Haskell in Green Land: Analyzing the Energy Behavior of a Functional Language - <AUTHOR> https://sites.google.com/a/cin.ufpe.br/castor/saner_2016__Haskell_final.pdf?attredirects=0&d=1 <comment><AUTHOR> In this paper, we attempt to shed light on the energy behavior of programs written in a lazy purely functional language, Haskell. We have conducted two empirical studies to analyze the energy efficiency of Haskell programs from two different perspectives: strictness and concurrency. Our experimental space exploration comprises more than 2000 configurations and 20000 executions. We found out that small changes can make a big difference in terms of energy consumption. For example, in one of our benchmarks, under a specific configuration, choosing one data sharing primitive (MVar) over another (TMVar) can yield 60% energy savings. In another benchmark, the latter primitive can yield up to 30% energy savings over the former. Thus, tools that support developers in quickly refactoring a program to switch between different primitives can be of great help if energy is a concern. In addition, the relationship between energy consumption and performance is not always clear. In sequential benchmarks, high performance is an accurate proxy for low energy consumption. However, for one of our concurrent benchmarks, the variants with the best performance also exhibited the worst energy consumption. To support developers in better understanding this complex relationship, we have extended two existing performance analysis tools to also collect and present data about energy consumption</comment>


Security Experts Hack Surgical Robot - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/view/537001/security-experts-hack-teleoperated-surgical-robot/

<comment><AUTHOR> "The control console connects to the robot over a standard network, which the attacking computer is also linked to. This set up allows the attacking computer to intercept and manipulate the signals sent in both directions between the control console and the robot.

The team tries out three type of attacks. The first changes the commands sent by the operator to the robot by deleting, delaying or re-ordering them. This causes the robot's movement to become jerky and difficult to control.

The second type of attack modifies the intention of signals from the operator to the robot by changing, say, the distance an arm should move or the degree it should rotate and so on. "Most of these attacks had a noticeable impact on the Raven immediately upon launch," say Bonaci and co.

The final category of attack is a hijacking that completely takes over the robot. This turns out to be relatively easy since the Interoperable Telesurgery Protocol is publicly available. "We effectively took control over the teleoperated procedure," they say."</comment>


Jobs Inside the API - <AUTHOR> https://putanumonit.com/2018/08/09/jobs-inside-the-api/ <comment><USER4> The lady with the iPad is in a rather tragic position as an output device for the system.

The "BAMF" booking agent however has a very important role in the API which isn't spelled out here: _authentication_. He's basically the sudo interface, with the power to rewrite flights at will. And for whatever reason our narrator has the right kind of speaking-to-manager powers to use him as the sudo interface.

Every bulk customer service process has its "exceptions", and this is clearly one of them. The role of humans is to understand the exception and turn it into pieces which the API will accept, either through the normal interface or the sudo interface.

See also [http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/category/callcentre/](http://www.harrowell.org.uk/blog/category/callcentre/) \- it's a short series, start at the bottom.

" Asymmetric legibility characterises call centres, and it's dreadful. Within, management tries to maintain a panopticon glare at the staff. Without, the user faces an unmapped territory, in which the paths are deliberately obscure, and the details the centre holds on you are kept secret. Call centres know a lot about you, but won't say; their managers endlessly spy on the galley slaves; you're not allowed to know how the system works.

...

Inappropriate automation and human/machine confusion bedevil call centres. If you could solve your problem by filling in a web form, you probably would have done. The fact you're in the queue is evidence that your request is complicated, that something has gone wrong, or generally that human intervention is required."

<comment><USER5> Hah, this is wise... and this whole conversation is evidence that tech does need the humanities, as many of these problems could be helped if more engineers spent more time reading Kafka...

<comment><USER6> Call centres are not a creation of engineers, but of suits - exploiting people on both ends of the phone to profit for themselves. Getting engineers to read works of Kafka won't do anything to solve this problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The "above/below API" metaphore is a good update for the description of a process affecting most jobs ever since the industrial revolution happened. The API of yesterday was the production line, where you are the one designing/paying for/maintaining the line, or you do what the line needs you to do. We notice a difference simply because the new production line is computerized, so this dynamic now applies to "intellectual" jobs as well - <USER2> it's just another form of mechanization.

A lot of books from the '60s and '70s (and before) are worth re-reading, they've exhamined this scenario extensively, back then.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've been pondering the theory that economic activity is a sort of glue that keeps humans occupied, and that humans being occupied is generally better than humans being unoccupied.

For example, there are theories that posit that economic activity and global trade prevent war due to the dependencies that those processes create - <USER3> can't destroy those you are dependent on without destroying yourself. However, it's equally easy to slip into chaos when those processes are manipulated or corrupted - see present day.

Perhaps what we are really seeing here is that the underlying forces that control life have not changed at all. Survival, competition, environmental change, adaptability, intelligence and evolution - if you believe in those concepts - are still the root forces driving everything.

What we have now are many layers of abstractions on top of the underlying forces. Literally in the term API is "interface" implying the abstraction on what could be either a human or machine process. Even machines compete for resources, since they have plenty of requirements to continue functioning - although they have different capabilities that go far beyond human abilities, and other areas where they lack the abilities humans have.

Economic activity is yet another type of abstraction designed to, hopefully, ensure the survival of a majority - although that too is an arguable point I'm sure.

I really enjoyed reading the article - this is mixing social science/humanities with IT/IS - a favorite topic.

I personally believe that man and machine are both of nature (a strong opinion, but quite debatable I'm sure). As such, we should be able to describe our relationship in terms of natural relationships - for example, parasitic, symbiotic, etc. This "above and below" the API and involvement of humans in those activities seems to imply something similar.

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's simply a binary occupied vs. unoccupied. If you are overworked (too occupied), then there are one set of potential problems (e.g. negative impacts on physical and mental health). If you are unemployed (too unoccupied), then your economic opportunities might be limited. Scaling either situation across many, many human beings results in negative social consequences of one form or another.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I totally agree with this article, except:

 _" That's what tax preparers are – they use the exact same software that anyone can use at home, but they allow you to talk to a human instead of learning the software"_

IMHO this is one of those edge cases where software might simplify the process 99 times out of 100, but a skilled/experienced human may help avoid uncommon but costly mistakes. There is enough nuance and vagueness in taxes that it pays to have a human look over your numbers -- even if they use software to do it.

<comment><USER7> Taxes cannot be completely automated because they are laws. Laws are expressed in language, and language is not exact - _even our own understanding of such language will change through the years_ , as any constitutional scholar can attest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The lady with the iPad situation sort of happened to me at McDonalds yesterday. I ordered from their touch screen. Their system told me to come up to collect my food but when I got there the person working asked me if I was different order number, i said no and she told me to stand away, I told her the system has told me to come up and I had not even finished speaking before her colleague handed me my order.

</comment><comment><USER12> From the comments:

"Mcdonalds around the world with those touchscreen ordering kiosks as well as live staff – the live staff are just essentially operating the touchscreen for you behind the counter."

They are not. I always use live staff because I cannot order no ice in the drink from the touchscreen.

<comment><USER13> Every McD's I've seen in the last decade has forced the customer to pour her own drink? The one closest to me right now just leaves stacks of cups next to the touchscreens, presumably relying on a combination of the honor system and hidden cameras to catch soda thieves.

It's funny to think back to when I was a kid and Burger King was the first to innovate pouring one's own drink. They discovered they could save more by firing the drink-pourer than they spent by allowing customers to refill their cup. As kids, we just enjoyed the opportunity to mix up some suicides...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Paul, the Left Hand's Milk Stout is one of my favorite beers. You were meant to try that beer that day.

</comment><comment><USER15> That link name is probably the reason why corporate proxy blocked it.

</comment><comment><USER16> This article is really funny.

I wrote the API for [https://RinkAtlas.com](https://RinkAtlas.com), as well as everything else that is RinkAtlas. So I thought, based solely on the title, that the article might apply to me.

It doesn't really apply to me, since I live in Bucks County, Pennsylvania and drive my car nearly everywhere I need to go.

But the references to airlines and airports are ancillary to the points he's making about jobs in this world economy in 2018.

<comment><USER17> Almost every single comment you've posted so far mentions your website. While it's great that you're proud of your creation, it is not a valid reason to pitch it especially when it's completely irrelevant to the discussion.

<comment><USER16> OK, thanks. If you feel that way, probably others do as well. I'd delete that comment if I could.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Humaaans, generate human illustrations in one line - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jktzes/humaaans <comment><USER2> I really like the tagging system on this. Very KISS and allows for other parameters in the future with zero learning curve: speech balloons, backgrounds, props (park bench, sofa for "sitting" option..).

Even additional actions (aside from sitting, jogging..) can be easily added. Not sure how far you want to take this (story telling?) but... it's currently a remarkably user-friendly base/template!

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, somebody just read my mind! Thanks for the kind words BTW! I aim to make this asset library configurable and easy to contribute. The final goal is to enable designers to contribute their SVG files without any code. Thanks to designers like Pablo Stanley, this kind of templates can be developed. I hope this can become a new way for designers to collaborate with each other. Anyway, I'll see you in the 2.0 release!</comment></comment>


An Interactive Introduction to Fourier Transforms - <AUTHOR> http://www.jezzamon.com/fourier/index.html <comment><USER2> This is great as it doesn't just explain the basics, it also shows how they are used in MP3 and JPEG files.

I always had a very vague "throws away data that's not perceived" idea of how MP3 works. With the background from this I was able to really understand the wikipedia page and found this great Ars[0] article from 2007 to cement my understanding.

[0] [https://arstechnica.com/features/2007/10/the-audiofile- under...](https://arstechnica.com/features/2007/10/the-audiofile- understanding-mp3-compression/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is incredible.

If I wanted to collect things like this to teach my kids, where do I look? How do we gather amazing resources like this in one spot?

I particularly love that it focuses on one topic and nails it.

<comment><USER4> Something that's become quite popular in recent times are "awesome lists"[0, 1]. This isn't the common use-case for them, but it might be worth looking into.

[0]: [https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome](https://github.com/sindresorhus/awesome)

[1]: [https://awesomelists.top/](https://awesomelists.top/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow. This is by far, hands down, the best way I have ever seen this explained. Just excellently done.

<comment><USER6> Exactly my thoughts also. Thank you Jez!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very impressive end enlightening indeed.

SmarterEveryDay published a video on this topic few weeks back: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds0cmAV- Yek](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds0cmAV-Yek)

</comment><comment><USER8> At the time of writing the Gibbs phenomenon -- the overshoot occurring at discontinuities of a square wave, which does not go away no matter how many harmonics are included (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon)) -- is not correctly represented in these visualisations, implying that important aspects of the underlying maths are obscured. In my opinion this limits the didactic value of an otherwise impressive presentation.

<comment><USER9> Yes, apologies I made some approximates in the article!

Interestingly if you're talking about discrete time fourier transforms (which is what we usually deal with in computers with jpegs, mp3s, etc), then you can perfectly represent a signal with say, 1024 samples using exactly 1024 sine waves without worrying about that effect. It's only in the continuous time variant that you have to worry about things like the Gibbs phenomenon (which you do run into once you start translating to real world output)

<comment><USER8> Right! I did assume a continuous space because that's what it looked like to me. Hence my pedantic comment which was sort of comically at odds with the light-hearted spirit of your article :) Very nice work. Thanks for sharing, and for the clarifying remarks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Slightly unrelated, here's a beautiful mathematical approach to the discrete fourier transform with evaluating a polynomial at the nth root of unity in the complex numbers:

[https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- compu...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-046j-design-and-analysis-of-algorithms-spring-2015/lecture- videos/lecture-3-divide-conquer-fft/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Very cool.

One idea that would be cool to see is a repeat of the video where the number of 'harmonics' is clipped.

Eg, show the video with only the first 5 circle components. Then the first 10, the first 15, and so on.

Will see the drawing approach the final image, and get the idea the low-freq harmonics do the bulk of the work but high-freq ones give the small details to make the hand a hand.

<comment><USER12> This is included in the article. Slide the slider below the animations to control how many circles will be used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is really cool. I especially like the rotating circles visualization. Another video that helped me finally "get" Fouriers is the 3Blue1Brown video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY)

</comment><comment><USER14> Really fantastic work. Best interactive write-up I've seen of a technical topic in a long time.

</comment><comment><USER15> In the animation at the top, should use a different color for the circles vs. the hand/pen.

</comment><comment><USER16> That was the most impressive opening demonstration. My eyes popped out of my skull.

</comment><comment><USER17> Beautiful! How long did it take to make this blog post?

<comment><USER9> Oh man, it took me a while. I started in August and have been chipping away at it on the side, until now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Amazing work! Thank you :)

</comment><comment><USER19> Epic ...thanks</comment>


Airliner crashes in French Alps - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32030270 <comment><USER2> First, this is a tragic loss of human life, and shocking that a plane crashed in Europe of all places. Will be interesting to discover the cause.

Secondly, I just landed in Lithuania to visit my partner's family. I just spent six hours convincing my partner that it's safe to fly, especially on an Airbus A320. We land to hear that the same kind of plane we flew on had crashed in the Alps.

My partner will never trust me again.</comment>


Alibaba-backed search startup Quixey is shutting down - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2017/03/09/quixey-alibaba-funding-mountain-view-shutting-down.html <comment><USER3> Quixey was a big sponsor to the college hackathon scene. They spent money on sponsorships all over the place. The engineers were for the most part good people, but the CEO Tomer was entitled and verbally abusive to people who got on his bad side. I think Tomer had a Steve Jobs complex. He would give talks about how great his startup skills were, and give keynote talks about how Quixey was changing the world. But it was apparent that Quixey had little traction and was going nowhere.

As time went on, Quixey kept sponsoring hackathons but Tomer would blow up at the students organizing them for little to no reason. He's a 30-year-old man, and he would be screaming at the top of his lungs at high school and college kids because he thought they had slighted the sponsorship. He threatened to not pay sponsorships after the fact, said he would tell his founder friends to "blacklist" hackathons, and even said he wanted to sue students for breach of contract.

That's most of my experience with Quixey the company. I never did use their product, but I'm not really sad to see them shut down.

<comment><USER4> Ha! I remember that. It was all over secret.ly .

They freaked out because they weren't able to get the biggest room at one of the events.

Good riddance, I say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quixey was the lead sponsor at a large college hackathon (I think LA Hacks) I was at a couple years ago. They were trying to build a search engine based on deep-linking into other mobile apps. A very good idea ("why doesn't google also search your phone's apps?"), but very hard to beat Google at it. The value needs to be very strong to get people to use it as a default search engine.

<comment> angry-hacker Google does index the content of apps that is not available on the web if you want and let them do it. But you see them in serps only the if you have the apps in question installed.

<comment><USER6> Quixey's tech could do it without the "if you want and let them do it" part .. by which I don't mean permissions, but that no special arrangements need to be made by the apps.

It is analogous to how google crawls websites with Javascript .. which are essentially applications that need to be "run" before you can get to their content.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I once won $100 from their competition, but never figured out how they are going to be profitable. Independent mobile app search makes little sense when there are two App Stores (Android and App Store) with builtin search.

<comment><USER8> My understanding of "app search" is that they weren't search for the apps themselves – they were making the _contents_ of the apps visible to other apps installed on a device. Quixey helped pioneer deep linking, iirc.

<comment><USER9> Isn't deep linking by definition a feature that had to be implemented by iOS and Android?

<comment><USER8> Definitely – but I would consider that to be separate from simply finding apps in the app store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> They've been on a downward slide for a while. I think many are thinking, "Were they still alive?" From what I've heard, they have good engineers so their tech folks should land well.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not a surprise. Many other sites tried (and failed) to do app discovery/recommendation without having a defensible competitive advantage (ie selling analytics and ads may not be enough). Other apps in the overlapping third-party app store / update notifier spaces have met a similar fate (ie Bodega) while some survive (ie Ninite, Secunia PSI).

alternativeto is currently a leader (ad-supported) but doesn't have a "moat" around it other than popularity.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would remember their Quixey Challenges. They had some nice problems as part of them and if you were able to spot the bug correctly, you got $100 + a hoodie.

</comment><comment><USER13> The conspiracy theory is that they are an attempt by the Chinese goverment to search user apps.

</comment><comment><USER14> Several previous posts here in the last two weeks. No comments.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13880373](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13880373) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13873035](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13873035) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13830314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13830314) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827524](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827524) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827185](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13827185)

<comment><USER15> > No comments

Is this the startup equivalent of having a funeral where no one shows up?

<comment><USER16> Oh, I deserve punishment for this, but Startups are so 2017...

Really, seriously, though the startup drum has been beat very hard indeed - not merely by the magnifier anything which reaches mainstream press from anywhere thought to be technology. But I forget when I last read about a startup that either was developing technology, or was a startup in the sense I originally understood. I think I lost the appreciation I did have, when to pivot became a seemingly overnight, instantaneous, blanket verb to admit no wrong and plow on burning cash regardless of a total failure to relate real world to prospectus.

What I have enjoyed seeing from afar, is much more valuable, however, than the spectacular sums sunk in startup mirage wells: the idea that it is a good thing to swing for the fence, in particular when young and resilient to life's knocks (albeit tempered massively by the new new new medieval economy of absent social and financial safety) and the widespread promulgation of baseline knowledge how to handle just starting a company, and demystifying the corporate world, I believe will pay dividends in eventually spurring - <USER2> me a sincere hope - a renaissance of small business. Because there sure is not much, sometimes I look, thriving in the penumbra of ZIRP funded corporate giganticism. I was just reading Berkshire Hathaway's 1990 report, yesterday. BRK was still counting in millions and tens of millions, and hundred of millions in equity... This epochal inflation has happened while so many grew up, it may be that economic historians, at least of the contrarian kind, ponder whether the startup boom was not a fear induced, hysterical, reaction to the absolute necessity to hit ball after ball out the park, in the early 21st century, to dare dream of a home and family.

edit, somehow auto correct dumped "romanticism" in the least fitting place...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Starting a search engine in 2017 is kinda like starting a stagecoach company in 1917.

<comment><USER18> How so?</comment></comment>


Sedentary Behavior May Thin Memory-Related Brain Area - <AUTHOR> http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195549 <comment><USER2> Sedentary behavior inhibits quality sleep, which has been shown to impact memory.

I wonder if researchers tracked the quantity and quality of sleep (REM vs NREM) among study participants. From the graphs it doesn't look like they did.

<comment><USER3> From the abstract, it looks like they just gave the participants a survey, and did an MRI. Actual time spent with the participants probably wasn't more than a few hours for just that (probably for cost reasons too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Perhaps a sedentary person makes fewer notable memories (their surroundings don't change much), and the respective area of the brain atrophies?

</comment><comment><USER5> " No significant correlations were observed between physical activity levels and MTL thickness. Though preliminary, our results suggest that more sedentary non-demented individuals have less MTL thickness. "

So, this wasn't conclusive? Just in case i may walk my dog twice as much but not much can be done with a software engineering job and sedentary hobbies.

</comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat crazy idea but anyone know if sedentary behaviour or poor memory are associated with graying hair at the temples?

<comment><USER7> Interesting that you bring this up. I don't know the answer, but I'll be 29 this year and have just recently started getting some gray hairs. The most prominent are two gray patches right over my temples.

<comment><USER6> Yes, it may be just a coincidence that this is so, with the temples and the temporal lobes being physically close to one another. But intuition makes me wonder.

<comment><USER8> Biologically, this doesn't make sense. One of the more accepted causes of graying-1 is a build of of H202 in the hair follicle resulting in the hair not holding as much melanin. It seems unlikely that this would come from the brain, through the skull since that's not how the circulatory system gets in/out of the brain (it mostly goes through the neck/spine).

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/health/10well.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/health/10well.html)

<comment><USER6> Indeed, but if control and resources (e.g. immune resources) are allocated via some kind of map in the brain then mightn't that make proximity relevant? (notwithstanding the bone barrier!) I admit it's a stretch...

<comment><USER8> Again, not really how things work. You're assuming that the dermal layers closest to a section of the brain are somehow working with that section of the brain and that's not really how it works. The circulatory system (which is most likely what's responsible other than the skin/dermis itself) doesn't route from brain to skin that way (because of the bone).

There is a pretty large concentration of veins/arteries - 1 that come up around the temple, so that could be related to the frequency of graying starting there.

1- [https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/superficial- ar...](https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/superficial-arteries-and- veins-of-the-face-and-scalp-news-photo/143063936#superficial-arteries-and- veins-of-the-face-and-scalp-picture-id143063936)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Indeed, one can be highly active yet still be sedentary for most of the day. "

That's a hugely interesting note there in the introduction.</comment>


From 'dotnet run' to "Hello World" - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhloQ0o5b0k <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the talk abstract:

 _Have you ever stopped to think about all the things that happen when you execute a simple .NET program?_

 _This talk will delve into the internals of the recently open-sourced .NET Core runtime, looking at what happens, when it happens and why._

 _Making use of freely available tools such as 'PerfView', we'll examine the Execution Engine, Type Loader, Just-in-Time (JIT) Compiler and the CLR Hosting API to see how all these components play a part in making 'Hello World' possible._</comment>


Rosencrantz and Ethernet (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.shakespearegeek.com/2014/10/rosencrantz-and-etherne.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/quux.poem](http://www.ultimate.com/phil/pdp10/quux.poem)

I think that I shall never see A matrix lovely as a tree. Trees are fifty times as fun As structures a la PL/I (Which Dijkstra claims are too baroque). And SNOBOL's strings just can't compare With all the leaves a tree may bear. And COMIT strings are just a joke. Vectors, tuples too, are nice, But haven't the impressive flair Of trees to which a LISP is heir. A LISPer's life is paradise!

Many people think that JOSS And others, too, are strictly boss; And there are many BASIC fans Who think their favorite language spans All that would a user please. Compared to LISP they're all a loss, For none of them gives all the ease With which a LISP builds moby trees.

RPG is just a nurd (As you no doubt have often heard); The record layouts are absurd, And numbers packed in decimal form Will never fit a base-two word Without a veritable storm Of gross conversions fro and to With them arithmetic to do. And one must allocate the field Correct arithmetic to yield, And decimal places represent Truncation loss to circumvent: Thus RPG is second- rate. In LISP one needn't allocate (That boon alone is heaven-sent!) The scheme is sheer simplicity: A number's just another tree. When numbers threaten overflow LISP makes the number tree to grow, Extending its significance With classic treelike elegance. A LISP can generate reports, Create a file, do chains and sorts; But one thing you will never see Is moby trees in RPG.

One thing the average language lacks Is programmed use of push-down stacks. But LISP provides this feature free: A stack - you guessed it - is a tree. An empty stack is simply NIL. In order, then, the stack to fill

A CONS will push things on the top; To empty it, a CDR will Behave exactly like a pop. A simple CAR will get you back The last thing you pushed on the stack; An empty stack's detectable By testing with the function NULL. Thus even should a LISPer lose With PROGs and GOs, RETURNs and DOs, He need his mind not overtax To implement recursive hacks: He'll utilize this clever ruse Of using trees as moby stacks. Some claim this method is too slow Because it uses CONS so much And thus requires the GC touch; It has one big advantage, though: You needn't fear for overflow. Since LISP allows its trees to grow, Stacks can to any limits go.

COBOL input is a shame: The implementors play a game That no two versions are the same. And rocky is the FORTRAN road One's alpha input to decode: The FORMAT statement is to blame, But on the user falls the load. And FOCAL input's just a farce; But all LISP input comes pre-parsed! (The input reader gets its fame By getting storage for each node From lists of free words scattered sparse. It parses all the input strings With aid of mystic mutterings; From dots and strange parentheses, From zeros, sevens, A's and Z's, Constructs, with magic reckonings, The pointers needed for its trees. It builds the trees with complex code With rubout processing bestowed; When typing errors do forebode The rubout makes recovery tame, And losers then will oft exclaim Their sanity to LISP is owed - To help these losers is LISP's aim.)

The flow-control of APL And OS data sets as well Are best described as tortured hell. For LISPers everything's a breeze; They neatly output all their trees With format-free parentheses And see their program logic best By how their lovely parens nest. While others are by GOs possessed, And WHILE-DO, CASE, and all the rest, The LISPing hackers will prefer With COND their programs to invest And let their functions all recur When searching trees in maddened quest.

Expanding records of fixed size Will quickly programs paralyze. Though ISAM claims to be so wise In allocating overflow, Its data handling is too slow And finding it takes many tries. But any fool can plainly see Inherent flexibility In data structured as a tree. When all their efforts have gone sour To swell fixed records, losers glower. But list reclaimers hour by hour By setting all the garbage free Yield CONSequent capacity: Thus trees indefinitely flower. (And trees run on atomic power!)

To men of sensibility The lesson here is plain to see: Arrays are used by clods like me, But only LISP can make a tree.

                - The Great Quux
                    (with apologies to
                       Joyce Kilmer)

</comment><comment><USER3> There's definitely a shortage of doggerel in this field.</comment>


How the Internet Is Broken: Big Questions and Bad Answers - <AUTHOR> https://nextbison.wordpress.com/2019/01/07/how-the-internet-is-broken/ <comment><USER2> I am going to keep posting the ledger of harms - [https://ledger.humanetech.com/](https://ledger.humanetech.com/)

Until we see all the issues in one place like a github issue tracker, solutions will always be piece meal and confined to personal experience.

We need more issue trackers like this, so that people with solutions to one issue or another have some sense of the big picture. Also Big Tech cant weasel out of one issue by talking selectively about another.

Who knows, maybe one day we will get to proper integration/system wide testing for fixes to social issues...

<comment><USER3> I love this concept. I think it could benefit by branching out in a way that tracks different companies, then create different branches for these companies to track the people making these decisions. There is a huge problem with greedy and horrible individuals hiding behind a corporate structure. A company is by definition a group of people and since we treat companies now legally the same as people the same rules must apply. The reason why this works is the same as why shaming individuals who rape people (Weinstein, Stacey etc) works. The only way to improve things is by moving the goalposts in corporate ethics the same way it has been moved by the #metoo movement for sexual violence.

the reason why I think this works is that ethics is an individual thing that can only be applied on an individual level. If a CxO suggests to set up offshore structures to channel profits away then burn them to the ground (figuratively).

the tech to do it is already there: the darknet!

<comment><USER2> "The only way" you are suggesting is not the only way.

Changing people's thinking and behavior, especially that of highly misguided characters in power, requires as Psychologist Marshall Rosenberg would say, choosing between Violence and Compassion.

Ideally for progress we want people to change the way they think about what they are doing, not spend their time defending it or how to get away with it. The latter being what we manage to keep doing.

This is where the choice of approach we take makes a huge difference.

Our Natural instinct is to choose violence, punishment, judgement, name and shame etc. We want to see heads role for suffering caused.

But this approach takes the focus off the suffering of the victim, and puts focus on how to cause pain to the perpetrator. It doesn't get perpetrators to change the way they think - to reflect. Instead they react - play defense, and spend their time and resources on avoiding and skirting punishment.

Think about this. Think about what Gandhi, MLK, Mandala did by not choosing this route. They didn't allow perpetrators to play that game. They showed us there is a big difference in outcomes when we tell a man - look at the pain you have caused VS you are <LABEL> and will be punished for the pain you have caused.

This ledger of harms concept is great, because it keeps focus on the suffering produced. It makes people in power squirm and reflect. Which is what plants the seeds of change. They will feel the need to change, just as the British Empire, US Govt or the South African govts did.

But as soon as you add punishment to each issue their focus will shift to self defense at all cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We need to teach our children to observe the world accurately and debunk > pseudo-science.

I'm not a scientist and don't have the depth of insight in many fields that I feel I could always accurately debunk pseudo-science. Most people aren't experts, and most kids certainly aren't. I've spent my career getting the measly amount of domain expertise I do have, and that's only in a very narrow IT field.

Rather, we need to focus on learning to better evaluate authorities. Who's the most qualified source of information? Which of several competing theories have the most qualified proponents? What incentives might they have to color what they believe?

On the web its really hard to know who's who. Mostly we have nothing better than the tone and look of the site and domain name. That's really pretty weak if you think about it! I'd definitely be interested in a system of some kind (browser extension?) that added a little more information.

<comment><USER5> That's interesting. I always struggle to understand why people believe in a god (or many), or that the Earth is flat and dismiss Science and evidence on the other direction. From the point of view of something that you can't understand, and you choose to delegate to an Authority... and you choose which Authority to trust... if you've been indoctrinated into religion you'll be more prone to choose a priest/pastor or a magic book as your source of Authority, even in things like the origin of the universe and where does life and animals and humans come from. Other people choose David Ike as Authority and believe there's a reptilian master race ruling humanity for millennia, and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of people could benefit from more skepticism. Thinking things through is not just work but it can be a hell of a lot of work. People naturally don't like to work. It is easy and fun to think someone's pipe dream will provide energy without cost. And it is easy to think that the such and such ethnic group is the cause of all our problems instead of thorough analysis of the issues.

The internet is mostly ok (besides the occasional bgp attack)

The web is really mostly rubbish though.

There is no way to fix the fact that a lot of people are wrong on the web. Anymore I don't feel a huge need to try to correct people.

<comment><USER7> _> A lot of people could benefit from more skepticism. Thinking things through is not just work but it can be a hell of a lot of work. People naturally don't like to work. It is easy and fun to think someone's pipe dream will provide energy without cost. And it is easy to think that the such and such ethnic group is the cause of all our problems instead of thorough analysis of the issues._

Could you maybe also benefit from more scepticism of your own opinions?

I ask this, because of the way you project the opinion of a 'wrong' group of people with two simplified strawmen. I don't think many people exist in the way presented. At least not in a quantity that makes the web rubbish.

It's easy to think other people are simplifying things too much, but maybe that's just an oversimplification itself..

<comment><USER6> We are allowed to be wrong. That is why I don't care to correct random people anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any mechanism that amplifies information also amplifies noise, something I think we didn't really understand when the web/internet started. Understand the provenance of information we see is still difficult, its not as if there is git log of changes in some concept or news item in some random website that goes back to whenever it was created globally. Even "blockchain" doesn't really fix the idea that it was garbage when it was inserted. Simple ideas like someone saying some words in a public context seems difficult to validate or verify sometimes much less complex ideas like climate change. Information is a messy concept made worse by the freeform nature of the internet/web.

<comment><USER9> Hmm. I seem to recall AT&T figuring out, about 1927, that they could amplify long-distance signals better (with less noise) by adding some negative feedback.

I know it's only an analogy, but maybe the Internet amplifies too well, and therefore the noise gets amplified much too well. Maybe the internet (especially the echo chamber parts) need some negative feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >We need to teach school children to be better at interrogating evidence and deciding (for themselves) what to believe.

 _And..._

>We need to teach our children to observe the world accurately and debunk pseudo-science.

These two ideas directly conflict with one another and create a dichotomy: If I have the freedom to beleive what I want, how does this translate into having the initiative to observe the world accurately and debunk pseudo-science?

The better approach would be to understand that a lot of the laws that govern our universe (or whichever other science) has been peer-reviewed. While this doesn't mean that they're infallible (see: ether), it does mean that we should still shouldn't question them, if there's something that doesn't align with our thought-processes on it.

The harder part, of course, is proving/disproving these ideas that they may have because of limitations - whether it be levels of education (such as in the states) or the time available to go through the scientific method until they have arrived at 'x' conclusion regarding it.

People working 40+ hour work-weeks, with their own families, etc. are - generally - less inclined to take-up the mantles of science because, at the end of the day, the cost versus rewards are too askewed for them.

Instead, what I think should happen is that the sciences should have bounty programs, much in the same way that technology does, to incentivise these ventures.

At the end of the day, people still need to put food on the table and deal with day-to-day life. While some are hobbyists (e.g.: hobbyist astronomers), I don't see such large communities around the heavy sciences (e.g.: hobbyist cosmologists, hobbyist theoretical physicists, etc.) and I think that would change if either people had more free time to donate to such ventures and/or it was incentivised.

Even the old precepts of the scientific minds gathering weekly for banterings about (might be stuff of media to blame for this, if untrue) to challenge and expand our understandings isn't something openly lauded - which, to me, should be. (I want to say this was something practiced by Einstein and friends/colleagues?)

Let's face it: Despite the advancements of the last 50 years, the word "nerd" is still a pejorative.

<comment><USER11> > These two ideas directly conflict with one another and create a dichotomy: > If I have the freedom to beleive what I want, how does this translate into > having the initiative to observe the world accurately and debunk pseudo- > science?

no these two ideas work well. be curious, but question what you see, and question yourself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> No matter how educated you are about the scientific method, there are going to be hypothesis that you don't have the technical skills to test yourself. Scientific knowledge has advanced, in part by accepting consensus. Not until a new idea fails do the assumptions it is built upon really need to be scrutinized.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think the proposed solution in this article also covers educating people to find a qualified source of information.

I was prepared to read an article talking about a problem without giving a proper solution for it. But it seems proposed solution is covering (not all) but a lot of the ground.

</comment><comment><USER14> _It's easy to see how people might wonder if vaccines cause autism—many children regress developmentally right after receiving vaccinations. It's been conclusively proven that this is correlation, not causation. There is absolutely no doubt: vaccines do not cause autism. But it's emotionally easier to for parents to believe they have a reason and someone to blame than the stark truth that their child's autism is not yet understood_

Tell that to the parents of the afflicted children. If the autism was not a genetic condition then the vaccines must be the cause. Simply because the mechanism by which autism develops is not understood doesn't mean the vaccines were not the cause.

 _post hoc, ergo propter hoc_

It is similar to the argument of those who maintained although there was a correlation between the presence of the HIV virus and the AIDS disease, it was only a correlation because the mechanism by which the HIV virus caused AIDS was not understood. I for one not being in the medical profession cannot say for sure that the actually mechanism is well understood.

I say again, tell that to the afflicted.

And what has this got to do with the Internet? If the Internet gives the opportunity to spread falsities as well as truths at Internet speed is it an inherent fault?

<comment><USER15> Sorry, I'm a bit confused - are you trying to lay out the faulty reasoning, or are you saying that vaccines COULD cause autism?

<comment><USER14> Wasn't there a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys that the researchers suppressed in the initial findings?

As far as autism was concerned research showed a correlation between autism and African American boys and the parents of those boys noticed that it began soon after the boys were adminstered the vaccine, and that was way before the researchers themselves admitted that there was a correlation.

As far as I am concerned vaccines cause autism in some cases.

Just because the actual mechanism has not been discovered doesn't mean they are not the cause, for the simple reason that you cannot simply vaccinate human beings with the intention of finding the causal link between vaccines and autism, which assumes that the neurological basis of autism is clearly defined.

[https://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/whistleblower-says- cdc-k...](https://www.ageofautism.com/2014/08/whistleblower-says-cdc-knew- in-2003-of-higher-autism-rate-among-african-american-boys-receiving-mmr-shot- earlier-than-36-mont.html)

[https://thevaccinereaction.org/2017/05/african-americans- vac...](https://thevaccinereaction.org/2017/05/african-americans-vaccines-and- a-history-of-suspicion/)

 _On the other side are numerous horror stories involving vaccinated children like that of Harvard-educated attorney George Fatheree, who was pressured by a pediatrician to resume vaccination despite seizures his infant, Clayton, experienced after a previous round of vaccines. That night, Clayton's seizures returned and he stopped speaking for three years. He grew into a severely disabled teen, suffering dozens of seizures a day. Because of similar vaccine- related injuries and deaths, the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program—a fund under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services set up to shield vaccine manufacturers from liability—has paid out over $3.6 billion in compensation to affected families._

If the blogger wants to give an example of false notions propagated at Internet speed, they can do a lot better than using the link between autism and vaccinations as an example.

<comment><USER15> >Wasn't there a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in African-American boys that the researchers suppressed in the initial findings?

> As far as autism was concerned research showed a correlation between autism > and African American boys and the parents of those boys noticed that it > began soon after the boys were adminstered the vaccine, and that was way > before the researchers themselves admitted that there was a correlation.

You're going to have to find some articles that aren't from suuuppppeeerrr biased sites. Only the age of autism has any sort of scientific paper link, and that paper they referenced was withdrawn due to Brian Hookers conflict of interest ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hooker_(bioengineer)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Hooker_\(bioengineer\))).

> Just because the actual mechanism has not been discovered doesn't mean they > are not the cause

That's a weird thing to assume. In that case turning 1 is the greatest cause of autism.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are some great security blogs, podcasts or Twitters to follow? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The CyberWire is a daily (Mon - Fri) podcast for cyber security news. Each episode goes for around 20 minutes and breaks down any significant news from the last 24 hours/weekend.

This is about the only cyber security news I directly follow and it tends to keep me abreast of the major going ons and the 20 minute length is short enough to digest daily.

</comment><comment><USER3> sec news, every week - [https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky- business/](https://risky.biz/netcasts/risky-business/)

less news topic, but in depth [https://defensivesecurity.org/](https://defensivesecurity.org/)</comment>


Universal Masking to Prevent SARS-CoV-2 Transmission–The Time Is Now - <AUTHOR> https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2768532 <comment><AUTHOR> > In this issue of JAMA, Wang et al present evidence that universal masking of > health care workers (HCWs) and patients can help reduce transmission of > severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections.

> In the largest health care system in Massachusetts with more than 75 000 > employees, in tandem with routine symptom screening and diagnostic testing > of symptomatic HCWs for SARS-CoV-2 infection, leadership mandated a policy > of universal masking for all HCWs as well as for all patients.

> The authors present data that prior to implementation of universal masking > in late March 2020, new infections among HCWs with direct or indirect > patient contact were increasing exponentially, from 0% to 21.3% (a mean > increase of 1.16% per day).

> However, after the universal masking policy was in place, the proportion of > symptomatic HCWs with positive test results steadily declined, from 14.7% to > 11.5% (a mean decrease of 0.49% per day).

> Although not a randomized clinical trial, this study provides critically > important data to emphasize that masking helps prevent transmission of SARS- > CoV-2.</comment>


Tech Talent Hunt Tries New Venue: Middle School - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20001424052970203937904580122042682958792?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB20001424052970203937904580122042682958792.html <comment><USER2> Judicial Approval of Contracts With Minors In The Tech Industry by Wallace E.J. Collins III, New York Law Journal

Technology start-ups and other computer software companies often employ young teenage whiz kids to write code or create new apps. With media giants like Disney and Viacom creating shows featuring younger and younger performers, and YouTube, Spotify and other online companies hosting content by eager young creators, content from minors is in ever-increasing demand by corporations. All of this raises the predicament of employing or dealing with a contract which involves a contracting party under the age of 18.

A minor may disaffirm a contract at any time during minority or upon reaching majority. Without a valid written agreement the employment is "at will" under the law of most states which means the minor can depart at any time. Copyright law, which is applicable to computer code, requires a signed writing to transfer copyrights and applies to authors of all ages, so without a valid written agreement the content created by the minor may not be validly transferred from its author to the employer. The dilemma created by a minor's ability to disaffirm a contract is that it may seriously jeopardize the employer's financial investment in the services of the minor.

The mere exercise of having the parent or guardian of the minor co-sign, approve or "guarantee" the contract does not resolve the problem. The minor may still repudiate the contract on the ground of infancy, asserting that the parent or guardian lacked authority to make the contract. In some jurisdictions, courts deem it against public policy to even enforce such guarantee language against the parent or guardian since it would subvert the purpose of the laws concerning the judicial approval of contracts with minors. So-called "working papers" under state law might work for purposes of a fast food chain or similar hourly wage employment but probably are insufficient for a tech company's purposes.

Although many tech companies may rely on the fact that they believe the minor is an employee creating intellectual property for the company, this may not be sufficient to transfer rights to the company in the computer code written by the teenage whiz kid as, for example, "work made for hire" under U.S. copyright law. It is beyond the scope of this article to address all of the factors courts consider when determining the issue of work for hire and the ramifications of the various outcomes of the cases concerning employers and computer programmers. Suffice to say that relying on the work for hire doctrine is an uncertain path for a tech company (all the more so when dealing with a minor).

State Laws Several states, including New York and California, have laws specifically concerning judicial approval of contracts with minors. New York's Arts and Cultural Affairs Law §35.03 provides for judicial approval of certain contracts for services of "minors" under the age of 18. The procedure involved can be somewhat arduous to navigate, and may prove to be a difficult gauntlet to run for a lawyer inexperienced in this area. However, tech and media companies employing minors or contracting with minors should investigate the efficacy of pursuing court approval to protect their investment.

Once the court judicially approves the contract, the minor is held to a standard of adult responsibility for its contractual obligations assuring the employer company that it will get what it bargained for and that the contract is legally valid.

As a practical matter, a proceeding for judicial approval of a minor's contract in New York is commenced by the filing of a verified petition. It can be filed by a parent, the guardian, a relative of the minor or any interested person or entity such as the employer. The petition must contain a statement of the length of the employment term, compensation, and all other relevant, material terms of the agreement. A complete copy of the proposed contract must be annexed to the petition together with affidavits from the parents and/or guardians which consent to the petition and support the facts. In addition to identifying the details of the nature of the minor's employment and the compensation to be paid, the petition must also contain a statement of who, other than the minor, is entitled to the minor's earnings and facts regarding the property and financial circumstances of the parent or parents so entitled. The petition may nominate a person to be appointed as limited guardian solely for purposes of establishing a trust account for the proceeding and should set forth the reasons why the person nominated would be proper and suitable.

Although a lawyer is usually appointed, a parent or other petitioner is not precluded from being appointed as limited guardian by reason of his or her interest in any part of the minor's earnings or in the contract provided such interest is disclosed. The court will designate how much is to be set aside and saved for the minor under guardianship until the minor becomes 18 years old. The court also has the option to appoint a special guardian to represent the interests of the minor at any time after the petition is filed.

As directed by the court, before the time at which the petition is noticed to be heard certain persons (other than the petitioner and anyone who has joined in the petition) must be served with an order to show cause why the petition should not be granted: (1) the minor; (2) the parents of the minor; (3) the minor's guardian(s); (4) each party to the contract; (5) any person having the care and custody of the minor; (6) the person with whom the minor resides; and, (7) the minor's spouse.

An order granting judicial approval of a contract for the services of a minor will rarely be granted on the papers alone. Usually a brief hearing is held at which the minor, the parent(s) and the various other interested parties may be questioned by the judge regarding the contract. Courts may require provisions in the court's order concerning how many hours the minor can work and may require that the employer provide tutors if regular schooling will be disrupted by the employment. Most terms and conditions of each arrangement will be affirmed as long as they are found by the court to be reasonable and not contrary to the best interests of the minor. Once the court does grant approval, an order will be issued which will, in effect, declare the minor an adult for purposes of fulfilling his or her contractual obligations.

California law concerning the judicial approval of minors' contract for artistic or creative services (Ca. Family Code §6750, et seq.), although similar, differs in certain respects. For instance, under California law there is no limitation on the length of the term of a minor's contract whereas in New York the limit is seven years. A hearing is usually required in California as in New York but under California law a maximum of only 50 percent of net earnings will be set aside until the minor becomes 18 years old whereas New York has no limit on what portion the court can direct to be set aside.

Once the court does grant approval, an order will be issued which will, in effect, declare the minor an adult for purposes of fulfilling his or her contractual obligations. Then all the results of the minor's services, including any copyrights in code or apps created by a minor during employment by the start-up or tech company, will be properly transferred as bargained for by the employer.

Wallace E.J. Collins III is a New York lawyer practicing primarily in the areas of entertainment and intellectual property law. T: ((212) 661-3656; www.wallacecollins.com

*reprinted with permission of The New York Law Journal 2014 [http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/expert-analysis/id=12026676...](http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/expert-analysis/id=1202667640206/Judicial-Approval-of-Contracts-With-Minors%3Fmcode=1380566174563&curindex=0)</comment>


Toradex Announces Availability of Dahlia Carrier Board for Verdin SoMs - <AUTHOR> https://www.toradex.com/news/dahlia-carrier-board-availability <comment><AUTHOR> 28 July 2020, Horw, Switzerland: Toradex, a leader in embedded computing, announces the release and availability of Dahlia, the latest addition to its carrier board offerings for the Verdin family of System on Modules (SoMs).

Dahlia provides a simple and convenient development platform for the Verdin SoMs. The board provides easy access to the most common interfaces in a compact 120mm x 120mm form factor. As with all Toradex carrier boards, the design is fully open and is an ideal starting point for your own customized Verdin carrier board.

Highlights: • Simple power via USB-C (PD and BC) • UART and JTAG interfaces conveniently accessible via a single USB-C connector • Gigabit Ethernet, PCI Express, MIPI DSI, MIPI CSI-2, CAN, etc. • Free and open design – allowing you to access the complete Altium design and manufacturing data.

Verdin modules provide a modern, future-proof set of interfaces focusing on ease-of-use and robustness. The Verdin line expands on the already successful Colibri and Apalis SoM families and comes with the same extensive software, documentation, ecosystem and support. This includes Torizon - the easy-to-use industrial Linux platform - and Toradex BSP Layers and Reference Images for Yocto Project.

The currently available Verdin SoMs feature the new powerful and efficient NXP® i.MX 8M Mini/Nano applications processors. Currently in development, is a Verdin SoM with NXP i.MX 8M Plus applications processor with Neural Network Accelerator and Image Signal Processing units. Additional Verdin boards are planned. Dahlia works with all current and upcoming Verdin SoMs providing highly scalable and future-proof solutions.

The Dahlia is available on the Toradex webshop, for more information visit the Dahlia Carrier Board page.</comment>


Is Google Degrading Search? Consumer Harm from Universal Search - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/lutherlowe/wu-l

<comment><AUTHOR> "While Google is known primarily as a search engine, it has increasingly developed and promoted its own content as an alternative to results from other websites. By prominently displaying Google content in response to search queries, Google is able to leverage its dominance in search to gain customers for this content. This yields serious concerns if the internal content is inferior to organic search results. To investigate, we implement a randomized controlled trial in which we vary the search results that users are shown  comparing Google's current policy of favorable treatment of Google content to results in which external content is displayed. We find that users are 45% more likely to engage with universal search results (i.e. prominently displayed map results on Google) when the results are organically determined. This suggests that by leveraging dominance in search to promote its internal content, Google is reducing social welfare  leaving consumers with lower quality results and worse matches."</comment>


Platpick – B2B marketplace for outsource services - <AUTHOR> https://platpick.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> PlatPick is a B2B platform that serves as an open and transparent marketplace for outsource services.

We have created a platform enabling users to outsource their IT projects to verified reliable and dependable contractors. It's user-friendly, your project completion and payments security are guaranteed. And you do it in a language of your choice!</comment>


Show HN: Python 3 tkinter graphical curve and surface fitter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zunzun/tkInterFit <comment><AUTHOR> This is James Phillips, author of tkInterFit.

my background is in nuclear engineering and industrial radiation physics, as I started working in the U.S. Navy as a submarine nuclear reactor operator many, many neutrons ago.

I have quite a bit of international experience calibrating industrial metal thickness and coating gauges. For example the thicker a piece of steel the more radiation it absorbs, and measuring the amount of radiation that passes through a sheet of steel can tell you how thick it is without touching it. Another example is that the thicker a zinc coating on steel sheets, the more zinc X-ray fluorescence energy it can emit - again allowing accurate thickness measurement for industrial manufacture.

My post-Navy employer originally used ad-hoc spreadsheets to very tediously create 4th-order polynomials calibrating to readings from known samples. So I started writing my own curve-fitting software in C.

When X-rays pass through aluminium, the atomic weight of the alloying elements is much greater than that of the aluminium itself such that small changes in alloy composition lead to large changes in X-ray transmission _for the same thickness_. Alloy changes look like thickness changes, egad! However, alloy changes also cause changes to the X-rays that are scattered back from the aluminium, so that if _both_ the transmitted and backscattered radiation is measured a more alloy-insensitive measurement can be made - but this is now a 3D surface fit, and I started writing surface fitting software. I began to do considerable international work.

This finally led to the development of my Python fitting libraries, and this example tkinter curve and surface fitter. I also have Python 2 and 3 wxPython and django versions on GitHub.

James</comment>


Comparison of image moderation APIs - <AUTHOR> https://dataturks.com/blog/image-moderation-api-comparison.php <comment><USER2> It would be nice if someone could compare these commercially available APIs with Yahoo's open_nsfw model in terms of accuracy: [https://github.com/yahoo/open_nsfw](https://github.com/yahoo/open_nsfw)

I'm currently building an API wrapper around it and running it on a Hetzner server with a GTX 1080 - prediction takes about 0.25 seconds and while I haven't optimised it for parallel execution, I think it should be able to handle at least +10 images/sec comfortably. I'm also testing video moderation by using ffmpeg to slice the video into screenshots and predicting the min/avg/high scores.

Moderating 25 million explicit images using Google Cloud Vision would cost around $19,500/mo vs €99/mo on Hetzner.

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes a lot of sense, actually its really difficult to get a large enough dataset for moderation tasks to make a decent inhouse model for a fair enough comparison.

Sure, we can try scraping that from pornhub etc but fee then the negative classes would be very domain specific, using stock images may not provide a good measure.

Also, its really weird to assign such a task to any of your employees, feels kinda strange :)

<comment><USER2> Yahoo's model could be fine-tuned: [http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/gathered/examples/finetune_f...](http://caffe.berkeleyvision.org/gathered/examples/finetune_flickr_style.html)

Yeah, it's definitely not a nice task but what's stopping someone (well, besides potential legal issues) from using these commercial APIs to create datasets programatically and training a cloned model from that?

I'm curious what the profit margins are on these APIs because I think they are way overpriced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I really hope you haven't picked a dataset that features only women nudity, but sample images suggest otherwise: [https://dataturks.com/projects/Mohan/NSFW(Nudity%20Detection...](https://dataturks.com/projects/Mohan/NSFW\(Nudity%20Detection\)%20Image%20Moderation%20Datatset)

<comment><AUTHOR> :)..There are a few examples of males as well.

<comment><USER3> No, there are not. [http://jsbin.com/bewinalezu/1/edit?html,js,output](http://jsbin.com/bewinalezu/1/edit?html,js,output)

</comment></comment></comment><comment> yaseen-rob I tried out various image labeling APIs, including Google Vision (Safe Search) for exactly this use case (moderation). I was honestly astonished at the pricing of these APIs. Google is somewhere at 1.50€ for 1000 images which is - imo - very expensive. I tried out the default models that come with Tensorflow but well, they are trained on scientific datasets which typically involve species and flowers - no luck there either. Any good tips for pre-trained models that solve this (for tensorflow)?

<comment><USER4> Download 1000 NSFW images, 1000 racy images and 100 completely SFW images. Train a model and publish it on GitHub?

<comment><AUTHOR> Would be really interested to see the results of this.

Also, consider using Dataturks to create and host the dataset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested, PixLab let you analyze 50K images or video frames via its /nsfw endpoint for $25. They charge $0.9 per 1000 requests after you reach this quota.

[https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=nsfw](https://pixlab.io/cmd?id=nsfw)

[https://pixlab.io/pricing](https://pixlab.io/pricing)

</comment><comment><USER6> what is the verdict? i been just scrolling down to see which is best and cant find any.

</comment><comment><USER7> The sample images shown only feature white women. Is that a limitation of the dataset?

<comment><USER8> Tila Tequila is Vietnamese, and features in the majority of the sample images shown.

<comment><USER9> She's also a white nationalist and neo-Nazi...

<comment><USER10> Not relevant to the conversation

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> BTW we had a question in general to anyone who can help us, Does hosting such a dataset cause issues with SEO etc? Anything else we should be aware of?

<comment><USER11> Probably wouldn't be wise to host a dataset like this with "example" images embedded or linked where a search engine could find them.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, will see how can I block crawl on this dataset. BTW how does it hurt exactly, couldn't find much except in case of safe-search mode.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook knock knock joke fail: Steve hijacked by Tim and David prank - <AUTHOR> http://metro.co.uk/2013/06/21/mans-attempt-to-tell-knock-knock-joke-on-facebook-fails-epically-3851491/ <comment><USER2> Full text (sans photo of knock knock joke): Use ← → keys to One man's (feeble) attempt at entertaining his Facebook friends with a 'knock knock' joke went badly wrong after two of his mates hijacked it – with hilarious consequences.

The unsuspecting user, known only as Steve (for security reasons), sought to delight the world with one of the oldest jokes in the history of the 'knock knock' tradition.

But, unbeknownst to him two of Steve's 'friends', David and Tim, turned out to be far funnier than he was – taking control of the post to turn it into one of the most convoluted (but staggeringly funny) episodes to play out on the social network.

A combination of the ridiculous and off-the cuff storyline, and Steve's increasing incredulity, combine to make it one of the best Facebook pranks we've seen in a long time.

Steve's experience, which can be relived in its entirety below (complete with some choice language – you've been warned), is a lesson to us all… Don't tell 'knock knock' jokes on Facebook.

..really? You thought hackers would be interested in this?</comment>


An Analysis of Pre-Installed Android Software - <AUTHOR> https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6713708 <comment><AUTHOR> Page 69: Thanks to the openness of the Android ecosystem, mobile device vendors can build and sell smart phones and other mobile devices using their own custom versions of Android. Most of these custom versions deviate significantly from Google's official Android Open Source Project (AOSP): in addition to various visual and functional changes to the base OS, vendors add proprietary applications (apps hereafter) to their firmware, and sometimes even add custom (often unknown) certificates to the system's root certificate store. In fact, recent anecdotal evidence has revealed that pre-installed apps can put, intentionally or not, user's privacy and security at risk. This is especially concerning for lesser-known brands producing lower-end devices for whom preserving user privacy might not be high on the priority list. In this extended abstract, we present our methodology to explore the complex and diverse ecosystem of Android pre-installed apps as well as our preliminary results.</comment>