to make a change
this drastic, having to reload the game wouldn't be a huge deal. I mean, you'd
want to make sure everything up to the point you were at still works anyway.
(Besides, this is an awful way to represent 2D points in practice).
FWIW, It's certainly possible to write code that reorders struct fields on
changes, but it requires either boilerplate, macro hell, or parsing part of
your C code for structure declarations (I've heard this sounds worse than it
is). Arbitrary mappings are more difficult and IMO not worth the trouble.
Not to say this technique doesn't have downsides. It's downsides are so huge
that IMO it's benefits aren't worth it, _unless_ you were already going to
program in that style to begin with.
\- No pointers to static memory (globals, vtables, and pointers to string
literals or constant arrays are out) \- No pointers to functions (most other
ways of emulating dynamic dispatch are out). \- You need to use custom
allocators that work out of your game state block. And since you have no
global or thread local state... you need to hope that any library you want to
use allows you to provide a context for any memory allocation it wants to do.
Most don't. \- etc, etc, etc... you get the picture. Essentially, you need to
write your game like its 1995.
And sure, maybe you can get this in lisp without any limitations (I don't
know, but I believe it if you say you can), but the reality we live in is that
it's unrealistic to write production-quality game engines in lisp. I've heard
it's used for scripting and AI in some places (probably just Naughty Dog,
tbh), but most of the code that goes into a game isn't in script, unless it's
a slow game.
~~~
malisper
> That's a pretty ridiculous use case.
It was just an example. I never said you would actually want to do it.
> maybe you can get this in lisp without any limitations
See my response to orbifold:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8943113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8943113)
> I've heard it's used for scripting and AI
There are many different versions of lisp, some of them are used for
scripting, but most implementations of Common Lisp could be used for almost
anything.
> most of the code that goes into a game isn't in script, unless it's a slow
> game.
Write version 0 in a high level language. Figure out the design and
representation. Then rewrite the slow parts in a more efficient language.
~~~
yoklov
> See my response...
That's very interesting, and would definitely solve a lot of the problems with
hot-reloading code.
>> There are many different versions of lisp, some of them are used for
scripting, but most implementations of Common Lisp could be used for almost
anything.
I was talking specifically talking about uses inside of production quality,
high performance (e.g. AAA-quality) game engines. The only usage of lisp that
I know of is inside Naughty Dog (Last of Us, Uncharted, Jak and Daxter, etc),
who have used it internally for a long time. I hear they're lisp nuts, but
even they don't try to write the game engine in it.
> Write version 0 in a high level language. Figure out the design and
> representation. Then rewrite the slow parts in a more efficient language.
For something small, retro, or 2D then maybe this could work. For anything
else, this would be setting yourself up for failure.
You'll end up rewriting all or most in C or C++. This will cause you to miss
deadlines and generally people will shit on your game on the internet.
Maybe it will be fast enough at this point, but odds are it won't. It will
probably have the same problem as most game engines written in a high-level
style, even if they're in C or C++. You'll fire up a profiler but there won't
be any optimization targets. The whole program will be more or less equally
slow. This is because you didn't design with memory access patterns in mind.
90% of the code will be spent waiting for memory to load during a cache miss.
Eventually, the game will be released and will struggle to hit 30fps. People
will continue to shit on the game online, and that's if anybody bothers to
play it.
Since you're starting now, it will probably be at least 4-5 year in the
future, so even if 60fps expected by everybody yet, the oculus rift will be
out, and anybody who plays your game on that will have a bad time. On the
oculus, the framerate needs to be at least 90fps, or you risk inducing nausea.
That means you have 9ms to update, and do _two_ renders of the game (one for
each eye), and if you can't make this target, your game isn't just slow, it's
actively harmful to the users.
The only way to avoid this is to think about memory usage, access, and the
cache from the very beginning. At that point, maybe you could still write it
in lisp, but any benefit it would have given you is gone.
I've seen most of this first hand (on engines that were written in C++, but
ignored the cache), and it really sucks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google buying Songza - raldi
http://songza.com/google
======
marclave
I do not exactly know I feel about this..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A brief history of the UUID (2017) - tosh
https://segment.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-uuid/
======
ponytech
Comments from the first post in 2017:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14508413)
------
thanatos_dem
Reading through this, I kept thinking that ULIDs[1] give the same benefits
described, with wider adoption/support.
Luckily it looks like the author has already written up his thoughts on the
differences[2].
[1] [https://github.com/ulid/spec](https://github.com/ulid/spec) [2]
[https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid/issues/8](https://github.com/segmentio/ksuid/issues/8)
~~~
masklinn
UILD is pretty much lying though:
> UUID v1/v2 is impractical in many environments, as it requires access to a
> unique, stable MAC address
RFC 4122 Section 4.1.6 "Node"
> For systems with no IEEE address, a randomly or pseudo-randomly generated
> value may be used; see Section 4.5. The multicast bit must be set in such
> addresses, in order that they will never conflict with addresses obtained
> from network cards.
There is no requirement of "a unique, stable MAC address" in UUIDv1, and most
UUID API should allow overriding the node (and probably clock_seq) fields.
> Canonically encoded as a 26 character string, as opposed to the 36 character
> UUID
> Uses Crockford's base32 for better efficiency and readability (5 bits per
> character)
> Case insensitive
> No special characters (URL safe)
You could just encode your UUID in base32…
> correctly detects and handles the same millisecond
I mean, that's worse than UUIDv1 by 3 orders of magnitude.
The lexical ordering is not a lie at least, so there's that.
------
dabber
Here's the Google cache until the server regains it's bearings:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xWcDCg...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:xWcDCgDGYKwJ:https://segment.com/blog/a-brief-
history-of-the-uuid/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)
------
jph
We changed from UUID-4 to ZID
([https://github.com/zidplan/zid](https://github.com/zidplan/zid)) because
it's faster and easier for many of our typical projects, including ones with
distributed computing and concurrent computing.
ZID is a secure random number represented as lowercase hex. No embedded
timestamp, no MAC address, no reserved character, etc. ZID-64 uses 64 bits,
ZID-128 uses 128 bits, same as a UUID, etc.
KSUID describes a hybrid ID approach i.e. the ID is a hybrid of a timestamp as
a string and random bits as a string. Our projects use a similar approach,
creating a timestamp and ZID (which is more flexible than a KSUID) or if we
want embedded time sortability then we use a ULID.
~~~
masklinn
> ZID is a secure random number represented as lowercase hex. […] ZID-128 uses
> 128 bits, same as a UUID, etc.
So… A UUIDv4?
~~~
jph
ZID comparison with UUIDv4:
1\. ZID specifies secure random number generation. UUIDv4 does not. Thus ZID
is useful in higher-security areas such as creating a unique ID that functions
as a password, or bearer token, or proof of knowledge, etc.
2\. ZID specifies that it can be as many bits as you want in multiples of 8,
and a notation suffix that says the bit count e.g. "ZID-128" means ZID with
128 bits. UUID can only be 128 bits. Thus ZID is more flexible e.g. ZID-64 is
a good fit for 64-bit systems, ZID-256 is good for fulfilling requirements for
256 bits of randomness, etc. This notation suffix is akin to the SHA
algorithm, which has SHA-128, SHA-256, SHA-512, etc.
3\. ZID specifies lowercase for hexadecimal string representation. UUID does
not specify lowercase or uppercase. Thus ZID is more-specific; ZID parsing is
one step easier/faster/clearer; ZID string comparison uses exact character
matching rather than case-insensitive matching. Thus ZID skips entire areas of
UUID bugs that we see in practice, such as one UUID system that emits
lowercase, one UUID system that emits uppercase, and an integration system
that needs to do string comparisons.
4\. ZID is always random. UUID has multiple algorithms, as you point out. In
practice we have seen the UUID multiple algorithms cause confusion and bugs
e.g. when a spec says "UUID" and the implementation uses a UUIDv4 yet the
spec's intent was a UUIDv1, or vice versa. Thus ZID makes it easier to write a
better spec.
5\. ZID subsections all satisfy proof of randomness e.g. computational
statistical analysis. UUIDv4 does not, because UUID4 uses 6 fixed bits to
indicate the algorithm. Thus ZID is easier and faster to prove as random, both
as a whole and also as any subsection such as by subsampling.
------
classichasclass
It's remarkable how much influence Domain/OS and Apollo had on later computing
and how few people actually remember them. I have an HP 425t here with a
Domain keyboard port, but after someone upgraded it to a PA-RISC 715, the
keyboard port is no longer connected to anything internally. Somehow this
seems metaphorical.
I also remember their computer graphics division. "Fair Play" made the rounds
at a lot of CGI festivals around that time.
------
amaccuish
I guess the NCA/NCS rpc stuff explains why UUIDs are so pervasive on Windows,
since DCE/RPC was based on NCA, and MSRPC is based on DCE/RPC.
------
ch33zer
I don't understand the desire to store timestamp information into a UUID. Why
not just add an extra timestamp field to your data? That seems like such a
simpler solution then embedding it into your UUID. I would go further and
argue that embedding anything but randomness into your UUID is a bad idea that
you will pay for in the future.
~~~
grzm
> _" I don't understand the desire to store timestamp information into a
> UUID"_
One reason is to be able provide sortability with respect to what is often a
surrogate key attribute, as listed in the introduction:
> _" It borrows core ideas from the ubiquitous UUID standard, adding time-
> based ordering and more friendly representation formats."_
You can find additional motivations in the "Time is on our side" section:
[https://segment.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-
uuid/#time-i...](https://segment.com/blog/a-brief-history-of-the-uuid/#time-
is-on-our-side)
> _" In Cassandra, TimeUUIDs are sortable by timestamp, quite useful when
> needing to roughly order by time."_
While you may not agree with the the reasons, I think they are understandable.
------
the_arun
Timestamp in the UUID will make sense if these are generated by one computing
node. Even if the nodes are off by a nano second in a cluster, we lose the
accuracy.
~~~
grzm
Timestamps in UUID values shouldn't be (and generally aren't) used for
coordination between nodes (where such precision an accuracy would be
important): they're used for rough sorting and partitioning of values.
Indeed, node-generated timestamps should never be used for coordination
regardless of whether they're encoded in UUIDs or not.
------
OliverJones
Credit where credit is due: Apollo Computer founder Paul Leach dreamed up and
implemented the UID concept, and later took it to Microsoft.
------
gumby
what a strange article. No, networked computing was not invented by Apollo and
indeed, I like how the author describes the first UUID as having been based on
prior UUIDs. I feel dumber after reading this.
~~~
contrast
Did you read it, though?
It absolutely does not say that Apollo invented network computing, it just
says it was one of the companies at that time working in that field.
Of course there were unique identifiers before the first UUID standard was
defined, and the author gives examples.
Acknowledging precursors, following the threads of how a particular
implementation or standard developed, is the only intelligent way to read up
on its history. The dumb thing would be to read into this things the author
simply never said or implied.
~~~
cfmcdonald
I think the clearly wrong statement here is "Workstations were really the
first networked computers."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twelve-Year-Old Awarded $3,000 for Finding Critical Firefox Flaw - Mikecsi
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Twelve-Year-Old-Awarded-3-000-for-Finding-Critical-Firefox-Flaw-162522.shtml
======
RiderOfGiraffes
See also:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1822116> <\- This one has the comments.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1828671>
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1824895>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits