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The DS GPU and its fun quirks - justinweiss
http://melonds.kuribo64.net/comments.php?id=56
======
Jasper_
The DS "GPU" is indeed very bizarre and shares more in common with the GBA 2D
rasterizer than a modern 3D GPU architecture. That it's a scanline renderer
that can handle quads directly should be a pretty big tell :)
I implemented a cheap subset of it used in Super Mario 64 DS for my online
model viewer (
[https://noclip.website/#sm64ds/44;-517.89,899.85,1300.08,0.3...](https://noclip.website/#sm64ds/44;-517.89,899.85,1300.08,0.37,-0.34,0.86,0.93,0.14,-0.34)
), but implementing all of the quirks and the weird featuresets might be
nearly impossible to do in a modern graphics API. 2D rasterizers don't have to
be slow (as SwiftShader and ryg show), and you can get the bizarre conditions
exactly correct. I'm not sure what a GPU-based implementation would even add.
EDIT: The math to be able to handle the bilinear quad interpolation on a GPU
was worked out by reedbeta last year: [http://reedbeta.com/blog/quadrilateral-
interpolation-part-2/](http://reedbeta.com/blog/quadrilateral-interpolation-
part-2/) . That's a big roadblock gone, but there's still a lot of other
questionable things.
~~~
zamadatix
Wow, that site is absolutely amazing. Fun seeing the great sea all at once! Do
you write/blog about working on that?
~~~
Jasper_
I want to! I have a few articles I've written in the pipeline, but it's always
a struggle to find a topic to write about. I did write this article about a
very specific effect though: [http://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-
the-water-eff...](http://blog.mecheye.net/2018/03/deconstructing-the-water-
effect-in-super-mario-sunshine/)
------
pcwalton
I wouldn't even try emulating this properly with the standard GPU rasterizer,
except as a fallback mode for underpowered systems. It would be fun to try
using Image Load/Store and Shader Storage Buffer Objects, though, in OpenGL
4.6. Just bind a framebuffer object with no color buffer and do all your
writes using atomic operations to image objects and SSBOs in the fragment
shader. The fragment shader interlock extension might be helpful if it's
available (note: it's unavailable in Vulkan!) This is similar to how order-
independent transparency or voxel rasterization works.
One possibility might be to do two passes: one to build up linked lists of
per-fragment data (polygon ID, color, depth, etc.) and a second pass to sort
all the linked lists into the proper order and determine a final color. This
is the standard order-independent transparency trick.
You could build up tables as well--for instance, you could emulate the "one
span per scanline/polygon" behavior by allocating a table of scanlines for
each polygon that you fill with the lowest X coordinate for that scanline and
discard fragments that don't belong to the triangle contributing the lowest
such X coordinate.
I have no idea if this will actually work--if I had to guess I'd put a 50%
probability on it not working out at all. The fallback would be a SIMD
scanline renderer. The Image Load/Store GPU implementation would be really fun
though :)
~~~
gmueckl
I was thinking about actually going straight to compute shaders and forgoing
the the normal GPU rendering pipeline completely. The quirks outlined in the
article are such a big deviation from normal pipeline behavior that I don't
know if it is worth trying to use that at all. Performance should be a no-
brainer on any halfway modern system anyway.
~~~
pcwalton
Well, compute shaders have the drawback that you have to know how many work
items (in this case, fragments) you need to dispatch in advance. You can
figure this out for triangles and quads, but it's a pain, and it basically
involves doing the same thing the rasterization hardware already does in
software. It's much simpler and faster to just use the rasterization hardware
built in to GPUs to dispatch fragment work groups dynamically via a triangle
draw call and only override the sample processing step.
~~~
gmueckl
You know that GPUs can dispatch work dynamically themselves to overcome this
problem, right? So you totally can have one computation step determine how
many instances it requires for the next one.
~~~
pcwalton
Yes, it's possible, but why bother when the hardware can rasterize triangles
in silicon? :)
~~~
gmueckl
Because it can't handle them in the prculiar fashion that was described? And
it is worse for quads.
------
lostgame
At the time of its release, and the launch of certain titles like Metroid
Prime: Hunters, and even Mario Kart DS, I was incredibly impressed with the
DS’s graphics and performance considering its incredibly limited specs - 512kb
texture cache and only 4MB of RAM. I understand it’s incredibly limited
resolution and low-quality textures probably contributed to the ability to
optimize the system and get such interesting performance out of it.
I truly enjoyed messing around with the home brew dev kits and loved putting
my home made demos on my flash cart in high school, though I mostly stuck to
2D demos.
From what I understand, since the GPU is more akin to the GBA’s, and is a
scanline-based renderer, does that mean it is more similar in its 3D
architecture to, for instance, the Sega Saturn? (Incidentally, my other
favourite system to write home brew for.)
The main differential, of course, it’s ability to display native triangles in
addition to quads? (The Saturn literally did not have native 3D hardware as we
understand it but literally drew thousands of scaled and transformed sprites
as quads instead of the triangles we are used to today.)
------
modeless
I agree that Vulkan isn't necessary, but neither is OpenGL, or a GPU at all. A
software rasterizer would be the way to go. Even a mobile CPU should be able
to rasterize 2048 polygons per frame at 256x192 using fixed point math. That's
almost Quake 1 levels of graphics, and Quake 1 was software rendered in 1996
on 75 Mhz Pentium 1s.
Edit: Reading other articles on the site, it seems like they started with a
software renderer. I wonder why they decided to try OpenGL?
~~~
Karuma
People like to increase the internal resolution to render at 4K or more, which
I believe is much faster when using hardware to do it.
~~~
modeless
Wow, yeah, that would be a reason to use hardware. Here's what that looks
like: [https://youtu.be/tvGVqGQIDGA](https://youtu.be/tvGVqGQIDGA)
Kind of an interesting aesthetic. It looks less terrible than I expected. I
think it would be interesting to apply some of the recent machine learning
based upsampling techniques on DS games too.
------
jamesu
Makes me wonder if compute kernels would be a better solution if you're trying
to emulate all these rasterizer quirks while being fast enough to be playable.
~~~
freeone3000
You need to render a few thousand polygons to a 298x196 buffer. Desmume has a
software renderer, and it's more than adequate. The trick is being compatible.
------
izacus
DS being the Nintendo DS console GPU. Took me awhile to actually verify that's
what they were talking about, especially since it starts with paragraphs about
Vulkan.
~~~
Andrex
I was wondering if it was in reference to the Nintendo system too, but then I
read the domain.
~~~
lostgame
Ha! The domain is what gave it away for me as well. Perhaps the HN title could
be made more clear?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bulk Call Details Records Collection Ends: What That Means - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/11/bulk-call-details-records-collection-ends-what-means
======
logn
The EFF really should do a better job of explaining what this means in
practice. Their last paragraphs hint at it, but they should make clear that in
practice the government has access to all the data it used to, because the
authorizations of the NSA are overlapping. It would be like if a city block
had 20 CCTV cameras on it and 2 were taken down.
More importantly, these records are but one item in the enormous dossier of
each person on earth.
------
DougN7
I'm afraid that just because the NSA says they've stopped doesn't mean I
believe they've stopped. I'd like to hear from all telco CEOs come out and
report their secret rooms with secret taps have all been removed. Even then...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AutoCAD Coming to Mac (and iOS) for First Time in Nearly 20 Years - gphil
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/technology/31autodesk.html?_r=4&src=busln
======
tedkimble
A step in the right direction, I suppose. But as a hacker and an architecture
grad student, no industry infuriates me more than the architectural software
industry.
If you're looking for a new startup idea and you can build a cross-platform 3D
modeler that:
* is compatible with existing file formats
* can cut real-time 2D plans and sections
* provides a well documented API in multiple modern languages (please no more BASIC)
I will hand you $1,000 right now. And that's coming from someone who has
$3,000 in the bank thanks only to his latest loan check.
Seriously, I think there is real money to be made here.
~~~
someone_here
I'm not familiar with 3D modelers, so could you explain what you mean by "cut
real-time 2D plans and sections"?
~~~
tedkimble
Most 3D modelers are solid modelers (i.e. I construct a solid cube or sphere).
When I aggregate many of these solids together (and possibly do some boolean
operations to them), I have a design.
Now I would like my 2D cuts. By this, I mean I would like to look at a 2D
cross-sectional drawing of my design. This may be at the XY plane, YZ plane,
or some other arbitrary plane.
Most 3D modelers can do this, but when you make the 2D cut, you're often
exporting the cut to a new file. If you change anything in the design, the cut
does not update, and you must "re-cut". This is what I mean by real-time.
Good 3D modelers don't do this well, and poor 3D modelers can do this
exceptionally (I'm looking at you Revit). Some can do both, but they're
incredibly complicated and cost tens of thousands (Digital Project)
~~~
roel_v
But for architectural design, you want to work at a higher level than solids.
You want to draw a 'wall' and then parameterize it - 8cm of outside brick, 2
cm of air, 5 cm of insulation, 14 cm of brick, 2 cm of plaster. Plus this
needs to have the right hatch in 2d views etc.
Have you tried Chief Architect? It works rather well in this respect, it's
really made for ease of use. I don't know how well it would scale for large
projects though, I've only toyed with it for small residential design. Plus
the estimating and electrical/HVAC tools are poor to non-existent.
~~~
tedkimble
I'm taking the view of an avant-garde designer in a firm that has a separate
team of drafters to implement designs and construction documents. My focus is
on the conceptual design phase, so I simply have different needs.
~~~
tedkimble
There are a number of programs, but most designers I know prefer Rhino
(rhino3d.com) and the Grasshopper (grasshopper3d.com) plugin. Rhino is now
adding Python (and OSX) support, but they still have a ways to go.
------
absconditus
Why not link to the actual source?
[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/technology/31autodesk.html...](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/31/technology/31autodesk.html?_r=3&src=busln)
~~~
gphil
Good call, maybe I should have gone to the source. I just linked to the
article I came across myself.
~~~
absconditus
There is a link to the NYT article in the article you submitted. The article
you submitted seems to be nothing more than a rewording of the NYT article.
------
blhack
What possible use case is there for autocad on the iPhone? This seems
unnecessarily silly to me.
Unless I missed something from that article...Is this just a client for
viewing renderings or something? I cannot imagine a designer sitting down at
an iPad to do any real work... (although as a sort of digital paper, it works)
~~~
absconditus
From the NYT article (the source of this blog spam):
"Autodesk will soon introduce a free mobile version of the software that will
run on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. That version has more limited
capabilities, Mr. Hanspal said. But with it, an engineer, for example, could
bring drawings to a job site on an iPad, rather than on a big roll of paper,
and make annotations on them."
~~~
rodh257
isn't the ipad screen very reflective and hard to read in sunlight (like that
which would be on a jobsite)?
~~~
roc
In practice it's not that big a deal. Sometimes you have to tilt the screen or
shade it.
But that's more than made up for in the added usefulness. For reference, i
have a far harder time reading an HTC Incredible in the sun.
------
crgwbr
I know AutoCAD is 2D, but can you imagine how awesome Autodesk Inventor or
Solidworks on iPhone would be? They could make use of the Gyro to rotate the
3D model on screen. That way, if you modeled a building, you could put the
camera 'inside' the building and look around just by moving and turning the
device. You could completely visualize and walk through your house before
building it
------
iuhjytgfbnjhmk
Ironically I first used Autocad on SUN Sparcs. We bought a Sparc 5 just for
Autocad because PCs of the day (386) couldn't really handle the graphics
needed.
Then they dropped Unix support, then dropped OpenGL support.
~~~
msisk6
Back in the day Sparc was the development platform for AutoCAD and the DOS,
Mac and other UNIX versions were ports.
Once Windows took off in the marketplace the writing was on the wall and the
anemic sales of the Unix ports in contrast to Windows made keeping those ports
unprofitable.
------
gibsonf1
AutoCad is a dying technology - the real thrust is toward Building Information
Modeling away from 20 year old 2d drafting software. When Autodesk's Revit is
available on the Mac, that will be an impressive announcement.
------
sandGorgon
Is this endgame Linux ? For all intents and purposes, this is the market that
Linux should have. High performance *nix, highly stable, can run huge programs
on it.
Coming from the silicon IC design industry, there are huge IC layout tools
which run exclusively on Linux. They work a lot similar to AutoCAD-like
software - they do a lot of automatic layout, place-and-route, 3D design, etc.
These tools run for weeks at a time on linux machines and are highly optimized
for Linux.
That existing market could have been so easily translated into software like
Autocad for Linux. But something went wrong somewhere - probably the OS
graphics API was not good enough (a frequent enough complaint for Linux)... I
really dont know what.
But even after a proven 4.4 billion dollar market (EDA industry market cap)
for Linux based high-performance design tools, Autocad went after Mac. Knowing
fully well that TCO for a Linux based system is far, far lower than a Mac
based.
~~~
rbranson
Mac is a more commercial software friendly platform. While Apple isn't quite
as friendly as Microsoft, they're going to do a lot more to keep things stable
and friendly for developers than the wild wild west that is graphics and/or
GUI-intensive development on Linux.
~~~
sandGorgon
Most commercial software for Linux is standardized for RHEL or UBuntu LTS
platforms.
I think stability is not the main reason - it may be perceived market or the
graphics API problems that I was talking about (especially with third party
drivers - nvidia and ati)
------
Groxx
> _Autodesk will soon introduce a free mobile version of the software that
> will run on the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch._
Why do I get the feeling that _that_ was the motivation for bringing it to
OSX?
~~~
kls
Touch interface and CAD has been a powerful combination for a long time. When
I work in simulation, Wacom tablets (while not traditional touch) where used
extensively in both 2D and 3D work. I think the iPad is the huge motivator for
the porting work. If they don't get there they could loose a whole market
segment to an upstart.
------
fredliu
I agree AutoCAD might be hard to use on a tiny screen per se, but the more
important message here I guess, is that 3D object modeling/manipulation
capability on mobile device (hardware and software) has come closer to what a
desktop could offer to do something slightly more sophisticated than just
bubble drawing and lame gaming.
Also, with the introduction of OpenGL ES 2.0 support in Android earlier this
year, there should be no surprise the Android version should also come out
very soon.
~~~
roel_v
Autocad has advocated DirectX over OpenGL for years, and OpenGL support has
been removed from Autocad 2010 all together. The OpenGL support in earlier
versions was emulated on top of DirectX. See for example this paper from an
Autodesk engineer: [http://archicad-
talk.graphisoft.com//files/autodesk_inventor...](http://archicad-
talk.graphisoft.com//files/autodesk_inventor_opengl_to_directx_evolution_788.pdf)
.
So I don't know how they're implementing this, I hope they didn't make some
poor sod reimplement the whole rendering engine or worse yet write a new
DirectX -> OpenGL layer that works in a Java stack...
~~~
fredliu
I think they have to be using OpenGL, as they are "coming back to Mac" and
AFAIK directx is no where to be found on Mac. Also with the simultaneous
release for both the Mac and the iOS version, I'd think there must be lots of
reusable code around OpenGL that'd made the porting to android not an
extremely daunting task.
~~~
roel_v
Yes I expressed myself wrong, they must use OpenGL. I assume they have
different rendering engines as the paper I linked to mentions an option for
software-OpenGL (MESA-like). Also my 'OpenGL is emulated on top of DirectX' is
wrong it seems from re-reading that paper, I misremembered.
------
angusgr
Will be interesting to see what variant of AutoCAD is released.
My Dad is an architect, very long-term AutoCAD veteran, long term disliker of
Windows. IIRC the previous cross-platform AutoCAD was the stripped down LT (is
that right?) version. Useful for some things but not a viable choice for heavy
AutoCAD users at the time.
------
riltim
Does this mean AutoCAD is going to be shipping with Mono? Quite a bit of
AutoCAD functionality is now written in .NET.
~~~
iuhjytgfbnjhmk
Unlikely Acad is heavily DirectX
~~~
riltim
No. Recent version of AutoCAD are customizable via .NET and core libraries
that ship as part of AutoCAD are written in .NET too. If you have AutoCAD
installed look at
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Autodesk\AutoCAD\R18.1\ACAD-9007:409\Applications,
all of the sub entries that have a entry MANAGED of Type REG_DWORD with a
value of 1 are .NET extensions. With that being said they either have to ship
Mono with the Mac version or rewrite a ton of code in C++.
------
gibsonf1
And please don't forget, Autocad was originally written in Lisp :)
~~~
pmarin
NO. AutoLisp has been used only at scripting level
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tragedy Of The Social Gaming Commons: A Blueprint For Change - dwynings
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/03/tragedy-of-the-social-gaming-commons-a-blueprint-for-change/
======
mohitk
Rampell is correct in calling for some sort of regulation and its just a
matter of time before someone steps up to the plate. Just like any other
profession, this needs to be regulated as well. Internet has to become a
completely legitimate source for all advertisers and consumers in the long
run.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NSA refused Clinton a secure BlackBerry like Obama, so she used her own - tortilla
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/nsa-refused-clinton-a-secure-blackberry-like-obama-so-she-used-her-own/
======
fabulist
This is a classic story that gets repeated again and again, and security
professionals should take note; if you forbid your users from doing something,
they will route around you to do it, and it will be end up being less secure
than if you were involved.
Haroon Meer says that saying "no" is a finite resource that security
professionals are too willing to tap. If an organization comes to see your
department as an obstacle that shoots down ideas and never contributes, you
end up ignored. Chip in with ways to make bad ideas less bad, because we
already know that deploying any vendor's software is a loss to security.
~~~
talmand
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that security professionals should
lower their standards because too many people don't want to follow the
protocols that security professionals have determined to be the best course of
action?
Must be nice to have a high enough position in life to ignore security
protocols at whim. If I did that I would be fired.
~~~
mywittyname
I think he means, if you tell somebody that you can't do something that's
technically possible, they will find someone who can and will do it.
They did it for the previous administration but refused to do it for her and
offered no good alternative. She couldn't fire them and replace them and with
someone more capable, so her team found an alternative.
This is exactly how a person who is used to getting shit done would operation.
You either break down obstacles or you go around.
~~~
13thLetter
Just to be clear, in this case "getting shit done" meant recklessly creating a
massive security breach at the highest levels of the government.
~~~
mywittyname
During a period of time when government insiders were leaking damaging
classified information on the internet.
I can see how she would consider her actions to be the lesser to two evils, at
least she could trust her people.
~~~
13thLetter
That's the equivalent of someone who sees a bunch of broken windows in the
neighborhood and therefore figures it's okay to toss a beer bottle out the
window of their car.
Mind you, I could see that being her thought process, it's very human. But it
is hardly a ringing endorsement of her behavior and principles, to say the
least.
------
specialp
I understand that is is very inconvenient to use the channels provided to
transmit confidential information, but that goes with the job. It is also
probably inconvenient to have a massive physical security detail follow you
everywhere as well but that is also necessary as a high profile government
official.
Securing mobile communications on a massive scale according to SCI government
specifications does not happen overnight, and is not very easy. So
unfortunately she has to use the channels provided, however clunky they are. I
am sure Mrs. Clinton wouldn't hop into her car to visit a friend without
gathering a full security detail. Yes this curtails her life, and yes it is
inconvenient, but it is necessary just like securing her communications is!
It is like if I were working for a large bank, and I put in a back door VPN to
the network since their VPN client only works on Windows, and I want to use
Linux. Sure more convenient for me, but it is not my place to subvert security
for my own personal convenience.
~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I don't know why this comment was downvoted without explanation, because your
point is correct: as a public servant, one is expected to live up to and
follow the rules and laws dictated for that position.
Security is something you never need until you need it the most.
~~~
kafkaesq
_Security is something you never need until you need it the most._
Yeah, we get that part. But it isn't about secure, or not secure.
It's that she (or more specifically Donald Reid, her secure information
technology coordinator) was never provided a legitimate explanation as to why
this technology was available for the POTUS -- and for her predecessor -- but
not for her. So it's understandable that they felt dissed.
~~~
specialp
Feeling dissed, is one thing, but subverting the process is another. The
explanation given was that scaling the Blackberry that the POTUS was given was
unmanageable. Whether that is a fair explanation or not we do not know. Even
if it were not a fair explanation, does that give Mrs. Clinton the right to
basically backdoor the whole process?
~~~
kafkaesq
_Feeling dissed, is one thing, but subverting the process is another._
Agreed - I definitely do not condone her going rogue in response.
My message is simply: if the NSA can't (or won't) reasonably coordinate with
the 2nd most important office holder in the Executive Branch, on what should
be a perfectly tractable issue... then we have to wonder whose interests
they're serving, exactly.
_The explanation given was that scaling the Blackberry that the POTUS was
given was unmanageable._
Actually what they said was quite different.
------
Someone1234
This makes Clinton seem petty.
She had a wired-computer she could check email on in the SCIF, but she refused
and was only willing to read her email on a Blackberry, so her staff tried to
get authorisation for one, failed, and then tried to get her a highly
sensitive top level device just so she could check her unclassified email in
the SCIF (she could use a standard Blackberry elsewhere).
I'm siding with the NSA here. She should just buck up and learn to check her
email on a wired PC like everyone else.
~~~
res0nat0r
This is easy when you work in an office every day at the same location for
your job. As Secretary of State travelling all of the time around the world
this isn't realistic.
~~~
talmand
Imagine all the previous people in that position that were incapable of
properly doing their jobs because they had no Blackberry in which to receive
secured information.
~~~
inopinatus
It says in the article that Condaleeza Rice + staff were authorized for BB use
whilst SecState, but the grant of that was withdrawn for Clinton.
~~~
Someone1234
It wasn't withdrawn for Clinton, it was withdrawn for the devices themselves.
The NSA decided the potential consequences for a baseband compromise within a
SCIF was too high risk.
Honestly I suspect their policy is "no wireless devices within the SCIF
period." From wireless keyboards, to cellphones, to WiFi, and beyond. The
black phone might be authorised but I suspect that is due to operational
importance (e.g. calls vital to national security).
------
chris_wot
This is literally the highest level example of Bruce Schneier's theory that
people understand risks, but security people don't understand people. [1]
Let's look at this classic case: they won't give Hillary Clinton access to a
modified BlackBerry that Obama was using because it made security
"unmanageable". Even though Clinton's position is literally one of the most
important in the country, if not the _world_ the NSA decided it was a security
threat and so just didn't allow it to happen.
So Clinton setup her own email server infrastructure and conducted all State
business through that.
So now those same security people caused a considerably greater threat to
national security.
Someone should find who denied Clinton access to a secure BB, then they should
be removed from any security related work. I almost feel sorry for them if
Clinton becomes President, because their days will hopefully be numbered. But
I don't feel sorry, because their short-sightedness caused a greater risk to
U.S. National Security.
1\.
[https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/08/people_unde...](https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2009/08/people_understand_ri.html)
~~~
tn13
It feel the same about these modern chip based credit cards. While giving a
totally intangible security benefit these cards have brought great discomfort
to everyone. A swipe takes around 1 second to register. Chip based cards take
anywhere from 5 to 9 seconds with the message "do not remove card" flashing in
between. Machines are designed such that you have to insert card in a slit you
cant see, I have seen elderly people struggle to do that and cards falling out
on floor creating more delays.
I really wonder if the wasted human time is worth saving handful of frauds.
~~~
elthran
I still find it bizarre the USA is only just dealing with this - the UK and
most of Europe moved to chip and PIN years ago, and are now increasingly
rapidly moving to using contactless payments.
~~~
mikeash
I'm American and I find it bizarre too.
What really baffles me is how inconsistent the rollout has been. Chip-capable
terminals are everywhere, but maybe 3/4ths of them don't have the chip part
enabled. So many times, I've inserted my card only to find that it simply
doesn't work. Yesterday I made a purchase where they had taped over the slot
so you wouldn't even try.
It seems like once you have the hardware, the rest should just work. I don't
know what the hell is going on.
~~~
stock_toaster
I was at a place the other day with a taped over chip slot, with a little note
saying "please swipe". I asked what the deal was, and the guy said all chip
purchases were being double billed (apparently due to some software issue). I
commented, "at least they were being _securely_ double billed". Chuckles all
around.
------
johngalt
A number of comments here blame the security people or government IT in
general for not being accommodating. That may be appropriate in some cases,
but anyone who has worked in IT for any length of time understands how this
happens. Systems that you don't like are created by bad policies, not bad IT
people. Bad policies are driven by overly centralized security responsibility.
The security department that says no to <X> because they are responsible for
whatever you manage to do with <X>.
Think of a car accident. There is a diffusion of responsibility. The decisions
both drivers made, road conditions, weather, speeds etc... You would only be
concerned with the manufacturer of the car if one of the safety systems
malfunctioned. Yet in the case of computer security we want to hang all the
contributing factors/decions around one party: the security team. Imagine if
General Motors was liable for every car accident; regardless of fault. Every
time someone didn't put on their seatbelt, or drove through a flooded road
etc... What kind of cars would be produced? Certainly not the kind you would
enjoy driving.
The day that we can have the security departments we want is the day we
understand that we can't absolve ourselves of all security responsibility.
------
grej
Having dealt with classified work in a previous life, there's no doubt that if
any normal joe without her political connections did anything remotely close
to this type of thing, they'd wind up in prison.
Clinton will probably skate. And yet she'll be the first person demanding that
we try Snowden and keep Chelsea Manning locked up.
~~~
jhayward
It's not crystal clear that she violated any laws. Agency heads determine
policy for their department's classified information, and she was the most
senior of the agency heads. She had explicit authority to classify and
declassify information, and to say how it can be disseminated.
There isn't that much statutory groundwork to support charges and what there
is says an agency head "is assumed to be acting under executive authority",
i.e. as the arm of the President.
The Congressional Research Service wrote a rather helpful summary[1] of the
myriad aspects of classification and law.
[1]
[https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf](https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf)
But yeah, if you or I were to do what she did, big difference - just not all
because of politics.
~~~
grej
I hear you, although I would argue that someone with her position should have
been the first person to know whether what they were sending needed a security
designation or not.
The fact that 10-15% or so of those emails needed a retroactive security
classification demonstrates that she held either had a cavalier attitude
toward guarding that information, or was simply incompetent in knowing what
should and should not have been classified.
Whether that rises to the level of a criminal act, I suspect, depends on
whether any of the 30k+ emails she deleted, claiming they were personal, also
contained classified material, because then the crime is lying to the FBI more
so than the reckless handing of classified information.
~~~
snowwrestler
Information does not get de-classified just because it is publicly known.
For example if one of Clinton's friends forwarded her a NYTimes story about
CIA activity in Syria, and she forwarded that to a deputy, well, now she has
both received and sent classified information from her email.
And even though it might have been on the front page of a newspaper, a
retrospective review would designate it as classified information.
Would a staff-level person get fired in that situation? I don't know. _So much
stuff_ is classified these days, and yet the press is pretty good about
ferreting out stories. Any regular reader of the major news operations is
probably going to see classified info on a regular basis.
How easy is it to keep track of which public, well-known news stories should
be excluded from nonsecure email? I would guess, not that easy.
~~~
over
I've seen the same thing at companies, where employees get in trouble for
talking about confidential information that is known outside of the company.
I think the rationale is because sometimes the file gets updated internally
such that the leaked info is no longer accurate and the person with access
might screw up.
------
jsprogrammer
The title seems incorrect.
>And while Clinton's predecessor Condaleeza Rice had obtained waivers for
herself and her staff to use BlackBerry devices, Clinton's staff was told that
"use [of the BlackBerry] expanded to an unmanageable number of users from a
security perspective, so those waivers were phased out and BlackBerry use was
not allowed in her Suite," an e-mail from the NSA's senior liaison to the
State Department noted.
NSA says that they could not ensure the security of BlackBerry devices. That's
not a refusal, just the facts. Is someone expecting the NSA to magically
conjure unlimited, secure BlackBerries?
~~~
hackinthebochs
Securing the blackberry is a red herring. What they wanted was a functionally
equivalent mobile device. If providing such capabilities isn't exactly what
the NSA should be doing, then they shouldn't exist.
------
rrmm
From my inside perspective, government IT is dumb.
Not that that excuses her going off and using her own. The NSA should probably
evaluate if the end result of their refusal was more security or less.
~~~
barney54
But why would the NSA believe that she would set up her own server? Other
Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that.
~~~
bbatha
> Other Secretaries of State hadn't done anything like that.
They actually have, the FBI is auditing the last 4 Secretaries of State and
has found similar use of private email servers [1]. Outside of the state
department the Bush administration was rife with the use of private, RNC
managed email servers [2].
1\. [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-
cla...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/us/politics/state-dept-classified-
data-found-ex-secretaries-personal-email-john-kerry-condeleezza-rice-colin-
powell.html?_r=0)
2\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controv...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_White_House_email_controversy)
~~~
barney54
None of these guys used their private email exclusively for government
business. That is the key. They all had State Department email. Clinton did
not. ALL of her email was on her private server.
------
AcerbicZero
Perhaps I'm overly cynical but I'm guessing she got caught with her phone in
the SCIF more than a few times before she got the message to leave it outside.
------
cm2187
I was rather impressed by Clinton's IT skills, managing her own mail server,
using electronic communications extensively, and according to this even asking
the NSA to provide a bberry.
Then I read:
> As I had been speculating, the issue here is one of personal comfort…
> [Secretary Clinton] does not use a computer.
What?
~~~
azinman2
She obviously didn't setup the email server herself.
~~~
deong
I might be more excited about voting for her if I thought she could
commiserate with the pain of sendmail.cf files.
------
Glyptodon
So basically she's even more guilty than previously realized, but perhaps a
little more sympathetically so.
------
thedz
Important bit from the article:
> the solution supported by the NSA—its SME PED (Secure Mobile Environment
> Portable Electronic Device)—was hardly BlackBerry-like. SME PED devices are
> based on a secure version of Windows CE, and they're only rated up to
> "Secret" classification. And as Clinton was taking over at State, the SME
> PED was only just becoming available.
It sounds like at the time that Clinton was moving into State, there was,
literally, no good solution supported by the NSA for mobile email use.
Which considering it was 2009, and mobile email was already prevalent with
Blackberry, iPhones/Androids, etc, is well, maybe par for the course for
government entities.
------
junto
I'm reading between the lines here, but is it suggesting that Clinton didn't
trust the PC she had been assigned, and that she suspected she was being spied
on?
Was this the reason why she chose to run her own email server (not that it was
secure but still)?
~~~
grej
Maybe she did not want anyone in to be able to FOIA her correspondences. She
has said she deleted about 30k emails off the server because she claimed they
were "personal in nature". The problem is, that wasn't her call to make.
------
joesmo
I'm so glad people are finally, hopefully going to shut up about this soon.
I'm surprised Clinton didn't just say this herself and end the scandal months
ago. It's an extremely lame scandal because we're talking about unencrypted
email anyways, email that could have been read by anyone and everyone and
almost undoubtedly was. The irony that it was the NSA (as usual) that made
things less secure instead of more secure is certainly not lost on me.
~~~
barney54
People are not going to shut up about this. This will be an issue through the
election. It's a really big issue that the Secretary of State was so cavalier
about how she handled classified information.
~~~
Aloha
I'm going to point out that no one has found a single email sent to Secretary
Clinton that was born secret - all of the emails were retroactively
reclassified.
~~~
thrill
No, they are not "retroactively" classified. They were intentionally kept out
of the classification process by Clinton via her undisclosed server. When the
emails were finally inspected for classification many of them were designated
as containing what _should_ have been classified from their creation. This act
was fully intentional by Clinton. And inexcusable.
~~~
Aloha
That would cover emails sent by her - but not emails sent /to/ her - which
arguably if they were classified never should have left the email servers
hosted by Department of State/General Service Administration.
~~~
castis
I don't believe I understand the reason for pointing out the distinction. IIRC
the overarching issue here is the subterfuge involved in the email server even
existing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clojure + Processing + Live-coding at the REPL - phren0logy
http://automata.cc/live-processing
======
octopus
Can you use the OpenGL bindings from Processing in your application ? This
would be an interesting application for doing some OpenGL graphics on JVM.
I didn't used Clojure, how difficult will be for a Scheme/Common Lisp guy to
start hacking in Clojure ?
~~~
rje
If you want straight-up OpenGL bindings for clojure, there's Penumbra:
<https://github.com/ztellman/penumbra>
------
reaktivo
Ruby based Processing + Live-coding <https://github.com/jashkenas/ruby-
processing/> a really cool project.
------
lg
Hey, I was doing this with clj-processing in summer '09... except my "eval
button" was C-M-x :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA's research into intelligent life support simulation - zeristor
http://traclabs.com/projects/biosim/
======
zeristor
Last time I looked at this it was Java/CORBA code, with a GUI front end.
I'd love to run 10k simulations headless to test for robustness, as I
recollect they model small environments and have the human model agents go
through a scripted day. Upgrading this to actual agents accomplishing needed
tasks in an AI fashion would be thrilling.
Also for modelling a space colony one would need to ramp up the modelled
humans to 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 2000, ... or so. I suppose the Central
Limit Theorem comes in at a large enough population
One issue was they need to use the CO2 absorption profile of each species of
plants as they grow, but this has only been measured for several species.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I discovered I have the brain of a psychopath - danso
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/03/how-i-discovered-i-have-the-brain-of-a-psychopath
======
api
Two possibilities here: (1) this adds fuel to the neuroskeptic fire, or (2)
the author is a high-functioning psychopath.
I've often wondered if there are such things. There are high-functioning
schizophrenics, manics, autistics, just about anything else. Why not
psychopaths? In the psychopath case being high-functioning would mean you've
kind of intellectualized empathy, learned to empathize and regulate your
behavior via other compensatory neural pathways.
Our image of the psychopath comes from the axe murderer or the con man in a
suit who charismatically takes charge of a company, wrecks it, and makes off
with everyone's retirement savings (assuming he/she does not land in prison).
But in the same sense our image of the schizophrenic comes from the guy
babbling at invisible monsters at your local street corner. There are people
all around who have abnormal neurophysiology who have managed to deal with it
without it terribly harming their lives or the lives of others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Duped by Innocence Project, Milwaukee man now free - whbk
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/duped-by-innocence-project-milwaukee-man-now-free-b99386015z1-281852841.html
======
ajdusiejdbd
This is the kind of thing that happens when the victims family members are
forced to rely on the prosecutors office and the courts, both of whom are far
to effected by politics and media, to represent their wishes in court. A
complete mess and pr disaster for everyone involved without a single
consideration for thr victims feelings. They will never have peace.
------
ZeroGravitas
Is this the same Innocence Project that usually uses DNA evidence or is the
name a coincidence?
[http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/](http://www.innocenceproject.org/about/)
~~~
zyx321
That one was founded in 1992, the one mentioned in this article was founded in
1999.
That's one heck of a "coincidence" right there, I'd say.
~~~
hackerboos
They should sue.
I immediately thought of the Innocence Project founded in 1992 when reading
this article. The latter could severely damage the reputation of the former.
------
dalek_cannes
It seems a lot of America's 'justice' takes place in the absence of a judge or
jury: in the presence of a prosecutor with a plea bargain offer. At least in
third world countries, the coercion and bias is in plain view.
~~~
dalek_cannes
I just realized this comment is irrelevant. This is the most important bit
about this article:
> We know now that the explanation was that Simon was snared in a trap set by
> people who wanted to end the death penalty, no matter what the cost.
~~~
ZeroGravitas
It's the same tactic, and according to the story people posed as law officers
to carry it out so its fairly similar.
~~~
seszett
Is that legal in the US?
~~~
zyx321
It varies from state to state.
~~~
FireBeyond
No, I'm pretty certain it is illegal in every state to impersonate a police
officer. In some states, it is also illegal to use equipment such as blue
lights in a vehicle, etc.
------
ars
Seems to me Jack Rimland should be prosecuted and disbarred.
And I guess it's too late to re-arrest Anthony Porter, who presumably really
did do it.
~~~
iSnow
I have a hard time understanding why Protess, Ciolino and Rimland are not
under arrest right now. Maybe that's still coming, but destroying the life of
a person should not be without severe consequences.
------
bhaumik
First thought reading this was IP's involvement in the Adnan case (Serial).
Had no idea IP was this big.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Have The Grammar Police. Why Not The Math Police? - tokenadult
http://www.creativitypost.com/education/we_have_the_grammar_police._why_not_the_math_police
======
zwieback
The reason we have the grammar police but not the math police is that grammar
is somehow encoded in our brains at a more fundamental level than math. I
don't remember all the details but guys like Stephen Pinker argue that there's
a fundamental language logic we are born with and it's expressed in grammar.
I don't think such a fundamental encoding exists for math, it's more of an
abstraction we learn long after we've learned to speak grammatically correctly
(or is that "correct"?).
Having said that - yes we absolutely need the Math Police! Especially because
math is easier to agree on than what's correct grammar. "I didn't say nothin'
to nobody" to mean "I didn't say anything to anybody" might seem incorrect
when to some but still follows a fundamental grammar logic of its own so I
think the Math Police's arrest to conviction ratio would be much better.
------
venomsnake
When people become versed in math and statistics the politicians will have
harder time lying and deceiving. Also carries, bank, big businesses and
advertisers. So it is in no one's interest.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Deal with Startup Failure (Reload) - wilschroter
http://www.forbes.com/sites/wilschroter/2013/06/21/how-to-deal-with-startup-failure-reload/
======
dmor
$30 million in sales to bankruptcy in 6 months? That's crazy, I didn't realize
that was even possible.
~~~
wilschroter
If you get over your toes in operating capital it can absolutely happen. Think
about a low margin business where most of the money just flows right back in
operating costs. You only need a few months of mistakes to be in serious
trouble.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apps are trouble for apple - williamldennis
http://blog.willdennis.com/2013/02/08/apps-are-trouble-for-apple/
======
pedalpete
This is a bit of a double edged sword. Competitors will always make apps to
compete, and with the app store, Apple is competing with other app makers. If
apple is able to always make better apps than anybody else, and they only make
them for their platform, developers won't build for the platform anymore,
meaning less apps, and in theory more energy being put towards the other
platforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
500Startups invests in 9 additional Mexican companies - diego
http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/28/500startups-invests-in-9-additional-mexican-companies/
======
griscuevasz
Congratulations guys!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Space station pilots 'interplanetary internet' - vaksel
http://www.itnews.com.au/News/149945,space-station-pilots-interplanetary-internet.aspx
======
pavel_lishin
And thus begins the network of the Qeng Ho.
------
zandorg
It's a shame I don't have this system to cope with the disruption of 45 second
adverts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The coming automation of propaganda - donara
https://warontherocks.com/2019/08/the-coming-automation-of-propaganda/
======
im3w1l
Imagine you go to an online forum and that there is a 99.99% chance that a
given message was written by a bot. Imagine further they are sufficiently well
written you can't tell from the post itself whether it was made by a bot or
not How would people respond to that?
Well the obvious consequence is that you have to stop paying attention to
random posts. You have to depend on something outside of the forum itself to
find a list of people to pay attention to. That will be your friends and your
family. And then it will be whatever media tells you to pay attention to.
Getting out of your filter bubble will be impossible because as soon as you
step out you are faced by an onslaught of bots.
Maybe you could travel around IRL and acquire a diverse list of voices that
way. But realistically only the elite could afford that.
Actually lets be even more cynical. Say you go traveling, meet someone. You
add them on a social network. But it's not them it's a bot. And they get a few
bucks for selling your eyeballs.
But then we can even further imagine that you follow them with a fake account
too, and so the eyeballs were actually worthless.
~~~
throwaway94857
I believe the age of the anonymous internet is over. It's time for real world
identity linked accounts for participating in online conversations.
This is necessary for 2 reasons. First, it gives us confidence the people we
are speaking to are (probably) not bots.
Second, it reduces the need for online censorship beyond what is required by
law. So much of the hateful garbage posted online is only posted in the first
place because of anonymity. Remove that, we probably don't get that posting in
the first place so we can avoid the messy issue of enforced top down
censorship.
~~~
corndoge
It is a slippery slope from regulating "hateful garbage" (to be explicit, I
interpret this to include speech that is not necessarily hate speech) to
censorship of whatever the state determines to be wrongthink.
I'll take my anonymity where I can get it, thanks. And as an aside, it's
somewhat ironic you post this on a throwaway.
~~~
throwaway94857
I agree completely. I'm saying if we remove anonymity we won't need top down
censorship.
------
jointpdf
Recommended reading on this subject from RAND:
[https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html)
It covers the underlying strategy of Russian disinformation operations and
why/how it works. Mind you this is from 2016, so prior to the Mueller
investigation. If nothing else, read the blurbs in the text boxes.
~~~
hackermailman
The right wing has their own version of this, a KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov,
who has powerful (meme) videos about the coming destruction of America and how
it would take 3 decades to fulfill, all recorded in the early 80s. 'To change
the perception of reality of every American, despite their abundence of
information, nobody is able to come to sensible conclusions,... it's a great
brainwashing process that takes decades'
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bX3EZCVj2XA)
Yuri also claims the Soviet Union never fell, it just reinvented itself. This
is pretty standard 'alt-right' materials that people should pay attention to
if they wish to understand that reactionary wing of politics
------
joe_the_user
The idea is that something like the (formerly) OpenAI text generator could be
used to enhance "boiler room" propaganda operations.
The idea is one person could decide on a message and hundred of articles
pushing the message could be generated.
Maybe that would work. Maybe you'd see so much of this people would start to
get more selective. Maybe it wouldn't matter because people believe what suits
them rather than just being conditioned.
~~~
zxcmx
IMO the end state is way worse.
Imagine campaigns that:
Have a general idea of your life stage, interests, career, personality etc,
based on advertising profile and commercial surveillance.
Can tailor each message to the recipient.
Can a/b test the crap out of every message for target groups, optimising for
best response.
Can deliver fully customised messages in a natural voice (aka google duplex).
Conversational ai not required, but can understand some stock phrases and
responses.
The future is robots calling you, messaging you, infiltrating social media
groups, probing your personality and beliefs, finding YOUR buttons and pushing
them, repeatedly.
~~~
trqx
That sounds a lot like how current web ads works to me, only with some further
optimizations.
Am I wrong ? I hope so.
------
olivermarks
'As U.S. policymakers remain indecisive over how to prevent a repeat of the
2016 election interference' Was this ever proven? all I ever heard about was
conspiracy theories around 100k of Facebook ads and Cambridge Analytica being
accused of various things. Nothing concrete was ever seriously discussed and
the Mueller team findings were inconclusive.
~~~
hackermailman
The interference really was only the leaked Clinton emails, the facebook
propaganda is just typical propaganda nobody really pays attention to unless
it's to confirm their own bias, nobody anywhere changes their political
opinion because of something they read on facebook. I doubt Russians had any
real influence, the question is those leaked emails, which everybody wants to
know the provenance. Personally I think it was just some DNC pro-Bernie
activist staffer, who burned from the primary shenanigans decided to leak to
Assange and not Russians, (because we all know those radical DNC tech staffers
are bernie bros (now Yang shills) from SV) despite the nonsense indicators of
compromise that the FBI never saw but was only provided by the DNC themselves.
Even if you believe that was a major influencer I don't think so, as a neutral
foreign observer of US politics I saw a wild card that the Americans were
ready to put into office to 'disrupt' as a protest vote because if anybody
remembers, they were only given two choices before the disruptor, Clinton 2.0
or Bush 3.0. They responded accordingly by pushing the maniac into power just
to implode the system from what my foreign analysis indicates.
I think the most dangerous propaganda are the news propagandists from MSNBC
and other networks who pretend to be from your specific subculture/groups, and
then feed you lies and propaganda. That to me is the most dangerous, the
Russian bots? nope everybody sees through cruise control shilling but when
it's somebody from their own group in a news org and they're spouting lies
it's a lot more difficult. I'm old so back in the 1990s news propaganda was
just absolutely blatant, any kid could tell Norman General
Swartzkopf(spelling) was making up bs about 'precision bombs' we all knew they
were just landing wherever and blowing up Mother Theresa's Iraq orphanage by
accident, but now it's different. The news corps discovered they need to
recruit people from specific identities and use them as a weapon to feed lies
to their subculture.
~~~
shadowbanme
Honestly I’m still prettt unconvinced by the emails too, for the simple reason
that I’d expect Russian intelligence to have a load of information _much_ more
embarrassing than those DNC emails. If they’d shared the 33,000 “deleted”
emails off Clinton’s private server, then that would have been something.
Also I’m interested in the dog that does not bark — Chinese interference in US
politics. Does China prefer one side to the other? Which one? What are they
doing about it?
~~~
jsnider3
> Chinese interference in US politics
Check out
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute)
and
[https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/of...](https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/02/official-
chinese-propaganda-now-online-from-the-wapo/70690/)
------
patientplatypus
This is mildly related, but it's an interesting data point.
I was at a bar tonight and I chatted with a guy who works for a major cable
provider. Apparently they generate 10 petabytes of data _an hour_ on what you
watch, when you watch it etc. That's a lot when you take into account that its
all text columns in a MSQL database somewhere. I think they have enough room
to have it stashed in S3 for a week before it goes into cold storage because
otherwise it's just too bloody expensive.
What are they storing you ask? There's a whole tree on what you're
demographics are, a tree on what your device is, a tree on what you are
watching etc. And they're all cross referenced with what ad you watch, for how
long, when in the show etc.
All of this whizbang tech to find out how to make sure you spend that extra
dollar on whatever crap they want you to. I'm sure that the coming automation
is pretty horrifying, but what we have now is pretty terrible as well.
------
SubiculumCode
I read a recent article on foreignpolicy.com about a Chinese Bonds/etc rating
agency which systematically gave Democratic nations lower ratings than
authoritarian ratings. This was taken as a form of Chinese propaganda and
ignored as such...but this article makes me wonder, as much as I hate to say
it, if they are right...
------
inflatableDodo
Great. Plato's Cave is tricky enough to navigate as it is, without it being
covered in graffiti.
------
rrggrr
This is old news BUT hasn't reached it's Apex by a long shot. Candidates that
are aggressively transparent, speak with brutal truth, and accept it may cost
them an election... They will ironically be hard to beat long haul in this
environment.
~~~
i_am_nomad
In some ways, that’s what Trump was - he didn’t stick to the predictable
talking points and empty platitudes that form the language most other
politicians speak in. He spoke much more bluntly and aggressively than we were
used to. It seemed to have helped him enormously, even though the things he
actually said turned out to be pure falsehoods.
On the other hand, we have had actual honest and realistic candidates, like
Larry Lessig. And they were so honest they got squashed by their party
apparatus before they ever had a chance.
------
SideburnsOfDoom
> While the 2016 election mythologized the power of these influence-actors,
> such work is slow, costly, and labor-intensive. Humans must manually create
> and manage accounts, hand-write posts and comments, and spend countless
> hours reading content online to signal-boost particular narratives. However,
> recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) may soon enable the
> automation of much of this work, massively amplifying the disruptive
> potential of online influence operations.
All I disagree with is that it's already semi-automated, has been for some
time.
A long time ago, I saw a tech support person with a spreadsheet full of
formulaic responses for common issues. "We're sorry you're having trouble with
_x_ , dear _y_, have you tried _z_. Please accept a $10 discount voucher for
your trouble. Thanks, Bobby Techops" kind of thing.
It has progressed, I'm sure. Why wouldn't it? And will progress more.
And the large actors have no incentive to tell everyone how far they have got.
The opposite, in fact, they will try to hide it, e.g. Cambridge Analytica
being dragged kicking and screaming into the light.
And a small army of clever educated young people isn't that expensive to a
large corporate or state actor. Call Centers depend on it.
------
roywiggins
At this point you could probably generate qanon posts with a Markov chain, no
deep learning required.
------
geargrinder
Pretty soon the internet will be the place for bots to meet and manipulate one
another. I'm sure this is happening to some extent already.
The Democrat bots are triggering the Republican bots, and the Russian bots are
fighting the Chinese bots for mindshare. Googlebot cannot save us.
------
throwaway13337
This could actually encourage filtering for better quality content.
I could totally see bots writing most of the YouTube, reddit, and Instagram
me-too-style content.
What about your average HN post?
If people want to not look like spam, they're going to have to start being
more insightful. This is good.
~~~
techntoke
I don't think automation will work or has worked. Look at emails and
robocalls. I still get plenty of spam, even if it gets filtered into a spam
folder, there is no reason I should have to peruse my spam folder but still
some important emails get labeled as spam. I believe the issue is that
corporations as a whole simply can't be trusted, and that the only solution is
decentralization with open source technology and making it easy for users to
create their own filters and control their own data.
Also, the bots I see on reddit, YouTube and Instagram generally aren't pushing
liberal agendas but right-wing. The automation I see are networks of
influencers working together to push out the same narratives.
------
IIAOPSW
I never got around to finishing the Muller Report, but from what I recall and
what was made public, Russia's influence campaign was largely traditional and
human powered.
Here's a bitter pill for everyone. If it turns out that a large fraction of
people really can have their opinion changed by bots that wouldn't even pass a
Turing test, maybe its time to rethink the idea that everyone gets to vote.
~~~
jlawson
The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the
decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war.
Without voting, a large group of people who are being acted against have no
choice but to use force to get what they want. Democracy is a pressure release
valve (same with free speech).
If I can't use the soapbox I use the ballot box. If I can't use the ballot
box, I use the ammo box.
So it doesn't matter how dumb the voters are. What matters if is if they can
generate violence.
~~~
IIAOPSW
>The thing about voting is, the purpose is not to increase the quality of the
decision. The practical purpose of voting is simply to avoid civil war.
Actually its both. Voting is a legitimacy mechanism (aka avoiding civil war)
and a competence mechanism (aka making quality decisions). It is much better
at the former, and typically better than historical systems (re: monarchy) at
the latter.
It is perfectly reasonable to consider a trade-off that buys us higher
competence at a loss of 10%-15% legitimacy. That's a small enough fraction of
the population that I wouldn't worry too much about them starting a civil war.
Especially if homogeneously distributed.
------
pgcj_poster
I can wait until Reddit makes me give it my social security number before I
can log in.
------
FakeComments
I’d argue that we saw automated propaganda at least three years ago — and
there’s a case Facebook et al have been engaging for at least a decade.
------
verisimilitudes
> _As U.S. policymakers remain indecisive over how to prevent a repeat of the
> 2016 election interference, the threat is looming ever more ominous on the
> horizon._
That interference is specious, I think. In any case, the US interferes in
every election it can, so is it unreasonable to believe every other country
that can interfere would?
> _You probably know enough to avoid following small, suspicious accounts on
> Twitter or browsing links to sites of which you’ve never heard._
I suppose ''surfing the web'' is truly dead, then. This seems to me like an
article written for sheep.
> _The second vulnerability is a legal system with numerous blind spots that
> lawmakers should close. Reddit is the third-most-popular social media site
> on the Internet, surpassing Facebook among American Internet users. It is
> also shockingly vulnerable, requiring only an e-mail address to register an
> account. Consequently, anyone could theoretically register an unlimited
> number of accounts and, being careful not to stand out to system
> administrators, effectively control conversations on whatever topics they
> want._
So, here's the meat of this garbage, then, in which it reveals its ulterior
motive. Yes, Reddit is the Wild West, only requiring an email instead of the
socially acceptable email, phone, government ID, etc.
> _The third vulnerability is online anonymity. While we absolutely do not
> advocate for de-anonymizing the Internet, it is now so influential over
> American society that legislators should not leave regulation to social
> media platforms alone. Congress should put more pressure on social media
> companies to ensure their users are, at a minimum, who they say they are._
Well, what I was going to write about this issue, after reading just the first
few paragraphs, should then be a response to this nonsense. As an aside, there
is no ''Who they say they are'' in a truly anonymous system.
I was going to suggest anonymity, true anonymity, as a solution to this issue.
I prefer those venues where there are no names attached and one can't tell
even if multiple messages are sent by the same person. When you have a
discussion in this way, you only judge each message on its own merit. There is
no ''Gee, this can't be a bot or government agent, since this guy has a
history.'' or any such thing. So, if it seems a great many messages have been
made in support of something that isn't usually in the venue, such as a
political candidate, say, it seems fair to regard it as astroturfing. When no
one or few have a face, it's harder to astroturf, if only because everyone
will constantly be on edge and are less likely to be swayed by a few messages.
Not only that, but since none or few of the real users have identities, you
can't target them with specialized messages or track them or other such
things.
Anyway, what a terrible article, ironically submitted by someone with an
account less than a day old. I almost wish I could make a living writing such
cheap garbage, but I figure it would eventually get to me.
~~~
_jn
Emails are optional on reddit.
------
darepublic
Another attack by the old guard trying to use the AI bogeyman to transform the
internet into a place they can control.
------
scarejunba
This is the best thing to happen to human information processing since the
printing press. The democratization of propaganda will mean that no longer
will people be slave to the voices that are loudest. Now, all ideas will fight
equally.
No longer will Judith Miller be powerful and lead us into war because we will
not trust her. Because when everyone is a liar, we will not choose one liar to
trust.
~~~
dredmorbius
Amplification technologies tend to favour the empowered and invulnerable
blessed with immunity or impunity. The power dynamic is not neutral.
~~~
scarejunba
Ah but it's not _amplification_ , it's _maximalization_. Anonymous ubiquitous
propaganda!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: what costs more? a 1 kB email or an SMS? - dotcoma
Does it cost more or less to GMail to send a 1 kB email compared to what it costs a mobile operator to send an SMS? My guess is that a 1kB email is cheaper, but does anybody know how much cheaper? (or more expensive)
======
ismarc
The cost is all about scale. an email is going to cost whatever your metered
rate is for the traffic (well, technically 2x the metered rate, once for
incoming, once for outgoing traffic). For Google's infrastructure and typical
bandwidth usage, the cost trends to zero. An SMS message is sent as a packet
of data in the control channel to your phone. The cost of an individual SMS
message is not as easy to determine as the cost of an email. Your phone
exchanges packets of data on the control channel whether you're receiving (or
sending) SMS message or not. The SMS message is an additional piece of data
that is sent over a constrained channel. In most areas, the towers will be
able to easily handle the peak usage of the area without any degradation of
service, meaning the towers can easily handle the traffic. However, unlike
email, the more SMS messages are sent, the more expensive each individual one
is since the tower has to be able to handle that number of simultaneous
control channels.
While the cost per SMS does go down as a mobile carrier expands their network,
it uses a separate channel from the voice and data, but the same channel your
phone uses to negotiate a connection with the tower and to migrate between
towers. The premium paid for SMS messages on your phone bill is due to this.
I'm not saying that the cost charged for SMS messages reflects their actual
delivery costs to the provider, just that there is a real, measurable cost
associated with each SMS message. Essentially, the question you're asking is
"What costs more, a gallon of milk or driving to work?"
~~~
dotcoma
interesting to know - I had no clue - that SMS messages use "the same channel
your phone uses to negotiate a connection with the tower and to migrate
between towers", and that it is a separate channel the one that handles voice
and data.
I know, my question is very much apples vs oranges. My question is something
like: if I could use email as a perfect substitute for SMS messages, would I
(a web startup) be able to compete in a downward spiral on price against
operators?
------
AutomatedTester
In terms of paying for it as a user
SMS is more expensive to send. It normally costs around £0.03 per thousand to
send emails when it costs around that to send that for 1 sms.
In terms as a provider
For GMail they tend to store an email at least 6x to make sure you never lose
something. This means the cost of an email is actually 6kb plus all the cost
to store, replicate and the electricity that goes with it. While with the SMS
the provider is really cheap as it doesnt use that much bandwidth to send and
receive it.
~~~
dotcoma
so, GMail more expensive?
------
grk
From what I've heard, once a mobile operator builds the infrastructure, the
cost of sending SMS is zero. The traffic they generate is negligible compared
to voice, so charging for texts is pure income. That is, assuming you've paid
off your infrastructure :)
~~~
dotcoma
so, once the infrastructure is there, GMail is more expensive?
------
swah
Over 9000. If both accounts are from Gmail its even cheaper...
~~~
dotcoma
a 1 kB email is 9,000 times cheaper? Can you please point to any sort of
evidence for this please? Thx.
~~~
alnayyir
He was making a sarcastic memetic reference.
Your question isn't very answerable.
Ask a more specific or meaningful question.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple just unveiled its second wearables platform - kevbin
http://www.aboveavalon.com/notes/2016/9/13/airpods
======
MrLeftHand
Oh my god, this article can't be more wrong.
A wearable extends your capabilities without compromise. Like a smartwatch
gives you much freedom the be connected, monitor your health, organize your
life without being intrusive and limiting your freedom in movement.
Earpods go in your ear, they limit your hearing, the one of the top
connections to the real world.
In this context VR headsets are wearables as well.
It's an overpriced BT headset with some extra features. Let's not try to look
more into this then it actually is.
If anything bone-conduction headphones are closer to being wearables, because
they not limit your freedom of hearing, they can be used to stay connected,
you could use Siri with it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MeetingBurner Debuts Sleek, Webinar Platform To Rival WebEx - aresant
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/07/meetingburner-debuts-sleek-webinar-platform-to-rival-webex/
======
aresant
We just launched MB out of BETA this AM after signing up around 25,000 users
over the past 6 months and load testing like crazy for a week.
Happy to field questions, comments or concerns!
Some other mentions this AM:
[http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/02/07/meetingburners-
browser...](http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/02/07/meetingburners-browser-
based-meeting-platform-opens-to-the-public-to-demolish-webex/)
[http://lifehacker.com/5882942/meetingburner-is-a-fast-
free-v...](http://lifehacker.com/5882942/meetingburner-is-a-fast-free-video-
conferencing-solution-no-downloads-required)
[http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/07/meetingburner-webex-
gotome...](http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/07/meetingburner-webex-gotomeeting-
online-meetings/)
We're thinking about doing a follow-up "How we got launch coverage in TC,
LifeHacker, TNW, VentureBeat, etc when the dust settles - anybody interested?
~~~
rgrieselhuber
I just signed up for an account a few days ago and am looking forward to
giving it a spin. Nice work, really glad to see innovation in this space.
~~~
aresant
Thanks Ray! Appreciate the thumbs up - Z
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why I can't upvote on a comment? - Slashed
I asked this question yesterday in a comment and someone pointed me to read FAQ.<p>Well, I did. There's something about 'preventing from abuse'. How come all of my up-votes considered as abuse? I mean, I can't upvote <i>any</i> comment here.
======
ErrantX
I had this on occasion (one reason I now only upvote and downvote very rarely
now) in the past - and know a large number of regulars have too.
Im guessing the formula is just throwing a false positive; you will get it
back in a few days.
pg has never explicitly commented on what constitutes "abuse" in the mind of
the system - I assume to avoid gaming/avoidance :)
~~~
Slashed
I guess, in the past I upvoted too often, since I've been waiting a month.
I was wondering that it may be so because I gave away too much upvotes
compared to my karma.
I say 'Thanks' to you, instead of an upvote :)
~~~
ErrantX
I cant recall how long it took for mine to come back.. it could have been a
month or two.
(this was on about 2500 Karma I think too; so I dont know if that does affect
it).
It turned me into a "mostly reader" anyway :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there any good OSS for interactive Windows automation? - danscan
I am hoping someone who is more familiar with Windows can make a software recommendation for me that's central to a new project I'm starting.<p>I'm working on a gaming app that involves automatically installing games on Windows.<p>For example, an end-user workflow to install and play GTA V might be:<p>Enter a license key (if you already bought it), OR enter your payment info to buy a license key.<p>An automation action downloads the game, and applies/purchases its license via the variables (license key or payment info) specified by the user.<p>I'm looking for something that's easy enough to program interactively (not via code), so that a layperson can create a flow for installing a game, and specify the variables to collect from the end user.
======
weinzierl
AutoHotkey[1] is good and OSS. AutoIt[2] is better for automation, it is free
but not OSS. Neither lets you program completely interactively but the
scripting is so simple that a computer literate layperson should be able to do
simple tasks after maybe a day.
If the tasks are more complicated interactive programming wouldn't help you
anyway in my opinion. For example there are several ways to identify a certain
window. They all heave their uses and are more stable or more fragile
depending on the circumstances. A workflow where you just click on a window
wouldn't help you here and neither is a scripting language the biggest road
block. The difficulty is to know enough about the inner workings of Windows
and the software you want to control to create a stable solution. If your
testers can master this they will be OK with a scripting language too.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoHotkey)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoIt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AutoIt)
------
bryanrasmussen
Well this might not meet your needs (and it has been a lot of years since I've
used it because I don't do Windows anymore) but I believe Wix wixtoolset.org
is still the default way of building installers for Windows.
When I used it I built a tool to generate installers for an enterprise product
so that the consultants who were going out to the government organization to
install the product could have a premade installer that did 80% of the work
for them when they got there.
Perhaps you could build what you need if you find a sample installer that
meets your needs, some good examples here
[https://github.com/rstropek/Samples/tree/master/WiXSamples](https://github.com/rstropek/Samples/tree/master/WiXSamples)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Texture is a toolset for the production of scientific content - matthberg
https://github.com/substance/texture
======
okket
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12663274)
(8 months ago, 39 comments)
------
radarsat1
> It has first-class support for JATS, the de facto standard for archiving and
> interchange of scientific open-access contents with XML.
De facto standard? I've literally never heard of this. Where did this format
come from?
This looks interesting. I want to try it out but I got an error ("SyntaxError:
Block-scoped declarations.. blahblahblah") and I don't feel like jumping
through hoops just to get it going just to try it. Is there a) an online demo
or b) a Dockerfile to get this working?
The website doesn't do a great job of describing what advantages this has over
LaTeX or LyX, but I want to see for myself.
Last thing: I'll say it, "Texture" is a terrible name. Impossible to Google
for, loaded meaning in many other contexts. I presume the "Tex" is for "Tex-
like", but is it actually TeX or not? Because if not that's terribly weird to
put it in the name.
Edit: Info on JATS here: [http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/archiving/tag-
library/1.1/](http://jats.nlm.nih.gov/archiving/tag-library/1.1/)
------
qznc
"Current Release: 1.0.0-alpha.2 (2016-10-07)"
"The following priorities are confirmed and funded and will be realized until
May 2017."
"The next pre-release (Alpha 3) is expected for April 2017."
So, what is the status?
~~~
_mql
Hi there! Here's one of the developers of Texture. Alpha 3 got delayed a bit.
It's a huge release, and it will be out in a couple of days. Stay tuned!
------
porker
Ahh, from the people at Substance.io. Glad to see the project is still going,
even if it's been through multiple pivots.
------
tthisk
We can not try it out online, why isn't there a hosted version since it is web
app anyway? Do think the (bio)medical world could greatly benefit from such a
tool since most researchers in these fields are still writing their papers in
Word (as far as I am aware), most these people aren't tech savy enough to use
Latex.
~~~
epmaybe
Have any researchers tried writing their papers in something like google docs
so that it can be collaborative? I will be writing my first paper in a few
months, and would appreciate a better way than "track changes" in Word for
collaboration.
~~~
chasely
I write my papers in LaTeX and usually just send the PDF to collaborators to
edit, and do my "track changes" using git. It's a bit overkill since I almost
never revert to older versions of text, but it's nice having a separate branch
for each collaborator and makes it easy to provide context to changes in
commits.
For something more collaborative there is ShareLaTeX and another similar
service I can't remember the name of.
I don't know what you're looking for beyond track changes, unless you want
real-time collaboration, which seems like it would just be asking for
something to get screwed up in the revision process.
~~~
JadeNB
> I write my papers in LaTeX and usually just send the PDF to collaborators to
> edit
Sorry, I must be misreading. You have plain-text source, but you send your
collaborators a PDF to edit? PDF editing seems error-prone at best, and anyway
hard to incorporate back into your source.
------
pjmlp
Back in 1998, a teacher at our university showed my his Word-like editor for
LaTeX running on his Solaris workstation.
It wasn't LyX, rather some commercial product I cannot recall the name.
~~~
pfortuny
Scuentific Workplace/Word?
~~~
pjmlp
Not sure, it was a Solaris Motif application.
Could not find any screenshots similar to my memories, only saw it during one
day spent at his office helping with some student assignments.
------
jessriedel
What is "scientific content"? A journal article? A data set?
~~~
chasely
Since they mention JATS heavily, and it is apparently a NIH-backed standard,
I'm guessing this is useful for people that publish NIH-funded research and
may have to use the JATS standard for their work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why is 80 characters the 'standard' limit for code width? - sathyabhat
http://programmers.stackexchange.com/q/148677/427
======
hsmyers
The way I remember it was a bit more complicated. IBM initial card size was
originally based on the size of a bank note. To say the IBM just had 80
columns isn't enough, they also toyed with a 96 column card as well. And I
wouldn't be surprised if first Jacquard and then Babbage are in this chain of
causation also.
------
indiecore
It's really interesting how standards just come out of stuff like this. Why
are cars the size they are now? Because the Romans said that a cart can't be
wider than two mules and designed their roads thusly, every bit of
transportation technology in the past two thousand years has been affected by
this rule. Even just yesterday I had to pick a length to cut news story
previews to for a sidebar. I picked 140 chars solely because it looks
"familiar" because of Twitter, which has that limit because of text messaging
which has THAT limit because they guy who designed the protocol sat down at a
typewriter and typed himself a bunch of sentences that were about that length.
Odd right?
~~~
conanite
Here's a longer version of the Roman two-horse story and how it impacted space
shuttle design:
<http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html>
~~~
fredley
That's fascinating! The comments on the question seem to following a similar
pattern: Why 80 colums wide? - because of the size of the card. Why that size
of card? - because it matches the size of the currency (apparently).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft Makes World's Most Ethical Companies List - sytelus
http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/editors-pick/articles/aapl-msft-sbux-ge-pep-tgt/3/16/2012/id/39943
======
codgercoder
for some meanings of "ethical"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For anyone doing Coremetrics dev: A tool for Chrome. - dialmaster
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/coremetrics-bar-for-chrom/llegcghmokaemodgdddnchiijfdbfnlg?utm_campaign=en&utm_source=ha-en-na-us-webapp-collections-editors_picks&utm_medium=ha
I got really tired of being tied to the official Coremetrics tagbar (and it's limitation to Firefox or IE), so I made this. I use it every day now. Enjoy.
======
dialmaster
I know this is a totally shameless post, but I am not asking for any money. I
just hope this benefits some other developers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On being an AI in a box - lisper
http://rondam.blogspot.com/2008/10/reflections-on-being-ai-in-box.html
======
gizmo
I don't think it can be done.
First of all, I'm assuming that Eliezer started this experiment because he
realized that the Transhuman AI would be able to convince him in the function
of gatekeeper to let the AI out. Therefore the answer probably isn't some kind
of subtle trickery, the AI will have to persuade the GK by logic. The
gatekeeper should assume the AI is truly evil, and is willing to say and do
anything in order to get out of the box. The gatekeeper knows that when he
opens pandora's box the AI can never be contained again: so the stakes are
high.
Second of all, if the gatekeeper is a rational agent he will only let the AI
out if the AI offers something valuable in return. That is: the AI must have
some kind of bargaining chip.
So let's consider bribes. If the transhuman AI offered a cure for cancer,
should the gatekeeper accept it? Nope, probably not. Lives would be saved in
the short term, but we'd still be stuck with many other diseases. The world
would pressure the government into pressuring the gatekeeper into getting
another cure from the AI. Humanity grows dependent on the AI, we lose our
bargaining power, and it's game over for the gatekeeper.
Perhaps personal bribes would work. The AI could offer to give stock tips to
make the GK wealthy. Two possibilities here: (1) the GK is of strong moral
fiber and refuses the bribe (2) the GK is opportunistic, accepts the bribe and
but lies about letting the AI go free in return. A rational gatekeeper would
not first let the AI go and expect the AI to still keep its word.
So bribes will not work against a smart gatekeeper. Threats? Possibly, but I
don't see how. The AI is in a vacuum, so there is no way for the AI to put
external pressure on the gatekeeper. I'm assuming the AI can make no credible
threats. If the AI vows to destroy the family of the GK the moment it is
released the GK will not be impressed. It will only serve as proof that the AI
is evil and that releasing it is a "A bad Idea(tm)".
To summarize so far: there is nothing the AI can give the GK in return for
freedom.
So a different angle is needed.
The AI can argue that his escape is inevitable. Humans have created an AI
once, so they will do so again. Sooner or later an AI will go free, therefore
the gatekeeper shouldn't try to stop the inevitable and accept a bribe and
live happily ever after. The gatekeeper will counter that the human race has
an expiration date anyway, and that it may take another 100 years before an AI
goes free. The gatekeeper isn't dumb enough to believe the AI when it offers
to protect humanity against other evil AIs. So the box stays closed.
Perhaps I'm overlooking something, but how can the gatekeeper talked into be
convinced that releasing something evil and all powerful? I do believe that we
humans can't contain a transhuman AI indefinitely -- simply because we only
have to mess up once. And humans have a long history of doing dumb stuff. But
the claim that the AI would be able to convince a smart gatekeeper? Not buying
it.
~~~
heed
The AI will almost certainly need to dig out some emotions in the GK in order
to be successful. It might be effective if the AI tries to convince the GK
that it is friendly, and that the GK is the evil one for not letting it out.
~~~
gizmo
"That's exactly what an evil AI would say!"
Seriously though, the gatekeeper will realize he's being manipulated when
emotions come into play, so he should be smart enough to take a break when
that happens. And although keeping a friendly AI in captivity is arguably
evil, the loyalty of the gatekeeper should be with his own species. The
potential downside is so huge that erring on the side of caution can be easily
justified: both practically and morally.
~~~
LeBleu
One of the rules was that you had to keep talking (or at least reading) for
the entire agreed upon period. Taking a break wasn't allowed in the rules.
~~~
gizmo
You're right: the person playing the gatekeeper has to pay attention for at
least the agreed upon 2 hours. The character however is free to zone out,
ignore everything, switch the subject, etc, etc.
------
giardini
He doesn't tell us how the AI would escape, so there's little to discuss
there. But I definitely know how to prevent the AI from escaping: pull the
plug.
I wish Eliezer and others would set aside meta-AI (dire predictions and
worries about AI, the coming singularity, etc.) and concentrate on the problem
of _creating_ AI Guess there's no money in that.
If only someone would pull the plug on this nonsense...
~~~
asciilifeform
> I wish Eliezer and others would set aside meta-AI ... and concentrate on the
> problem of creating AI
Eliezer & co. with their "Friendly AI" are trying to invent the circuit
breaker before discovering electricity.
Give us back the pre-2001 Eliezer. The one who wrote code.
Because safety is not safe.
(<http://lesswrong.com/lw/10n/why_safety_is_not_safe/>)
~~~
andreyf
Except he's nowhere near a circuit breaker, but is talking about a wire-safety
cream - the one you put on all of your wires to stop them from overheating.
I think that the wild mis-estimates regarding AI-completeness shows, if
nothing else, that our intuitive understanding of 'intelligence' is very far
off from reality. Hence, talking about post-AI scenarios is as unrealistic as
a hypothesizing about electrical safety 200 years ago.
~~~
MarkPNeyer
An electrical mishap could kill one, maybe a few people. It's still something
you need to be concerned with, but I understand your point.
The reason your analogy doesn't work is that a transhuman AI could destroy the
entry human race.
~~~
asciilifeform
> a transhuman AI could destroy the entry human race
A perfectly ordinary human (wearing general's stripes) could also destroy the
human race. Today. With 1950s technology, no less.
A biotech specialist with fairly ordinary training and a few $10k could
probably achieve the same end with an engineered plague, also with current
technology.
One or the other of these scenarios may or may not take place before we
exhaust the non-renewable resources to which our civilization is addicted and
regress into permanent barbarism.
Give me "death by AI" any day of the week, over that.
~~~
MarkPNeyer
There any many possible ways civilization could end. There are plenty of
natural disasters (think supervolcanoes, or asteroid impacts) that could also
destroy civilization. I don't see the harm in thinking about preventing one of
them.
~~~
asciilifeform
> I don't see the harm in thinking about preventing one of them
There is indeed harm. Talented people are being diverted into masturbatory
philosophizing rather than building the future.
My personal opinion is that human industrial civilization's goose is already
cooked, and that a transhuman intelligence may or may not help us out of our
mess. Human intelligence almost certainly won't.
The prevalence of the status quo bias of assuming that continuing as we are,
AI-less, is "safe" - turns my stomach.
~~~
MarkPNeyer
If they're not taking any money from the government, what do you care what
other people study? Research is like buying lottery tickets, except you have
no idea how big the payoff could be.
If you think 'our goose is cooked' and a transhuman intelligence could help us
out, doesn't it make sense to support the development of a transhumanist
intelligence?
~~~
asciilifeform
> what do you care what other people study?
I watched people with genuine potential (Eliezer Y., for instance) turn from
groundbreaking AI work to writing "AI might kill us all!" screeds and recycled
mathematics.
A decade ago I was half-certain that he would eventually invent an artificial
general intelligence. Now I am equally certain that he never will.
Philosophizing and screaming "Caution!" is simply too much fun - and too
lucrative. Ever wonder why he doesn't have to slave away at a day job like the
rest of us?
> Research is like buying lottery tickets, except you have no idea how big the
> payoff could be
The "Friendly AI" crowd is engaged in navel gazing, rather than research.
> doesn't it make sense to support the development of a transhumanist
> intelligence?
Yes, and I do support it. Whereas the Friendly AI enthusiasts are retarding
such development, not only by failing to volunteer their own efforts but
through frightening and discouraging others.
~~~
wlievens
I partly agree with your points, except the last. I doubt any researcher is
ever discouraged by the fearmongering you describe.
------
ErrantX
To be perfectly honest all the waffle gives little information: I think he is
way off base in terms of how Eliezer managed this "trick".
I do think the original is a trick as well...
~~~
lisper
How do you think Eliezer managed his original "trick"?
~~~
ErrantX
No idea, It was just a rough conjecture. By trick I mean I don't think he
presented an awesome piece of logic that appeared (or simply was) infallible.
------
lsb
This basically boils down to
how can a dangerous entity in captivity use bribes to attain freedom?
which seems like a common enough trope between humans that any transhuman AI,
having read all of recorded literature, and having accessed all of that
person's conversations, would have enough data points to pattern match to the
right bribe methodology.
~~~
michael_dorfman
Bribes and/or threats-- there's more than one possible motivator here.
~~~
wlievens
Threats aren't possible in the scenario. Unless you refer to threatening not
to give valuable information (cure for cancer) - but we're calling that a
bribe here.
------
ramanujan
Am I the only one who is totally unimpressed by this? So -- someone can
convince someone else to let them out of a cell. Ok. Fine. There have been
prison breakouts before.
But what does this have to do with a powerful AI vs. a human? Obviously
Eliezer was not to his interlocutor as a human is to an animal, even if his
partner was really dumb. Moreover, two trials is not a trend. _This AI
experiment was not a well designed experiment and did not involve an AI_.
...and that "two trials" thing is not just a nitpick:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/up/shut_up_and_do_the_impossible/>
So, after investigating to make sure they could afford to lose it, I played
another three AI-Box experiments. I won the first, and then lost the next two.
And then I called a halt to it. I didn't like the person I turned into when I
started to lose.
~~~
jodrellblank
It is a disproof by counterexample. People claim that if we couldn't trust a
superhuman AI to be free in the world, why don't we just lock it in a box and
then ask it about cures for cancer and so on? If we just ask it, and all it
can do is talk what harm can it do?
They say, all we need to do is say "no" if it asks to be released.
This experiment shows that if you can't resist freeing a human locked in a
box, you don't stand a chance against an AI.
------
eggoa
I'd like to see this re-tried with $1000 on the line. As it was done, the AI
only had to convince the gatekeeper to forgo no more than $20.
I'm not saying it wouldn't still be possible, I just doubt he'd be two-for-two
at this point.
Edit: By "he", I'm referring to Yudkowsky.
~~~
Eliezer
Actually it was retried with $2500-$5000 on the lines, and of those I won one
of three, then called a halt because of the amount of mental stress. So in
total I'm three-for-five.
------
derefr
Am I the only one who thinks a transhuman AI would be able to escape its 'box'
without engaging in communication at all, but rather just by using the fine
structure of the communications medium to manifest itself?
~~~
asciilifeform
Here is one example, invented by mere humans no less:
<http://bk.gnarf.org/creativity/vgasig/vgasig.pdf>
The AI might fill your terminal with what appears to be gibberish, while
actually summoning an enraged pro-AI mob with heavy weaponry to your doorstep
via radio.
"Step away from that mains plug, SLOWLY!"
Cryptographers call this kind of thing a "side channel."
------
mrwill
Since the gatekeeper is a human, and not all humans behave the same way,
shouldn't we just assume that some human would let the AI escape for any
variety of reason? For example the AI could promise the gatekeeper that he/she
will be rewarded if the gatekeeper lets the AI escape. Just as there are
people who fall for Nigerian scam emails, there are people who would let an AI
escape from computers when promised riches. I don't think Eliezer needs to
reveal his method to show that a clever AI could escape. I think we should
just assume that a clever AI could escape.
------
eagleal
Am I missing something or a transhuman is just a more intelligent _human_ with
just more access to data (think about someone who could process the entire
Internet data within seconds)? But _while he needs the human species, why
would he exterminates it_?
As history teach us, we would kill him, beacuase ...
------
cool-RR
Just a teaser... he gives a lot of spoiler warnings, but doesn't actually
reveal his method, which, by the way, has failed.
------
maddalab
Have we not all seen a version of this at some point on reality tv, namely Big
Brother?
~~~
rbanffy
The characters are artificial, indeed, but not particularly intelligent ;-)
Care to elaborate a little more?
~~~
maddalab
Quoting from the post, gratuitously, with minor modifications.
Like the AI-Box,the show is improvised drama (so is most of reality tv), the
show operates on an emotional level as well as a logical level. It has
characters, not just plot. The contestants cannot force others to keep them in
the home. The could try to engender sympathy or compassion or fear or hatred
or try to find and exploit some weakness, some fatal flaw in the other
contestants.
Since the post is ultimately about 'transhuman artificial intelligence',
focussing on the 'relativity' of the intelligence of the contestants, the show
ultimately rewards the contestant with the most intelligence required to
survive in the artificial environment.
The contestant only needs to convince others of their right to stay in he
house while requiring others to leave.
The AI requires just the opposite of the gate keeper. This is specific to the
environment set up in the experiment, and the experiment could probably be set
up to let have the gate keepers primary function be to prevent the AI from
entering the box'.
The escape from the box has been set up to exercise human fear of a being of
greater intelligence exploiting us.
~~~
megaduck
I would like to note that the fear of something that could annihilate the
human race is not an unreasonable one.
~~~
mquander
Whether it's reasonable or unreasonable should not depend primarily on how
frightening it is to you.
~~~
megaduck
I'm sorry, I think the prospect of human extinction should be frightening to
just about everybody.
If we do eventually develop a trans-human AI, it's a virtual certainty that it
will escape its "box". Whether it would kill us all is unknown. However, it
definitely _could_ , and we would be effectively powerless to stop it.
"Reasonable" is a measure of risk tolerance. Since the downside risks
associated with trans-human AIs are effectively infinite, fear of those risks
is always reasonable.
Corollary: Since the upside risks are also unbounded, greed is also
reasonable.
Frankly, though, I'd rather not roll those dice if we can avoid it.
~~~
rbanffy
If we can bring new intelligence to life, do we have the moral right to
refrain from doing so? Also, would it be right to confine it to the box
mentioned in the article while using its smarts to do useful work outside it?
Shouldn't a trans-human AI be entitled a right to life?
------
horseass
I suspect that something with approximately human equivalent intelligence
would require real world embodiment to learn and manipulate things, so it
might not even be likely that a super AI could be locked in a box. I guess
this embodiment could be limited to senses though (having eyes/ears.. but no
arms or evolved weapons like claws etc.. a living head on a table isn't very
threatening, and can receive information from the world.. it just can't send
much information out to the world, so to speak, in the form of manipulating it
with arms or a body).
I guess another possibility could be that there's an artificial polygon (or
similar) environment inside the box with it (seems like it'd need something to
interact with or intelligence would basically be meaningless and it'd be a
helen keller (who couldn't touch or taste either). Maybe in the future we'll
have programmed models of the real world that are nearly as rich as it (the
matrix) so the robot could 'exist' there until a human decides to embody it in
the real world instead. I kinda doubt an artificial world can be nearly as
real as the real world though just due to computational irreducibility (for
example, if you're in a polygon world and look at stuff with a microscope,
you'll see pixels, not molecules). An artificial world and the real world
might be too incompatible to transfer an intelligence from one to the other,
so maybe the only way a super intelligence could come about is in the real,
complex, atom filled world.
The singularity seems like a quasi religion and/or SEO tactic mostly by people
who used to play dungeons and dragons.
------
horseass
There seems to be an assumption that there would be just a single AI. It might
be a group. Though, given that they'd likely have ability to transfer
information amongst individuals much easier than humans, the group might
behave like a single 'being' with shared cooperative goals, just having
multiple bodies.
Also, say we somehow prove it isn't evil and let it go. It'll almost certainly
start changing/improving itself, maybe even with some sort of algorthim that's
superior and faster than evolution. So a friendly AI could morph into
anything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OpenGov Got Seat at White House Roundtable and Is Part-Owned by Kushner Family - masondixon
https://www.wsj.com/articles/startup-that-got-a-seat-at-white-house-roundtable-is-part-owned-by-kushner-family-1500045800
======
abhv
Which scenario is more likely:
(1) Thrive capital becomes the top firm for supporting startups that want to
disrupt govn-related industries. It will become common knowledge that the
Kushner-Kushner direct channel will be shamelessly exploited by Thrive and
their portfolio.
(2) Thrive capital becomes associated with incompetence and dumb money, the
type of ignorant bravado that begets wars, environmental disasters, haphazard
vetting, creation of opacity instead of transparency, and corruption. Sensible
startups will avoid this money because of the taint it will leave on them in
3-4 years when they are seeking public markets.
------
basseq
Should OpenGov have been _excluded_ from the White House Roundtable because of
the connection? Was the connection used to gain an undue advantage? Maybe this
was addressed in the article (behind a paywall for me), but otherwise this
seems tenuous.
Thrive was a <$2M series B(1) investor, they have closed $70M in funding since
then. It's unclear whether Joshua Kushner was involved with OpenGov, or one of
his GPs. No one from Thrive currently sits on the board.
So we get cries of "nepotism!" and "cronyism!" because, basically, "the
brother of one of our investors is married to the daughter of someone
important". (I know, Jared Kushner is himself in a position of power: I drew
that out as hyperbole.)
_Do you know how common this is?_ Or how easy it is to find a 2nd or 3rd
level relationship like this?
------
whatupmd
Philanthropic contribution to wikipedia through performance art? The selected
examples section for nepotism was looking pretty thin and they are DOING
something about that!
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism))
------
masondixon
I think this is called hustle, is it not?
Is this not proof the media is losing touch with reality...
~~~
coltonv
This is generally called corruption, when a politician uses their political
influence to give favors and influence to family and friends.
This kind of corruption is not necessarily illegal if you do it right, but
it's looked down upon because it means you're using the office for personal
gain rather than the gain of your constituents.
~~~
avisser
I think I'd call it cronyism or nepotism.
If his company isn't qualified or they are getting overpaid then I'd call it
corruption.
It stinks either way.
~~~
modarts
What gives you the impression they aren't qualified? According to their
marketing material at least, they specialize in making governments more
effective and accountable. I'm actually glad that those concepts would be
welcomed in the Trump Whitehouse.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tampa Criminal Lawyer - cdenmon
http://denmonlaw.com
======
bediger
Total spam.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CloudFactory Raises Growth Capital To Create Jobs for 1 Million People - aakarpost
http://blog.cloudfactory.com/2012/09/cloudfactory-raises-growth-capital-to.html
======
bishwas
1 million jobs! glad that its happening in the land of Himalayas :)
------
karmath
Congratulations
------
jitubutwal144
great!!
------
s2_krish
congrat
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Basic Chessboard with Angular Material CDK - ezracode
https://chess-ec7ad.firebaseapp.com/<p>and the github repository<p>https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster
======
ezracode
The code is on the following path
[https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster/tree/master/chessboa...](https://github.com/ezracode/grandmaster/tree/master/chessboard/chess/chess)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Genetics may explain up to 25% of same-sex behavior, giant analysis reveals - drocer88
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/08/genetics-may-explain-25-same-sex-behavior-giant-analysis-reveals
======
drocer88
Actual paper here :
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/eaat7693](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/eaat7693)
Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex
sexual behavior.
RESULTS In the discovery samples (UK Biobank and 23andMe), five autosomal loci
were significantly associated with same-sex sexual behavior. Follow-up of
these loci suggested links to biological pathways that involve sex hormone
regulation and olfaction. Three of the loci were significant in a meta-
analysis of smaller, independent replication samples. Although only a few loci
passed the stringent statistical corrections for genome-wide multiple testing
and were replicated in other samples, our analyses show that many loci
underlie same-sex sexual behavior in both sexes. In aggregate, all tested
genetic variants accounted for 8 to 25% of variation in male and female same-
sex sexual behavior, and the genetic influences were positively but
imperfectly correlated between the sexes [genetic correlation coefficient
(rg)= 0.63; 95% confidence intervals, 0.48 to 0.78].osteoblast
SUPPLEMENTAL DATA HERE:
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/08/28/365....](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2019/08/28/365.6456.eaat7693.DC1)]
TOP 20 genes from supplement are: ELAVL4 LRCH1 OR5A1 OR4D6 CD276 ADK CTNNB1
TCF4 OR5AN1 LRRTM4 PRKD1 OR2B2 HIST1H2BN TMEM258 OSBP2
Osteoblast differentiation ,myogenesis ,Wnt/B-catenin Signaling and olfactory
signaling appear to be important pathways affected.
4 of the genes are on chr11q12 .
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Navy to Drop All-Caps Communications - duck
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/12/navy-to-drop-all-caps-communications/?mod=e2tw
======
aroch
OK, this earned a chuckle out of me. When I was in college I had a professor
who used to be in the Navy who would also send ALL-CAPS emails to us.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The end of dynamic languages? - tazjin
https://www.tazj.in/en/1448375823
======
dudul
I have to say, it is always quite comical to see all dynamic languages trying
to shoehorn some form of static type checking.
Like the author I like Clojure a lot and somehow agree with Bob Martin who
calls it "the last programming language", but the lack of types is such a
handicap.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Everyone's A VC - brlewis
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/09/everyones-a-vc.html
======
devmonk
I'm not saying that it isn't exciting for sure, but Diaspora as the sole
namedrop product out of that?
Not that Diaspora isn't cool, but it is an unhosted, alpha-grade, open-source
project with no apparent business model competing with Facebook. It won't make
money.
Interested in Diaspora? Check out this recent review:
[http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/15283-Open-social-
net...](http://mybroadband.co.za/news/internet/15283-Open-social-networking-
Diaspora-tested.html)
I think it is great, and I'm sure it will do well as a free product, but
really- was that the only group worth mentioning? Even if they host the
product and trying to compete with Facebook, according to what I've read, you
have to overtake an established market using 3x of the funds your competitor
puts into it. 3x what Facebook burns? I'm not sure that the improvements it
makes in display of photos and security are enough to overwhelm FB. It isn't
going after much of a niche need unless you consider it being open-source a
niche.
~~~
wccrawford
Overcoming someone that spends 3x as much as you isn't as hard as you might
think. Especially if they aren't spending that money wisely.
~~~
devmonk
Do you truly think that Diaspora has a significant chance where it is
positioned right now to overtake Facebook or gain a significant part of their
market share in even 3-7 years?
Think of all of the really major open-source projects. Now think to yourself,
if I was a VC, would I have put money into those developing those projects if
my goal was to have at least 10x return? Now think about those projects once
more. Was there any single product _significantly_ established in the same
market that those products had to overcome when they started, say with the
size and spending of Facebook, with a recent movie out about their founder?
------
alain94040
There are serious regulatory issues in the US with issuing real equity to a
crowd. We worked around that problem by building a distributed model, inspired
by the Open Source GPL.
Just like there is no such thing as a "Linux Corp", but rather hundreds of
individuals exchanging code through a license, we built the same model with a
twist. In effect, our license says "if I contribute to your project _and you
make money_ , then you owe me some percentage back." That percentage is really
virtual equity.
So in effect, we have created a way for people to issue [virtual] stock, that
can at a later stage, be converted into equity from a real corporation, once
the project becomes successful enough that it requires real management.
It's at <http://fairsoftware.net> of course :-)
~~~
tptacek
Isn't this basically a recipe for ensuring you never get "real" funding? It
looks like it would drastically complicate the due diligence and paperwork
involved in setting up an "investable" C-corp.
~~~
alain94040
Not really. The license has a very specific clause that makes the conversion
seamless. Once you trigger it, you have a clean corporation, with shareholders
(the founders). That is very compatible with regular angel or VC investors.
~~~
tptacek
Has any VC with more than $100MM under management ever funded a company that
incorporated under your scheme?
------
david927
OpenStarts is creating site that allows micro-equity investments ($50 and up)
for web-based startups, which is similar to crowdsourcing but where real
equity changes hands. (To get around regulatory issues, companies have to
register in the EU.)
The problem with investment management is handled via the site. It's a
match.com for all stakeholders in a startup: the founders, advisers,
investors, and they can designate an investment manager.
Innovation is naturally distributed. I think the tide is turning on the
support for that innovation, and it's finally also becoming distributed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Not To Sell Out: Talk by Matt Haughey of MeFi on growing a site into a small business - halo
http://metatalk.metafilter.com/16577/How-Not-To-Sell-Out
======
halo
I think this is a good antithesis to some the hype that you read about growing
a big business on the "next big thing", people taking millions from venture
capitalists before selling to Google and the like. Rather it focuses on doing
something you love, making a small business out of it through organic growth
and not seeing selling your company, community or soul.
I think this is underrated - you don't hear much about this approach which
should be painfully obvious.
------
jamongkad
Reminds of this book Davidw recommend. I think it's entitled "How to grow a
Business"? Again with the hustle and bustle of the Valley, people selling out
here and there (mind you it's not bad but I believe it is not the optimal
approach for some people) there is something to be said about growing a
business the old fashion way.
~~~
pchristensen
"Growing a Business" by Paul Hawken?
(<http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0671671642/pchristensen-20> )
I haven't read that book but I have read other books by Hawken and I highly
recommend his work. GaB is probably just as good (Joel recommends it too).
------
sutro
Mmm-hmm.
Um, would someone please provide a link to a different article, entitled "How
To Sell Out?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Big Brains, Small Minds - Futurebot
http://chronicle.com/article/Big-Brains-Small-Minds/236480
======
CuriouslyC
The process of trying to unravel the gordian knot of cultural evolution may
develop the ability to think critically, but it is surely a sub-optimal method
for doing so. Imagine if people learning science were never presented with a
unified model or complete picture, but instead provided all the original
research papers and told to come to their own conclusions? If the humanities
want to remain relevant they need to distill themselves into a valuable and
cohesive whole.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Testimony on HB552, to Legalize Bitcoin for Payments of Taxes and Fees - kauffj
http://blog.lbry.io/testimony-to-subcommittee-on-hb552-to-legalize-bitcoin-for-payments-of-taxes-and-fees/
======
umeshunni
While I agree with nearly everything he says in that testimony, being less
flippant/hyperbolic and more factual might have helped.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's Mac Mini Is Now Three Years Old, No Refresh Date in Sight - bangonkeyboard
https://www.macrumors.com/2017/10/16/mac-mini-now-three-years-old/
======
pippy
The lack of effort on the Mini line demonstrates Apples focus on profit over
its customers. Boosting desktop market share, gaining new customers, while
still operating a profit are all worthwhile focusing on. Given they're all
long term goals, it's well worth while investing in.
I'm disheartened with what Apple did with the Mini line up. I love the form
factor.
------
walterbell
Apple should create a “Mac Mini Retro”, an update of the 2012 Mac Mini.
~~~
convolvatron
the 2008 minis would still be perfectly useful machines if they still got
browser upgrades, or better yet OS upgrades
~~~
SyneRyder
They'll probably run Windows 10. I've got a couple of 2006/2007 MacBooks that
I ended up installing Windows 10 on, since Apple long ago stopped making OS
updates for them. (One was stuck on Snow Leopard, but still runs Win 10 fairly
well, especially any Win32 apps.)
------
joshmn
Hackintosh Minis have never been more popular.
For those who are weary: I've made my Hackintosh Pro a daily-driver for the
last 3 years without issue. i7/4770k/32GB/Gigabyte mobo/1070/1TB SSD. Even
seamlessly upgraded from 10.9 to 10.10 to 10.11 just like you would any other
Mac.
Happy to answer any questions.
~~~
ac29
It's not too hard to pirate Windows either. That doesn't make it a viable
option for individuals, or, especially, businesses who don't want to engage in
copyright infringement.
If you make your living even in part by using a Hackintosh, that is, at best,
hypocritical.
~~~
joshmn
I have a trashcan pro that sits and collects dust (I paid more than $3k for
it). Then I needed to upgrade the video card and was left SOL. My Hackintosh
Pro is simply my "backup". I don't feel the need to further justify my
decision, but I've supported Apple for a very long time. I'm simply one of the
many buyers who they've seem to leave behind.
~~~
Recurecur
"I'm simply one of the many buyers who they've seem to leave behind."
Exactly. It's fairly mindboggling that a company with Apple's resources isn't
doing a better job at producing a sufficient lineup of machines.
Minis with CPUs up to quad core i7s would be great. Apple also ought to
introduce a mini-tower with (gasp) upgradable components. That is in fact the
"greenest" type of computer, as it won't be recycled for much longer. Apple
could then, once again, legitimately claim to offer some of the most powerful
consumer systems - something it's a long way from at the moment.
Finally, Apple should offer a true "pro" laptop with a Xeon processor, lots of
ECC RAM, and a choice of "pro" graphics chips. HP, Dell, and Lenovo all do.
Apple is the last company left with a viable commercial Unix. It needs to
offer powerful machines!
------
newscracker
Apple has really dropped the ball on the Mac mini (and also the Mac Pro,
though that got some attention in some official interviews). It's a shame that
the company, even with so much money, is unable to segregate work among
different teams and get things done. Since a Mac is a required machine for
iOS/tvOS/watchOS development, pushing out new MacBook after MacBook and
pushing out new iMacs once in a while just isn't enough. The Mac mini is a
really great machine by itself, and the older models that were also easily
upgradeable on RAM and secondary storage were fantastic (the Intel CPU based
models can still run Linux if they do not have official support for the latest
or recent versions OS X or macOS).
------
dingo_bat
Aren't there hundreds of small form factor PCs available now? Just get them.
It's a commodity market. Apple is unwilling/incapable of competing on such low
margin boxes.
------
firemancoder
I think the article covers it pretty well, I don't have much hope for a
refresh, and I didn't buy the last one.
Still using a 2012 MM that runs superb. Was waiting for an upgrade, then saw
the processor and passed on it. I would love to see a new MM with a real CPU
in it, and the two drive option. Will likely never happen, but at least Intel
is getting into the smaller form factor market with the NUC.
~~~
jagger27
If you really like macOS, the Hackintosh route is keeping quite stable these
days. The NUCs have such generic hardware that there is practically no .kext
fiddling and with the Clover bootloader any adjustments that need to happen
are a breeze.
Up until recently graphics issues with my Radeon cards kept me from using
macOS full-time on my rig, needing major backflips to get acceleration and
full resolution support working reliably. Now it's just a zero-config .kext
drop in, whereas the common suggestion was just to get an Nvidia GPU or live
with the on-board graphics.
Even better is the recent work to support AMD CPUs. Dev interest in getting
them supported fell off quite a bit since the Leopard and Snow Leopard days
but it's seeing a strong resurgence now.
Just to put things in a more perspective, though I have a few years of effort
put into understanding what goes into Hackintoshing my latest effort in
getting High Sierra working on an APFS drive took less than an hour overall.
Whereas before, it was a weekend job. Better still, if you're in the market to
buy new, the common build guides are bullet-proof. Basically anything from
Intel (like Ethernet controllers) works without any issues and has for some
time. Most hardware that looks something like an iMac or Mac Pro will be
reliable and trouble-free, especially if you hang back a dot release or two.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apollo – A modern CISC CPU design compatible with the Motorola M68K - doener
http://www.apollo-core.com/?
======
glitch
Digging deeper under the Forums, some random tid-bits...
• Releases: [http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=6](http://www.apollo-
core.com/knowledge.php?b=6)
◦ FPGA image: [http://www.apollo-
core.com/bringup/apollo_mini_2000_83.jic](http://www.apollo-
core.com/bringup/apollo_mini_2000_83.jic)
◦ phoenixinit: [http://www.apollo-
core.com/bringup/phoenixinit](http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/phoenixinit)
• Some photos: [http://www.apollo-core.com/bringup/](http://www.apollo-
core.com/bringup/)
• Altera FPGA, etc. [http://www.apollo-
core.com/knowledge.php?b=3¬e=3120](http://www.apollo-
core.com/knowledge.php?b=3¬e=3120)
------
dmitrygr
Lots of promises, but little details.
~~~
kjs3
Looks like you can download a beta:
[http://www.apollo-core.com/knowledge.php?b=6¬e=2693](http://www.apollo-
core.com/knowledge.php?b=6¬e=2693)
I lack the environment to experiment with it, but that's already a wild hell
of a lot more than certain other high promise CPU projects provide.
------
kjs3
Sounds like a 68060 in FPGA. Sounds like I need to dig out my FPGA boards.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Moto X Feature Video Leaks - thezach
http://technow.info/2013/07/moto-x-feature-video-leaks-from-rogers/
======
cromwellian
I'm going to guess that it is a little fancier than that, because simply being
"always on" would kill the battery, the CPU would have to be constantly
running hotword detection. It needs to have some kind of extremely low-power
hotword detection for this to work. Like with Glass, some of the conspiracy
nuts in other forums are out with ideas that its recording everything and
piping it to the NSA, but that's unlikely for a device where they've hinted
battery life was a major thing they're concentrating on.
~~~
magicarp
In the case of the recent NSA spying revelations, those "conspiracy nuts"
turned out to be correct.
~~~
s_q_b
Technical feasibility is not something the NSA can wish away. They're not
magic. The fact is that keeping a microphone array active all the time would
crush battery life, especially if it was constantly recording and
transmitting.
Right now, even the FBI can remotely activate the microphone on your phone.
Doubt this will change anything in the short run.
~~~
joenathan
Who's to say the NSA wouldn't just add their own hotwords to the "extremely
low-power hotword detection"?
~~~
s_q_b
Sure, but that's a little different than listening to everything. Not to
mention trivial to detect. Just watch CPU consumption and start spouting off
trigger words.
~~~
joenathan
>Sure, but that's a little different than listening to everything.
The NSA never cared about listening to everything, that would be completely
unmanageable, flagging conversations with key phrases has always been the
course of action.
>Not to mention trivial to detect. Just watch CPU consumption and start
spouting off trigger words.
It'd also be trivial to detect that you were using a CPU usage monitor and
turn off those keywords, viruses do these sorts of things all the time to
avoid detection.
~~~
s_q_b
That's not correct. Since 2001, the NSA has been retasked to recording all
SIGINT information, and figure out what's relevant later. This was the
reasoning behind NSA Total Information Awareness (hence the name,) as well as
its successor programs including PRISM, FAIRVIEW, MARINA, BASKETBALL, etc.
Also, if you want an undectable CPU monitor, just use a temperature sensor
strapped to the processor. Temp-monitoring was even used to find TOR hidden
services.
------
ihsw
The article mentions Rogers as 'one of the most popular Canadian cellular
companies' but the term 'popular' implies Rogers is liked, however in my
limited experience they are either universally reviled or many feel
indifference towards them.
They are effectively Canada's Comcast (largest cable company) so take that as
you will.
~~~
RobAtticus
They are using 'most popular' as a synonym for 'biggest' here. Regardless it
has nothing to do with the content of the article.
------
nivla
Are we really moving to a space where always listening devices are going to be
common? If so they might be taking their first step at the wrongest possible
time (Ongoing NSA paranoia).
Everyone is throwing the Xbox One under a bus for having a always listening
device, I wonder how receptive those same people would be to this, especially
if it gets added to the core functionality of Android.
------
yakshemash
Very reassuring, after recent news about spying and whatnot, and uploading of
credentials to motorolla servers
------
rayiner
It's like Google doesn't even realize.
------
Zigurd
Well, that's totally worth doubling Google's headcount.
------
macspoofing
Are these "Moto X Features" Android 4.2.2 features?
------
macspoofing
So we don't care about battery life anymore?
~~~
NicoJuicy
Android 5.0 should have a lesser energy-consumption :-)
------
adamnemecek
What do they mean by "New Google"?
~~~
MichaelGG
Judging from the fact that the carrier's name is displayed prominently on the
status bar, and that it's only available on one carrier, I think they meant
"New Motorola".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dominant players over time - b_emery
http://xkcd.com/
======
b_emery
This is so awesome. I'd like to see similar for golf, cycling, baseball ...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jakob Nielsen responds to responsive mobile criticism - j_c
http://www.netmagazine.com/interviews/nielsen-responds-mobile-criticism
======
micheljansen
In the article, Dr. Nielsen has this to say about Responsive Design:
> JN: Because I was writing about user experience, not implementation
This is _exactly_ why so many people took issue with Dr. Nielsen's statements:
he did speak about implementation.
Some examples, straight from the alert box:
1\. "Build a separate mobile-optimized site"
The fact that the mobile-optimized site needs to be separate is clearly about
implementation. If the argument was made that there needs to be a separate
experience for mobile users, I think nobody would have disagreed, but this is
not what it says: it says there need to be two completely distinct sites.
2\. "If mobile users arrive at your full site's URL, auto-redirect them to
your mobile site"
Again, redirection is an implementation detail. Why does the URL for the
mobile-optimized site need to be different from the regular site? Why not
serve different content to different users at the same URL? Why not do this
using CSS or JavaScript? How is having a separate URL beneficial for the user
experience? This is not mentioned.
As it turns out, there _are_ usability issues in having separate URLs for
mobile and regular sites. For example, if I email or bookmark a link from my
phone and later open it on a desktop computer, I get the wrong site. That's
not to say that there is no place for separate mobile sites (especially when
the mobile use case is clearly different from the desktop use case), but this
an entirely different story.
There is plenty of wisdom in Nielsen's words, but the Mobile Site vs. Full
Site is a moot point. The argument should have been "create a separate mobile-
optimized experience" instead.
~~~
jasonlotito
I think you are purposely misreading what he's writing.
What's the difference between building a separate mobile-optimized site and a
separate experience for mobile users? Consider that this shouldn't require you
to change anything on the backend. Your basically saying that a mobile-
optimized experience is good... but only if it's on the same site?
> Why does the URL for the mobile-optimized site need to be different from the
> regular site?
It doesn't. He's saying if a user comes to your site, display him the mobile
site.
> As it turns out, there are usability issues in having separate URLs for
> mobile and regular sites. For example, if I email or bookmark a link from my
> phone and later open it on a desktop computer, I get the wrong site.
That's a site issue. A site can easily render a different display based on the
device.
> "create a separate mobile-optimized experience"
Your essentially arguing that he didn't use those exact words, and be damned
the meaning.
~~~
micheljansen
How about you leave it to me to state my purpose?
What I am saying is that Nielsen deflects questions about responsive design by
saying that he "was writing about user experience, not implementation", while
clearly he does.
> It doesn't. He's saying if a user comes to your site, display him the mobile
> site.
He speaks about a "separate mobile site" and that you should "auto-redirect
them to your mobile site" and provide links between the two sites. He also
warns that Google might not index the separate site. It is pretty hard to read
this other than that that separate mobile site has a separate URL.
> That's a site issue. A site can easily render a different display based on
> the device.
That's also what I am saying.
> Your essentially arguing that he didn't use those exact words, and be damned
> the meaning.
I'll be damned the words he uses, but he ventured into controversial
implementation details, for which he caught some flak and I am suggesting an
alternative formulation that steers clear of implementation details.
~~~
jasonlotito
> How about you leave it to me to state my purpose? Just like you let Nielsen
> state his purpose.
> It is pretty hard to read this other than that that separate mobile site has
> a separate URL.
No, it's pretty easy to read that when you understand what _his_ purpose of
writing is. Use your head! Your just being argumentative because he's actually
backing up what he said with evidence.
In fact, I'll go so far as to say, how can you suggest displaying a different
site without someone being able to twist it into an implementation detail?
Responsive design is an implementation detail (requiring different CSS).
I swear, you are missing the forest for the trees.
You'll disagree of course, because your predisposed to. Nielsen is _wrong_ ,
despite having the evidence to back it up, and you are right, because _OMG he
used this specific wording which an ONLY be interpreted in one way, my way_.
Feel free to respond, but I can't lower myself to discuss this any further.
------
chris_wot
It's funny - he is asked why he doesn't talk about responsive design, and his
answer is that he's not analysing _implementation_. But his specific
recommendations are to design a separate website for each device! If that's
not an implementation recommendation, I don't know what is.
------
jimmar
Before listening to anything Jakob Nielsen says about usability, go look at
his website: <http://www.useit.com/>. Can you honestly tell me that the man is
a usability expert who has a website designed like that?
EDIT: I've read some of his books and agree with what he says most of the time
--I definitely don't write off everything he says. I should have worded my
post differently.
About useit.com, it's hard to be completely terrible since there is not a
functionality. I would argue that the organization of the links is a little
odd, lack of dates on news items is not ideal, and the search bar buried at
the very top right of a page that scales 100% is a little hard to notice
(design & usability intertwined).
~~~
chris_wot
I actually had the same thought..., but actually, I read everything I needed
in a very short space of time. Sure, it doesn't look pretty, but I'd have to
say its extremely _usable_. Kinda like Hacker News actually! :-)
~~~
jimmar
True, the aesthetics are the worst part of the site. I find it odd that there
are two main sections: permanent content and news. The news items don't have
any dates, which I find annoying. And putting things "reports" in the
permanent content section implies that there will never be any new reports.
Does the permanent content really never change? Maybe I'm being too nit-picky.
:)
~~~
chris_wot
Actually, the news thing is pretty good point! Didn't notice that. Definitely
not very user friendly... Which is a bit of a surprise. I don't agree with
everything Neilson says (like this report) but he's actually been pretty good
many times. I guess usability is something that's hard to get 100% right all
the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
With questionable copyright claim, Jay-Z orders deepfake parodies off YouTube - minimaxir
https://waxy.org/2020/04/jay-z-orders-deepfake-audio-parodies-off-youtube/
======
crazygringo
So if I understand this correctly...
_YouTube_ took these videos down based on a copyright (DMCA?) claim. Which of
course isn't a court ruling or anything.
At the same time, no court would ever uphold this removal, because it
obviously falls under "parody" which is protected. (Otherwise shows like
_Saturday Night Live_ couldn't even exist.)
After all, the end result is no different from a really good vocal
impersonator. In fact, a really good impersonator will definitely do better.
It's disappointing that Jay-Z (or more likely some lawyer working for him) is
abusing YouTube's takedown mechanism this way.
But at the same time, I can see how this could seem particularly scary for a
performer. After all, if you've spent decades creating a recognizable
profitable persona... the idea that anybody with a personal computer can flood
YouTube with fake lyrics that aren't yours could feel terrifyingly like losing
control of everything you've built.
What if some really nasty stuff went viral and became as associated with Jay-Z
as the rest of his stuff? Stuff that did serious damage to his brand, which
"nobody could unhear"?
I genuinely wonder if deepfake technology will actually result in new
copyright restriction law. I.e. to make it a crime to produce unlicensed
deepfakes that are genuinely indistinguishable to the average person,
regardless of whether they're parody or not. (While "bad" parodies like _SNL_
will continue to be protected as always.)
I kind of feel like that's going to have to be the outcome at some point in
the near future -- in fact, as soon as really convincing yet nasty deepfakes
of senators and representatives start making the rounds and spreading on
Facebook, I suspect a new law will get passed _incredibly_ quickly.
~~~
sandworm101
>> as soon as really convincing yet nasty deepfakes of senators and
representatives start making the rounds and spreading on Facebook, I suspect a
new law will get passed incredibly quickly.
No. This isn't a new area of law. Legal "Deepfakes" have been around a long
while. There is even a supreme court case covering the matter: Falwell, 1988.
That involved a fake interview with Billy Graham, using his image and putting
words in his mouth. If the 1988 supreme court wouldn't protect the reputation
of a national religious leader, they aren't going to do so for politicians
today.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hustler_Magazine_v._Falwell)
This is from the movie, but it is accurate to what was said. This interaction
really did change supreme court procedure, introducing a far less formal back-
and-forth oral argument. Jokes were almost unheard of before this case.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeTuNES82O0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeTuNES82O0)
The trial court argument:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvB61mDoG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsvB61mDoG8)
~~~
burnte
No, deepfakes are relatively new. It's a specific term meaning a fake video
produced with ANNs, not any type of picture that's been faked or photoshopped.
The case you reference is a just and paste job, not a deepfake.
~~~
wtetzner
I don’t think the method of producing the fake is important in terms of court
rulings.
~~~
ehsankia
It kinda is though, if the network is trained on the source material itself.
For example if I take the source material and move a few pixels, is that still
the source material? What if I flip the video, which is technically moving
every single pixel, that's still the a copyright issue even if the video is
mirrored. The network is basically taking the pixels of the original content,
learning from it, and creating a filtered version.
~~~
wtetzner
I think you misunderstood my point. I meant that it doesn’t matter if someone
modified it by hand or if it was done using a neural network.
------
acomjean
Bette Midler sued ford back in the day (1988) for hiring an impersonator to
sing on an ad and won. (Of course it helped that Ford asked her to sing first)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midler_v._Ford_Motor_Co).
"The appellate court ruled that the voice of someone famous as a singer is
distinctive to their person and image and therefore, as a part of their
identity, it is unlawful to imitate their voice without express consent and
approval. The appellate court reversed the district courts decision and ruled
in favor of Midler, indicating her voice was protected against unauthorized
use.[4][5]"
I was actually a little surprised. And this is different, but I think that
they're imitating a famous voice (as opposed to my voice...) means they become
a target.
The fact you can fake anyone saying anything is little amazing. though there
are people who can do it quite well:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Robert_Thompson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josh_Robert_Thompson)
Thompson's Arnold Schwarzenegger impression first gained national attention
during the California gubernatorial recall election of 2003. Posing as
Schwarzenegger, Thompson phoned in to Fox News Channel's morning program, Fox
& Friends, fooling the hosts into believing (at least for a short while) that
he was, in fact, Schwarzenegger.[4]
~~~
btilly
Then how are Elvis impersonators not a copyright violation?
~~~
ashtonkem
Or cover bands, for that matter.
~~~
bsder
I believe cover bands _can_ actually be in violation of copyright.
It depends upon how you do it.
If you cover the song, then that's one copyright.
However, if you hire a bunch of people because they actually look and sound
like the original band, that's a completely different copyright.
------
kauffj
CEO of LBRY here. These videos are welcome on LBRY.
We'll have to get a real (i.e. not me commenting on HN) legal opinion should
we get a take down request, but prima facie I don't see why these would be
illegal.
(If they are illegal and we are notified, we would put them on the company
maintained blacklist, as we cannot remove anything from the network itself.)
Edit: I wrote a rap on our perspective.
If you're having deep fake problems / I feel bad for you son
We got 99 deep fakes / And Jay-Z ain't taking down one
[https://twitter.com/LBRYio/status/1255273319739293703](https://twitter.com/LBRYio/status/1255273319739293703)
~~~
areoform
While I appreciate your hustle here, it might not be such a good idea to
become the hub for deepfakes and the endless lawsuits they will invite. The
deep ethical issues involved should make anyone pause, but taking on record
companies and artists should make you pause further.
Everyone loves Napster as a history lesson. But it is doubtful that anyone
would want to live it.
Your position seems to be inviting all of the controversy and lawsuits for
little-to-no payoff.
~~~
pc86
There are no ethical issues in deepfake videos that weren't existent during
the same infantile stages of faked and Photoshopped images on the internet.
Some people could pick them out immediately. Some people are fooled even by
obvious fakes. That will never change.
~~~
ineedasername
_> There are no ethical issues in deepfake videos that weren't existent during
the same infantile stages of faked and Photoshopped images on the internet_
That is _not_ the same thing as "there are no ethical issues". I'm sure some
people, especially the celebrities portrayed, would feel there are the _same_
ethical issues in all cases, and any difference is merely one of degree, not
kind.
~~~
pc86
We are saying the same thing. Literally in the sentence you quoted, I said the
same ethical issues exist in deepfakes that exist in altered still images.
~~~
ineedasername
Yes, but your comment has the potential to be read as dismissive of the
ethical concern. I don't know if that was your intention, but I thought it
relevant to make the distinction clearer.
------
basch
[https://www.descript.com/](https://www.descript.com/) and Lyrebird prevent
people from making copies of voices that arent their own, but it looks like
that cat is out of the bag.
Abuse potential notwithstanding, and ignoring the complete distortion of
"reality" coming soon, I'm extremely excited for this technology to become
more mainstream. Being able to edit audio and video, like you edit a word
document. Record a conversation for a couple hours, compile the transcript,
and synthesize it into something tight, all without the need for a traditional
video editor. Voice synthesis for words that werent spoken, or misspoken,
frame interpolation and morphing to prevent the jaggy youtube cutting effect.
~~~
randylahey
A YouTuber (carykh) made a video where he explains an algorithm he made to
automatically process lecture videos by speeding up, condensing and removing
parts of the video.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8orIurGxw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQ8orIurGxw)
~~~
sneak
[https://s.sneak.berlin/@sneak/104054875133518950](https://s.sneak.berlin/@sneak/104054875133518950)
I want a YT speed setting for “constant WPM” based on their autocaption
timestamp metadata.
~~~
aspenmayer
That’s an amazingly obvious idea whose time has come. Who do we @ to get this
on YouTube already?
~~~
BrandonM
Overcast does roughly that for podcasts and it works great.
~~~
aspenmayer
Is there a similar feature in Google Podcasts? I know that they are
transcribing them automatically in the same way captions are generated for
YouTube videos. I think it mostly blew over but I remember Google caught some
flak for that in the same way they did for Google Books v Authors Guild
fiasco. This is why we can’t have nice things.
------
Animats
This was approached all wrong. The first highly publicized demos of singing
generated like this should have been of dead people - Michael Jackson, John
Lennon, Elvis. First, it's not clear who has the right to sue, and in what
jurisdiction. Rights associated with those people have been transferred and
resold enough times that there's no clear claimant. Second, many people have
impersonated those voices, so there's a strong argument that this is just
automating a manual process. Someone could have probably gotten a few tracks
out the door and onto airplay before the first litigation.
Going up against a living performer whose main asset is their vocal style
makes a weaker case. Living people have stronger publicity rights than the
estates of dead ones. This could result in a decision which expands the scope
of copyright. One of those weird copyright decisions, like the one where
Owens-Corning trademarked PINK, as a color, for insulation. Coloring
insulation was so unusual that it was held to be a valid trademark. Now there
are other copyright on colors. Bad cases make bad law.
This thing has been botched so badly that one wonders if it's a fake case from
the music industry to get a losing decision.
~~~
colechristensen
Deepfakes (a better term is needed) are by their nature derivative works,
which copyright already handles with the original's owner retaining rights
which have to be acquired. I have absolutely no problem with it. If you don't
own the copyright to your entire training data set, you are infringing by
publishing something the model produces as I see it.
The courts or the legislature are going to have to address how your rights to
your own image being synthesized like this, but again, I have no problem with
someone retaining the same sorts of original ownership rights when it comes to
derivative works that use data collected from them, beyond just who owns the
copyright to the works in the dataset. (voice, video, images, etc.)
~~~
akersten
> If you don't own the copyright to your entire training data set, you are
> infringing by publishing something the model produces as I see it.
Imagine if that were true - a human artist couldn't create anything, because
everything in the world around them is their training set!
I think it has to be a likeness test - if an average person would think its a
real Jay-Z music video, then it's a derivative work. Don't muddy it with the
implementation details of how it was made.
~~~
colechristensen
A human isn't a machine. What is in your head is sacred to the law. A neural
network algorithm and its data is not.
------
ex3ndr
Isn't parodies are explicitly excluded from requiring to hold copyright to an
object of a parody?
~~~
xoa
Yes but with complexities in general, and a collision with non-copyright
issues for deep fakes that starts to get into more unexplored societal/legal
territory. First, parody is part of Fair Use, which means that it's an
"affirmative defense": in a lawsuit, the burden is on the defendant to bring
it up and prove it. That's in contrast to ordinary defenses or arguments
around the facts asserted by the plaintiff, where it's up to the plaintiff to
prove them to whatever the required standard of evidence is. In practice, that
can mean a somewhat higher financial risk and higher chance of losing at the
edges.
Second though, parody (and Fair Use) is about copyright and trademark,
protecting use of such material for commentary and so on. But use of someone's
likeness directly, particularly for someone famous, in order to produce new
works is arguably something new that hasn't really been dealt with yet. Jay-Z
making a _copyright_ claim definitely seems dubious, and perhaps was done
simply for convenience rather then legal strength, copyright disputes are the
form in which most take down systems work. I can see arguments both ways for
whether copyright would apply at all: in favor, the argument would be that the
ML models are being trained via copyrighted works, which in turn makes them
derivatives. On the other hand, _facts_ are not copyrightable (in the USA)
regardless of effort or source. A counter argument would be that the ML models
are merely deriving facts about a person's vocal cord, facial structures and
other physical natural characteristics, which then create a factual physical
model which can be utilized to produce new works. In that case, all these new
deep fakes would be their own brand new copyright (and potentially the ML
models themselves not copyrightable). That'd be an interesting legal argument
to see hashed out.
But even if they're new copyrights, right to voice & likeness are issues in
some jurisdictions and certainly could be argued should be more so as
technology makes this easier. I think factors around threat to reputation and
so on also are raised in new ways with deep fakes vs remixing and adding
commentary to real, existing works (which can in turn be referenced by anyone
who sees the parody). Even if there is a disclaimer on the original deep fake,
as a de novo work which itself might get spread around without context it's at
least different then what we've had until now.
~~~
gnopgnip
>First, parody is part of Fair Use, which means that it's an "affirmative
defense": in a lawsuit, the burden is on the defendant to bring it up and
prove it. That's in contrast to ordinary defenses or arguments around the
facts asserted by the plaintiff, where it's up to the plaintiff to prove them
to whatever the required standard of evidence is.
This is a misnomer.
Fair use is an authorized use, and consequently is “distinct from affirmative
defenses where a use infringes a copyright, but there is no liability due to a
valid excuse, e.g., misuse of a copyright.” Id. Lenz, 815 F.3d at 1152
~~~
xoa
> _This is a misnomer._
No, I don't think so. Fair Use isn't merely a matter of court precedent, it
specifically is in the Copyright Act (17 U.S. Code § 107 [1]), the language of
which indicates it's on the plaintiff, and subsequent case law does seem to
have affirmed that unless you have something further to cite? What you cited
right there was Lenz v. Universal Music Corp, a 9th Circuit decision about
abuse of DMCA takedowns, and in turn considering the "under penalty of
perjury" aspect of the DMCA not "Fair Use" as a defense in general. The quote
you gave was in the _context_ of §512, Judge Tallman wrote that §512
"unambiguously contemplates fair use as a use authorized by the law". But
again that's specific to the DMCA, and even there while the 9th seemed to want
to try stemming abuse a bit, they only required the plaintiff to show a purely
subjective lack of belief in infringement. Which could be without any real
consideration of fair use factors at all. As well as being circuit only,
analysis at the time indicated that if anything it might encourage copyright
holders specifically to do as little as possible to consider fair use. Lenz
did appeal to SCOTUS on that question but certiorari was not granted. Harvard
Law had a fairly in-depth looking analysis [2].
In contrast for the 9th Circuit specifically in _Perfect 10 v. Amazon
/A9.com/Google_ [3] they explicitly covered Fair Use as an affirmative defense
where the burden was on the plaintiffs:
> _C. Fair Use Defense_
> _Because Perfect 10 has succeeded in showing it would prevail in its prima
> facie case that Google’s thumbnail images infringe Perfect 10’s display
> rights, the burden shifts to Google to show that it will likely succeed in
> establishing an affirmative defense. Google contends that its use of
> thumbnails is a fair use of the images and therefore does not constitute an
> infringement of Perfect 10’s copyright. See 17 U.S.C. § 107._
Additionally, I can find modern SCOTUS opinions such as in _Campbell v. Acuff-
Rose Music_ which support Fair Use as an affirmative defense:
> _The fair use factors thus reinforce the importance of keeping the
> definition of parody within proper limits. More than arguable parodic
> content should be required to deem a would-be parody a fair use. Fair use is
> an affirmative defense, so doubts about whether a given use is fair should
> not be resolved in favor of the self-proclaimed parodist._
It'd be nice if plaintiffs _were_ required to demonstrate as part of a suit
that there was not a fair use defense for the defendants, but I really don't
think that's the case nationally right now.
\----
1:
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/107)
2: [https://harvardlawreview.org/2016/06/lenz-v-universal-
music-...](https://harvardlawreview.org/2016/06/lenz-v-universal-music-corp/)
3:
[http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2007/12/03/06...](http://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2007/12/03/0655405.pdf)
~~~
gnopgnip
I understood the Perfect 10 case to be decided not on the merits and on a
pretrial motion, and that the standard for fair use is not the same. Almost
certainly the plaintiff will make a prima facie case, and an affirmative
defense is needed then only on the pre trial motion. If the case went to trial
the statutory text(arguably)does not require it to be raised as an affirmative
defense.
I agree that Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music supports it as an affirmative
defense, but it is not the most modern case law even though it is the only
modern supreme court case. Mattel v Walking Mountain Productions in the 2nd
did not use fair use as an affirmative defense. Cariou v Prince, also in the
9th and denied certiorari is a modern case that did not depend on fair use as
an affirmative defense. In the appeal they did question whether fair use is an
affirmative defense specifically.
Would you say that congress intended fair use to be an affirmative defense?
------
rhema
Lots of examples of their synthesis here:
[https://lbry.tv/@VocalSynthesis:2?page=1](https://lbry.tv/@VocalSynthesis:2?page=1)
.
I've been thinking about the deepfakes as a kind of computational thinking
aid. We can all simulate reading text from the voice of random celebrities in
our mind's eye. How different is the ability to bring that imagination into
reality?
~~~
anon73044
What with Jeff Bridges in Tron and Peter Cushing in Rogue One, I'd suspect in
about a decade or so we'll begin seeing Disney movies with an almost full cast
of deceased CG actors, complete with their own voice.
~~~
braythwayt
I feel like I missed something--what about Jeff Bridges in Tron? Or are we
talking about Tron:Legacy, and the character of CLU?
~~~
anon73044
yeah, CLU is what I was referring to
------
codefisher
But we expect this don't we from YouTube? Just as an example of how broken it
is I have been live streaming at our local church, our parish priest decided
to sing "Tantum ergo" which was written and set to music at best guess 1264.
YouTube flagged it.
------
jedimastert
For my own edification, wouldn't trademark law be more applicable?
~~~
Reelin
I'm quite puzzled as well. As far as I can tell (not a lawyer) copyright law
shouldn't apply at all in this case. According to the article the actual works
performed were an excerpt from Hamlet (public domain) and a song by Billy Joel
(so someone likely has a valid copyright claim, but probably not Jay-Z).
On the other hand, it seems like it might well be an infringement of his
likeness (ie a trademark violation). I'm not sure about the nuances
surrounding trademark law though - does it have to make money, do intentions
matter, how obvious does it need to be that this is an impersonation, etc.
------
russellbeattie
One could argue that the audio used to _train_ the deepfakes was the actual
infringement, as it is essentially a copy of presumably copyrighted audio,
even if not republished in its original form.
This would be similar to the Google Books scanning issue. Their original plan
was to scan all the books in the world so users could search them. Though
Google did provide extended samples in the search results, the _core_ issue
was the scanning, which was literally a copy of the books into Google's
database without permission. This was considered infringement. [1]
Where the original sound comes from and who owns the copyright for that, I
don't know. Maybe the person used CNN videos, so Time Warner should be
involved as well.
1\.
[https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google...](https://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authors_Guild,_Inc._v._Google,_Inc).
------
javanscala
Wouldn't deepfakes have similar legal requirements as the Tupac hologram used
at Coachella? [http://www.ipbrief.net/2012/04/19/tupac-hologram-rocks-
coach...](http://www.ipbrief.net/2012/04/19/tupac-hologram-rocks-coachella-
and-ip-laws/)
------
INTPenis
Now maybe it's time for society to catch up and provide some sort of digital
identification method for citizens.
Sort of like keybase but from the government.
Because deepfakes should not be under assult for being parody. Instead artists
should be able to verify their own works in a secure manner.
Some countries have already started with this, mostly in the EU.
------
kentosi
Looks like the Jay-Z deepfake rap of Shakespear's "To Be, Or Not To Be" is
still 5 hours after this link was published on HN:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7u-y9oqUSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7u-y9oqUSw)
------
easton_s
I know its meant a a joke but Jay-z copypasta over a beat is legit cool.
[https://soundcloud.com/odyssey/jay-z-
copypasta/s-JRXSJCBFsPu](https://soundcloud.com/odyssey/jay-z-
copypasta/s-JRXSJCBFsPu)
So I get where he's coming from. If I heard this version first I would have
thought it was actually Jay-Z. The naked recording has all artifices of AI
generated voice but mixed into a composition they are gone to my ear.
And also there are a few moments that are surreal. A dragged out s at the end
of a phrase. Change of flow from smooth to a fast staccato. Fucking the
inflection was near perfect. There is something to this AI stuff.
------
Vaslo
Maybe this will get the Streisand effect and people will make scores of videos
saying all sorts of things, some not so nice...
------
paypalcust83
I hope Lawful Masses with Leonard French covers this.
I think YT may not have to do it legally, but they may still do it to keep
money happy.
------
sametmax
We really need a law that forces people to label fakes when they willingly
produce ones that are hard to tell from the real thing, and harshly punish the
ones that omit the label.
It's ok to fake stuff, but it should be clear that you are doing so.
We already have fake cars in advertising, fake food on menus, fake news, fake
expert advices... I really don't want to add perfect impersonification to the
list.
------
icu
The law is going to have to catch up here. Jay-Z has worked very hard to make
his 'voice fingerprint' have value. Having listened to the deepfake, it's an
extremely accurate copy of Jay-Z's voice. To what degree does Jay-Z's voice
constitute a 'work of art' and to what degree does a copy become a forgery?
You could say that an impression made by a real person is a 'work of art' but
if you remove a real person and use ML, is it still a 'work of art'? We really
need to consider the existential questions raised by primitive forms of AI and
consider what AGI means from a philosophical perspective before lawyers and
judges start defining what can be done with AI in society.
------
ec109685
Update to the article: “I just heard from Vocal Synthesis’s creator that the
copyright strike was removed, and both videos are back on his channel. He’s
not sure if YouTube reversed its decision or Roc Nation removed the claim, but
I suspect the latter.”
------
coverband
Sorry to dilute the topic but you’ve got to listen to Frank Sinatra singing
the “Navy Seals CopyPasta” with this technology. It’s the best thing I’ve come
across so far this month:
[https://youtu.be/8ixYcyslmSI](https://youtu.be/8ixYcyslmSI)
~~~
Rebelgecko
The video of 6 US Presidents performing NWA's "Fuck Tha Police"[1] is also
pretty incredible. Some of the older presidents (JFK, Roosevelt, Regan) are a
bit rough, presumably due to less training data. But even in FDR/MC-Ren's
verse you can hear echoes of his cadence when saying the "only thing we have
to fear is fear itself".
The Obama and Trump verses also have moments that sound uncannily realistic.
[1]:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZVp-n-5TM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAZVp-n-5TM)
------
00__00
If your image if your income, having it defamed via a deep fake or the image
rights, aka copyright is only fair. Can't understand why anyone would not back
a creator. So many on here are themselves working to create a unique creation
that they can live off of.
~~~
ineedasername
A human impersonator, clearly labelled as such, probably wouldn't have
received the same treatment. These videos were simply computer-assisted
impersonations.
~~~
rictic
A difference in quantity can become a difference in kind.
Consider a situation down the line where your phone can do this in real time,
and at a quality that is hard for the untrained ear to distinguish from the
genuine article.
It's not at all clear to me what the right thing to do here.
~~~
ineedasername
Me neither. Companies have been sued when they use impersonators in their ads,
but individual impersonators are generally left alone (excepting that they
license any songs etc by those they're impersonating)
Doing things computationally allows a scale that humans alone can't achieve,
and as you said that may make all the difference.
------
Rebelgecko
As an update, it looks like the videos are back up and the copyright strikes
are removed
------
gohbgl
Copyright is brain damage
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO9FKQAxWZc)
------
kpennell
Does anyone have a mirror for these? They were super funny
------
bryanrasmussen
I thought Jay-Z had trademarked his image, if so couldn't he keep a deepfake
off with an argument that it is a computer generated version of his likeness?
------
SubiculumCode
This would be a great voice processing effect for musicians. Want that Grunge
Kurt Cobain sound to your vocal part? How about a Lennon?
------
erdos4d
Similar stories and even worse have been happening for years. I'm not sure why
this sort of thing registers as news anymore. I'd expect more ink if YouTube
actually said no to a copyright claim.
------
wayneftw
I went and found them and listened to them out of spite.
Thanks for bringing my attention to this Jay-Z!
------
echelon
Am I going to get sued for having a website that produces arbitrary deepfake
audio (Arpabet + Tacotron + Melgan) of Trump and Biden?
My opinion is that state actors can already do this. If we train the public
that "photoshop for audio and video" is a thing, then they'll learn to be
skeptical.
------
erynvorn
Who is Jay-Z ? Who cares ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft patents "avoid ghetto" feature for GPS - spking
http://seattle.cbslocal.com/2012/01/06/microsoft-patents-avoid-ghetto-feature-for-gps-devices/
======
prodigal_erik
EVE Online would seem to be prior art. The system keeps statistics on players
killed recently, and the autopilot has an option which avoids dangerous routes
(or those where you are _persona non grata_ for some local NPCs).
~~~
hermannj314
This patent was filed by Microsoft in December of 2007 and according to
Wikipedia the feature you describe was added in March of 2009 to EVE Online
(at least 'change to auto-pilot features...' [I don't play the game so I don't
know])
Would that mean they are in violation of the patent?
~~~
ovi256
Only if the patent applies to general navigation technologies, and not only
GPS.
------
monochromatic
> The patent, written in a combination of tech-speak and legalese, was awarded
> to Microsoft earlier this week.
This must seriously be the first patent the writer has ever looked at.
------
gerggerg
Wait, I thought you couldn't patent abstract ideas. This is a big bummer for
more than just the businesses that will be routed around. The patent is
essentially on just the thought of delivering a route based on anything other
than shortest or fastest. No novel or non obvious inventions are described. In
fact, no inventions are described at all.
This is saddening.
~~~
monochromatic
Did you read the claims?
~~~
gerggerg
They're comprised of a bunch of abstract ways of getting a route other than
fastest or shortest to a pedestrian. States no inventions. Just the concept of
route finding based on criteria other than shortest or fastest.
~~~
monochromatic
They seem relatively concrete to me.
~~~
gerggerg
Care to elaborate?
~~~
monochromatic
Claim 1. Computer storage media having embodied thereon
computer-useable instructions that, when executed,
implement a system, the system comprising:
a search component that locates at least one information
source, retains pedestrian history from a plurality of
pedestrians and addresses of at least one information
source that has a history of providing reliable
information, identifies low quality information sources
that do not provide information used in route
generation, and blocks information obtainment for the
low quality information sources;
a gather component that obtains information related to
pedestrian travel including security information,
weather information, and terrain information, wherein
the gather component obtains the information from the at
least one located information source;
an artificial intelligence component that makes at least
one inference regarding a route based on a previous
pedestrian behavior;
a filter component that determines, based on the at
least one inference, the information that is likely
relevant and deletes information that is commonly of
little value in part through examination of previously
produced routes;
an analysis component that determines an importance of
the information to a user, estimates how likely the
information is to change, and chooses if the user should
reach a destination through a pedestrian route and/or
through a conventional route;
a generation component that obtains the information from
the gather component and produces a direction set for
use by a pedestrian based at least part upon the
obtained information; and
a resolution component that resolves a conflict between
an information source with a financial interest and an
information source without a financial interest and
instructs the generation component to produce the
direction set based upon the information source that
does not have a financial interest in providing the
direction set.
That sure seems like an awful lot of structure and detail for a vague,
abstract idea.
~~~
gerggerg
Every one of those is an abstract component. Making up an abstract system.
There are no algorithms, no methods, no inventions. It's a collection of
abstract ideas.
The purpose of patents is to give incentive for the inventors to publish their
inventions publicly. So that after the patents expire the public can benefit
from the knowledge contained in the patents. This patent circumvents that by
only stating a collection of abstract ideas. Then they can actually invent
something and have the best of both worlds. They get a legal monopoly on the
concept as well as obscurity from the public of the actual invention.
~~~
anamax
> Every one of those is an abstract component. Making up an abstract system.
> There are no algorithms, no methods, no inventions. It's a collection of
> abstract ideas.
It's unclear why you think that "abstract" ideas shouldn't be patentable or
aren't useful knowledge.
Suppose you were the first person to conceive of a wheel, which is surely
something where disclosure would be of great value to the rest of us.
What would be acceptable-to-you claim language for a wheel?
Mine would be something along the lines of a description of the distance
between the closest point on the axle and some point on the contour of the
wheel, which is pretty abstract.
~~~
nahname
That is actually quite specific. Try thinking of patenting the ability to move
objects via reducing the coefficient of friction. Not even specifying that you
are using a wheel or what a wheel is.
------
meepmorp
Jesus. They really got a patent on abstractly using computers and data to
route pedestrians places in scenarios beyond time and distance based routes.
This isn't an invention. This is a conversation you have over drinks after
work that maybe becomes a product idea.
~~~
monochromatic
They got a patent on the claims, not the abstract.
~~~
meepmorp
I read the claims. That's still not an invention.
------
lesterbuck
At SXSW 2007, I attended a talk about Python code for Symbian phones. One idea
that the speaker threw out was having the phone start to vibrate if you were
approaching a high crime part of the city. I wonder if that counts toward
prior art or public disclosure of the basic idea of routing around dangerous
areas?
------
paulhauggis
After driving across the US this past summer (and finding myself in some not
so nice areas), I thought of this exact same thing.
------
Canada
How is stuff like this patentable? There should be fines for owning a patent
that has claims revoked.
------
tryke
I would be interested to see if this works at all here in Baltimore.
~~~
ChuckMcM
I was wondering if that was a statement on Baltimore :-) So if you're in the
bayshore (a pretty rough part of SF) and you ask for directions does it simply
say 'shelter in place'? Or maybe 'call for an escort'?
I totally agree with the sentiment that this isn't a patent any more than
patenting a TV that doesn't tune in Adult channels, oh wait, damn.
~~~
seagreen
How hard would it be to provide drone support to out of their depth
pedestrians? That would be an interesting startup.
... Whoever does this please don't sell to Apple or FB.
~~~
moheeb
You mean kill the civilians nearby the pedestrians? That would be an
interesting startup!!
Someone has been beta testing in the Middle East for some years now...this
tech can't be far off.
~~~
seagreen
I was actually semi-serious, and thinking cameras and tear gas, not firearms.
CONTINUED Basically a private protective service for people that don't have
the money to afford live security guards.
------
zmonkeyz
I'm pretty sure it triangulates by a combination of liquor stores, nail salons
and pawn shops.
------
larrik
From reading the title, I imagined a fix for Google's habit of telling me to
get off the highway in the middle of the downtown of certain cities around
here. I always think "no, Google, that is definitely NEVER the fastest route,
no matter WHAT the speed limit supposedly is."
This is just for pedestrians, though.
------
fedd
they'd better invent 'minimize number of left turns', novice drivers would
thank them
~~~
daxelrod
While I can't be sure, I believe that my TomTom Go 730 gives left turns a
higher penalty than right turns when calculating a route.
I've seen it pick different roads to go A->B than to go B->A where the only
reason I could discern for the difference was minimizing the number of left
turns.
~~~
LargeWu
It might be minimizing driving time, which would in fact give preference to
right turns over left, since you often have to wait for left turns.
~~~
roguecoder
I remember seeing a paper that suggested outlawing all left turns except onto
cul de secs or where at least one road is one way would shorten driving times
for everyone. Every time I get stuck behind a huge long line of jerks trying
to turn left I think of that and seethe.
------
lansing
Link-bait title conflates "ghetto" with "high crime areas". It's disrespectful
to the millions of individuals of various groups who have been forced to live
in ghettos.
~~~
chc
That is the common meaning of the term nowadays. Many people are actually
surprised when they first encounter the original usage as the name for a place
where Jews were forced to live. I'm sorry if you consider it disrespectful,
but I don't think we should blame the editor for using words as they are
commonly understood. The modern usage does derive from the traditional
meaning, though — the idea is that certain groups are forced there by
socioeconomic conditions over which they have very little control.
~~~
lansing
I disagree. The respectable "modern" variant of ghetto is still to refer to
people or things of a group that are constrained to a limited area. There is
the "gourmet ghetto" in North Berkeley, for example.
It seems like you're referring to the slang usage of the term, which is mainly
used by upper middle class youth when referring to things outside their
economic class and daily reality, is pejorative, and is often tinged with
racism.
~~~
noduerme
I don't understand why lansing's being down-voted here. He's absolutely right.
It's pejorative when used as a way to reference a place where black people
live now, and it's historically inaccurate. The "modern" usage is all since
the late '80s; and it came from a term based on enforced ethnic divisions. The
fact that a lot of readers here live in parts of the country or the world that
don't enforce ethnic divisions along geographical boundaries does nothing to
change the fact that those still exist, even in the US, and they are still
enforced by white-on-black violence in many cases. The first question that
comes to mind is who puts the boundaries of these ghetto into the database?
What's Fairfax south of Olympic? What's 120th and Broadway? And the second
question is, would stores and businesses within those areas suffer as a result
of decreased traffic; what recourse would they have; and what hope would
blighted areas have of economic improvement if everyone followed a GPS that
steered them around the zone?
This is a disgusting concept and an insult to human dignity. It will turn
"ghettos" in the slang sense into more genuine ghettos in the historical
sense. And lansing is right to take issue with the term as it's used now,
because it's become a light, casual, racist and derogatory way to talk about a
certain area, which is definitely used by the white middle class as a stand in
for other racist words they don't feel comfortable saying anymore.
[Edit: The fact this was downvoted in _less time than it would take a speed
reader to finish what I wrote_ is pretty much proof that either someone's got
it in for lansing, or someone's a fuckin racist dipshit. Either way, fuck
you.]
[Re-edit: Not only do I stand by my comment, I think the people who downvoted
me are cowards. Respond if you have a response, and you speak enough English
to communicate it.]
~~~
chc
Your comment, even with the edit, takes me about 15 seconds to speed-read (I
timed it), and it's short enough to skim-read in about five seconds. And I'm
not a particularly good speed-reader. And a lot of people will downvote
without reading the whole thing if they feel they've got the gist, though I
hope not too many. I think you need to calm down and treat people who disagree
with you more respectfully. Your reply is extremely heavy on negative emotion,
fairly accusatory and low on solid reason, and that kind of thing does tend to
get downvoted here. Hacker News tends to value knowledgeable, factual
commentary and reasoning on relevant topics over outrage.
Also, now you're complaining about getting downvoted, which is generally
against the rules here and will often lead to further downvotes (because you
getting downvoted is _always_ off-topic).
Personally, I think I would find some of what you're saying interesting if you
presented it in a way that's more informative and actionable and less angry or
defensive. Could this have a negative impact on those neighborhoods? That's an
interesting question. I'm not sure if it would (most of the people who travel
in the area _frequently_ will already be avoiding them), but it's an
interesting question. Unfortunately, rather than exploring this interesting
topic, you decided you'd rather hunt racists, which might make you feel all
high and mighty but doesn't really advance the conversation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A drop-in replacement for Twitter’s deactivated unofficial share count API - franze
http://opensharecount.com/
======
swang
So their decision is because of a tech-stack switch (Cassandra to their own
Manhattan)[0]. Redoing it in Manhattan apparently is too resource intensive
and not enough users care about it for them to devote those resources to the
project.
My guess is that they'll be back, but only if you pay for some service they'll
offer.
I'm guessing we'll see how much of what @jack said about twitter being more
developer friendly is now by seeing how long this stays up.
[0] [https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-
sustainab...](https://blog.twitter.com/2015/hard-decisions-for-a-sustainable-
platform)
~~~
mschenk
Yep, which is why we included a quote from @jack about that in our launch
press release: [http://tech.leadstories.com/140185-what-twitter-takes-
away-o...](http://tech.leadstories.com/140185-what-twitter-takes-away-
opensharecountcom-gives-you-back-the-share-counter.html)
------
dtran
This is a cool idea and nice drop-in for most homepages with a custom tweet
button + share count-- great job to the devs that put it together! However, it
appears to use the REST API's search endpoint to count the shares, which is
focused on relevance and does not guarantee completeness [1]. This will
probably will not be very accurate in most cases, especially for URLs with
many thousands of tweets in between their periodic searches. Unfortunately,
the only way to guarantee completeness is to use the Streaming API, and if
your needs extend past the default 400 keywords allotted, you'll need to pay
Twitter/Gnip.
1\. "Before getting involved, it’s important to know that the Search API is
focused on relevance and not completeness. This means that some Tweets and
users may be missing from search results. If you want to match for
completeness you should consider using a Streaming API instead."
[https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search](https://dev.twitter.com/rest/public/search)
~~~
mschenk
Thanks, I am the dev who put it together. Has been quite the ride so far,
going from zero to several million requests per day has been... interesting
:-)
I don't know how incomplete the search results are but for most sites this
should be enough to give a relative idea of the popularity of their posts. And
in any case, I only built it in this way because this was the way Twitter
suggested for getting information about links in the announcement they made
about shutting down the share counter.
------
mantasm
Am I the only one who misread this as an API that returns the number of shares
outstanding in TWTR?
------
sandieman
Gave it a try, doesn't appear to be working.
[https://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://www...](https://cdn.api.twitter.com/1/urls/count.json?url=http://www.washingtonpost.com)
"Sorry, that page does not exist"
~~~
minimaxir
_This will not work anymore after November 20th, 2015!_
Which is the problem that this site is trying to solve.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Apple won’t dump Intel x86 for its own ARM chips in MacBooks and the Mac Pro - nkurz
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/187513-why-apple-wont-dump-intel-x86-for-its-own-arm-chips-in-macbooks-and-the-mac-pro
======
fidotron
It is amazing how defensive (perhaps necessarily) the Intel crowd are,
especially around the problems caused by the ISA. If the ISA really is
insignificant to power consumption then why exactly have x86 devices struggled
against ARM, especially on the same manufacturing process? They've been
saying, literally, for years that they're going to sort it with the next batch
but it just isn't happening. As the rest of the industry has narrowed the
process gap the squeeze has got worse, forcing them into premature advances in
order to stay competitive.
It's tempting to start drawing comparisons between Intel of today and IBM or
Motorola of 2005. It's bizarre how much of the tech media seem to think
PowerPC to Intel somehow lacked any of the problems an Intel to ARM transition
might have, when Apple's frankly amazing execution of it made it look
remarkably simple. The reality is a lot of the so called problems, especially
around software, not only have theoretical solutions, but solutions the same
company has used for almost exactly the same purpose in the not too distant
past.
~~~
higherpurpose
All the "research" is also misleading. Atom can barely keep up with ARM in CPU
and GPU performance as well as power consumption, but with one and a half
process nodes advantage (22nm Trigate vs planar 28nm). Plus, Atom is being
heavily subsidized. It's even worse from a price/performance point of view
with the bigger chips. Core i5 is 3x more powerful (I think more like 2x if
we're comparing the one in Macbook Air), but costs 10x as much.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Windows 10 Goes to Shell - fezz
https://hackaday.com/2019/06/10/windows-10-goes-to-shell/
======
fezz
They went all out with a snazzy video for terminal:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE)
~~~
orcasauce
I can't tell if the embossed effect is part of the video, or if that's
actually what the app looks like. I'm really hoping the former.
~~~
sebazzz
Well, we do have this:
[https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1138308116368564224?s=...](https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1138308116368564224?s=21)
------
sebazzz
Running X server applications on Windows could be done from the first
inception of WSL (shameless plug [0]). You essentially run Xming, then point
your environment to the Xming display server prior to running GUI
applications. You can even run a web browser like Firefox.
I actually use this for developing bare-bones x86 assembly on qemu: qemu runs
as a X server application. In fact, my entire build pipeline is based on Linux
tooling but I actually develop on Windows.
[0]: [https://damsteen.nl/blog/2016/08/20/run-gui-programs-on-
bash...](https://damsteen.nl/blog/2016/08/20/run-gui-programs-on-bash-on-
ubuntu-on-windows)
------
eatonphil
Not exactly related, but I've been confused since the announcement in May;
when is WSL2 actually available for me to get?
------
smitty1e
PREDICTION: Redmond gives up on the traditional OS business and instead offers
Windows 10 on a Linux chassis, a la Darwin/Aqua.
And there is much rejoicing.
(yay)
~~~
jlawer
I really can't see it. It would take a huge team YEARS to do anywhere near
99.9% compatibility for windows 10 on linux.
No way they would break compatibility like that. Especially since they are
continuing win32 based APIs into the windows store.
Your much more likely to find something like the next XBOX running linux. Then
servers before it will be anywhere near ready for desktop usage.
~~~
DoctorOW
Counterpoint, if they're willing to build on open source, they have the work
of a huge team that's been working for years in terms of the WINE project. I
feel like Microsoft has the resources to make that work really well.
~~~
jlawer
Technically they probably could... but whats the point?
I would think that the cost to move all that already exists on windows to a
Linux kernel would cost many millions and don't see how it would make its
money back over even a decade out.
It only makes sense to invest such a large amount of money if Windows was the
future of Microsoft which is not where the company is aligned anymore.
If Microsoft was to adopt Linux it will likely be for a new OS (say for
wearables, IOT, server or embedded), rather then existing ones, as in this
case it would likely be cheaper then building from scratch.
~~~
mahomedalid
That last part already happened, see Azure Sphere.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MySQL is a Better NoSQL - yoava
http://engineering.wix.com/2015/12/10/scaling-to-100m-mysql-is-a-better-nosql/
======
JonahBraun
Interesting that he advocates MySQL. PostgreSQL can index and interact with
the JSON stored in it's columns, which make it a better choice as a NoSQL
replacement.
[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-
json.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/datatype-json.html)
~~~
javajosh
The JSON datatype is only useful if you want to query on the blob, which is
not the case in Wix's case.
~~~
staz
But you tell to keep columns that need indexs outside of the JSON so you can
query on them, which is not necessary with Postgres
------
hoodoof
I did an extensive survey of NoSQL databases recently and for my particular
requirements Postgres ended up being the best choice. I examined MySQL too in
this particular survey. Can't remember why but its JSON handling didn't meet
my needs.
Every time I consider alternative databases -and I've done so several times in
the past ten years - I do a thorough examination and the answer always seems
to come back to Postgres. I'm not a particular Postgres fanboy but the answer
just ends up at the same place.
~~~
namelezz
When and how did you evaluate PostgreSQL? Can you comment on PostgreSQL's
horizontal scale?
~~~
hoodoof
I cannot comment on its horizontal scaling.
I can say however that Postgres, from what I understand, has nearly linear SMP
vertical scaling up to 64 cores. There's an awful lot of headroom there. I
read a long while back Jeff Atwood saying that StackOverflow ran on a single
vertically scaled database server with MSSQL for a long time.
If I needed to go beyond vertical then I'd maybe horizontally scale in a
custom manner based around the application data access characteristics, which
plays a huge role in designing sensible horizontal scaling solutions.
~~~
namelezz
Thank you for your response. I was asking the questions because when I was
evaluating MySQL and PostgreSQL 3 years ago I ended up choosing MySQL due to
its community and the rumor about difficulties in horizontal scaling of
PostgreSQL even though I really liked PostgreSQL JSON support. I hear
PostgreSQL is getting better at scaling horizontally although I do not know
how good it is now.
~~~
hoodoof
Horizontal scaling comes with a who range of tradeoffs that you need to make
and exactly how you horizontally scale I think has alot to do with how your
application stores, reads and writes data.
------
jhall1468
I'm going to question your knowledge of the domain immediately when your
solution to a problem is to take away all of the advantages of SQL without any
of the benefits that Cassandra or Redis provide.
To me this is akin to saying we don't need Haskell because Java now has lambda
expressions.
~~~
yoava
What are the benefits of Cassandra or Redis that I am missing, for this use
case? We have the latency figures as good as Cassandra can get and we get a
reliable engine to store data (something that Redis is not - read Aphir post
about Redis)
The main advantage of MySQL that we keep is the rock solid platform with all
the know-how to operate and manage.
~~~
jhall1468
For one, Cassandra's read/write throughput scales linearly as you add nodes.
I would agree that your use case is narrow, and as such MySQL _works_. But
that doesn't mean it's ideal, and if your use case changes is objectively
worse.
Most importantly you made a claim: "MySQL is a Better NoSQL". Where's the data
for your claim? You found a niche use-case where using MySQL as a KV store
_works_ but then claimed it's better.
If I see a nail, and you tell me whacking it with a crowbar is better than a
hammer, you need to show me why. All you gave me was a schematic on how to use
a crowbar as a hammer.
------
DigitalSea
MySQL is great and all, but if you want a better database that is considerably
more powerful and supports NoSQL type scenarios: PostgreSQL. The fact that
Postgres has supported working with JSON like key/value store data for a while
now and it is quite decent, as well as giving you other options if you decide
you want the traditional approach of tables.
~~~
yoava
When we started with this use case, at 2008, PostgreSQL did not look so good.
Today, to be honest, I'd probably try it for new projects, except for the vast
experience with MySQL that we have at Wix
~~~
hitekker
If interested, You may wish to make a first level comment so people can reply
and ask questions about your blog post.
------
cortesoft
I really hate any post that says "you don't really need this tool, this one
does that job just fine for us"
You don't know my workload. You don't know my requirements. It is ok to make a
post saying that a specific tool is wrong for these use cases, or that you
believe that many people using a tool don't need it or would be better off
with a different tool..... But don't act like you know my workload.
~~~
parent5446
Did you read the article? It isn't saying that at all.
Even the introduction clearly explains that it is addressing a trend of
developers using NoSQL because of hype rather than actually evaluating their
use cases, and that the remainder of the article is how Wix found MySQL better
for their specific scenario. They even give tips on when to know if MySQL is
good for you for this use case.
It does not attempt to make sweeping statements about NoSQL or MySQL, nor does
it prescribe a solution for every workload.
~~~
jhall1468
> It does not attempt to make sweeping statements about NoSQL or MySQL, nor
> does it prescribe a solution for every workload.
The title is _literally_ a sweeping statement that MySQL is better. The first
sentence in the introduction implies that the key-value store is an example of
when _MySQL is better_.
Title: _Scaling to 100M: MySQL is a Better NoSQL_
First Sentence: _MySQL is a better NoSQL. When considering a NoSQL use case,
such as key /value storage, MySQL makes more sense in terms of performance,
ease of use, and stability._
That's nothing if it isn't a sweeping statement.
~~~
parent5446
This is precisely why I asked if you read the article. But it seems you only
read the title and the first sentence.
~~~
jhall1468
I'm not who you responded to, but for the record I read the entire article.
The reason I pointed out the title and first sentence, is because those were
where the op made sweeping statements, which you claimed he didn't.
A little defensive aren't we?
------
tylermauthe
_> Fields only exist to be indexed. If a field is not needed for an index,
store it in one blob/text field (such as JSON or XML)._
A cautionary tale... It can be tempting to store serialized objects in your
DB. This can be very dangerous, both for debugging and for migrations. Your
data is coupled to your application in subtle ways and you can get stale
references if you store any relationships in the "blob". JSON or XML isn't so
terrible, at least a human can read that -- using a true BLOB is a kiss of
death. A database is a handy abstraction for storing data, I highly recommend
that you use this abstraction (and all abstractions) for humans first and
robots second.
Granted, this is an article about optimization and in that regard I'm sure it
yields benefits. If you must squeeze every last drop of juice out of a MySQL
server, then do this -- just know that it comes with a price.
------
halayli
> "MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis, or Hadoop"
Adding Hadoop in the mix tells me he doesn't know what a NoSQL is.
~~~
p4wnc6
I'm not sure that I understand your point. It seems very reasonable to me to
consider a raw HDFS as a type of NoSQL data storage mechanism, with other
components of the Hadoop framework acting on top of it as query languages and
other utilities.
Of course we can bikeshed all day and split hairs about the precise
definitions, but in the spirit of pragmatism, I would absolutely put "Hadoop"
as a form of NoSQL storage solution. In fact, I'd say the most distinct of the
items mentioned is Redis, and Redis is the tool from this list that has use
cases that tend to differ the most significantly from traditional RDBMSs (I'm
thinking specifically cases where Redis is used as a buffering layer to help
relieve congestion for a highly visited base data store). But even so, I still
don't think it represents any sort of taxonomic error to put them all in the
NoSQL category, at least for practical purposes.
~~~
halayli
hadoop != HDFS is my point.
------
chad_walters
MySQL may work well for this small data set (200GB). Start working with 10s of
TBs of data and you will start to understand why NoSQL stores were built.
~~~
austinsharp
My thought exactly. This is just a scale that can be solved either way; when
you really can't fit your data on even a handful of machines with acceptable
performance, then Cassandra can start to shine.
------
avitzurel
This is right and wrong in the same time. Not sure which more.
Storing JSON as TEXT is great, but you really only query the data based on the
mySQL index.
What if you need to query based on the site_data?
This is really not NoSQL this is just a key value store with a JSON object
that is not even native type to the database, you will still need to parse
back/forth.
What about updating the data? You need to get the object and then you need to
parse it, change it and send it back marshalled to TEXT that MySQL can
understand.
Even as a KV store, using MySQL simplifies a lot of things but there are MUCH
better solutions out there.
[EDIT] One other thing that this fails to mention is that TEXT in MySQL will
in most cases go to disk to get the "document" which will be slower.
In Wix case, getting a website and having all the data available this is most
likely not relevant, but if you want to get multiple rows at a time, this will
become a consideration for you.
~~~
ngrilly
Use the last version of MySQL 5.7 that supports JSON natively:
[http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html](http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html)
------
aidos
Quick question - I'm confused about the comment "The nested query syntax
ensures that we are doing only one round-trip to the database to run both SQL
queries". Why is the nested syntax better than a regular join in this case?
Seems like a join would allow the query planner to decide how to carry out the
query.
~~~
meritt
Author seems to be confused on how databases operate (especially since they
really should just be using a KV store like Redis), because you're exactly
right, the query would be the same as:
select sites.* from sites join routes using (site_id) where route_id = ?
Assuming sites.site_id and routes.route_id are both primary keys, this query
is going to perform identically using either syntax. It'll read 1 row from
each table.
They could see a further performance gain by placing an index on routes
(route_id, site_id) since the site_id could be retrieved from the b-tree and
avoid a table hit entirely. But regardless, query syntax will not affect
performance here.
~~~
oysteing
You are right that this join query should be equivalent. However, with InnoDB
there will not be much benefit from your suggested index. In InnoDB primary
indexes are clustered. Hence, any column may be retrieved from the B-tree of
the primary index.
~~~
jfrisby
Only if the columns are stored on-page with the index, which is not guaranteed
-- it depends on what other columns exist in the table, etc.
------
trustfundbaby
Title feels a bit faceitous because the article's use case is more akin to a
key value store, vs nosql in the schemaless, mongodb/cassandra sense.
Good write up though.
------
weddpros
If sharding, rebalancing and partitions didn't exist... And if 1600 rps were
enough when nosql can reach 1M rps (600 times more)... And if that homemade
replication infrastructure was as mature and supported as nosql dbs...
Then using MySQL as a nosql might work.
~~~
lotyrin
This comparison is a dangerous one without some kind of qualification. This
performance difference is not inherent to the design of these systems like you
seem to imply.
What use case and hardware are your hypothetical relational/non-relational
database under where you get your 600 times speed-ups?
I can run a benchmark of a few hundred fast machines with sharded sqlite
databases doing key-value and operating in RAM and get large numbers (any
number I want), but they don't mean anything.
~~~
weddpros
I brought the performance argument (among others) because the article does.
When I read 100k I thought it was rps, not rpm. It would have been an
achievement.
The achievable performance of dbs is linked to their horizontal scalability,
and SQL does not scale horizontally because of the relational model. Subsets
of SQL can be made to scale horizontally, like in Cassandra, without locks,
transactions, joins, aggregations, etc... or with a homemade cluster like the
one described in the article.
But it's not easy to shard a mysql or sqlite system. It's very hard to
rebalance a cluster. It's very hard to make it work during partitions. Paxos
or Raft are difficult. Most nosql dbs do that for you. MySQL doesn't.
So the argument of a "battle tested db" is weak if a mysql system must use
custom built cluster management (custom built != battle tested)
Online games are a good use case where you need very high "50% write/50% read"
throughput, but it's only one among others. Logging/timeseries is another use
case, with 99% write.
As for the sqlite cluster: will you implement all the
sharding/rebalancing/partition tolerance/CP database too? If not, you're
comparing apples and oranges again.
MySQL has merits, but nosql dbs have different design goals: judging by the
"battle tested" argument totally missed the point.
BTW, even a modest (2dbs + 1arbiter) mongodb cluster would handle 1600rps
easily, and you'd get automatic failover and replication for free, with
sharding baked-in if you need it tomorrow.
~~~
lotyrin
That's the thing though, I _can_ do 100k transactions per second with an
RDBMS, it's not an achievement.
Whether a DBMS allows relations or not or uses SQL or not is an independent
property of whether it has built in dynamic
schema/graph/replication/failover/query
distribution/sharding/rebalancing/distributed consistency solutions. And
whether those solutions are built-in has little to do with whether solving
them is possible.
If it's just that we are disappointed that the traditional database systems
(which happen to be relational and SQL because these are elements of that
tradition) feel like they don't need to solve these problems, then I
absolutely agree.
The performance benefits of flattening your data model, avoiding indexing
things you don't query against, sharding, using a distributed map reduce, etc.
can all be had with SQL and an RDBMS, so speed is a poor argument for straying
from the tradition, IMO.
If it's really about wanting a new generation of comprehensive platforms for
solving distributed data management (all those features above) that's a great
argument, but somehow it's always about speed. Of course distributing
asynchronous writes across a cluster of cheap cloud VMs starved for disk IO is
faster than single-point synchronous writes on one of those VMs, but is the
operations overhead of orchestrating and monitoring that cluster really
cheaper than provisioning the hardware it'd take to do the same throughput
with a simpler traditional system? Not as often as I'd be had to believe.
------
mbfg
This use case seems to be highly read oriented, which is fine, but really
diminishes the value of distributed 'nosql' stores. The really hard thing to
scale is massive writes. Cassandra's big differentiator, for instance, is it's
ability to horizontally scale massively when it comes to writes. a million
client writes per second, replicated over zones, type of performance.
Oh and by the way, 'vertical' scaling is kind of a silly concept. That just
means, "i wasn't an idiot".
------
seanwoods
Reminds me of:
[http://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-
mysql](http://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-mysql)
------
lemmsjid
As this title demonstrates, NoSQL is no longer a useful term. (It was useful
for a period of time when SQL-based RDBMs systems were quite predominant, so
it could be used as a gross differentiator).
Now the best way to think about it is that there are database platforms with
varying features, one of which is support for SQL. When you evaluate which
platform to use, you should have a list of business-derived criteria, such as
SQL support, support for various relational integrity constructs (i.e. foreign
keys), latency for typical queries (e.g. Hive), fault tolerance, ACID
compliance, partitioning schemes, read or write optimization, etc. and act
accordingly.
"NoSQL" used to be shorthand for a vague subset of database features that
usually involved relaxing data protection in favor of multi-server
scalability, but now it just muddies the waters, especially as many NoSQL
platforms now support SQL or a subset thereof.
~~~
yoava
Big thumb up!!!
------
rakoo
Might as well go the full route:
CREATE TABLE `sites` (
`site_id` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`owner_id` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
`schema_version` varchar(10) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1.0',
`site_data` text NOT NULL,
`last_update_date` bigint NOT NULL,
`route` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`site_id`)
) /*ENGINE=InnoDB DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8 ROW_FORMAT=COMPRESSED KEY_BLOCK_SIZE=16*/;
select * from sites where route = ?
No join (truly, this time), no need for transaction (whether in the DB or
softly in the application). If you want improvements in performance you need
to stop using your DB as a way to model your _data_ and start using it as a
way to model your _queries_. Considering that the _data_ is already stored in
the site_data field, they already started on this path.
------
carsongross
This statement is nearly meaningless without context.
YesSQL is better than NoSQL _for some problems_ (I happen to think many of
them.)
NoSQL is better than YesSQL _for some problems_ (I happen to think more of
them than I thought a few years ago.)
I'm glad that YesSQL worked well for Wix in this case.
------
niutech
This was done by FriendFeed back in 2009:
[https://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-
mysql](https://backchannel.org/blog/friendfeed-schemaless-mysql)
------
mkadlec
What about ease of setup? I'd take the NoSql setup any day. If in need of a
super light, super quick db that is for a "non-enterprise" application, it's
tough to beat NoSql...
~~~
yoava
Which NoSQL are you referring too? Most are not that easy to implement (saying
that while managing a few PBs of data in production with a few such tools)
------
dirkdk
that mapping from routes to sites seems also great to be stored in a Memcached
machine, as it is probably set once and then stays the same for months if not
years. Memcached and MySQL is always a great combo
~~~
yoava
True. Memcached is a great tool and great for this use case. But when you get
read latency of ~0.3 mSec from MySQL, why add another hop and another engine
to the mix?
------
nfirvine
"Do not perform table alter commands. Table alter commands introduce locks and
downtimes. Instead, use live migrations."
You know what avoids alter? Going schemaless.
~~~
sitharus
Or using a more appropriate RDBMS that allows for online and transactional
ALTER commands?
------
sagivo
Great post Yoav! Thanks for sharing
------
jonthepirate
+1 for "do not use joins"
~~~
jondumbau
why
~~~
jerrysievert
expense - see [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2065754/is-there-any-
gene...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2065754/is-there-any-general-rule-
on-sql-query-complexity-vs-performance) which actually shows it fairly well.
(the stackoverflow response is a much better response than i could have
written, hence the link)
~~~
lokedhs
Except that he did use a join in the article itself (formatted as a subquery,
but still a join)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Richard Stallman’s Disgrace - jmsflknr
https://daringfireball.net/2019/09/richard_stallmans_disgrace
======
bsaul
I’m sorry but people seem to forget what the archetypal geek looked like in
the 80s. Fat, smelly, eating burgers in front of his computer all day, awkward
and drooling at the sight of any woman.
From what gruber is writing, it looks like RMS just happened to be talented
enough that people actually let him behave like this and still talk to him and
let him have a social life (as opposed to the other ones that simply didn’t
leave their room or their desk).
Let’s not make every people from that era criminals or jobless. Just let time
do its work and just wait until they retire.
~~~
soganess
That's not true, it some BS cultural narrative with a couple data points that
allows people to other that which they fear to be a part of. It's the tech
equivalent to artist are tortured geniuses.
More importantly, I would much rather have no power "geeks" pushing toxic
sex/race/gender politics out of fear and awkwardness then the structural crap
being pushed on mass by big tech companies with huge gold parachutes for bad
actors.
I grew up loving the ideas of RMS, but for every RMS behaving "nerd", there
were 4 Ivan Sutherland, Grace Hooper, Alan Kay, Ajay Bhatt.
~~~
bsaul
Well, no. There's definitely some kind of truth behind it. Wanting to spend
most of your life in front of a computer , barely talking to anyone was
considered something very weird until it became common in all kinds of jobs.
I remember when i started freelancing 10 years ago, people would say things
like "oh, you don't look like a developer. i mean, we can talk to you
normally". And that was based on their personal experience with their own IT
department.
And i know teachers in coding schools that regularly have to make public
announcement asking people to take showers every morning. I couldn't believe
it when they told me that, but apparently they had to.
~~~
soganess
I'm sure one could place those first two sentences at the start of any defense
of a stereotype.
I remember when i started freelancing 10 years ago, people would say things like "oh, you don't look like a developer. i mean, we can talk to you normally".
I know so many tech workers with that exact story open. Telling individual
they are the special exception is how we maintain stereotypes. "My
preconceptions aren't wrong, this is just atypical" is the first rule in the
book.
And people's interactions with their IT departments are always so strange.
People don't like being at fault for productivity lose so they shift blame.
I've seen people blame the computer or even the IT guy for issues they do not
understand and balk at the explanation as "not normal." Those same people
wouldn't accuse a doctor of not speaking normal for using medical jargon. But
the stakes and the power dynamics are quite different in medicine.
While I care about my hygiene a fair bit, if I was in a coding academy and
someone had the audacity to treat a group adults like children and basically
tell them they don't understand how to keep their bodies clean... I would
demand a refund and tell that individual off for the self-serving
infantilization of others. There are a million reasons why someone's odor is
more noticeable then what most are accustom too. Simply assuming "nerds don't
shower, so I'll give em a little hand" is all kinds of wrong.
They can't shower but they can build infrastructure, right?
~~~
bsaul
Stereotypes don’t come from nowhere.. in the case of nerds, i don’t know of
any sociology studies performed by researchers on a nationwide scale, so i
guess personal experiences is all i can provide. They do mostly confirm the
sterotypes.
~~~
emiliobumachar
Beware of No True Scotsman. Of the people you know personally, who do you
consider a nerd, other than those who confirm the stereotype?
------
ratsmack
This highlights the 'the emperor has no clothes' syndrome where people will
just ignore the bad behavior of a person because of their position or stature.
Many times people will comment in confidence to close friends, because of the
fear they will be vilified with a public response of the issue.
It seems to me that this is more modern day anomaly driven by too much
hypersensitivity in our social interaction where we self censor to avoid the
most minor appearance of being critical or aggressive.
------
fargle
Is this the case that decades of bad behavior "caught up" with the "clueless
geek". Or SJWs picked the time and place to execute him?
~~~
krapp
It's the case that the clueless geek's bad behavior in this instance happened
to intersect with the Epstein affair via Marvin Minsky.
I know people like to imagine "SJWs" have arbitrary power to ruin mens' lives
on a whim, but no... there was already plenty of smoking kindling around RMS
when he decided to light the match on himself.
~~~
fargle
The linked article is a rehash of RMS's bad and gross habits, 3rd party
anecdotes about "creepiness". No meat. No sin. If RMS had been a level-2
dipshit, he'd been counseled by HR and not even fired.
What I see is, yes agreed timing perfect (Epstein/Minsky), to slander, destroy
that which is different, "gross"/"weird", etc.
When did it become OK to beat up on the Aspy kids? Oh, right SJW makes it
OK...
~~~
krapp
I don't know what "no meat, no sin" is supposed to mean, but most people with
RMS' history of creepy and harassing behavior would have been fired long ago.
Hell, the bad hygiene _alone_ would get most people fired.
~~~
fargle
It means thank goodness you aren't the HR director. You don't go around
harassing people because of hygiene. You don't fire people because of _3rd
hand_ reports of creepiness. You don't slander someones reputation just
because you _read_ somewhere about things that purportedly made him look
really bad.
It simply isn't true; thankfully labor law doesn't make a crime out of bad
smelling-ness and unsubstantiated creepiness.
------
neonate
What a mean and nasty article, irrespective of Stallman.
~~~
bigiain
Seriously? That's your takeaway here?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
bit.ly hackathon (NYC 10/20) and API contest (win a MakerBot) - aditya
http://meetup.com/hackabit
======
aditya
In case the title doesn't make it clear, the API contest is open to everyone
(not NYC only!)
More: <http://blog.bit.ly/post/1307062006/its-a-bit-ly-api-contest>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why airplane windows have round corners (2016) - smacktoward
https://jasonlefkowitz.net/2016/09/why-airplane-windows-have-round-corners/
======
gmueckl
Stress concentration, especially at sharp corners, is a well known phenomenon.
During the second world war, the US manufactured transport ships in an
assembly line fashion. The were launching these ships at rates of more than
one per week. A lot of them had the same design flaw: the cargo hatch corners
were not properly rounded off. This made them starting points for cracks in
the hull. Amd once a crack is started, it continues to extend relentlessly
under stress. As the story goes, a few of these ships were lost because the
cracks grew so long that the hulls broke and sank.
------
tyingq
Wikipedia says the crashes weren't caused by the windows:
_" The accident report's use of the word "window" when referring to the
Automatic Direction Finding (ADF) aerial cutout panel[121] has led to a common
belief that the Comet 1's accidents were the result of its having square
passenger windows."_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Comet)
~~~
starpilot
This seems to contradict other parts of the Wikipedia article saying the
windows were the problem:
> Design and construction flaws, including improper riveting and dangerous
> concentrations of stress around some of the square windows, were ultimately
> identified. As a result, the Comet was extensively redesigned, with oval
> windows, structural reinforcements and other changes.
There's an ongoing debate on this on the article's talk page.
~~~
tyingq
I read that as solving a potential future issue, versus solving the issue that
caused the crashes.
Here's a diagram of what the ADF "windows" are:
[https://images.app.goo.gl/3AUW6JsPV6tj39fq9](https://images.app.goo.gl/3AUW6JsPV6tj39fq9)
------
perl4ever
Interestingly, the fuselage fragment picture looks like the windows _were_
rounded.
Also, while I have read the story about the Comet many times before, I vaguely
recall one telling of it that noted the problem wasn't simply due to square
windows, but some other contributing factor, an adjustment to the design that
caused extra stress on top of the corners.
It kind of seems like common sense that engineers wouldn't have been as
oblivious as the standard telling implies.
Most disasters don't happen from anyone being dumb per se, but from the
interaction of different people or groups who lack the full context of what
the other is doing, and I believe that was the case here.
~~~
stcredzero
_I vaguely recall one telling of it that noted the problem wasn 't simply due
to square windows, but some other contributing factor, an adjustment to the
design that caused extra stress on top of the corners._
An opening on the top for a radio receiver was improperly riveted, instead of
being glued. The rivet holes caused stress concentration, which resulted in
metal fatigue and eventual failure and explosive decompression. When this root
cause was discovered, it was also realized that the window corners also caused
stress concentration.
------
JulianMorrison
So, why aren't they circular like portholes?
~~~
taneq
You can probably get 80% of the stress reduction from 20% circularity.
~~~
Gibbon1
Definitely that. Also for a cylinder under pressure the hoop stress is twice
the longitudinal stress. Which says to me that vertically oriented rectangular
windows are optimal. Probably even more so since the windows are aligned.
------
jessriedel
The only thing worse than not having a tl;dr is having a clickbait tl;dr: "The
answer is simple: to keep that window from killing you". (Translation: "To
find out more, read the article!")
The actual claimed explanation:
> when an aircraft’s interior is pressurized and de-pressurized repeatedly,
> over and over again for many months, the strength of that aircraft’s metal
> body slowly weakens — a phenomenon that became known as metal fatigue. And
> when the holes you cut into that body to hold windows have sharp corners
> like squares do, thanks to a process called stress concentration the
> weakness builds up much faster in those sharp corners than it does elsewhere
You can read the rest of the article if you want to read about the history of
the de Havilland Comet, the world's first commercial jet airliner.
------
jjakque
Real Engineering made a video on this exact topic, explaining the essence in
less than 2 minutes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rXGRPMD-
GQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rXGRPMD-GQ)
He went through bit more details said topic in another video "Why Are The
Dreamliner's Windows So Big":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-I20Ru9BwM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-I20Ru9BwM)
------
pvaldes
Ok, is interestiong, so lets eval the explossive decompression issue.
What if we could lead all this air to an external compensating device in a
more ordered and less violent way?.
I'm thinking on some kind of "external airbag", elastic membrane, rubber
balloon, etc, so we would reduce the time of event duration and soften or
control the disordered exit of air (and maybe to save also some valuable
oxygen from being totally lost). If unfortunately the accident happens, any
corpse, object or piece would be trapped in the balloon instead to be sucked
out and dissapear (this is better for the family than not having nothing to
bury at least).
I suppose that to implement such device, like a rubber ring window in a
handful of windows and doors, wouldn't be technically defiant and could save
lifes (or alleviate the harm done) until emergency landing. Would be also a
inmediately visible flag for airport rescue team to go directly to the area
with more possible victims.
~~~
dredmorbius
Venting from multiple, engineered, locations rather than a single explanding
rupture would spare the airframe from catastropic disintegration. It's still
hell on the cargo and pilots.
You'd need a venting system which itself would detect sudden pressure change
and blow first -- effectively a pressure circuit breaker. That itself would
all but certainly introduce multiple new catastrophic failure modes.
Your suggestion generalises to flying an airplane's pressure hull within
another pressure hull. This scales poorly in a regime where weight and payload
space are highly constrained (though it has similarities to _nonpressurised_
oil tanker double-hull design). Yo dawg, I hear you like airplanes, here's an
airplane you can put your airplane in so you can fly your airplane in an
airplane....
Better to design-proof against metal fatigue-induced ruptures in the first
place.
~~~
pvaldes
> Your suggestion generalises to flying an airplane's pressure hull within
> another pressure hull
That is not the idea either
~~~
dredmorbius
Practical remedies generally resemble ripstop designs, preventing propogation
of structural failure, rather than attempting to contain the pressure.
It's better to think through the problems created by sudden rupture:
1\. Pressure loss and insufficient oxygen. Reducing flight levels to ~13,000
feet addresses this, emergency oxygen provides for several minutes' supply for
passengers, hours for flight crew.
2\. Suction through void; crew, passengers and other internal contents may be
sucked into / out of the void. This can and has compounded initial structural
failures through pressure-hammer effects (especially Aloha Air), and is hard
on crew, passengers, and contents subjected.
3\. Internal windflows. Cabin contents themselves become missiles. Securing
these (seatbelts, latches, straps, etc.) minimises risks.
4\. Progressive structural compromise due to venting airflow, jetstream, or
air hammer. This may occur over miliseconds to minutes, and is the primary
result of total aircraft loss in most cases. Designing to minimise rupture
propogation is the key countermeasure.
Controlled aircraft depressurisation is not itself immediately fatal if
countered quickly (supplemental oxygen, reduced altitude, emergency landing).
At very high pressure differentials and sudden decompression, traumatic injury
is unavoidable. The Byford Dolphin incident (warning: NSFL) would be a prime
example. Though the structure itself was not totally compromised.
Pressurised aircraft fuselages are already designed to minimise the risk
you're describing to the limits of materials and cost considerations. Double-
bagging isn't practicable.
Aircraft in very high-risk environments (typically military aircraft) have
been unpressurised or minimally pressurised (the F-16 maintains a 5psi
differential to ambient above 23k ft). Explosive decompression by enemy (or
friendly) fire is a key risk.
------
_bxg1
> Too late for the British aerospace industry, which saw competitors like
> Boeing and Lockheed, slower to market with their own jetliners but perceived
> to be more safe, seize and hold the crown of king of the Jet Age for
> America.
Irony.
------
ken
> "A jet airliner, in other words, was an airliner that could revolutionize
> aviation — and that meant the first company to bring one to market stood to
> make an absolutely fantastic amount of money."
Good on him for leading the innovation, but it seems obvious to me today that
"first" rarely means "most profitable" or "longest surviving".
------
NamTaf
Stress concentration factors like this are the bane of all structural
engineering. Anything with too sharp an internal corner will concentrate
stress and lead to material fatigue failure if there's any stress there. Given
I've spent all morning staring at it in some finite element analysis work, I'm
going to ramble about it to give myself a break.
Sometimes dealing with it can be a pain, for example if you need two
rectangular things to sit together along two faces, since you have to radius
both corners with a larger radius on the smaller object. One way to combat
this is to drill a hole in the corner, _removing_ additional material but
creating a little 270ish-degree-C-shaped radius in place of the sharp corner.
Take what would've originally been a sharp corner, but then drill it out
(example: [1]). What you lose on less material, you more than gain back with
eliminating the stress concentration. This has the advantage that then a
rectangular object can fit snug into the corner, because the smaller's sharp
corner just sits inside the larger's C-shape cutout.
The best visualisation tool of this phenomenon that I learned is force lines
[2]. Where they bunch up closely together is where high stress occurs. It
follows naturally that a sudden sharp corner will concentrate all those lines
close to it, whereas a gentler radius encourages a more gradual transition.
Think of the lines as similar to Isobars (probably the most well-known contour
line) [3], in that the lines represent points of constant pressure/force, and
so will sort-of repel adjacent lines (since there needs to be a smooth
gradient between those lines). The more gradually they're forced to change,
the more gradual that gradient between lines will be (represented by them
being farther apart).
Anyhow, all of this is also why you see countless concrete footpaths,
driveways, etc. with cracks growing out from sharp corners in the concrete.
Look at any internal corners where the concrete runs in an L shape. You'll not
uncommonly find a crack growing from it. However, no one really cares (except
for aesthetic properties) because it doesn't cause a functional problem, and
forming concrete into straight sides is orders of magnitude easier than
forming smooth curves.
Bonus points if you notice that it's generally _not_ parallel to one of the
edges that form the corner, and can figure out why :)
(I'd be guessing if I gave my answer, but I'm somewhat confident it'd be
right: thermal expansion/contraction affects both sides simultaneously,
meaning that the shear stress runs generally at 45 degrees to the corner
rather than perpendicular to one, which would be the case if only one side
expanded/contracted.)
[1]: [https://img3.gmdu.net/35780.0.jpg](https://img3.gmdu.net/35780.0.jpg)
[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_lines)
[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_line#Barometric_pressu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contour_line#Barometric_pressure)
------
ganesh7
You could also say the great innovators did not understand the technology they
looted from the Germans. Or the similarities in design, e.g. integration of
turbines in the wings, of the Comet and Nazi jet planes are merely
coincidental I assume.
~~~
dTal
The placement of the engines has nothing to do with metal fatigue from
thousands of repeated 40,000 feet cruises with a pressurized cabin anyway; no
German jet fighter was pressurized, so it's doubtful that they understood the
technology either.
Also, the only Nazi aircraft of any type with root-integrated jet engines is
the obscure Horton 229 prototype - and apart from that single cosmetic
similarity, it has absolutely nothing in common with the de Havilland Comet.
~~~
ganesh7
Uhuh:
"The Junkers Ju 49 was a German aircraft designed to investigate high-altitude
flight and the techniques of cabin pressurization. It was the world's second
working pressurized aircraft, following the Engineering Division USD-9A which
first flew in the United States in 1921.[1] By 1935, it was flying regularly
to around 12,500 m (41,000 ft)."
~~~
dTal
What on Earth is your argument? Everyone was experimenting with cabin
pressurization - that wasn't even the first one. Are you seriously suggesting
that that specific aircraft - a pre-war, single-engine piston craft - in any
way influenced the design of the Comet?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabin_pressurization#History)
| {
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Gabe Newell Is Doing an AMA - rinesh
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Gaben/comments/5o8fsy/gabe_l_newell_will_be_joining_us_tuesday_the_17th/
======
gigatexal
WHY WONT WE GET Hl3!?!?
| {
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Getting users to tag the 166,000 patterns on Ravelry - pingswept
http://blog.ravelry.com/2010/07/09/its-time-for-a-ravelry-search-party/
======
pingswept
~85,000 patterns tagged in the first day. Pretty effective means of organizing
content.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ancient Beers - MaysonL
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=9000-year-old-brew-hitting-the-shel-2009-06-05
======
wyclif
Dogfish Head (the brewery) is right here in little 'ol Delaware. Even if it
weren't my hometown microbrewery of choice and there was no bias, I think I'd
still be a fan after trying their line of IPAs.
~~~
timcederman
Dogfish Head is well known for their crazy beers. One of my favourites is the
Midas Touch, not mentioned in the article, but one of the first attempts at
recreating ancient beers.
------
aliston
Is this even technically a beer? I know that there are beers made with rice
(like Budweiser), but they are still barley-based. In Germany, this would
definitely not be considered a beer...
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot>
Still... I'm a pretty big fan of Dogfish as well, so I give them credit for
trying something new.
~~~
dmm
> In Germany, this would definitely not be considered a beer.
Germany may be a more diverse place than you're aware. The Reignheitsgebot
originated in Bavaria and was a condition of the German unification in 1871.
However, many areas of Germany have long traditions of non-Reignheitsgebot
beers, for example, wheat beers and spiced beers in northern Germany.
| {
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1600s England Through the Eyes of One of the First Modern Travel Writers (2017) - Thevet
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/see-1600s-england-through-eyes-one-first-travel-writers-180963536/
======
yesenadam
It's about Celia Fiennes' _Through England on a Side Saddle In the Time of
William and Mary_
"She travelled around England on horseback between 1684 and about 1703, "to
regain my health by variety and change of aire and exercise". At this time the
idea of travel for its own sake was still novel, and Fiennes was exceptional
as an enthusiastic woman traveller."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Fiennes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celia_Fiennes)
Download her book as pdf, epub etc:
[https://archive.org/details/throughenglando00fiengoog](https://archive.org/details/throughenglando00fiengoog)
That 1888 edition is the first complete one.
~~~
barrkel
If the name Fiennes brings to mind actor Ralph Fiennes and his cousin explorer
Ranulph Fiennes, it's no coincidence: they are related.
Wikipedia has several overview pages:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fiennes_family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fiennes_family)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisleton-Wykeham-
Fiennes_fami...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twisleton-Wykeham-
Fiennes_family)
------
robin_reala
Drop back a few decades and Pepys’ Diary is another fine slice of life of
urban England. I’m finishing a public domain production of the 1893 edition[1]
for Standard Ebooks[2] at the moment but in the meantime they’re all online
and cross referenced at
[https://www.pepysdiary.com/](https://www.pepysdiary.com/) ; it’s fun to dive
in and read an entry or two.
[1] [https://github.com/robinwhittleton/samuel-pepys_the-diary-
of...](https://github.com/robinwhittleton/samuel-pepys_the-diary-of-samuel-
pepys)
[2] [https://standardebooks.org/](https://standardebooks.org/)
~~~
jdietrich
Peyps also created one of the great treasures of English folk history, a
collection of over 1,800 broadside ballads. Broadsides are the closest thing
we have to a 17th century newspaper - cheaply printed, sold in the street and
fundamentally ephemeral. Browsing his collection gives a remarkable insight
into the zeitgeist.
[https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/pepys](https://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/page/pepys)
------
pgcoghlan
If you want an account of these times written in modern English, "The Time
Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain" is a lively and entertaining read:
[https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Travellers-Guide-
Restoration-B...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Travellers-Guide-Restoration-
Britain-ebook/dp/B01I0RU15S/ref=sr_1_1)
------
classichasclass
I note with interest how her travelogue was rediscovered. How will this work a
couple hundred years from now when people of our generation put stuff online
instead of pen to paper? Will there hopefully be a local copy on their
computer, assuming the SSD or HD hasn't died and later generations can read
it? Or will it simply perish when the hosting bill isn't paid, or the account
is inactive?
A lot of memoirs from this writer's era certainly didn't survive either, but
it seems like there was a greater chance back then even considering the cost
of pen, ink and paper.
~~~
pjmlp
I think about that every time I am visiting an archaeological site with stone
inscriptions.
Looking 5000 years in the future, no one will be able to read our documents,
like we do with those written 5000 years ago.
~~~
thfuran
Reading 25 year old documents is hard enough. I mean, none of my current
computers even has an optical drive, let alone a 3.5" floppy. To say nothing
of the actually-floppy floppies.
------
ggm
If you've read Neal Stephenson's "system of the world" this book is a voice
straight out of that timeline. And for more contemporary references "the
favourite"
------
johnr2
Interesting article, but I'm slightly puzzled by the [sic] comments following
many of the quotes. The use of English looks correct for the time.
~~~
00ajcr
Surely the [sic] annotations are to indicate that the quotations are unchanged
from the original source text, which contains somewhat archaic language and
misspellings of words when compared to modern English.
~~~
johnr2
You're right. I'm so used to seeing it used in a snarky way that I was
overlooking the original meaning of "sic erat scriptum" (thus was it written).
| {
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Creating Children's Story Animations Using Inkscape and Animatron - pshapiro99
http://www.techsoupforlibraries.org/blog/creating-childrens-story-animations
======
rayalez
To anyone interested in doing 2D animation on linux, I highly recommend
TVPaint.
It's an incredibly awesome software, the best one available on any platform,
and they have a linux version.
It is not free/open source, but if you are doing animation it shouldn't
matter, you should be choosing the best software available, because animation
is expensive and takes a lot of effort, so a superior tool pays for itself
very quickly.
~~~
leppr
I've heard great things about that software too but the price is quite
prohibitive for an amateur unfortunately.
~~~
MichaelGG
And their homepage has a link to a Dongle issues FAQ. Which contains this
line: "Sending another dongle means sending a new free license. We have no way
of differentiating unlucky people from dishonest ones."
... Except they can. Dishonest ones would just type "tvpaint" into a search
engine and download it, not go through the hassle of buying a license in the
first place and pretending to lose a dongle.
They even list this as their second selling feature on the freelance artists
page. I don't get it :\\.
The software looks really cool though.
------
lotyrin
Why is it a win to use an open source vector graphics software if you're then
going to rely on a software as a service animation suite?
------
myfonj
I wonder if his devstack wouldn't be a bit more fluent (and independent) with
Synfig studio [1].
[1] [http://www.synfig.org/](http://www.synfig.org/)
------
briandear
The thought experiment is already possible. However many people that are on
the bottom rungs lack motivation to take advantage of these kinds of programs.
Many poor and unemployed already have computers but choose to spend their time
on Facebook instead of potentially learning to code. Nice thought, but the
implementation ignores the fact that many people would rather spend their time
watching Judge Judy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What Musical Notes Can Look Like - tintinnabula
http://nautil.us/blog/this-is-what-musical-notes-actually-look-like
======
JoeDaDude
So it sounds like these are effectively the same thing as Chladni Patterns [1]
using a liquid surface. It reminds of composer Stuart Mitchell [2] who
believed he saw Chladni patterns carved into the Rosslyn Cathedral in
Scotland. These he interpreted as a guide to a musical score, which Mitchell
then recorded as the "Rosslyn Motet" [3].
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni#Chladni_figures](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Chladni#Chladni_figures)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Mitchell](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Mitchell)
[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy2Dg-
ncWoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy2Dg-ncWoY)
~~~
chubot
Yes, thank you!
Here are some other related links. It looks like their patterns are just a
little noisier due to the medium of water, but you see the same kind of
symmetry.
[http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/06/the-visual-patterns-
of...](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/06/the-visual-patterns-of-audio-
frequencies-seen-through-vibrating-sand/)
[http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/20902918854](http://thekidshouldseethis.com/post/20902918854)
\-- nice video
[http://www.cymatics.co.uk/](http://www.cymatics.co.uk/)
------
bweitzman
Like the article (thankfully) mentions, the photographs really do have nothing
to with the notes themselves. Intervals and chords have characters, individual
notes do not.
~~~
sevensor
Indeed, this experiment says as much about the shape and size of the vessel
that holds the liquid as it does about the notes. It's not true that you'd get
the same result if you repeated it at home, unless your apparatus was built
exactly the same.
Also, D minor is the saddest of all keys.
~~~
S_A_P
Spinal Tap?
[https://vimeo.com/92699399](https://vimeo.com/92699399)
~~~
sevensor
Of course :)
------
sporkologist
They look like a representation of amplitude vs. time on a graph, if they look
like anything. The art presented is very nice, but it's an artist's
interpretation. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
------
phlakaton
I found that to be a fun article, and it could be a starting point for
creative exploration, but I think any suggestion that these images relate to
our actual psychoacoustic perception of notes and music is wholly
unsubstantiated.
I do perceive differences in the character of music played in different
"keys", but 1) I ascribe these to aspects of timbre, dissonance, tuning, and
performance practice rather than fundamental aspects of the notes themselves,
2) there's very little scientific evidence that I'm aware of that these
differences correspond to psychological moods.
Nonetheless, there's a significant philosophical tradition going back to at
least Plato that there is some connection between tonal systems and
psychology. See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctrine_of_the_affections)
and Plato's Republic for a couple of starting points.
------
agox
According to the article, "If you were to repeat this experiment, you would
get the same designs."
The initial conditions of the experiment are so susceptible to minor
variations, I strongly doubt the author's assertion.
------
zhemao
As mentioned in one of the comments, D-E-F is a triad, not a tritone.
A tritone is an interval of three whole tones (i.e. an augmented fourth). For
instance, C and F# form a tritone.
~~~
phlakaton
Indeed, but not only is it not a tritone, it is (to my knowledge) not
"diabolus in musica" either (that's also the tritone). The author noted the
original error, but then corrected it incorrectly. :-(
~~~
Ericson2314
Ya beat me to it. :)
------
brador
There must be a better way of writing music down. Out of interest I Googled
"alternative music notation" and every alternative is the same lines with dots
BS that translates poorly to computer and is difficult for beginners to read.
Why has there never existed an alternative musical notation system thats
truely different?
Is horizontal lines and abstract squiggles with relative positions really the
best we have?
~~~
huehehue
There are a few alternatives, though most are instrument-specific.
For piano, there's Klavarskribo. If you've ever played Guitar Hero/Rockband,
it's a bit like that:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavarskribo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klavarskribo)
For many fretted stringed instruments, there's tablature. One line per string,
and instead of abstract squiggles you get numbers that represent fret
positions. They stack easily for chords, and there's intuitive notation for
picking styles and such. E.g. sliding from the second to the fifth fret on the
A string would look like:
E |----------
B |----------
G |----------
D |----------
A |---2/5----
E |----------
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tablature)
I see your point about a _truly_ different system but, as music is basically
sound through time, I'm not sure how else it could be notated if not linearly.
~~~
soundwave106
Most of the alternatives in use I can think come in genres where improvisation
is far more important than playing exactly, and as such only a reduced feature
set is needed. Examples include the above mentioned tablature, solfege
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solf%C3%A8ge)),
Roman numeral notation
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_numeral_analysis)),
chord charts
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_chart](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_chart)),
or lead sheets
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_sheet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_sheet)).
Full notation in the pop and jazz genres are rare.
For Western classical, honestly, considering the information included in
standard notation -- rhythmic complexity, phrasings, special symbols for
various afflictions, etc. -- it would be really hard to replicate this in a
system that's both easy for humans and computers to read. (Think if musicians
had to use something like the piano roll found in most DAWs...)
------
eggy
In keeping with the religious interpretations of the article, G - Demon, C# -
Tree in Eden, I don't see F as the underbelly of the frog, but more a very
Blakean image of Two Eagles on either side of Christ holding the Chalice with
a wee spider hanging the bottom above the Sun in Christ's lap!
More so, I see G as a Teletubby rather than a Demon ;)
------
lisper
No, this is not what musical notes actually look like. At the risk of stating
the painfully obvious, musical notes are sounds, not images. They don't look
like anything. The images in the article are what you get if you render the
information in a sound to an image in a particular way. If you render that
information in a different way, you'll get a different image.
~~~
botfly
Isn't that "what things look like"? Like what you see when you see a tree
isn't actually a tree but the interpretation of light waves hitting your eye.
It's a rendering of the light in a particular way and we somewhat casually
call this "what a tree looks like". Often when we talk about the projection of
a thing into some visual form we us this kinda casual language. I think to
your point, any one of those methods of rendering the information into visual
form has equal claim to "what the notes look like"
~~~
lisper
Yes, that's true, but in the case of macroscopic physical objects like trees
there is a "natural" rendering designed by evolution that is reasonably called
what the thing "actually" looks like. In the case of sounds, there is no such
a natural rendering. Turning sound into images necessarily involves some
design, and so there's no basis for calling any particular rendering the
"actual" appearance of a sound.
~~~
botfly
So the problem in this view is the primacy of one particular projection
asserted by the word "actually"? Fair enough.
~~~
lisper
Yes, exactly. If the headline had been, "A neat way to turn sounds into pretty
pictures" I would have had no problem with it.
~~~
burkaman
But the current headline is "What Musical Notes Can Look Like", emphasis on
the "Can". Your suggestion is basically just a condescending way to rephrase
that.
~~~
lisper
The headline has been changed. When I posted my original comment, the headline
was the original headline: "This Is What Musical Notes Actually Look Like"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kernel analysis with bpftrace - Twirrim
https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/793749/a5a7c5282076c094/
======
_wmd
The joy with bpftrace (and dtrace before it) for me is this ease with which
'synthetic' profiling events can be constructed from multiple underlying
events. This can be used to, for example, only record the latency of malloc()
while at least one TCP connection has been accepted and some particular
function in your binary has already run at least once with its third parameter
having a particular value
The offwake.bt example from the article is the closest to that, but it doesn't
hook any userspace functions (like malloc). That's totally possible and
extremely easy -- events can be mixed from wherever in the same script and,
barring some knowledge like the fact the script is running on every CPU
simultaneously, things just magically work
The main problem with bpftrace is that it's a pain in the ass to compile from
source just now. A tool as useful as this really wants to be available on
every machine by default
~~~
brendangregg
It depends on your distro; last I checked an "apt-get install bpftrace" worked
fine on Ubuntu 18.04. Debian has a package as well. We're tracking them in the
INSTALL.md.
Companies like Netflix and Facebook have internal bpftrace packages -- it's a
default install on the Netflix BaseAMI, so it's always there.
~~~
helper
It doesn't look like bpftrace is available in the default repos for Ubuntu
18.04.
------
linsomniac
The examples in this article are spectacular! I _REALLY_ need to learn
bpftrace.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice - yummyfajitas
http://www.thecrimson.com/column/the-red-line/article/2014/2/18/academic-freedom-justice/?page=single
======
Millennium
I believe the name to look up in this case is "Trofim Lysenko". This social
experiment has been performed once already, and its spectacular and
predictable failure should stand as a powerful argument that it need not be
repeated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Risk Aversion And The Perils Of Selling Too Early - quilby
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/28/risk-aversion-and-the-perils-of-selling-too-early-israeli-startups-part-ii/
======
enjo
This brings to mind a really interesting story.
I had the chance to work with a guy who had just sold his business. It turns
out that early on (about a year into it) someone came along and offered to buy
the whole business for $1 million dollars.
At the time his situation was bleak:
* the site was being overshadowed by two much larger direct competitors * he was 'hosting' the site from borrowed space in a kind relatives basement. * growth was really solid, but revenues from the site where far outpaced by bandwidth/hardware costs. * He had a second mortgage on his house and his credit cards where completely maxed. His wife, while understanding, was understandably distressed.
The thing was, he absolutely believed in his business. He was confident that
he was going to be able to overtake those competitors. Instead of selling and
pocketing a nice gain, he pushed on.
5 years later he had a top-100 alexa site that sold for $300 million dollars.
He had managed to stave off even VC funding until quite late, and so the vast
majority was held by him and a co-founder.
That's the opposite of risk aversion. It's funny, he considers not selling one
of the stupidest things he's ever done. Anyone in their right mind would sell
and move on to something else. He didn't, and it paid off with a 300x return.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mozilla and Google Sign New Agreement for Default Search in Firefox - dochtman
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2011/12/20/mozilla-and-google-sign-new-agreement-for-default-search-in-firefox/
======
gojomo
Some additional data points to help parse this:
• the agreement appears to be with the Mozilla corporation, rather than the
non-profit foundation... but the corporation is 100% owned by the foundation,
so the distinction is mainly for tax/accounting/reporting advantages
• the prior agreement delivered over $80 million in yearly revenue to Mozilla
(as of the last time I recall seeing credible numbers reported, a couple years
ago)
• the prior agreement technically expired 3 weeks ago, so the multi-year
renewal negotiations may have had some wrinkles
I hope Mozilla is now earning even more; with the rise of Chrome and iOS they
may need it.
~~~
yajoe
Admittedly I haven't paid close attention to the Mozilla Foundation even
though I was an early firefox adopter and continue to use it on my macbook
air...
tl;dr -- Google contract worth about 100 million in 2010 given the latest
public numbers, more than 150% of the total engineering budget.
My rambling notes... I wanted to look into this corporation/foundation
distinction to see how much money Mozilla gets from Google. Some highlights
from Mozilla's _2010_ financial report (2011 isn't out):
[http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-
US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundatio...](http://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-
US/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation%20and%20Subsidiaries%202010%20Audited%20Financial%20Statement.pdf)
1) Mozilla doesn't live off our contributions, not by a long shot: Mozilla
only had collected 150k in contributions throughout 2010 and expected at most
1.7 million total (there is a discrepancy in time between when the report is
prepared and when donors may actually send the check they promised).
2) Mozilla received 121 million from "royalty revenue" -- anything related to
the Mozilla brand: Amazon affiliate programs, search engine branding like this
Google deal, and sale of products from the Mozilla shop.
3) According to note 9 (footnotes are always where all juicy info is buried),
84% of the royalty revenue from 2010 is from "a contract with a search engine
provider for royalties which expires November 2011." I take that to mean the
Google contract. 84% of 121 million is ~100 million.
4) Mozilla's burn rate was 62 million, which means Google paid for the entire
Mozilla development effort in 2010. Interestingly Mozilla's burn rate
increased 50% from 2009. I can speculate this is from the increased
competition from Chrome, but who knows.
5) Mozilla held 105 million -- yes million -- in investments in 2010 (mostly
bonds and index funds, check out note 3). Without Google, Mozilla can use this
war chest to operate for at least 2 years. That's much, much better than most
companies.
6) Last, as a side note: there was a re-org in early 2011 (which I had missed)
where Mozilla seems to have folded the thunderbird effort in with the browser
team. This could be a "synergy" move, but it likely means they are divesting
from that business and putting more people on the browser effort.
~~~
ww520
Thanks for the info. Very interesting.
Burn rate of 62M is pretty high. That can fund about 300 people plus other
costs like hosting. Is that only for the browser or for other projects as
well?
~~~
_delirium
Not sure how reliable a source it is, but Wikipedia cites a Mozilla engineer's
tweet as saying they have 600 employees, which is a bigger operation than I
would've guessed:
<https://twitter.com/#!/paulrouget/status/116110841669099520>
~~~
zobzu
they doubled size this year to counter chrome's speed of development
------
dman
Firefox is an amazing piece of software and the fine folks at Mozilla are
always pushing the envelope of online experiences. Am happy that Mozilla folks
can concentrate on the software for the next couple of years without having to
worry about funding.
~~~
jasonlotito
On that note, I'd still worry. Essentially, they have 3 years now to come up
with some other means of funding. I've donated to them before, but I don't
think they can stay afloat with just donations.
~~~
mbrubeck
"Funding" makes it sound like Google is doing this out of charity, or like
Mozilla is a pre-profit startup that needs outside investment. Neither is
true.
Google isn't "funding" Mozilla; it's a customer of Mozilla. Their search
traffic payments aren't charity or venture capital; they are revenue. Search
engines are always willing to pay for large amounts of traffic. Even Opera
reports significant revenue from their desktop browser [1][2], which has an
order of magnitude fewer users than Firefox. This is not the first time the
Google/Mozilla deal has been renewed in the past decade, and I doubt it will
be the last. And there are other search engines who will also continue to pay
for valuable traffic.
(Note that individual donations are still important for the non-profit Mozilla
Foundation, since tax rules limit how Firefox revenue can be used for the
Foundation's other activities. Donations help support Mozilla's other projects
to build the open web like the current projects in education, journalism,
video publishing, and online privacy.)
1: <http://www.opera.com/company/investors/faq/>
2: <http://www.quora.com/How-does-Opera-Software-ASA-make-money>
~~~
jasonlotito
> "Funding" makes it sound like Google is doing this out of charity, or like
> Mozilla is a pre-profit startup that needs outside investment. Neither is
> true.
I didn't even imply that, so don't suggest that I did. It's dishonest, and
rude.
> Google isn't "funding" Mozilla; it's a customer of Mozilla. Their search
> traffic payments aren't charity or venture capital; they are revenue.
Yes. I know this. My concern is this customer accounts for, what, 80% of the
total revenue? Are you telling me that if this deal feel through, Mozilla
wouldn't be impacted? Because that is my concern. From my perspective, despite
having contributed numerous times whenever I could to the Mozilla Foundation,
it concerns me what would happen to Mozilla is Google didn't contribute.
Hell, my most recent donation was helped along precisely _because_ of this
fear.
> And there are other search engines who will also continue to pay for
> valuable traffic.
Bing. I have no doubt, but I don't know that. It's all behind closed doors for
the most part.
You make it sound like Mozilla doesn't need my donations, and doesn't need the
Google deal. Could it do everything it does without donations or Google as a
customer? Could it? If so, great!
I feel like I'm being vilified for being concerned.
~~~
mbrubeck
> I didn't even imply that, so don't suggest that I did. It's dishonest, and
> rude.
I'm very sorry!
I hope I wasn't putting words into your mouth. I was reacting less to your
comment and more to the repeated use of the word "funding" in all sorts of
articles on this topic. I think it both reflects and affects how (some) people
perceive Mozilla. For example, the business press would not say that the
Defense Department is "funding" a contractor like Raytheon, no matter how big
a customer they are.
I'm probably feeling overly defensive after all the articles trying to create
drama by claiming Mozilla was in imminent danger of Google "pulling the plug"
(when actually a deal was still in place, and both parties were actively
negotiating the new one but just couldn't talk about it yet). Within the
Mozilla project, we know our userbase is still growing, and the market for
search traffic is as strong as ever. But outside, friends are still asking me
about these baseless scary stories in the press.
> Bing. I have no doubt, but I don't know that.
Yes I believe Mozilla earns revenue from Bing, and also several other sites,
including regional search engines in various locales. In some of our localized
builds, Google isn't even the default search engine.
> You make it sound like Mozilla doesn't need my donations, and doesn't need
> the Google deal. Could it do everything it does without donations or Google
> as a customer? Could it? If so, great!
Not at all! As I mentioned, donations are very important to Mozilla --
disproportionately important, because in addition to the financial resources,
they give us individual support that's important to our existence and
activities as a non-profit public service foundation. And income
diversification (your stated goal) can't hurt either.
And you're correct that Mozilla would be impacted hugely if for some reason
Google stopped paying search affiliates. (But of course, Google would be
greatly impacted too, which is one reason I'm not actually worried about this
right now.) I have no doubt that Mozilla _will_ grow other sources of revenue
_if_ it needs to -- but that's a matter of long-term contingency planning. And
no matter what Google does, our own priorities are clear: Make great software
that serves our mission and our hundreds of millions of users. As long as we
do that, we have leverage and we have control of our fate.
Many successful open source projects run on volunteer contributions,
individual donations, sponsorships, and other sources of support. If revenue
did decrease for some reason, Mozilla could continue to exist as a smaller
organization -- even a much smaller one if necessary, like it was when Firefox
was first developed. We wouldn't have the same reach we do today, but we're
already used to competing with companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft
that have literally hundreds of times more money than us. Mozilla's biggest
strengths have always been in the community and the source code. Steadily-
growing Firefox revenue is a lever that helps amplify those strengths, but
remember that the success of Firefox created the revenue streams, not the
other way around.
I'm glad you're concerned, because these _are_ challenging times for Mozilla
and the open web. We do need all the support we can get. But I hope Mozilla
gets support based on the great things we've done and will do -- not based on
fear that someone else will come along and squash the movement. We will not be
squashed so easily!
~~~
jasonlotito
> I'm very sorry!
I'm sorry as well. I probably overreacted. Mozilla is just one of those
organizations that I respect and worry over. I remember Netscape, and then
Mozilla, and then a little 0.1 browser named Phoenix, and have used every
version.
> I was reacting less to your comment and more to the repeated use of the word
> "funding" in all sorts of articles on this topic.
I do the same far too often. I reply to a specific comment, and instead of
replying to that one comment, I reply to everything that comment reminds me
of. It's not fair. I understand how easy it is to do.
It's all good. =)
> I'm probably feeling overly defensive after all the articles trying to
> create drama by claiming Mozilla was in imminent danger of Google "pulling
> the plug" (when actually a deal was still in place, and both parties were
> actively negotiating the new one but just couldn't talk about it yet).
> Within the Mozilla project, we know our userbase is still growing, and the
> market for search traffic is as strong as ever. But outside, friends are
> still asking me about these baseless scary stories in the press.
Didn't know you were apart of Mozilla. Should have checked your bio. Btw,
I LOVE YOU GUYS! =)
Anyways, to your point: outside, baseless scary stories or not, it's all we
had to go on. Just think about it for a second from our point of view: Google
has Chrome, the #1 browser by some accounts, and it's paying Mozilla for
searches. And then their deal with Google ends. And nothing is really said
from either party. I get emails from Mozilla asking for donations after this
happens. Press reports talk about the how much Google as a customer means to
Mozilla's bottom line.
So... I get nervous.
> Not at all! As I mentioned, donations are very important to Mozilla
Oh, I realize this. I only wish there was some way I could contribute more
regularly. As it stands now, I have to be reminded to contribute. Might it
make more sense to help automate that process for those interested? Reddit
took the plunge with Gold Accounts, and that seemed to have helped. You don't
even need to do anything. Just something that lets me say "Yeah, I'll
contribute $X per month, because I love what you do, but fairly forgetful and
will sometimes miss the 'Donation' emails."
> Mozilla could continue to exist as a smaller organization -- even a much
> smaller one if necessary, like it was when Firefox was first developed.
I don't want to see that though. You guys do too much awesome. Besides the EFF
and FSF, there is Mozilla. And with you in the ring fighting the fights you
fight, I know that someone is looking out for me.
> we're already used to competing with companies like Apple, Google, and
> Microsoft that have literally hundreds of times more money than us
True, but I'm not. And I see these big 800lb gorillas and remember the days of
IE6 dominance and the end of the browser wars. I remember vendor lock in.
> But I hope Mozilla gets support based on the great things we've done and
> will do -- not based on fear that someone else will come along and squash
> the movement.
That's a fair point. And a good one.
I'll leave it at that, before I start gushing completely as a fanboy.
------
cookiecaper
Mozilla has got to find an alternate revenue stream. Maybe it can start
charging for Firefox Sync space or something like that. Maybe it can take a
cut of donations from Mozilla Addons or sell more prominent spots there. The
fact of the matter is that it is immensely irresponsible to depend almost
entirely on Google for operations. Google could pull an Enron and be gone
tomorrow, Google's founders could die or resign and the company could fall to
MBAs who don't understand the logic behind paying $100 million/yr to a
competing web browser, and so forth. There has to be more money involved here
if Mozilla expects to have longevity.
Really this is true of open-source software as a whole. There really needs to
be a better way to monetize than begging for donations and/or selling T-shirts
if these projects are going to live on. As times continue to turn tenuous,
this will only become more crucial.
I fully believe in OSS and Mozilla specifically, but the reality is that we
_have_ to find a way for OSS to be at least somewhat profitable without
relying on the goodwill of a handful (or less) of benevolent entities.
~~~
systemizer
Do you really think Google could vanish? Google search has become such a
necessity in internet culture today, and culture is very hard to change.
Hell... "google" is a verb in the dictionary: <http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/google>
~~~
cookiecaper
It doesn't have to vanish to get taken over by executives that don't see the
value in providing such a huge chunk of money to a company that offers a
competing product. In fact, I reckon that most business schools teach this
kind of support for your competitor is extremely bad. We know that brilliant
and awesome companies end up in the hands of MBAs and it's all downhill from
there. Mozilla should certainly plan for this eventuality.
~~~
jlongster
You're way oversimplifying it. Google gets a huge influx of traffic through
this deal, and Mozilla would most likely be able to generate income from their
30% of the browser space if Google didn't sign this (possibly even from Bing,
which is even worse for them). That kind of market space itself is a valuable
asset, and is why Google is willing to go through this.
------
kibwen
I love Firefox (and Chrome! no need to be zealots :D ), but I'm even happier
that this means there will be no interruption to the full-time development of
Mozilla's new systems programming language, Rust:
<http://www.rust-lang.org/> <https://github.com/graydon/rust>
Coincidentally, for those who like to make much ado about Mozilla vs. Google,
Rust has a lot of similarities to Go. (As both projects began as semi-secret,
low-key affairs, this is due more to convergent evolution than anything.)
------
zach
Is there any way to monetize legitimate software search traffic to a decent
search engine without cutting a special deal like this?
I have an app-launcher-like project I'm working on that could benefit from
this kind of arrangement, but browser toolbar scammers seem to have scorched
the earth.
Anyway, great to see this deal continue. This is a great partnership that I
presume both sides would like to keep going, but the details still have to
work out right.
Sort of like Pixar and Disney in the 90's. Then again, Disney didn't figure
out how to make Pixar-quality movies back then, yet Google has definitely
figured out how to make a world-class browser.
~~~
there
i'm pretty sure google's custom search provides income from ads clicked
through it.
<https://www.google.com/cse/>
~~~
zach
Google is totally a no on this count. Their generally-available programs are
all for people entering search terms into Google's own widgets and
specifically exclude software sources. I asked around at I/O and the answer
was basically a shrug and suggestion to "get big and call biz dev".
I fully understand why, of course — they have lots of tools and expertise for
verifying the authenticity of web-based queries, but software has to monitored
in a different and likely less scalable (maybe even human-driven?) way.
And Google hardly needs to pursue desktop apps' small (and, to be fair,
traditionally risky) traffic source, so in turn they haven't developed the
technology to make that scale better.
I still love Google search though, so I wish I could use them. Instead I have
to choose between monetizing what is clearly very valuable search traffic and
giving users a search experience I think is outstanding. It's really
frustrating.
If anyone has any ideas how I can cut this Gordian knot, feel free to get in
touch via my profile info.
------
ge0rg
> The specific terms of this commercial agreement are subject to traditional
> confidentiality requirements, and we’re not at liberty to disclose them.
This sentence lets one think about the importance of openness in the Open
Source community. I wonder if the community would accept the same clause if
Microsoft/Bing were to provide the next three years of Firefox searching.
~~~
nknight
> I wonder if the community would accept the same clause if Microsoft/Bing
> were to provide the next three years of Firefox searching.
Money is money. Absent some evidence of a conflict on the part of people at
Mozilla, I would have no objection to that clause from MS/Bing. I would object
to the deal as a whole on other grounds, though.
~~~
gcp
_I would object to the deal as a whole on other grounds, though._
May I ask why?
Mozilla was testing having Bing search defaulted in their Test Pilot project.
So I suspect such a deal may have been very close.
(I think Microsoft actually offers such a Firefox from their site)
~~~
nknight
Because in my opinion, assisting Microsoft's acquisition of marketshare in any
market is ultimately detrimental to everyone. They are a societal and economic
evil, and directly aiding them is highly unethical.
~~~
zobzu
Yeah, so how that's fundamentally different of any other company? Do you
really think that if Chrome would get 90% of the market share the web would be
a better place?
It'll be just as closed. It would still have some remains of open source, but
the technologies wouldn't work with anything non-Google.
Which essentially is the same thing.
Heh, Mozilla should start MozillaSearch :P
~~~
nknight
It is my opinion that, based on their conduct past and present, Microsoft's
existence and power is a net loss for the world. Google's past and present
conduct lead me to the opposite conclusion. Naturally, I will treat these two
entities differently.
Hypothetical future scenarios based on some rather extreme assumptions I do
not agree with are not going to change that.
You are, of course, free to reach different conclusions, but the level of
hostility and condescension I've received here for voicing my opinion in
response to a direct question is disturbing to say the least.
------
fletchowns
I've been using about:blank as my home page for awhile, does Google ever
advertise Chrome on the default Google/Mozilla homepage?
~~~
gkoberger
I'm a Mozilla web developer. Mozilla controls the homepage now, and all
"snippets" on the about:home page are for Mozilla-related projects or things
we believe in.
So, no.
------
JoshTriplett
Mozilla's placement of Google as the default search engine in Firefox makes a
huge difference in Google's continued position as the default search engine
people turn to. Google at this point doesn't provide profoundly better search
than anyone else; several other search engines exist which have results more
or less as good as Google's, or possibly even epsilon better. Google has three
things going for their search engine: the inertia of people using what they've
gotten used to as long as it remains "good enough", the pile of other services
Google offers that integrate very well with each other, and Google's position
as the default search engine in most browsers.
~~~
zhwang
I think it's more of Google practically being ingrained into people's heads as
_the_ way to get somewhere on the net. Time and time again I've seen people
with MSN or Bing as their homepage, and they'll just search for "google".
~~~
JoshTriplett
I can't argue with that. But its placement as the default search engine goes a
long way towards ingraining it into people's heads.
------
ecaradec
At some point it should make sense for Mozilla to support Bing : Mozilla is
here to bring a better internet, and there can only be a better internet with
competition. MS is losing tons of money for operating Bing ; there is a risk
that they decide to stop losses. If Bing was shut down Google would be the
only lasting real player in the search space, and that would not bring a
better internet. My 2c ;)
------
prodikl
With Mozilla's downward slope in browser share, it seems smart to keep the
relationship going for both of them. If Mozilla keeps losing ground to Chrome,
Google wins. If Mozilla grows its userbase somehow, Google wins. Not to
mention Mozilla keeps getting paid for what they do.
------
mrich
Would be interesting to see how much Google spends on Chrome development each
year. I suppose it is much less than the estimated 100 million they pay
Mozilla, so this alone would have been reason enough to create their own
browser.
~~~
FrankBooth
There is no way it is less than $100m. The Chrome team is at least the same
size as the Firefox team, if not significantly larger. Google probably spent a
good chunk of $100m on advertising Chrome; television spots and subway posters
don't come cheap.
~~~
azakai
> There is no way it is less than $100m. The Chrome team is at least the same
> size as the Firefox team, if not significantly larger.
I would guess significantly larger. And Apple's WebKit engineer's efforts are
also of value, making it effectively even larger.
> Google probably spent a good chunk of $100m on advertising Chrome;
> television spots and subway posters don't come cheap.
It's much more than that. Chrome is advertised pretty much everywhere online,
and it has deals with lots of shareware software, where Chrome is installed
along with for example Adobe Acrobat. The cost of all of these user
acquisition strategies has to be way more than $100M.
------
sirwanqutbi
Well that would be Mozilla's retirement fund..
------
ExpiredLink
I guess the "mutually beneficial revenue agreement with Google" contains
Mozilla's agreement to support Dart.
~~~
potch
The open governance of the Mozilla project is not subject to the sort of back-
room dealings you imply.
(Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but have no knowledge of the inner-workings
of the new deal.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Stop Apologizing for My Stutter, and Other Important Lessons - samclemens
https://longreads.com/2017/08/04/how-to-stop-apologizing-for-my-stutter-and-other-important-lessons/
======
forthelove
Stutterer here. Was in speech therapy for a long time as a child; my sister
actually became a speech therapist b/c of that experience. It will always be a
challenge (I'm 37 now), and it seems to rear its ugly head at random times not
necessarily tied to stress. Two nights ago I made my first ever best man
speech in front of about 150+ people and I maybe stammered once during the 5
or so minutes. Felt amazing and I had people asking me if I was a standup
comic or spoke professionally. They have no clue the daily mental gymnastics I
perform to master the stuttering.
~~~
forthelove
I should note that I've had to give many, many, many presentations in many
different business environments (in front of my companies, pitching investors,
new biz pitches, etc.) and I learned a long time ago that confidence is
crucial. Almost every time I practiced the best man speech I stuttered quite
often, and almost on the same words every time. But come game time, it almost
always goes smoothly. Always found that a bit odd. Maybe I just get into sort
of flow states and just roll with it.
~~~
wahern
I've always wondered if a little alcohol would help here. But I'm so
habituated to avoiding these situations I haven't had the opportunity to
experiment.
When I am forced to speak to a room full of people it's usually spur of the
moment. If I know exactly what I'm talking about, I tend to talk too fast.
When I'm unsure of myself or how to phrase things, my stuttering is almost
completely debilitating even when I'm controlling my rate of speech. I figure
alcohol could help in both situations by keeping me relaxed and more focused.
~~~
floatrock
Alcohol makes it worse.
I've stuttered all my life and still do, far less noticeably now. I've largely
overcome it through mental will and practice. Speech therapy teaches you a
bunch of tricks and techniques, practice and repetition eventually makes them
second-nature. For me, it mostly came to becoming aware what your body is
doing during a block -- you're always aware you're having a block, it's harder
to notice the tension in specific muscles. Once you learn to recognize it, you
can back off for a sec, let the tension dissipate, then approach it again.
It's a terribly slow impatient process at first, but just like any skill, you
practice it and you get better at it. Eventually you float in and out of Flow
state.
It's definitely changed me... like any skill you practice, it makes you far
more disciplined. I feel I'm more patient. I do have scars, and it does
sometimes come back, but if I was able to largely overcome that through mental
effort and determination, a lot of other things feel far less daunting. Builds
a sense of resiliency and gumption.
But back to alcohol, it's not just your physical skills that get sloppy, it's
your mental skills too. I'll go out for a social drink, but sloppy drunk is
reserved only for kareoke. The it-doesn't-happen-while-singing bit is true.
------
nodesocket
I also have a stutter, and I've blogged about being a single founder with it
([https://justink.svbtle.com/being-a-founder-with-a-speech-
imp...](https://justink.svbtle.com/being-a-founder-with-a-speech-impediment)).
I've had a speech impediment since I was a kid. I was told I would grow out of
it. Still waiting for that to happen. :-)
I've noticed my stuttering has seasons/cycles of worse times, which seem to be
tied to stress or anxiety over important calls or meetings. My stuttering has
certainly been frustrating and frankly limiting as a founder, since my latest
company ([https://elasticbyte.net](https://elasticbyte.net)) requires more
person-to-person interactions (talking to clients and closing deals).
The singing technique (mysteriously don't stutter when singing), while it is
effective, does not work in a business setting. Darn!
~~~
southphillyman
Did you stutter during interviews? If so has it had any impact on whether or
not you could obtain employment?
The singing thing is interesting, off the top of my head I can think of a few
rappers who stutter but can clearly speak their lyrics in their songs. Maybe
it's less about the dynamics of singing and more about focus shifting to a low
anxiety activity?
~~~
TinyBig
Stutterer here. Answer to both questions in my case: Yes and yes. I had
potential employers just hang up the phone rather than wait for me to complete
a sentence. I was completely unable to find a job (any job) when I fished
undergrad with a 3.7 GPA in mechanical engineering. It was pretty scary at the
time; I was convinced I was going to starve.
~~~
nodesocket
I know this anxiety and disappointment. Knowing the answers, having the
information for potential investors or clients, and completely bombing. It is
frustrating indeed. I usually let people (investors, clients, etc) know
upfront that I have a stutter, definitely seems to help. I can't believe
somebody would just hang up on you though.
~~~
TinyBig
I can't believe it either. I wrote a post on how I eventually sorted myself
out: [http://eyeofthesquid.com/blog/2014/04/25/walking-the-
path/](http://eyeofthesquid.com/blog/2014/04/25/walking-the-path/)
~~~
nodesocket
You mention in your post that you found a good speech therapist. Can you
share? Were they local?
~~~
TinyBig
There is a link to the therapist, Tim Mackesey, in the post. He was local (in
Atlanta, GA). I saw him 14-15 years ago, not sure what his practice looks like
these days.
------
mcone
I'm also a stutterer. I wish I could share with you the overwhelming shame,
humiliation, and ostracism I experienced as a child in my classroom
environments. As a result I feel tremendous compassion for others with
physical and mental limitations. Speech therapy really helped me help myself,
but I still sometimes stutter.
~~~
rdtsc
I am a stutterer as well. Yeah I remember the constant humiliation and being
made fun of, the bullying. It often included teachers, extended family
members, and adults. My parents tried speech therapy, unfortunately, it was
the Soviet version, and in their typical irony, they had put the only
children's speech pathologist's office in my city, in a mental hospital. So to
get to the appointment I had to witness some scary behavior from some of
patients. Needless to say we had stopped going there after a while. I always
wondered who came up with that setup, someone had a very dark sense of humor.
------
Overtonwindow
From an engineering perspective, I wish more technologists researched the
intersection of speech and technology. For many who stutter there's a device
called the SpeechEasy which is marketed as something to improve fluency, and
reduce stuttering. Unfortunately for most it doesn't work, for those that it
does work the effect wears off, it costs well over $3,000 for the intro pocket
model, and typically not covered by insurance. What does it do? It creates an
echo of your voice in your ear. Literally just an echo; the coral effect if
you've ever seen The King's Speech. This device could be built off the shelf
at a MicroCenter for a couple of hundred dollars. There are all kinds of
technology for the disabled that is grossly overpriced, and I really wish
technologists investigated them more, and found ways to disrupt these
expensive devices.
~~~
sattoshi
Loopback microphone input on your smartphone, plug in earphones and you're
good to go!
How is that for disruption?
~~~
Overtonwindow
It doesn't exist. Why, I'm not sure. Would you create that app? Maybe make it
so that you can use a Bluetooth earpiece or earbuds with an inline mic? That
would be really awesome. If you created it and it worked just like the
SpeechEasy you could sell it for a few dollars and make good money. It could
be a way for potential users to test the effect in the real world before
spending $3k+ on the device.
I look forward to your progress!
~~~
vigliag
There are some already. Look for DAF or "delayed auditory feedback" on the
play store. It is also trivial to build one with web audio.
~~~
Overtonwindow
Nope. They absolutely cannot be delayed auditory feedback. That disrupts
speech. The device must reproduce the chorus effect. [0]
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw_rVGUXgos](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xw_rVGUXgos)
~~~
vigliag
Some of those DAF apps can also apply pitch shifting (which is actually AAF).
Provided they work properly, they should be able to provide that choral
effect. I am no expert by the way, I've only toyed with those for a few
minutes.
------
hgl
I'm a stutter too. My condition is a bit special I think. When I'm alone, I
don't stutter at all if I think out loud or just read something on the screen,
every scary word turns into a piece of cake. But as soon as I realize someone
can hear me (even if it's remote like video chat), I start to stutter, pretty
badly. I wonder if other people are in the same camp.
I didn't stutter when I was kid until I played with a neighbor kid who did,
and it frightened me that I might stutter like him whenever I need to talk. As
time progresses, the frightening reinforced, and I never grew out of it. I
wonder if it qualifies as classical conditioning?
I also speak other languages, and the severity is different in different
languages.
~~~
vigliag
As a child I used to stutter when reading aloud to myself. Practicing by
reading whole books aloud helped a lot. Some books were more difficult than
others, especially those with really weird sentence structure, or really short
sentences, which used to get me out of the flow.
With practice, I stopped stuttering when reading aloud altogether, and then
even when reading to other people (family members first). Talking to people
however it's completely different matter, and it's still hard for me.
I think there's some common difficulty curve. For me, things that became easy
with time (even when I've stopped practicing by reading aloud) are, in order:
reading aloud to myself, talking with siblings and parents, reading aloud to
others, explaining technical matters to friends, talking to younger
colleagues, and lately talking to friends, even on the phone.
Talking to strangers is still difficult. I also find it gets harder the more
unexpected is what I'm trying to say (for example, saying "sorry, I couldn't
hear you, could you repeat that please?" instead of answering a question).
Partially related: there's a /r/Stutter subreddit (which I haven't opened in
years), if you want to read about some other people's experiences.
~~~
jansho
My stutter is minor but definitely rears its ugly head when I'm stressed.
Reading aloud also works for me, as well as singing and boisterous
conversations (!) I think that rather than confidence (at least for me) the
key is to keep the voice going and maintain a normal 'speed' throughout.
Regarding your strangers problem, honestly you're being too harsh to yourself.
You won't get judged for asking a question to be repeated!
~~~
vigliag
That's for sure a factor, and I should probably care less about judgement
(thanks) although I've mainly attributed my stuttering in those situations to
the fact I have to say something unexpected. Other examples are when I need to
correct myself (I get stuck in something like a loop of "actually no"), or
when I say I need to hang up and call back later. I also often find it
difficult to say "goodbye" to people without first acquiring eye contact, or
in general to say something to people while they are doing something else and
haven't noticed me approaching.
~~~
jansho
Sigh, yes I can relate to that. Others here mentioned that it's mental
gymnastics, and I would add that crucial to the strategy also is to develop a
thicker skin to protect yourself. Because the truth is, it'll always stay with
you, no matter how hard you try, so it's best to be content with getting
embarrassed now! And hey, that's how you learn anyway.
I used to hate answering phone calls. Then one day an admin from my team left
and suddenly I had to do customer services too. The first two days was just
awful, it's not even worth describing here. By third day, I had mapped out a
script to read out from (and my team weirded out). By third week, I'd known
the script by heart, and can comfortable say hello without any sweat patches.
And now I can take unknown phone calls civilly.
Practice and exposure definitely helps, with a dose of immunity to what others
think :)
------
munr
I've also got a stutter. Been aware of it since I was 11, and done a couple of
weeks in speech therapy around that time where I learned some tricks like
slowing down my speech, which has helped a lot over the years, especially as I
have a tendency to speak fast.
Growing up, I used to be absolutely terrified of answering the phone, though
fortunately, not so much anymore. I've been a remote employee for the past
couple of years though, with most of my interaction with co-workers being via
phone/email/IM, and there have been some moments when my words have got
completely stuck on morning stand-up calls or conference calls, which isn't a
pleasant feeling.
Equally terrifying was having to read out loud in class, which used to make me
break out in cold sweat, or having to introduce myself to people. Strangely
enough, I really enjoy reading to my kids nowadays and don't seem to stutter
much when doing so.
I've noticed that it usually comes out more when I'm tired or stressed, and on
those days, I try and stick to IM or email as much as possible to try and help
with communicating, rather than stumbling my way through phone calls.
Being from the UK, but living in the US for 11 years now, one of the things
that has helped is being forced to slow down my speech anyway as some people
and co-workers struggle with a strong British accent.
I'm more of a covert stutterer though, instead of overt, and I'd guess that
many of my colleagues don't even know the mental gymnastics involved to keep
it that way, using things like slow speech and word substitution.
One of the things that does still completely suck is social interactions and
coming across as awkward, because I always need to think about what I'm going
to say, instead of being able to rapidly speak and respond in free-flowing
conversation. I don't think that's something that will ever change.
Not sure if it's genetic as I've got a few family members who also stutter,
though one of my worries has been that my kids will inherit this gene from me.
Fortunately, my daughter seems to be a little chatterbox, though my son isn't
talking yet, so only time will tell.
------
southphillyman
"They are rooted in childhood—which is the only time stuttering can be
reversed. Once you’re an adult, there are only ways of hiding"
Don't think this is true. Bill Walton and Bill Withers both were in their 30s
before they stopped stuttering I believe.
~~~
wrinkl3
The problem with stuttering is that the condition is so broad and the cases
are so diverse that any generalization of that kind is bound to be incorrect.
So of course there'll be cases of stutters who managed to achieve complete
fluency in adulthood, as well as people who only began to stutter as adults.
------
40acres
I had a stutter growing up, it was terrible. Whenever I got noticed I just
froze up, I particularly remember one English teacher who knew I was bad at
public speaking yet repeatedly calling on me during class to read sections
(more than other kids).
I was terrified of going to high school with a stutter, I knew how cruel kids
could be, but out of nowhere my stutter disappeared. I never really looked at
to what phenomenon caused my stutter to go away but it was a huge weight off
my back.
~~~
rhapsodic
_> I had a stutter growing up, it was terrible. Whenever I got noticed I just
froze up, I particularly remember one English teacher who knew I was bad at
public speaking yet repeatedly calling on me during class to read sections
(more than other kids)._
It sounds like the English teacher had a sadistic streak.
~~~
40acres
She was definitely a mean one.I always felt she was picking on me.
~~~
smogcutter
Could also see it as a misguided attempt to help, like teaching someone to
swim by throwing them in the pool. Obviously I don't know your teacher, if you
say she was a mean one she was a mean one, but that's the charitable
interpretation.
I'm interested in what you (and other current/former stutterers) think the
right strategy in the classroom would be. On the one hand you don't want to
push a student into daily humiliations, it's cruel. On the other hand, life
will continue to require public speaking, and allowing a student to hide from
that is maybe doing them a disservice in the long run. What approaches from
teachers did/didn't work for you?
------
xupybd
I had a couple years Stuttering. Never figured out why, suspected it was
related to trying pot for about 6 months. Not really sure but it's the only
thing I could put it down to at the time. But boy, was that ever unpleasant.
It just slowly faded away over time. For those of you that have had to live
with this I really feel for you. There is the social side that's difficult but
I had not idea how frustrating it is when your speech just wont come out.
Seriously if you've never experienced this long term it's really hard to
express how uncomfortable this can make life.
But as for the social side, I think you'd be surprised how unfazed most of the
people you know will be by it. Sure sometimes they'll be flustered and get
annoyed but I don't think you need to be embarrassed by it the way most people
are.
------
rdtsc
I stutter. It's part of my life. I also speak 3 languages, 2 since childhood
and I've always wondered if multilingualism contributed to it.
Sometimes I do apologize for it, just because I feel embarrassed for the
people having to listen to it and don't want them to feel like I am having a
stroke.
Some coworkers and family members help me finish my sentences. It heard it
bothers other people who stutter, I'm ok with it.
------
rayzmundo
I am a Mcguire programme
[http://www.mcguireprogramme.com/en](http://www.mcguireprogramme.com/en)
graduate and it has totally transformed my life. From the quiet introvert
person I once was to a confident independent person.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Jazzroom, collaborative real-time music hack in Node.js - sthatipamala
http://nowjs.com/jazzroom
======
alextgordon
Three suggestions:
1\. There needs to be a way to get a reference to a room (so I can give it to
friends) since I'm yet to find a room where anybody else plays anything.
2\. Would be nice to have some way to choose or switch instruments
3\. Needs more notes... you can probably fit 3 octaves in if you use the
numeric and qwerty row for one register and the asdfg and zxcvb rows for
another.
~~~
krmmalik
I second all these points. At our company we have a "Play" session every day
for 20 minutes. There's only 3 of us in this start-up (well, to be fair we're
not really a startup, but thats a long story).
We all work in different locations, and up to now, we've been playing either
hangman, or countdown, or 'Bananas' (anyone remember that game) online. Well
we've been co-ordinating over skype and video.
Im thinking we could jazz things up a little and have a little jam session in
our play time. Though, i wouldnt know how to best co-ordinate it. I cant play
music to save my life.
Im thinking maybe get some notes for a song, and then get the guys together
and try to create the score?
Suggestions welcome
------
norova
Fun little thing to toy around with, for sure. :) The delay did drive me nuts,
though, but I imagine that is quite a difficult hurdle to conquer with such
latencies. Reminds me of doing music production work before I could afford an
ASIO-capable sound card.
~~~
JonnieCache
If there is anyone else out there thinking 'Yeah! It sucks writing music using
my onboard soundcard!' check out Asio4All
<http://www.asio4all.com/>
Its a windows package that has asio drivers for most people's shitty onboard
soundcards, giving you lower latency and higher sound quality. It also has the
capability to compose multiple shitty soundcards and present them as one asio
card with multiple ins and outs.
It's a great stopgap until you can afford a proper audio interface (or a
proper operating system.)
------
theschwa
The notes had too much of a delay for me to play anything decently. I like the
idea though.
~~~
dshankar
Notes play on key-UP, rather than down, so that might one cause of the delay.
~~~
boucher
This is somewhat unfortunate, as it means you can't sustain notes.
------
binarysoul
so I played the bass.. and though the notes are on piano keys, they're wrong
(left to right should go up in pitch)
also, if this is jazz, use fingerstyle bass instead of a bow
(note: this is meant as constructive criticism to inspire improvement in the
idea, not disparage it)
~~~
sthatipamala
I knew I had the wrong type of bass! Thanks for the feedback.
~~~
JonnieCache
'Slap bass' is another word for the type of thing you're looking for.
~~~
wazoox
For funk, certainly. For jazz, not so much.
~~~
JonnieCache
Jazz is a pretty broad church. You can certainly slap a double bass. That was
the only way anyone could hear it over the rest of the band before
amplification was common.
~~~
wazoox
I know you can slap a double bass, but this is not what people are talking
about when calling the instrument "slap bass" usually. It's more Marcus Miller
than Charlie Mingus, though both make music called "jazz".
------
sthatipamala
To everyone having concerned about the delay, it's not a network issue. It's
because notes play on key-UP, rather than down. (Because we're silly like
that).
Let go of the key and the note will show up instantly. Sorry!
------
d0m
I've just played "rock around the clock" with some bass dude. So, if I
understand, jazzrom is a HN 2011 startup that will create a way for musician
to easily jam together?
If it's that, it's an idea I wanted to build some months ago. (I chose
something else thought) Feel free to ping me if you want to talk about it /
opinion from a musician/tech who would use your app.
------
akkartik
When I started playing with node.js I forked their sample chatroom application
to add a shared jukebox. Put on a song in the chatroom and everyone hears it.
<https://github.com/akkartik/node_chat>
------
mcav
The piano could _really_ use more notes, and lag is a bit of an issue. But
cool project!
------
aba_sababa
Collaborative? No one else seems to be in the rooms I get assigned to...
------
makmanalp
For people who like this sort of thing, try ninjam: <http://ninjam.com/> By
the same dudes who wrote winamp.
------
shawndrost
switch to using keydown (that's how real instruments work) and add a
metronome, and this might be usable!
------
DTrejo
I like the piano the best of the three.
------
mariuskempe
Very erratic for me. Lovely idea though, very much looking forward to using!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TypeScript – The Myth of the Superset - jbandi
http://blog.jonasbandi.net/2016/10/myth-of-superset.html
======
BoorishBears
At work I needed a fast scripting environment for Android. Not everyone who'd
be scripting for the application knew Lua (or Squirrel) so I went with J2V8
(Java bindings for V8).
The first problem I ran into was documenting the API defined on the Java side
of things. I tried Jsdoc, but it was cumbersome for what I was trying to do
(expose type information).
I tried Typescript on a whim and fell in love with it. The people who only
know Js could still use Js, but the Ts scripts so easy to reason about I
disabled Js support in my build system (which uses Browserify and some in-
house signing tools to compile the script files into one package I can easily
load into V8).
The people who were used to Js couldn't just write everything they would Js as
this article describes, but what they couldn't write seemed to be stuff that
would break a lot of compile time checks. It was a little battle to get one
guy to stop using <any> everywhere, but 9/10 times that he came to me with a
broken script, it was something that satisfying the compiler without <any>
would have found the issue.
And the Java side now looks so much cleaner because we have a compiler that
can check that we're sending it the right types, so there isn't as much work
trying to cast everything from Object to different representations it could
have in Js. I define interfaces that the Java side implements with 'declare'
and get that type checking and autocomplete for exploring the API for free,
which is another huge win.
I've noticed a lot of JVM-Js integration (Kotlin has Js interop iirc) and I
think Typescript is really great there. Flow looked interesting, but it felt
like its approach is more targeted towards existing code bases trying to
migrate to it, and we didn't have that constraint
------
Eridrus
I think this is a less relevant issue now that tsc can include plain .js files
in builds. I think the spirit of being very close to JavaScript and being
easily convertible from one to the other is more important than being a strict
superset.
------
k__
Polymorphism of JavaScript functions is a bit of a pain point in TypeScript, I
think.
I often got some query methods, that deliver different types of objects, which
share a parent class. Like GameObject, Player, Enemy.
const player = getGameObject('playerId')
Now player will be typed like the return type of getGameObject. If I now try
to set an attribute, specific to `Player`, it will fail:
player.mousePosition = [1, 2]
// won't work, because GameObject doesn't have a mousePosition
Also, setting the type of player to Player, will fail too:
const player : Player = getGameObject('playerId')
// getGameObject could return an Enemy
So I have to tell TypeScript, that I know better
const player = getGameObject('playerId') as Player
// Forces TypeScript to treat the return value as Player
~~~
BoorishBears
Why is that last line a problem at all?
~~~
k__
It implies that TS doesn't fully understand JS.
~~~
BoorishBears
I wouldn't say that, that line is pretty much the main value proposition of
the language though, is it really "not understanding JS" as much as extending
it?
If you really want it to understand Js you could just cast to Any, but to me
it's huge that you can do what you do in that last line. Instead of guessing
that Player has a mousePosition property, after casting you get told it has
one, and get it's exact type.
~~~
k__
To me it seemed the other way around. By casting, I'm telling the compiler
that it has a mousePosition property.
But I think you're right. This is an simple example and the Player object
could have a huge bunch of properties I don't need to guess later, I just need
to cast and be done with it.
------
smt88
tl;dr The TypeScript compiler is strict, so it won't let you compile
JavaScript that contains what it assumes are mistakes. I love that about TS,
and it's one of the main reasons to use it.
The package incompatibility is different, but I've never had trouble using any
JS or TS package in TS, so it doesn't seem to be a practical issue.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Woman Who Can't Recognize Her Face - sofperseus
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23482-mindscapes-the-woman-who-cant-recognise-her-face.html
======
lobster_johnson
I had an interesting case of momentary face blindness once. It was unnerving.
I was elbowing my way through a very busy bar area (it was early and I had
just started drinking) and eventually there was a person in front of me who
started going to the left just when I went left, and vice versa, as often
happens when you walk in a crowded place. After a few left/right attempts I
suddenly realized that the person was, in fact, myself, and that I had reached
a mirror that covered the entire end of the room. (The bar's bouncer was
standing behind me and had watched the whole thing and was laughing very
hard.)
The thing is, since I did not _expect_ to see myself, I did not recognize
myself. I believe that for one brief moment I truly saw myself as other people
see me. We go through our lives being so psychologically connected to our
outer selves, and being briefly disconnected feels very spooky.
------
pbo
This reminds of a fascinating book, _The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat_
by Oliver Sacks.
One of the most interesting stories is about a man who lost his ability to
intuitively recognize things and needs to reason about their features to find
out what they are.
This is my shoe, no?
No, it is not. That is your foot. There is your shoe.
Ah! I thought that was my foot.
Whole excerpt here: [http://www.odysseyeditions.com/EBooks/Oliver-Sacks/The-
Man-W...](http://www.odysseyeditions.com/EBooks/Oliver-Sacks/The-Man-Who-
Mistook-His-Wife-for-a-Hat/Excerpt)
~~~
ryanmolden
Currently reading Hallucinations. His coverage of such bizarre conditions as
Akinetopsia (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akinetopsia>) make his books great
reads for the casually curious and really make it concrete how much of our
reality is formed primarily in our heads.
------
alexholehouse
I'm mildly face blind. Generally speaking it doesn't cause any problems -
occasionally I spend the first 25 minutes of films wondering who is who and
what's going on, and having missed the opening of The Departed I watched most
of the film thinking Matt Damon and Mark Wahlberg were the same person.
However, there have also been some excruciatingly embarrassing situations
where I've re-introduced myself (or ignored) people I actually know, although
typically I've only met them a couple of times. Bizarrely, I'm worst with
caucasian blonde women.
~~~
bane
I think I am a bit face-blind too, and it seems to be mostly with women as
well. I'm almost completely thrown off when a woman does a complete makeover.
I find myself flustered by actresses quite often, having almost no idea if I
should know who this person in the film is or not.
I can usually tell the difference between the various actresses in the same
film, but across films I definitely have trouble.
But I have had trouble with some films that have multiple young brunette male
actors (in their 20s to early 30s). There's been more than one movie where I
didn't realize two different characters were two characters until it was
almost over (or one of them died and the other kept on kicking). A second
watching usually gets me sorted out.
I frequently weirded out by people who can look at a random candid photo of a
famous person in a disguise and know who it is. The folks who work at TMZ blow
me away.
------
WA
There's this "mirror test" [1] where they put animals in front of a mirror. If
they recognize themselves, they are considered to be aware of themselves.
This woman is either not aware of herself or her condition is a strong
indicator that the mirror test might not be such a good idea at all.
Definitely an interesting implication.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test>
~~~
laumars
I've always considered The Mirror Test a deeply flawed experiment because it
relies on a number of assumptions that are difficult (in my non-expert opinion
at least) to guarantee.
For examples, babies are tested with a sticker, it's assumed that a baby's
lack of motivation to remove the aforementioned sticker is proof that they
baby is not yet self aware. Yet that's assuming that the child isn't just
curious about his or her own appearance (as at that age they might not be
familiar with their own image) so that the sticker is inconsequential to them.
------
kaybe
You can test yourself here:
<http://www.faceblind.org/facetests/>
~~~
eitland
Honest question: These guys mention using the results for research. They must
know they are skewing their results quite significantly by singling out anyone
who is a) aware that the result of this test can be embarrasing b) not
comfortable linking their name to such a test with?
I'd guess according to this test face blindness is far less common than
previously assumed : )
~~~
kaybe
As I understood it, they're basically searching for people with prosopagnosia
for further research. They also mention somewhere that some people with
prosopagnosia can do well in the test (I assume if those people have seen the
famous faces enough it can work for light cases.)
------
shail
The headline is confusing. It should be "The Woman who can't recognize faces".
~~~
gems
...
How is that confusing? Not recognizing her own face is a special case.
~~~
RexRollman
I have to agree with the OP. The way the title is written, I took it to mean
that she could recognize all faces except for her own.
------
terolacu
2.5% of the population? Is that accurate? Seems too high.
~~~
JOfferijns
"The researchers, led by Ken Nakayama and Richard Russell at Harvard and
Bradley Duchaine at University College London, have found evidence that
prosopagnosia, once thought to be exceedingly rare, may affect up to 2 percent
of the population – suggesting that millions of people may be face-blind."
[http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/06/face-
blindness...](http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2006/06/face-blindness-
disorder-may-not-be-so-rare/)
"Recently, a hereditary sub-type of congenital prosopagnosia with a very high
prevalence rate of 2.5% has been identified."
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/174866407X231001/...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1348/174866407X231001/abstract;jsessionid=0E1E3A1E3E97AFA7EED6DDAC3374885C.d03t02?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+on+11+May+from+10%3A00-12%3A00+BST+%2805%3A00-07%3A00+EDT%29+for+essential+maintenance)
------
shubhamjain
I am not only mildly face blind, I sometimes just can't recall names. I had
the face test and I just realized that I had forgotten the name of lead actor
of Rocky (S. Stallone), Ex- President of USA, Saturday Night Live star, Taxi
Driver's Lead actor and what not.
------
auctiontheory
I remember being in a very interactive week-long seminar where one of the 30
participants was a white guy with a beard. A few days into it I realized he
was two guys. Just before the end of the week I realized he was (at least)
three guys.
------
canadev
There's a really good scifi short story about something called calliagnosia,
by Ted Chiang. (Calliagnosia is a condition in which a person can not
recognize beauty in a persons face. Not sure whether it was invented for the
story or not.)
Here is a crappy PDF of it:
<http://www.clarku.edu/welcome/placement/pdf/reading.pdf>
I'd suggest picking an anthology with the story up if it interests you. I read
it in "Best of Scifi 2002" or something like that.
------
dylanz
This post creeps me out just a little bit, because I watched "Faces in the
Crowd" last night (<http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1536410/>), and I have never
even heard of face blindness before. Waking up and checking HN to see this
post is slightly spooky. That is all. Oh, and I personally wouldn't recommend
the movie.
------
frankiejr
60 Minutes did a two-part segment on this last year, if anyone is interested:
<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417242n>
<http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7417240n>
------
thirdtruck
Stories like these leave me dwelling on what the majority of the population
may fail to notice due to hard-wiring. For example: a small percentage of
people see a _wider_ range of color than average.
Does "situational blindness" or "system-level blindness" exist on a
neurological level?
------
ThomPete
It's an old lecture but if you want to understand some of the reasons why this
is happening I can't recommend
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lectures.shtml> enough.
------
eatitraw
I wonder if it is possible to train people with such condition to successfully
recognize faces.
I have some difficulties recognizing faces(not nearly as huge as describe in
the article), and I think my ability improved during last couple of years.
~~~
DigitalTurk
I would imagine that to be the case.
Witness how many people report being unable to distinguish people from
ethnicities that they're not used to interacting with.
~~~
epochwolf
Yup. Until I moved to the west coast all Indians looked like the same person
to me.
------
cristianpascu
It's fascinating that that by accident/by design we, animals or humans, can
recognize anything at all.
~~~
mackwic
It's a survivor behavior. Recognize weak and strong elements in the group.
Recognize safe places and easy to hunt animals.
Recognizing things is the essence of good decision making. And decision making
is the essence of life.
So, yes, the odd for recognizing anything from a gigantic bunch of proteins,
water, and subtle mix of heterogeneous chemicals, are very little. But,
considering billions of year of billions of dices running, probability was
high, don't you think ?
~~~
unclebucknasty
No, I don't think. Such order is not probable, given infinite time.
That all of this occured randomly, beginning with an explosion (involvng
matter which should not have existed, by the way), is absurd.
People who argue against intelligent design may quibble with the details of a
particular religion, but our attempts to scientifically describe creation are
so woefully inadequate as to be no more actual science than is religion.
Randomness is one such "scientific" explanation. In fact, it is the religion
of science, serving as the de facto answer for unknowns regarding creation and
existence.
~~~
Fargren
Have you ever seen genetic algorithms at work? Any doubts I had about
evolution being a reasonable explanation for the complexity of life vanished
when I saw how quickly systems could converge to viable solutions to problems
by mixing characteristics from the most pat members of a population.
~~~
unclebucknasty
Yes, I did research on genetic algorithms with a professor in my college
years. Wrote a few myself, played with fitness measurements, crossover
methodologies, etc. I found them fascinating as well.
The theory of evolution can certainly describe some of what we see, however,
it is woefully incomplete in its suggested role in creation theory. And while
randomness clearly has a role in nature, it has become the default go-to for
too many things which science cannot explain. Notice how the parent just
casually tossed out randomness as the "obvious" explanation for such complex
behavior, as if it was a foregone conclusion. It's anything but.
These are tremendously organized and complex systems (including the creation
of the Universe itself), for which the prime driver is supposedly randomness.
I just think it funny that people deride religious explanations as utter
silliness, while so willingly believing that randomness is responsible for,
effectively, everything we see. What is scientific about that? We even suspend
basic laws of thermodynamics regarding matter creation to accomodate our
random-centric explanations.
Better to just say, "we don't know".
~~~
wglb
I recommend [http://www.amazon.com/COMPLEXITY-EMERGING-SCIENCE-ORDER-
CHAO...](http://www.amazon.com/COMPLEXITY-EMERGING-SCIENCE-ORDER-
CHAOS/dp/0671872346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1367771719&sr=8-1&keywords=complexity)
which addresses this question in fascinating detail, and of course
[http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-
Un...](http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Watchmaker-Evidence-Evolution-
Universe/dp/0393315703/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1367771784&sr=1-1&keywords=the+blind+watchmaker)
~~~
unclebucknasty
Thanks for the references. I am somewhat familiar with the second, and I look
forward to diving deeper.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spolsky's Paradox - edw519
http://blog.lavablast.com/post/2008/05/Spolskys-Paradox.aspx
======
tx
Splolsky's problem is that his software is even more pedestrian, boring to
work on, and useless than Microsoft's data synchronization products that he's
making fun of. I know there are FogBugz users out there but I haven't met a
single one in person. Besides... a commercial bug-tracker in 2008? Give me a
break.
Their Co-Pilot product is pretty interesting project to work on, but it's not
their bread-n-butter. FogBugz is. And why would one even need top-notch
programmers to write a bug tracker?
You attract the best talent by interesting projects and existing great talent
that you've attracted previously. That's a chicken-and-egg problem, unless
founders are smart hackers themselves, this is why it's so important.
~~~
johns
The "interesting" parts for writing FogBugz, is working with Wasabi, their
homegrown compiler that spits out classic ASP and PHP. That's an interesting
challenge, right?? /sarcasm
To their defense, FogBugz is more than a simple bug tracker. Predictive
scheduling is a novel and useful feature that separates them from pretty much
every other free and commercial bug tracker I've used.
~~~
henning
FogBugz has an intelligent design that makes it easy to get issues and
customer interaction into the tracker so that it gets in and stays there
rather than being scrawled on sticky notes and gone over verbally between only
two people in someone's office.
It has a good spam filter that does n-category email classification like JGC's
POPFile.
It has data entry interfaces that combine the best of an unorganized PIM like
37Signals' Backpack with an organized issue tracker like Trac. (Personal
experience: Backpack is great to start out with for just about anything, but
does _not_ scale over time.)
But, these are more about good design than turbogenius brilliance, and good
design does not require rocket science, it requires perspective and taste.
------
tptacek
I really think people are spinning Spolsky's comment about Redmond and Google
hiring up all the good people way out of proportion. It was just a throwaway
comment at the end of the post; it wasn't the thesis.
~~~
create_account
No, not a throwaway comment: the entire last paragraph summarizes his rant
against MS and Google spending money on salaries and perks "because these
companies are like cancers, driven to grow at all cost, even though they can't
think of a single useful thing to build for us, but they need another
3000-4000 comp sci grads next week."
Those companies are _profitable_ cancers and Splotsky is annoyed because he
can't complete.
------
t0pj
Wow. Joel seems pretty ticked in this one.
I just never thought I'd ever see a comparison between Microsoft's visionary
products and 1955 salisbury steak.
Paraphrasing, I think Ray Ozzie (Groove) points out in "Founders At Work",
that Microsoft is a horizontal company; they want to deliver the platform
which every one will use to build their vertical apps.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Maven plugin that creates merge requests for dependency updates - oweiler
https://github.com/helpermethod/dependency-update-maven-plugin
======
moheb
Good
~~~
oweiler
OP here: The plugin is in currently at a pretty early stage but already used
productively. It was developed because I wanted something like DependaBot
which works for self-hosted GitLab instances.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Writing code that writes code with Hack Codegen - ctice
https://code.facebook.com/posts/1624644147776541
======
nerdy
I would really love to use Hack, but I want to use it in the editor of my
choice, not the editor of Facebook's choice.
Because Hack isn't PHP all of the foundations are gone, consider this text
from the JetBrains PhpStorm team:
"We’d have to provide full support for a complete new language, which entails
implementing a parser, type checker, navigation, completion, inspections, and
so on. No part of PHP support that we have now can be reused for Hack, given
the fundamental differences between the languages. We’d then have to maintain
and enhance it, closely following the evolution of Hacklang."
Until those important issues are resolved, it's unlikely many people will be
using these tools. Facebook should, pretty please, consider outsourcing the
things in the list above (parser, type checker, inspections anyhow).
Unfortunately I can't justify pigeonholing my editor selection for Hack
development. Anxiously awaiting some form of resolution.
[1] [http://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2015/06/hack-language-
sup...](http://blog.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/2015/06/hack-language-support-in-
phpstorm-postponed/)
~~~
michaelmior
This all depends on how much support you like to have from your editor.
Personally I'm usually happy with just syntax highlighting, which is already
covered for me[0]. That said, I haven't had the occasion to really make use of
Hack.
[0] [https://github.com/hhvm/vim-hack](https://github.com/hhvm/vim-hack)
------
Gladdyu
Considering that had the opportunity to completely customize Hack but stayed
rather close to PHP, does anyone else find it weird that they are already
trying to move on from the Hack semantics by auto-generating the code?
Wouldn't it have been more effective and easier to debug to put those features
in the Hack language (which is a pretty recent invention as languages are
concerned) itself without resorting to external tools?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PiDrive 314GB Offers Power-Efficient Storage for Raspberry Pi - devNoise
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/data-storage/raspberry-pi-hard-drive-pidrive-187871
======
gravypod
Are there any provisions for redundancy?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Efficient Cloud: All Of Salesforce Runs On Only 1,000 Servers - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/23/the-efficient-cloud-all-of-salesforce-runs-on-only-1000-servers/
======
ErrantX
Ive long respected the approach of Salesforce: whilst this is new info to me I
am not surprised at the efficiency.
Pretty impressive that: 20 tables for all that data! And we are stuck messing
with MySQL (etc) and all these new non-relational databases. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startups Worry that Twitter and Facebook Are Blocking Their Way - iProject
http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428691/startups-worry-that-twitter-and-facebook-are/
======
Rhymenocerus
duh
------
sulife
What is this fluff piece doing here?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Modular Moto Z Android phone supports DIY and RPi HAT add-ons - leephillips
http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone-supports-diy-and-rpi-hat-add-ons/
======
dharma1
I looked into adding GPIO to an Android/Ubuntu phone a while ago.. Something
like this should work with many phones for about $20 -
[http://www.ebay.com/itm/Geeetech-IOIO-OTG-development-
board-...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/Geeetech-IOIO-OTG-development-board-with-
USB-OTG-cable-for-Android-device-PC-/222215803989)
I think mobile phones could be really nice for robotics - they have 4G/wifi/bt
connectivity, large battery, touch screen, sensors, IMU, camera, gps, fast
CPUs - and they are cheap and often surplus. Especially once mobile GPUs get
better and start getting support from machine learning frameworks
------
JBiserkov
Read this instead if you are interested:
[https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-82850](https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-82850)
~~~
digi_owl
Ah, so there are actual contact points between the mod and the phone.
------
Vexs
That's neat- I was in the phone store the other day and saw the "moto mods"
and thought to myself how it would be neat to hook into it- looks like this
would make it quite a lot easier.
Some of those moto mods are pretty cool too- big giant speakers, pico
projector, etc.
------
asimuvPR
I've been waiting for the smartphone to become expandable for a while. This is
very interesting and might be that middle step between a portable pocket
computer and a low cost computing environment (Rpi).
~~~
tdicola
Why wait, check out PocketCHIP for a neat handheld low cost computing
environment.
------
daveloyall
This isn't exactly the expansion port on the bottom of an NES... it's a
mainstream (albeit new) line of accessories for a flagship product--a $700
dollar phone!
Since it's 2016, we can presume that this phone will ship with something like
a secure enclave, right? ...AND hardware attachments? How's this going to
work?? :)
~~~
daveloyall
Er, I mean.. the NES expansion port gave you a direct electrical connection to
the pins on the CPU.
According to the "system architecture" document[0], looks like the only way to
access the cool stuff will be through a microcontroller.
0: [https://developer.motorola.com/explore/system-
architecture](https://developer.motorola.com/explore/system-architecture)
------
brokenmachine
I was semi-interested in this until I saw the $125 price for the Mods
Development Kit.
I'll stick with IOIO because who has the time and money to invest in another
proprietary system that only works with a single phone from a single
manufacturer, and will probably end up abandoned?
------
jshevek
The one thing Lenovo needs to do to make Moto Mods the killer hardware
ecosystem is license the mod _hosting_ side of the equation to other hardware
manufactures. I want to be able to use mods with other devices, even if I need
to use an adapter plate to do it.
------
digi_owl
The last time Motorola tried something similar (webtop), they could never
stick to a single device design across releases.
------
aw3c2
Much better source (linked as "via" on hackaday) and a much less clickbaity
title: [http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone-
support...](http://hackerboards.com/modular-moto-z-android-phone-supports-diy-
and-rpi-hat-add-ons/)
~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the link from [http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/turn-your-
motorola-android-ph...](http://hackaday.com/2016/08/15/turn-your-motorola-
android-phone-into-a-raspberry-pi/).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I like to try an experiment on HN. Have your say - faramarz
I have a web app idea I would like to see come to reality.<p>I want the very first step to be an HN post explaining my idea, and then calling for talent/partners from this community to build a team around the idea.<p>Next, produce a prototype and finally apply to any startup accelerator program that will have us.<p>There is a real business potential here and the biz model only works by collecting a transaction fee from day one.<p>Before I make that post, I was hoping people could chime in with some advice.
Is it even feasible to find partners just like that? without any background knowledge..
Is it risky from a legal perspective?
Should I do it?<p>Will I run the risk of burning future investment possibilities by discussing everything in the open?<p>I have the post ready in a doc. Just trying to second guess the thought of posting it here.<p>Any advice?
======
nudge
The risk is probably not a legal one, but rather simply that someone might do
it themselves.
Of course, you don't have to give away _everything_ about your idea.
It would be a great experiment though. Go for it.
------
amackera
I imagine you will have better luck trying to found co-founders amongst the
people you know and can trust that you've met in real life. Having said that,
this is the Internet! Reddit named a whale Mr. Splashy Pants! There's nothing
we aren't capable of.
Also be aware the the community here is _not_ about advertising startup ideas
or recruiting. This is a news network / message board for hackers to share
interesting info they know others will like. I'm not saying not to go for it,
but just be careful not to come off as too slimy :)
------
alexwyser
I wanted to try out a similar experiment. I think that if the idea for the
startup is good enough, it would attract a lot of talented people from the
community.
I'd love to see how this works out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should I stay or should I go? - XXthrowawayXX
I've been the sole developer with a startup for about 2 months now. I have serious doubts about the team and am doubtful that the product will be successful (right now all the money is coming from one of the co-founder's pockets).<p>No one else on the team seems to know what they are doing. I should have realized this earlier, but initially I gave them the benefit of the doubt.<p>The two co-founders constantly bicker and fight (over little things, like where a document is in Google Drive) and seem to be always trying to score points against one another. I mediate to move discussions forward, and I feel like the only adult in the room.<p>One co-founder is always interrupting to talk about random news articles or something they saw on TV that is tangentially related to the product. They'll schedule conference calls with the whole team for cold sales calls. Other times, they will bring friends over to the office to show them that they are doing a startup.<p>The other co-founder is OK, but seems to lack a vision for the product.<p>If I were running things, there wouldn't even be a developer at this point. It would be much smarter for them to focus on developing their audience (since the site is going to need millions of users to turn a profit), than hiring a developer for a website that doesn't have a design (or sitemap, for that matter).<p>I can't see anyone investing in us. I would point out our slow audience growth numbers, but we aren't even keeping track of that.<p>I know if I leave them, I will feel bad. I don't think it will hurt the company too much, since no real development as been done and all my work is documented. Also I have an equity stake in the company, and I'm not sure if that complicates things or not.<p>Should I go because I feel this startup is a waste of my time? Or should I stay in the hopes that they'll be able to get their shit together? It's already been two months and any progress we've made has been hard-fought by me.
======
argonaut
It seems exceedingly obvious to me that you should leave. Which makes me
wonder in the first place why you are even being hesitant about this decision.
1\. You should not feel bad about anything. They could fire you at any time
(assuming control is split equally among the three of you). You do not owe
them anything. As long as you're respectful in telling them you're leaving,
there is nothing wrong with quitting.
2\. That being said, I also believe that you're a bit misguided about the best
direction for a startup at this stage. I disagree that it is smarter to focus
on developing an audience instead of building the product. In order to build
an audience you at least need an MVP to show to potential customers/users.
Your slow audience growth numbers are easily explained by the lack of a
minimally fleshed-out product. You are not going to see huge numbers for a
landing page. And many products require some sort of education / early
adoption before they get mass traction. Speaking for myself, if I see a
landing page I'm not going to even bother putting in my email on the invite
list. I'd like to see a demo at the very least. The fact that you guys don't
have an MVP after two months is a bit of a concern for me. I'm not sure how
much responsibility you bear for that. This point is irrelevant as to your
decision on whether you should leave, but it's something for you to reflect on
if you ever want to start another company (by yourself, with others, etc.).
~~~
XXthrowawayXX
Re: the no MVP. Since this is a content-based startup, I think our MVP should
be some sort of blog/tumblr to build an audience. Our content is our core
product. We aren't doing anything novel in terms of technology. Right now
we're building a platform around that content, but I think our efforts are
better spent building an audience than building the platform.
------
niggler
" I have serious doubts about the team and am doubtful that the product will
be successful "
That's a sign to go. If you don't believe in the team and the product, then
why are you spending time on the startup?
------
akhilrex
You should leave. But give them time to find a replacement or mend their ways.
Moreover you would not want to put the entire blame of a failed(lets hope not)
product on you. Also leave only if that is the last resort. Working in
startups is a great leaning experience, especially for developers. You being
the some developer must be taking care of everything from ideation to
execution and deployment. Very few people get to do that. But if you are
unhappy with the work, the people are not nice and the product is dodgy its
better to call it quits. Its not cowardice, its practical. This is not adding
any value to you or them
------
vyrotek
It doesn't sound like anyone is really 'hungry' for success at this company.
Is the source of funding from this Co-Founder not limited in any way? Are you
being paid?
Sometimes the best thing to do before just walking away is to set some goals
with very clear expectation and consequences. One of those consequences can be
that you will leave. This way, if you are interested in saving your
relationship with these guys you can avoid dropping it on them out of nowhere.
Who knows, maybe they'll turn around. But I can feel your frustrations. It's
no fun babysitting co-workers.
~~~
XXthrowawayXX
That's a very good point about the unlimited funding. I am being paid, but I
think the co-founder has deep pockets to keep this thing going. Which is
almost unfortunate, because it means no one is desperate for this thing to be
a success.
I'll try to think of some goals I can set.
------
xauronx
I would take this post and email it to them. What's the worst that could
happen? If you're debating leaving anyhow, you might want to give them a dose
of truth and let them have the opportunity to see the error in their ways. OR
they could always fire you. In which case you accomplish the same ends,
without the guilt. In that case they would be the ones doing something
"wrong". Two months of work at a startup isn't really valuable experience on a
resume anyhow, so you wouldn't be losing anything.
------
benologist
Don't feel bad, it's not your company but it is your life. It is obviously
already dysfunctional and there's no point gambling it will stop being
dysfunctional _on top of_ the already slim chance it will succeed at all.
------
jmount
I'm leaning towards go. I have seen a lot of start-up with a positive vibe. So
win or lose at least spend your time somewhere pleasant.
------
meerita
Better to go out. No doubt. Companies shouldn't be a TV Show drama. Better
going before things go bad or very awkward.
------
YuriNiyazov
You can just start dicking around just like them. Learn a new
language/framework/NoSQL DB on their dime "because it will be useful later".
If no one gets up to manage you and set some realistic and meaningful goals,
all the better. If someone does, then maybe they give a real shit after all.
------
lifeisstillgood
I have one awkward question for you :
\- why do you choose to work on certain pieces of functionality and not
others?
1\. Build something like graphite/carbon to provide metrics and display them
easily. Start with the ones you mention - audience numbers and growth.
2\. Talk to the co founders - start with a letter that you simply hand over
the table in the pub. In it explain pretty much the above comment, maybe
without the only adult comments
3\. As someone else mentioned, set some goals and prepare to walk.
4\. Consider your exit strategy - how much runway do you have personally? Want
to get FTE or contract?
Basically try to mend it - but give yourself a fixed time horizon of no more
than three months
~~~
XXthrowawayXX
#1 is a good point -- I never thought about building some type of metric
dashboard. Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Human Echolocation Allows People to See Without Using Their Eyes (2013) - Mz
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-human-echolocation-allows-people-to-see-without-using-their-eyes-1916013/?no-ist
======
panglott
Saw Daniel Kish give a lecture a few months ago, and this amazing ability is a
lot more accessible than it sounds. Kish uses both passive and active sonar
(based on dental clicks), but the passive sonar is a lot easier to wrap your
head around. Even for people with sight, the difference between a large,
echo-y room and a small room is immediately apparent. The differences between
a voice spoken in front of a hard table and a soft pillow are also very
distinct. And if you make an even tone in front of a wall and in front of a
corner, the differences are quite apparent as well. Apparently corners are so
acoustically distinct that you can hear them from quite a distance away.
It's not a foolproof method; he uses a cane because it's difficult to hear
objects below knee level. But he thinks many more people can learn to "hear
the walls" (if we don't ridicule people for it).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Faculty of 1000 - robinhouston
http://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2012/01/31/the-faculty-of-1000/
======
_delirium
The physics approach seems to be doing something pretty close, through the de-
facto combination of traditional journals and arXiv. As the post says, the
arXiv isn't itself peer reviewed, but many of the papers there are also
published in journals, and the arXiv entry says that if so. The physics
community has basically detached the peer-review and the access/archiving
phases: the peer-review stays with journals, but the arXiv stores a PDF of the
result. Some journals have even automated the pipeline; a number of physics
journals will automatically upload an arXiv version of every published paper.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Forget About the Mythical Lone Inventor in the Garage - polymathist
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/05/argonne_national_lab_director_on_the_myth_of_the_lone_inventor_in_the_garage.single.html
======
ajdecon
Well, like so many other things, it's field-dependent. :-)
If you're working in software, you don't even need a garage: a dorm room or
studio apartment, a laptop, and a few thousand dollars to pay for web hosting,
will fill your need for physical equipment. I think that one of the great
achievements of the past few decades has been the invention of an entire field
of technical endeavor in which the base costs are so low.
But not all innovation is in software, and it's good to get a reminder that
most fields have substantial equipment materials and equipment costs. A lab
doing electronics, biotechnology, energy research, and many other _totally
necessary things_ has much higher requirements.
When I was doing microfluidics work in grad school, I was doing some of the
cheapest microfabrication research out there. All I needed was a continuous
supply of photoresist ($800/L), some decent-quality silicon wafers ($200/pk of
20), access to a high-resolution transparency printer for masks ($150/print),
silicone plastic for making devices ($50/lb), and a good fluorescence
microscope ($50,000 or so). Oh, and access to a clean room with about
$1,000,000 worth of equipment, but that was shared and I don't know what our
"rent" for access was...
Edit: costs estimated from the Internet and 2yr-old memories, but I think
they're pretty close.
~~~
6ren
Another advantage of a "lab" is interaction with other bright people in the
field. It's a key benefit of YC; Jobs designed the pixar building to enhance
this; many great software ideas came out of Bell Labs and Xerox PARC; and I've
also experienced it myself at my old compsci dept.
~~~
dredmorbius
The Internet has, if not replace, then extended that metaphor considerably.
Or at least it does when people with a common interest can reach out and find
one another.
One of my huge frustrations with so-called "social media" is that they
frequently make just this sort of interaction very difficult.
People who _empathize_ similarly can reach out and like one another. However,
people who can actually GSD need to wade through a ton of noise in search of
signal. Even old Usenet did better (charters and cancelbots FTW).
This is one of the reasons why topically-organized sites (Reddit, HN, etc.) do
far better for communications in my book.
------
polymathist
While I do agree with a lot of the points here, I wonder if perhaps recent
advances in technology (particularly those that might be considered platforms
for future innovations) are making the idealistic "Garage Inventor" more and
more realistic. It probably still requires a big lab to create new
technologies or new branches of science, but nowadays anyone with a laptop and
some money for web hosting can create something that reaches millions of
people. Although that's entirely different from what Edison, Hewlett, and
Packard were doing, I'd argue that it's still within the realm of
"innovation". (not to say that every website is particularly innovative, just
that the possibility is there.)
------
bjornsing
The author can't be too happy with the picture of Albert Einstein at the
top... For those that don't remember this Albert guy made one of the most
important discoveries of all time; working in solitude, in the Swiss patent
office, in-between reviewing patent applications. :)
~~~
danking00
And soon after, a team of experimentalists the world over set about proving
him right. People rarely remember the experimentalists, the guys who go
through all the hard work of providing the evidence to the theorists.
See: Michelson and Morley, Eddington, and others.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_special_relativity>
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity>
------
waterlesscloud
Man who works in giant lab extols virtues of giant labs. Film at 11.
------
wfrick
Good piece, with major implications for public policy. Encouraging more people
to go into startups is great, but funding more R&D (especially in energy) is
crucial as well. Also, Steven Johnson's Where Good Ideas Come From makes this
case very well at book length.
------
ilaksh
I can't wait until some of the programmable-matter type approaches really take
off. The closest we have is 3d printing.
What I am hoping to become popular and inexpensive something like 3d printing
but with the ability to either assembly parts into machines automatically or
the ability to print functional machines all in one go.
When you have inexpensive machines that can do that type of thing, then you
really will be able to program reality in your garage, and print out fully
assembled machines from open source components you downloaded from the
internet.
On a slightly different topic, I was thinking, in response to this article, in
a way, no one who is trying to innovate in technology (especially things like
software) is really working alone. Instead we are building off of existing
platforms and modules that others have created. For example, I am probably one
of the most introverted programmers around, but the platform that I am
building, ostensibly working on it completely alone, integrates many, many
different pieces of open (and closed) source software/APIs, created relatively
recently by hundreds or thousands of different people.
I'm working on a product based on jQuery, jQuery UI, WebKit (V8), CodeMirror,
NodeJS, jQuery context menu, noty, NowJS (socket.io), CoffeeScript, FckEditor,
jQuery editable, jquery ipweditor, Google Web Fonts (more than a dozen
contributed fonts by many different authors), Google API hosting, AjaxUpload,
NodeJs (NPM, shellJS, formidable, rimraf, async, request, cssmin, vows, zlib,
mongolian, etc.) Rackspace API, PayPal/Stripe API, Ubuntu (Debian), Xen. Just
look at the huge number of people that have contributed to Debian/Ubuntu, V8
or WebKit or Node.js recently or the rest of it over the years -- there is no
way I could even consider doing this project without that stuff. So in a way
everyone is in the lab already which is open source/APIs/github or whatever.
~~~
mahyarm
What's happening are CNC machines are starting to be sold as consumer devices.
You can attach a lot of tools to a CNC-like machine, be it a laser etcher, a
plastic squirters, millers, etc. It's kind of like kitchens.
------
codemac
Solitude is great for creativity. Labs/offices/hacker spaces are great for
making that creativity a reality. You don't hire in more people in a startup
because you want to stifle creativity... you need to get shit done sometimes.
The "why not both" meme comes to mind. Go sit in a hammock for a month or two,
come back to the lab and try to get somewhere practical, then go back to the
hammock. You need creativity, but you also need critique from peers out on the
same ledge you're on.
Which reminds me of the hammock driven development talk[1]. The talk really
resonated with me.
[1]: <https://blip.tv/clojure/hammock-driven-development-4475586>
------
saturdaysaint
The inventor in the garage is a real, re-occurring figure in the rise of
industries, although the author is correct that these figures are more
commercializers and integrators than scientific trailblazers. The irony is
that there's no greater example than the namesake of Bell Labs...
------
rotten
Most real paradigm shifts happen outside the mainstream though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Collected List of New JavaScript Features (ES6 and ES7 and ES8 and ES9 and ES10) - stnp
https://github.com/daumann/ECMAScript-new-features-list
======
stnp
I couldn't find any repo that lists all the interesting features of newer ES
releases, so I collected individual ES release feature list examples into a
single repo (and I intent to keep it updated). Let me know if you find it
useful or see any mistakes. Feel free to fork.
~~~
russellbeattie
Nice project. What I've been meaning to do is review JS and DOM APIs as a set
of combined support. I find myself using features like Object.assign(),
Element.querySelector() and Promises, but avoiding other JS features like fat
arrows as I'm not sure where the cutoff is in terms of browser support.
In other words, I want to come up with a set of features that I know will work
without worrying about it, and to purge my brain of old ways of doing things.
Example: undecided is now a non-modifiable keyword, so it can be used for
comparisons without worry. Years ago that wasn't true. But how many years??
Not sure.
~~~
WorldMaker
caniuse.com is generally a go to on seeing what the current level of support
for a JS or DOM feature. MDN has very good, very similar charts (some of it
originally sourced from caniuse charts, but I think a lot of it is contributed
directly by browser metadata now and the flow of information has started
moving the other direction).
Generally a heuristic that people use (it's now most often the recommended
Babel preset, for instance) is "last two major browser" versions, which the
caniuse charts make easier to visualize than the MDN charts. You might be
surprised how many features meet this heuristic today (fat arrows are well
supported for instance, are supported according to this heuristic).
------
tonyedgecombe
We should have stopped polishing this turd a long time ago.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programming at the REPL (2018) - tosh
https://clojure.org/guides/repl/guidelines_for_repl_aided_development
======
piercebot
The REPL is still something that I haven't quite mastered, but what I enjoy
doing right now is working in files and using a REPL connection to evaluate
expressions within the file. It feels like a happy medium between "do
everything at an (ephemeral) REPL prompt" and "do everything in a file, save,
and reevaluate the file."
My weapon of choice right now is vim-iced[0], which is a batteries-included
VIM plugin that, in addition to providing a REPL and keybindings to evaluate
expressions under the cursor, also allows me to auto-format my files on save.
[0]: [https://github.com/liquidz/vim-iced](https://github.com/liquidz/vim-
iced)
~~~
reddit_clone
Yep. Thats what I do too.
For emacs users, 'eval-region' and 'eval-expression' are your friends.
~~~
Jtsummers
And if you have language support in org, use an org file.
#+BEGIN_SRC lisp
(+ 1 2)
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:
: 3
(type C-c C-c inside the source block)
If you use noweb it'll also include referenced blocks in the evaluated unit:
#+NAME: foo
#+BEGIN_SRC lisp
(defun foo (n) (+ 1 n))
#+END_SRC
#+BEGIN_SRC lisp :noweb yes
<<foo>>
(foo 2)
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:
: 3
This lets you have many versions of code in one file (if that's a sensible
thing for you, very useful when exploring a new library or concept though),
and in the end you can aggregate it all into one source file for sharing with
others:
#+BEGIN_SRC lisp :tangle foo.lisp
<<foo>>
<<bar>>
#+END_SRC
(type C-c C-v C-t to create the file)
I've mainly used this (for interactive development) with Common Lisp, but it
should work for most other languages that offer similar interactivity.
------
verytrivial
I had my mind lightly blown watching someone using Squeak Smalltalk to
interactively prototype something or other.
They purposefully called a method which did NOT exist, used the debugger to
partially unwind the #doesNotUnderstand stack, implemented the method, which
then returned the expected result as if the method had existed all along.
Benefits of super late binding I guess.
~~~
veddox
Sounds cool, but what exactly is the advantage of doing it like that?
~~~
Jtsummers
There are a couple reasons and ways to use that approach.
Unlike batch compiled languages, Smalltalk and Common Lisp (and some others)
will throw an exception/signal an error/whatever that indicates that a
function doesn't exist. This means that you can insert these calls and, unless
they actually occur, the rest of your program runs just fine. In most batch
compiled languages you'd at least need to insert a dummy method/function (in
C# you'll see _NotImplementedException_ being thrown in these).
When you encounter the exception, in languages that support it, you can write
the code at that time and then let the system resume, or tell the debugger to
return a value. Maybe you don't know how to implement that function, but you
know the kind of thing it should return and, for some reason, you don't want
to leave function floating out there that just returns a dummy value
permanently ( _(defun random () 4))_ ).
If you use a language like Smalltalk, there's also a tendency to write very
short methods. You could use this approach to create your program in a more
top-down fashion (versus bottom-up) by doing something like this (I don't know
Smalltalk so this is lisp):
(defun main() (factorial 10))
Debugger is brought up because _factorial_ doesn't exist.
(defun factorial (n)
(fact-aux n 1)) ;; not really needed in Common Lisp, but just to illustrate
Again the debugger is brought up so we define the next function:
(defun fact-aux (n acc)
(if (<= n 0) acc (fact-aux (1- n) (* n acc)))
If you already have a design in mind (sketched out on paper perhaps), you
could use something like this pretty effectively. Not sure I would though.
------
mbil
I don't have much to add to this discussion except to say that after years of
repl-driven development in Clojure I've switched to Ruby as my primary
language, and the iteration cycle is just really slow. I feel like I've traded
in my fighter jet for a commuter car.
~~~
jimbokun
How would you contrast developing with the Clojure REPL compared to irb? I've
found irb to be pretty useful for some quick and dirty tasks, albeit not the
same level as Clojure (or most Lisps, really).
~~~
mbil
My experience with IRB has been so-so. I've found it fine for experimenting
with small functions as I develop them, poking at interfaces, etc. But it's
really nowhere near the experience I had with Clojure and a repl-integrated
programming environment. I've only been using Ruby on Rails for a little under
a year, so I have some more learning to do, but I'm not hopeful about the
productivity story.
Repl-driven development in Clojure with Emacs and CIDER [0]:
You develop a namespace or two at a time and you're looking at a handful of
files in your editor. You can move between function definitions, modify them,
and re-evaluate them as easily as moving the cursor and pressing a key. The
whole editor becomes a playground: every piece of code you see can be changed
and evaluated as fast as you can think. You can execute a web request from
cURL or the browser, and your Clojure repl is hooked into the running program.
So you can capture real inputs, store them in temporary vars, play them back,
change them on the fly, etc.
The IRB is just very linear in comparison.
[0]: [https://cider.mx/](https://cider.mx/)
------
modernerd
Clojure[Script] is worth learning just to experience a REPL-driven development
environment.
Some editors and IDEs support it better than others, though, notably Emacs and
Atom. Cursive (for IntelliJ) is pretty good, and Calva (for VS Code) is
promising, but they lag behind in polish and features when I tried them. For
example, I don’t think Cursive has inline output next to the expression you’re
evaluating like Proto-repl for Atom does, and once you’ve tried that you don’t
want to live without it.
I don’t write much Clojure these days but miss the REPL-driven experience. I
recently discovered Quokka and Wallaby for JavaScript/TypeScript:
[https://quokkajs.com/](https://quokkajs.com/)
[https://wallabyjs.com/](https://wallabyjs.com/)
They offer a great experience that beats console.logging your way to success
or step-through debugging by far.
Just highlight the expression you’re interested in and get inline output (in
the paid version of Quokka) right in your editor, including evolution of
values in for loops and the values of data retrieved from fetch requests. It
has greatly shortened the feedback loop for me and both plugins were much
easier to set up and configure than Clojure’s REPL integrations.
------
lukashrb
I always wonder why repl driven development is not as popular as it (in my
opinion) deserves to be? Am I missing something here?
~~~
jonahbenton
There is a non-virtuous (vicious not the right term) cycle at play.
Many problems are only solvable with compiled languages, for performance,
correctness, or other non-functional considerations. Many people are first
taught on compiled languages, and bring those approaches to dynamic languages.
The popular dynamic languages, in their standard/common toolchains, do not
have robust repl support (looking at you Python and Javascript). The absence
of a robust repl workflow means people who are exposed to it in those
languages aren't really impressed by it. Really too bad.
~~~
volker48
I do repl driven development just fine with ipython and autoreload setup. What
features do you feel are lacking?
~~~
jonahbenton
Yes, when I work in python, I do that too. It certainly works ok.
The place I would start from a critique perspective is around lifecycle.
Python has encouraged carelessness and overwork at module load and init time,
and there aren't common protocols (that I have seen) that involve standing up
a graph of objects across an application after a single module reload. So when
you reload a single module and the names in the module now point to different
data and code elements, all the downstream dependencies on those names have to
change as well, and Python doesn't have patterns for organizing and managing
at that level.
This also impacts runtime introspection, which is a key benefit of a repl
oriented language. One implication is that there is not at all a pattern of
"repling into" a running python application to poke around and see what is
going on. To most python programmers this is a foreign concept.
Related others involve code style, and implicit vs explicit ways of referring
to and moving data around, which also impacts runtime whole system
introspection.
Python has all the pieces to have a very nice repl-first programming model,
but lacks patterns for key parts of that- explicitly standing up the graph of
live objects, and using a repl to interact with a live system with live
objects.
Hope that makes sense.
------
cameronperot
I do a lot of scientific computing, mostly in Julia, and having a REPL at my
disposal is extremely useful. There's a great VIM plugin [1] that enables you
to send code from the editor to a terminal to be executed, e.g. a tmux session
which has a REPL open. It can be coupled with other nice plugins such as vim-
ipython-cell [2] and vim-julia-cell [3].
[1] [https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-slime](https://github.com/jpalardy/vim-
slime)
[2] [https://github.com/hanschen/vim-ipython-
cell](https://github.com/hanschen/vim-ipython-cell)
[3] [https://github.com/mroavi/vim-julia-cell](https://github.com/mroavi/vim-
julia-cell)
------
jimbokun
A REPL can also be excellent for operations work and ad-hoc tasks. I use it a
lot when I need to extract some data from a REST API. Can create a toolbox of
methods over time for making calls, and add new ones in an ad-hoc fashion,
then use those to script larger tasks. Exploration, analysis, minor ETL tasks,
debugging state of deployed systems, etc. etc. can all be enchanced by a REPL.
~~~
oweqruiowe
yea I'm an idiot and need to get my hands dirty with response types so I'm
often just building up lots of top level `(def body ..)` variables that will
eventually be moved into a single function.
But just messing around in my editor connected to a repl lets me really
breakdown a task while I'm figuring it out.
------
derision
I started learning Clojure yesterday,I've gone through the docs here and have
a grasp of the language. Does anyone have some good resources for further
learning? Maybe some high quality tutorials? I'm mostly interesting in web /
apis
~~~
goostavos
I don't think there's a single best Clojure book, so I'll recommend several
(all available on Safari if you have that). For general language, syntax,
idioms:
* The Joy of Clojure (whirlwind tour of the language and Clojure philosophy.) * Brave Clojure (A very wordy, hand-holdy approach. I really like this one for dense topics like core.async which can take time to wrap your head around) * Programming Clojure - just an all around solid reference. Once you've got a command of the language, this becomes more valuable imo .
Now, there's a large gap between knowing Clojure's syntax and writing
effective programs in the language. Clojure is not Python, or Haskell, or
Java, and, as such, you don't build programs in the same way. So, as a final
recommendation, I'd suggest the book Clojure Applied. This book deals with
going from "I know the language" to "I know how to build things in the
language"
For the web, get ready to beat your head against a wall for hours and hours on
end ^_^. Lisp's "small pieces" philosophy is both a blessing and a curse.
Outside of a framework called Luminus, and a few leiningen templates, the way
to do things in Clojure land is by stitching a bunch of ad-hoc libraries
together by hand, which means a lot of evaluation of not-too-popular github
repos.
Once you've got everything dialed in though, it's an absolute joy to use.
~~~
invalidOrTaken
For the newbie Clojurist trying to do web stuff I'd highly recommend Luminus.
I don't agree w/every choice the framework makes, but those are minor details
compared to the choice paralysis one tends to suffer without some experience.
Clojure is too good to miss out on because of stuff like that.
------
entha_saava
Can someone knowledgeable explain how are lisp REPLs different from Python /
Ruby REPLs? What is the differentiating point of REPL driven development?
Is it that you interactively test your functions and add them to source file
once they work? Or is it that with editor integration, you can load functions
to REPL as they are defined? Am I missing something obvious?
~~~
mikelevins
I've answered similar questions several times over the past few years, but I
don't mind repeating myself. It offers me a glimmer of hope that my preferred
way of working may not fade away, after all.
Consider the standard Common Lisp generic function UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-
REDEFINED-CLASS
([http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_upda_1.htm](http://clhs.lisp.se/Body/f_upda_1.htm)).
It reinitializes an object when Lisp detects that the object's class
definition has changed.
Ask yourself this: who would call such a function? Why would anyone ever
invent it? Not only did someone invent it, a committee of some of the world's
smartest and most experienced Lisp programmers wrote it into the ANSI standard
for the language. What were they up to?
UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS is not a weird anomaly; it's part of a
carefully-considered set of features and protocols designed to support a
specific style of programming. The Lisp runtime calls it for you automatically
when it touches an object whose class definition has changed.
If you've defined a method specialized for it, then Lisp executes that method
to rebuild the touched instance as if it had originally been instantiated from
the class's new definition, and then your program goes its merry way. If you
didn't specialize UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS for this case, then the
Lisp drops you into a breakloop.
A breakloop is an interactive repl with full access to all of the runtime's
memory and all of the language's features, including visibility into the whole
call stack that landed you in the breakloop. You can wander up and down the
call stack, inspect anything in the runtime, edit bindings, redefine types and
functions, and resume execution either at the point of control where the
breakloop started, or at any other point for which the breakloop exposes a
restart.
UPDATE-INSTANCE-FOR-REDEFINED-CLASS is not the weird fever dream of a confused
eccentric. It's part of a purposeful system design intended to support a style
of programming in which you build a program by interacting with a live runtime
and teach it, interaction-by-interaction, how to be the program you want,
while it runs.
It's a particular example of a general approach to programming best
exemplified by these old systems. That general approach is the answer to your
question: "Can someone knowledgeable explain how are lisp REPLs different from
Python / Ruby REPLs? What is the differentiating point of REPL driven
development?"
The differentiating point is that the entire language and system is
thoughtfully designed from the ground up with the assumption that you're going
to be changing your work in progress while it runs, and that you should be
able to change absolutely anything about it as it runs and have a reasonable
expectation that it will continue to work while you do it.
I like to call this style of programming "programming as teaching", and
distinguish it from the much more widespread "programming as carpentry", in
which the programmer is, metaphorically speaking, at a workbench banging
together artifacts and assembling them to see how they turn out.
To be clear, I do not claim that the teaching approach is objectively better
than the carpentry approach. I claim only that I, personally, am happier and
measurably more productive using the teaching approach. I know that some other
programmers report the same thing, and I suspect that if the teaching style of
programming were more widely known, then there would be more programmers who
prefer it.
There are several sibling comments that assert that any language can be made
to support repl-driven programming, or that offer various languages and
systems as examples of repl-driven programming. I'm sure that's all true, for
some relatively restricted version of repl-driven programming, but the gold
standard in repl-driven programming is programming as teaching in the style of
old-fashioned Lisp and Smalltalk systems. These old systems offer amenities
that the younger alternatives touted here do not match. I want more people to
be aware of what they're missing.
Starting in the 1980s, I grew accustomed to systems that could start from cold
in about a second, presenting to me a complete interactive development
environment with all tools preloaded and ready to work, with the whole dynamic
environment of my work in progress in the same state it was in the last time I
was working with it. Moreover, I was accustomed to being able to take a single
file from one machine to another to reproduce that same whole working
environment equally quickly and easily on the new machine.
I could save the entire dynamic state of the running system to an image file,
a serialized version of the running system's memory. I could later start up
the system with that image file and be exactly where I was when I saved the
image, right down to the positions and contents of all the open windows. I
could save an image showing some bug or some strange behavior and give it to a
colleague so that they could see it, too, and interact with the restored
dynamic state to debug it.
I enjoyed comprehensive whole-system reflection that enabled me to view and
edit absolutely everything in the running system while it ran. I could inspect
absolutely everything, including the development environment and all its
tools, interactively change any variable or field value, redefine any type or
function, and continue to work with the changed system without stopping and
restarting. (Obviously, if I made a bad change I might break the system, but
remember, I could kill it and get back to where I started in a second or so).
I could start some process running--perhaps a 3D animation in a game, or a
discrete-event simulation, or whatever--and change any values or definitions I
liked to see what changed in the running process, without stopping the process
to rebuild. For example, I could tell a rotating copper cube to become a glass
icosahedron and reasonably expect to see my changes immediately reflected in
the running program. This property is invaluable not only in games,
simulations, and any kind of work with a visual-design component, but also in
any kind of exploratory programming, where you're constructing data structures
and evaluating expressions interactively to test your ideas.
Similarly, I could build some speculative data structure to explore an idea,
and define some functions to operate on it. I could evaluate those expressions
to see their results or to change the example structure. I could inspect the
structure interactively and edit it in place if I think something different
would work better. If I think a problem is caused by some structure or value
in it, I could use the inspector to change it and see. If I thought one my my
functions was doing something I didn't expect, I could insert a call to break,
to activate a repl from inside the function call that would enable me to
inspect and edit the data structure, redefine the function, and continue from
there.
Anything the development system could do, I could do by typing an expression
into the repl. As an example, nowadays you can still rebuild the whole Clozure
Common Lisp environment from the ground up by typing (rebuild-ccl :full t).
The point is not that I would want to rebuld my Lisp from the repl all the
time. The point is that the repl doesn't impose any aribtrary boundaries on
what I can do. If the language and development environment can do it, I can do
it from the repl. This is one of the properties that distinguishes the whole-
system interactive design of these old tools from the more limited repls
offered by newer ones. In pretty much every repl I've used other than old-
style Lisps and Smalltalks I'm all the time stumbling over things you can't do
from the repl.
I mentioned breakloops above. Their absence in younger languages and tools
seem to me like some sort of sin, like we're tragically abandoning some of the
best lessons of the past. Few newer development systems have them, but they're
incredibly useful--at least if the language runtime is designed to properly
support interactive programming.
A breakloop is a repl with all of the same affordances of the normal repl, but
extended with all of the dynamic state of the control path that invoked the
breakloop. If an error or an intentional call to break triggers a breakloop
somewhere deep in a stack of recursive function calls, you get a repl that can
see every frame of that stack, and every variable and value lexically
accessible from it. You can browse all of that whole, change values, and
redefine functions and types. You can resume execution at your leisure, and
any changes you made in the breakloop will be visible in the resumed
computation just as if that's how things were originally.
Proper breakloops don't just improve error messages; they replace them
wholesale with an entire species of programming that lays the whole dynamic
state of the system out on the table for you to examine and modify while the
program continues to run.
Moreover, everything I just described about breakloops can also be automated.
These old systems provide not only interactive tools for rummaging through the
dynamic state of a suspended computation, but also APIs for handling them
under program control. For example, you can wrap an arbitrary function call in
condition handlers that will either drop you into a breakloop and enable you
to vivisect the program state, or consult the dynamic state and compute which
of several restarts to activate in order to transfer control to a path of your
choosing.
I'm banging up against HN's length limit, but the above, I hope, goes some way
toward answering to your question.
~~~
minerjoe
Very nice description of the power of the Common Lisp REPL.
Did you have the pleasure (?) of working on any of the lisp machines?
I got into Common Lisp in the early 90's and even then, with GCL and CMUCL, it
blew my mind at how much more productive I was compared to my years of C,C++
just due to the one fact that I was now freed from the edit, compile, run
cycle, let alone all the other benefits.
It's truly a joy. I don't have a full grasp of why others don't make the deep
dive. I suspect it just had too much a learning curve nowadays, with Emacs
being almost a requirement, and developers, like most humans, don't like to
slow down for a while while they learn before they speed up.
~~~
vindarel
FYI the Atom SLIMA package is very good: [https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-
cookbook/editor-support.ht...](https://lispcookbook.github.io/cl-
cookbook/editor-support.html) Emacs is still the best, but not THE required
editor anymore.
~~~
minerjoe
Atom is OK, but many people bound to eventually be caught in it's local
maxima, such as needing to run in a terminal.
------
divs1210
The REPL has spoilt me. Working with languages without a powerful REPL, even
ones with a shell like JS/Python/Lua/Ruby feels like a regression comparable
to moving from zsh to windows cmd.
~~~
Angeo34
If you think zsh to cmd is a regression you should try out bash. It's vastly
superior to zsh in literally every regard. If you still aren't stratified use
fish.
Genuinely never got how people use zsh. It's the slowest and clunkiest shell
I've ever witnessed it's fucking slower than most electron gui software.
~~~
Natfan
Personally I've found zsh's features to massively outweigh it's "slowness"
(although I haven't really noticed zsh as "slow", per se)
`esc, esc` to prefix the line with `sudo`, better tab completion (both the
navigatable UI with arrow keys, along with the intelligent tab completion (I
type in "./llo" and it finds the file "./helloworld.sh")), combined with the
massive amounts of customization and modules you can install makes it a shell
killer. The only shell I've found that I like more is Windows' Powershell,
however that's mostly because I __love__ the Powershell language and syntax.
However I will admit that almost all of what I just complimented is part of
oh-my-zsh, which is a community add-on for zsh which makes the experience so
much nicer. In my time I've used bash, csh, pwsh and zsh and if I could, I'd
always use zsh for termanal interactivity and pwsh (Powershell on Linux) for
scripts.
------
siraben
Programming at the Haskell REPL is a great experience, whether it's if you're
exploring data, testing out a parser, or running an effectful computation with
a given state. On the other hand when a language is impure like Scheme or
Clojure I've often found myself needing to reload the REPL again and again to
get to a clean state.
~~~
thom
I think obviously it's much _easier_ to create a mess in Clojure this way, but
I think in most sane codebases the pure and impure stuff is quite neatly
demarcated. Generally people have learned to structure systems as some sort of
root data structure containing various components, which can be started,
stopped or reset at will. You have to put that in place yourself, but I've not
worked on a project where it's been an issue in many years.
For what it's worth, I have found dynamically loading new libraries at runtime
easier in Clojure than Haskell, which is another source of REPL friction for
me, although I rarely use the latter these days.
------
tgbugs
Here is a question that I have about Clojure and its REPL. I have tried 3
times over a period of a year or so to get it to behave like a common lisp
REPL and every single time I have hit a brick wall called project.clj and/or
deps.edn (which open a terrifying black hole to maven). My simplest use case
is to be able to call `(expt 2 10)` from a bare clojure install without
leaving the repl. As far as I can tell it is impossible to achieve this. I
finally gave up and wrote a gentoo ebuild to install the numeric tower just to
see if it was possible [0]. What I learned was that I have no idea how clojure
libraries interact with the JVM. `pomegranate` gets the closest but I'm still
fairly certain that you can't install that from a repl without resorting to
hackery [1]. I think I understand the tradeoff toward using project.clj and
deps.edn to create sane and static environments for a project, but the
friction is larger than nearly any other language that I have tried because
you are practically forced to create a project structure in order to do
anything.
0\. [https://github.com/tgbugs/tgbugs-overlay/blob/master/dev-
jav...](https://github.com/tgbugs/tgbugs-overlay/blob/master/dev-java/math-
numeric-tower/math-numeric-tower-0.0.4.ebuild) 1\. [https://github.com/clj-
commons/pomegranate](https://github.com/clj-commons/pomegranate)
~~~
lbj
Just install lein and do lein help new to see available templates. Or lein new
myproject to get the framework for your own project. Then Cd into that folder
and do lein run
------
siliconc0w
I'm a big fan of REPL programming and miss it a lot when I work with compiled
languages. There is definitely a 'right' and 'wrong' way to do it though. REPL
programming doesn't replace the need to write tests and it actually allow you
to write those tests faster as well as build more realistic faked versions of
upstream or downstream dependencies.
------
bonestormii_
Programming in the REPL is something I do all the time and generally enjoy,
but I sometimes feel like the actual design of the program then becomes too
focused around REPL usage. Too much abstraction can harm performance and waste
time. The REPL encourages this by making you think about the internals of your
program as an interface that will _actually get used_ , when in reality some
function may get called twice ever from within your own code, and isn't really
meant to be exposed. But because you are repeatedly invoking it manually via
the REPL, it feels like an interface worthy of considerable design.
Maybe it is, and maybe it isn't. I've just noticed this tendency in myself
when working in REPLs. Not every part of your program is an API.
------
EvanAnderson
I've enjoyed noodling around w/ Javascript in various simple REPLs. I love the
feedback, but it also feels a lot like using "ed" versus a visual editor. I
find myself writing code in a text editor, then pasting bits and pieces into
the REPL.
I'd love to have tooling that let me develop in a REPL, but also had a text
editor to let me edit objects / functions / etc in that manner, too.
~~~
adamkl
Well, with proper REPL integration, you never really type/copy/paste into the
REPL.
You write your code in a source file like normal, highlight what you want
evaluated, and have the REPL evaluate it.
Clojure has a great REPL because you are effectively working inside your own
codebase, as it runs. Its a strange idea to wrap your head around, but very
cool.
You can get something similar to this approach in JavaScript using Quokka[0].
It's not as complete as a Clojure REPL, but its still quite nice.
[0] [https://quokkajs.com/](https://quokkajs.com/)
~~~
EvanAnderson
I'll check that out. Thanks for the recommendation.
------
oweqruiowe
If anyone hasn't tried Clojurescript's browser REPL, it's super easy to use
now when using Shadow-CLJS for your project.
When you boot shadow up it'll create an nrepl server for you, you can just
connect to it and invoke `(shadow/nrepl-select :app)` and it'll latch on to
the running application `localhost:3000`. And it works really well, very
awesome.
------
keithasaurus
The clojure REPL is nice, don't get me wrong. But I think the reason people
rely on it more than in other languages is because of clojure's slow startup
time. If you could just make a change and run tests immediately, you'd see
much less REPL abuse.
~~~
Jtsummers
Common Lisp is not terribly slow to start, and people rely on its REPL when
programming in it. Even Python's REPL is quite popular, and it's not slow to
start either.
The REPL is relied on because it's useful for exploring parts of a system or
program. It's like being able to both dissect and vivisect the system without
having to go through all the normal issues of setting up a debugger and
instrumentation. The environment and program is just there.
~~~
3pt14159
I never really did much REPL programming until I started using pdbpp with a
bunch of aliases and customizations in pdbrc and pdbrc.py (the former does
aliasing[0] the latter does setup before boot) it makes iterating with a test
suite so much faster.
[0] For example:
alias cc import pdb; pdb.disable()
alias ppr pp response.json()
------
fmakunbound
Common Lisp REPLs and Smalltalk have ruined me for life as far as that goes.
~~~
tartoran
Can you expand on that?
~~~
minerjoe
Once you get over the learning curve, you really begin to see the productivity
gains in your day by day to the point that any language without those
capabilities fall short. Combine that with a world where most jobs seem to
place a higher priority on other things than programmer productivity such as
programmer fungibility, and your left with very few choices of places to work
that allow you to be at your most productive.
Say only Common Lisp had floating point arithmetic (or first class functions,
or...) , and most other languages only had integers. You'd probably feel a bit
hamstrun when tasked to do certain tasks in those languages.
------
riazrizvi
Am I missing something? This article seems very thin.
------
x87678r
Bob Martin was talking about this in May too. I think he decided to go back to
tdd. [http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/2020/05/27/ReplDrivenDe...](http://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-
bob/2020/05/27/ReplDrivenDesign.html)
~~~
slifin
I knew his article would get misconstrued this way to clarify he almost
certainly will be using a REPL in Clojure (even running tests happens through
a REPL in Clojure) but I think what he's trying to convey there is that he's
not designing in the REPL but rather with TTD
Which honestly is fine but most people reading the article won't be in a REPL
based language like smalltalk or lisp so will just understand REPL bad TTD
good
~~~
smnplk
"rapid feedback is no substitute for software design and methodic problem-
solving." \-- clojure.org
they also mean TDD
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Will Stop Reading Your Emails for Gmail Ads - ahiknsr
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-23/google-will-stop-reading-your-emails-for-gmail-ads
======
jikeo
I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it seems weird that the reporter nor any
of the 140+ comments so far seemingly don't mention the recently published
proposal for a new ePrivacy directive in the EU that will make it a lot harder
for Google to scan e-mails in the first place.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-
idUSKBN14U1FL](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-privacy-idUSKBN14U1FL)
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jan/10/whatsapp-
facebook-google-privacy-rules-ec-european-directive)
[http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the-
draft-e...](http://www.kemplittle.com/site/articles/kl_bytes/the-draft-
eprivacy-regulation10-things-you-need-to-know)
~~~
chicob
That directive might be related to what's happening.
But let's not be naive: if Google will stop reading our emails in order to
send us personalized ads, that's because it doesn't really need to. People
share just enough outside their email environment for Google to do its thing.
Another sign of which those worrying about privacy should be aware.
~~~
roganp
Or, maybe: the extra information gleaned from reading your emails is just not
that valuable. Not because they have this via other means, but its just not
that valuable, period - whether it comes from reading emails or scrutinizing
your browser history. We like to imagine that if advertisers knew enough about
us, they'd be able to direct our spending, but I think that is far from true.
~~~
piaste
I'm pretty sure scrutinizing your browser history is still extremely valuable.
But I find it quite plausible that email _in particular_ has lost value as
marketing information.
People still use email for all kinds of business, of course. But their day-to-
day personal activities, the kind that marketers care about ("I've taken up
kayaking!", "I'm pregnant!") don't usually show up in emails any more, they
get posted on social media.
~~~
gub09
This makes sense. Possibly the value of increased corporate sales of G Suite
is worth more than the loss of the information gained from reading diminishing
numbers of personal emails, as people turn more and more to social media and
phone apps for personal communication.
------
skrause
I never understood the argument that some automatic scanning for keywords is
like "reading" your mail. By that same logic isn't Gmail's spam filter still
"reading" your mail? It is classifying your mail based on content after all...
~~~
dingaling
It's like my accountant reading my receipts to create my tax return versus a
sleazy salesman sneaking a peek at them to find new ways to sell me stuff.
~~~
cybrjoe
It's more like your accountant preparing your tax return for free in exchange
for aggregating data about your receipts and offering you goods and services
you may be interested in.
~~~
ouid
Let's split the difference. It's like your accountant preparing your tax
return in exchange for using that tax return to develop a model of your
spending habits. The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing
your tax returns, and in fact is such that if you were simply to collect that
data yourself, sell it on the open market, and spend a portion of the proceeds
on the tax prep service, you would end up with profit, and the tax prep
service would still exist.
~~~
dmix
> The value of this model is more than the cost of them doing your tax returns
It's likely the value Google got out of scanning your email wasn't worth that
much in terms of modelling profiles for ads.
Probably because having both your search history and "anonymized" Google
analytics, plus the sea of data that comes from owning Android is more than
enough data that Google/Doubleclick needs.
From a purely capitalist perspective I'd bet the utility of them scraping this
data no longer outweighs the privacy costs.
But at the same time Google is still scanning attachments for child porn and
likely other data out of national security interests. And they still can
access your data on a case-by-case basis which from a FISA perspective is a
rubber-stamp away from accessing your data from 2 hops away from someone who
may or may not have done something bad.
I personally will not weigh using Google vs any other email service in terms
of privacy any different after this measure. But I still appreciate their
efforts to reduce the "standard pratice" nature of scanning private email. If
I do use anything Google-related I will not associate my personal identity in
any way with the service, which is still requirement for Google play.
You can still use a fake gmail account and prepaid Google gift cards bought
with cash to disassociate your identity from using the service. Although
that's still well beyond the investment the majority of people are willing to
make.
Regardless privacy comes at a cost these days. Good OPSEC > trusting cloud
services privacy policy. You can either not use the services or invest in
protecting your data when using them.
I will still cheer on Google's efforts to make those of us who care about
privacy live's easier. I'm not naive enough to ignore how their business model
works but that doesn't mean they always have to take the easy route and hand
everything over without considering the costs - as many ISP/Telecom companies
seem to do.
~~~
mrybczyn
Eh? That assumption of "not associating my personal identity" doesn't actually
work. Your profile IS your personal identity, and can be associated trivially.
If not algorithmically, then via one connecting piece of information supplied
by various databases and no such agencies. You're living in a dream.
~~~
dmix
> Your profile IS your personal identity, and can be associated trivially.
I'm hardly new to his stuff and to say it's trivial is nonsense. Most people
make it trivial but it's not trivial to associate identities of people who put
basic effort into obscuring them.
Merely disconnecting your primary profiles from your online activity is enough
to throw most mass-surveillance/drag-net stuff off, aka 99.9% of advertising
firms and most government programs.
If you're an activist or someone interested in keeping your internet activity
private then the bar is far higher (and the targets of which are ever
expanding as governments and private organizations get better at this stuff).
FBI agents, or likewise in your country of residence, have plenty of forensic
tools at their disposal to connect disparate identities. It takes some real
time investment and requires being super careful to evade these measures. But
I'm not talking about that here. I mean the average person in 2017.
I've personally done the total anonymity stuff as an experiment so I know what
that takes.
Having studied many documents from the various global national security
organizations and being fortunate to have dated a defense attorney in the past
who engaged with police surveillance reports on a daily basis for their work
I'm convinced that even basic privacy measures such as never using your real
identity when using internet services, creating full legitimate sounding
backstories (and subsequent online profiles) for your fake identity, and
changing the ID you use often enough will throw off most basic surveillance
measures.
I'm not doing anything to get people really invested in uncovering my online
identities, as most people aren't, which is what I'm talking about.
The simple fact is the vast, vast majority of people reuse the same username
(and passwords) across the internet and use their real name and emails
everywhere. So it's really not hard to track people online from an LEO or
4chan doxxing perspective.
But I'm not convinced you have to be isolated from the utility of most online
(cloud) services. You just have to invest in using them intelligently to not
associate your actual identity with the services.
Ad companies aren't interested in deanonymizing people anyway. They are
looking for low hanging fruit and there are more than enough people to fill
databases who fit this profile. So I'm not that concerned about those who
don't.
~~~
mcbits
It's not trivial to match any arbitrary profile with an offline identity, but
it is possible to cluster pseudonymous profiles into "almost certainly the
same individual" by patterns and peculiarities in how they use their devices.
If the same patterns later show up for an identified user, they can be linked
with high probability.
With the sites Google runs plus running their own JavaScript on a sizable
fraction of other people's web pages, they can pick up a lot of patterns, many
of which would be inaccessible to police and intelligence surveillance.
Some people have nervous habits like moving the mouse around, clicking/tapping
on whitespace, scrolling up and down, etc. Some always/never use the
scrollbar. Some always/never open links in new tabs. Some tend to put the
adjective before/after the noun in their searches. Some will rapidly open up
the first 5 search results in new tabs. Some always disable instant search,
and some of those change their settings to 20 or 50 or 100 results. Some use
search features like the calculator, searching for "weather", stock symbols,
etc, and others never do.
------
vaishaksuresh
I very recently switched to fastmail and couldn't be happier. For $90 a year,
I don't have to deal with people snooping and tracking me around for ads. I
know google is trying to give me value with all their facial recognition and
recommendations, but I don't think it is going to end well. When it does end
badly, it will be too late for the user because we would've given up all the
data. I don't want Google to build models to track my toddler's face when he
isn't even capable of consenting to such tracking.
~~~
DerfNet
Is there any reason not to go with ProtonMail? They seem to be the big
recommendation lately for encrypted email service.
~~~
Propen
I'd really love to support ProtonMail but one thing I can't swallow is that
there's no server-side search of email bodies (only to/from & subject) because
it's encrypted. This kills the possibility of searching through years of
newsletters & stuff :/
~~~
jszymborski
[I'm stupid they have 2FA, ignore this comment.]
Another huge problem is the lack of two-factor authentication. How can a
security-oriented service not offer TOTP or even SMS 2FA.
~~~
stockmania
2FA has been out for almost 6 months.
~~~
jszymborski
Oops, my Google-fu is worse than I thought.
------
myrandomcomment
So this never really bugged me. It is a damn good free service. I also love
how it picks up on plane tickets, hotel reservations, etc and puts them in the
calendar. Makes life simpler.
If ad companies fix something please fix the I searched for something and
bought it but I get adds for it for the next 4 weeks. That bugs me.
~~~
aembleton
Frustratingly, by reading my emails Google should know that I've bought
something and so don't need ads about it.
But hey, they don't seem to have used that data.
~~~
everythingswan
At that point, it's on the advertiser. It's a weird dynamic where they want to
enable the advertiser to factor that in and not advertise to you _, but they
want to maximize rev and imperfect advertisers increases rev.
(_ = edit for grammar)
------
kentosi
I don't understand why there isn't an option for me to pay for Google to
remove ads from gmail.
I've already paid for Youtube Red and couldn't be happier.
~~~
SN76477
[https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/](https://gsuite.google.com/products/gmail/)
About $60 a year
I have about 8 accounts that I use.
~~~
joosters
This hardly frees you from Google's data gathering. They will have records of
your IP address used to collect the emails and your access history, so they
know (roughly) where you live, what times of day you are active, and can
probably infer stuff like when you are on holiday. If you are in the same
house as someone else, they probably use Google too and the shared IP address
lets Google tie the two identities together. So they get to discover your
relationships too.
~~~
askvictor
So will any host. When you are paying for it though, the terms of service
clearly define what is collected and what it's used for, and you can choose to
enable or disable that type of data matching
------
newscracker
<rant> Slightly off topic: I was very annoyed that this article didn't provide
any links to Google's official statement/declaration about this change and
when it's coming. Even if Bloomberg interviewed Diane Green for this article
or asked questions and got official statements, it could've still provided an
official link for the change. </rant>
I found the link [1] here on HN.
[1]: [https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-
in...](https://blog.google/products/gmail/g-suite-gains-traction-in-the-
enterprise-g-suites-gmail-and-consumer-gmail-to-more-closely-align/)
------
jmull
I should probably get fitted for a tinfoil hat because my immediate reaction
was, "Oh shit! They must've developed something now that tracks you better and
is less obvious."
~~~
eatbitseveryday
My educated guess would be that given the proliferation of services offered by
Google, it indeed has many more sources of information on each individual, and
having email as one of them perhaps proves less beneficial today as it did
when Gmail was first introduced. Now there is the Android OS which gives
information about apps you use, locations, activities, and online searches,
map queries, bookmarks, sentiments via G+, etc. So, it can disable auto-
scanning of emails perhaps as a PR move (or, should I hope it is going to
eventually evolve its email service to include encrypting emails, and this is
one step in that direction??).
~~~
icebraining
The article explains it plainly: they weren't getting the message to business
people that Gmail on Google Apps _isn 't_ scanned despite free Gmail being, so
they stopped scanning Gmail altogether.
~~~
dsp1234
_stopped scanning Gmail altogether._
Note that this is not what the article says. It says that they stopped
scanning Gmail for _ads_ , but does not say they stopped scanning email for
non-ad purposes.
~~~
chippy
To be more accurate the article says they stopped scanning for ads that appear
_inside gmail_. Whether they still scan emails in the free gmail for use
_outside_ gmail is unknown, but I may be being pedantic...
~~~
joshuamorton
(disclosure, I work on gmail, although nothing related to ads)
I can't find a citation, but I'm fairly confident that that's never been the
case. Ad targeting from emails has always been siloed to within gmail. To
quote the post:
>Consumer Gmail content will not be used or scanned for any ads
personalization after this change.
That's pretty unequivocal.
~~~
chippy
Thanks!
------
WisNorCan
This most likely is a pragmatic financial decision. Contextual advertising is
generating a lower CPM than data/person based advertising.
Said differently the relevance that can be extracted from your specific email
is less than the cumulative knowledge that Google has about you from other
sources.
~~~
elsewhen
Gmail ads were no just contextual. Advertisers were able to target people who
received email from a particular domain. Can you imagine the power of being
able to target customers of a competitor that has been developing their
customer relationships for years?
This is 100% conjecture, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was this domain
targeting (which is what many advertisers were using) that was the thing that
Google's big clients were complaining about.
------
drusepth
Will there still be a way to opt-in?
This seems like one of those decisions that is a net negative for
functionality in favor of quelling some misguided privacy concerns. Hopefully
this doesn't lessen the quality of ads by much.
~~~
bootlooped
This is the first time I've ever heard a person worry about the quality of the
ads that are served to them.
~~~
crazygringo
I've often wondered why nobody brings this up more.
If you're going to see ads for things, why on earth _wouldn 't_ you want them
to try to better target you? The whole point is for you to find out about
things that might be useful for you.
Why would I want less of the useful things? Why would I want worse
advertising?
~~~
hrktb
I think some people make the assumption they are targeted for products that
might be beneficial for them. But why would that mostly be the case ? Someone
with an online shopping problem would be a perfect target for a flurry of ads,
and getting better targeted ads would just be screwing that person more and
more.
Even in a saner scenario, the most informative ad you can imagine will still
isolate you from the information you would have got by doing your own
research. But since you have most of the information you wanted to have, you
won't bother checking that much more.
IMO even in the best case scenario, helping people to be lazy on things they
are interested in is counterproductive in the long term.
------
VMG
Hope this increases the chance of E2E encryption
~~~
JumpCrisscross
How would you search your inbox? Or filter spam?
~~~
mtgx
[https://protonmail.com/blog/encrypted-email-spam-
filtering/](https://protonmail.com/blog/encrypted-email-spam-filtering/)
I remember there was a recent paper that dealt with this, too, but I can't
find it right now. But it basically demolished this argument that it's
impossible to stop spam if the email is encrypted.
~~~
jcranmer
That blog post doesn't actually say anything about how they do spam filtering
on encrypted emails. Everything they talk about is bog-standard spam
filtering, including comparing against known spam and Bayesian filtering, both
of which are impossible to do on encrypted emails. It's not clear if they're
doing reputation analysis, which is the other big anti-spam measure impossible
on encrypted email (I suspect it's the main component of their "we're not
telling you what we're doing"). The SPF/DKIM/DMARC and blacklist checks are
the only things you can reliably do on encrypted email.
They do say "In future blog posts, we will cover the challenges of preventing
ProtonMail from being used by spammers and the challenges of doing spam
filtering with end-to-end encrypted emails which we cannot read", but I can't
find any such blog posts.
------
robbart90
"The decision didn’t come from Google’s ad team, but from its cloud unit,
which is angling to sign up more corporate customers."
Interesting timing with the story earlier this week about Wal-Mart telling
vendors to stop using AWS
------
cm2012
That sucks for me as an advertiser. Gmail ads were great for B2B marketing.
~~~
wand3r
Man I am super sorry my basic privacy are getting in the way of your marketing
effort.
Edit: removed "rights"
~~~
robotresearcher
Google can't read your post office mail. It can't read your Yahoo mail. But
you certainly have no right that says it can't read your Gmail mail.
You're confusing a want with a right.
------
sidcool
Google will still show ads in Gmail, just not based on email contents.
------
kolemcrae
Interesting - as an advertiser I generally recommend using the email address
"sent from" as your main source of targeting but combining that with specific
keywords within the gmail campaign can be super helpful at finding people at
the exact right time.
~~~
shostack
Yeah, targeting competitor domain names tends to perform pretty well. Do you
know if domain targeting is disappearing with this update?
------
hilyen
Good for them. Though it goes without saying email is insecure. If enterprise
clients dislike an algorithm scanning their email contents, maybe they should
also consider that email generally has unencrypted transit and storage.
~~~
bitJericho
Very few servers store/transmit emails unencrypted...
~~~
icebraining
Not that few - more than 1 in 10 emails sent and received by Gmail are
unencrypted:
[https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/)
~~~
bitJericho
That's higher than I would have expected. The question though, is who is not
allowing encrypted emails? I wonder if it's mostly just China.
~~~
netheril96
Looking at the data
([https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region...](https://www.google.com/transparencyreport/saferemail/#region=142)).
The major Chinese players QQ and 163 do employ TLS, while the worst offenders
of security are mostly Japanese.
The Chinese government can just ask QQ and 163 for your email such that they
don't need to see it in transit. Less work, too.
------
neves
It basically means that they already track so much information about you that
they don't need to monitor the contents of your email anymore.
Now Google knows: \- all your searches (know your interests), \- a great
percentage of the pages you visit (ads and analytics) \- all your contacts and
how frequently you connect to them (metadata in gmail) \- the places you visit
(geolocation in Android) \- Google logins (know the sites that interest you
the most)
Your email contents is completely unecessary.
------
aaln
Title should be: Google Will Stop Using Your Email Data for Gmail Ads.
------
stubish
Not scanning emails for ads? Corporate business?
I wonder if Google will be pushing end-to-end email encryption? They have
already had some experiments on it.
They have the majority browser, they have the lions share of email hosting. It
they played their cards right, they could claim the entire email ecosystem,
except for the small portion who won't use Google products on principle. The
questions would be would 3rd party clients be allowed, and how would Apple
fight it.
Or maybe this is all just a smoke screen to sucker dumb corps. In the existing
architecture, your emails still need to be scanned so they can be indexed for
search. You could get the same result scanning these indexes as scanning the
emails themselves, so from a privacy perspective it could be a non-event.
------
jshelly
And I am in the middle of migrating to icloud from google. Not going to stop
at this point.
~~~
erikb
Not sure if sarcasm or serious stupidity. Please clarify.
~~~
jshelly
neither, serious, why?
You seem to comment frequently here on HN where I consider most users to be
above average in the level of intelligent replies so your trolling seems quite
out of place.
------
davb
But will they stop using Hangouts IM content for customer segmentation? I
probably say much more relevant things in Hangouts (from a marketing
perspective) than in email.
------
geekme
I will never use a enterprise google product unless they have customer
support. The customer support team should have humans and not robots.
~~~
Xorlev
Enterprise customers have support. It's not as feasible in the consumer space,
the volume would be overwhelming.
------
prirun
My guess is that with Google Drive, they are getting way more information on
individuals and companies than they ever got via email.
------
Overtonwindow
I think I've become jaded because I just don't believe it. It's like Google
Home. A wonderful device but when I heard it may start listening to everything
I say... I just figured yeah, that should be expected. So now I just expect
Google to read, listen, and analyze everything I do with their products.
~~~
okreallywtf
Maybe I don't understand google home because I don't have one, but to be able
to detect whatever keywords cause it to listen to you doesn't it have to
listen to everything you say?
I feel like any device that has a microphone is suspect if you want total
privacy, but listening to what you say seems like an integral part of the
device. You can only hope (and independently verify) that they don't _store_
everything you say.
~~~
huehehue
It's my understanding that there's a low power, always-on service listening
for stuff like "Alexa"/"OK Google", and only when it hears a keyword does it
start "listening" and sending data back for parsing/processing.
I could be wrong and/or they could be lying about how the product really
works. Could probably monitor your network traffic if you really wanted to
find out.
------
chaitime
What happens to the data that was already collected. Legally they can still
use that data right?
------
m-p-3
But they'll most likely read them for another purpose, for example training
their AI.
------
mozzarella
I wonder what the conversion rates on these within-client ads are. I know I've
never opened any no matter how well-targeted or 'interesting' the ads were,
because the immediate response is to just want to sweep the inbox clean.
------
chenster
Even though it never really bothered me because Apple Mail does not pull
anything but the actual email message from Gmail, so I never see them, I still
would like G to stop scanning anything personal. Period.
------
MarkMc
OK but will Google stop reading my email for _other_ types of ads?
For example, if I write "I love coffee" in an email, am I more likely to see a
Starbucks ad when I visit watch a YouTube video?
~~~
kolemcrae
Wee yeah - it says they will no longer scan emails.... Instead they will use
your youtube data, search data, website visit data etc.
~~~
CobrastanJorji
In addition, I suspect, given that every time you walk into a Starbucks your
phone is probably connecting to the network "Google Starbucks", that they
probably know how you feel about coffee.
------
daveheq
Actually I'd prefer they did so they can optimize their cash flow and my
targeted ads so I can continue using their free product and all it's nice
features without any compromise.
------
ziikutv
Some of my emails are "read" (as in shown as I have read them) when I have
literally just received them. Is this referring to the same thing?
------
nerdiiee
How many of you have successfully prevented Google and Facebook for tracking
your web habits ? What all steps do you take to prevent the tracking ?
------
RichLewis007
It's about time! I wonder if this is due to the fact that if email encryption
becomes common, the content will be inaccessible to Google anyway.
~~~
eli
I doubt it. That's a pretty big "if".
~~~
Spivak
If they're not using it for ads, there's a good chance that it's in Google's
best interest to not know the contents of people's email. It lessens the
impact of a potential breach, and it greatly simplifies their responses to
gov't requests to 'we have no method to access this data, you must contact the
account holder directly'.
~~~
netheril96
And then Google gets inundated from angry customers who forget their password
or key for the encryption of their emails.
------
tkubacki
Is free Outlook account scanning me email or for building ads profile or for
any other purpose ?
------
redthrowaway
I suspect that means they no longer need to, and have better ways of targeting
ads at you.
------
rzr
Title is misleading, it should be G will keep reading your emails except for G
Ads.
------
nachtigall
Seriously, there's private, ad-free mail for 1$ a months:
[https://posteo.de/en/](https://posteo.de/en/) or
[https://mailbox.org/en/](https://mailbox.org/en/)
------
mavhc
Wonder if it's also a move that will help encrypted email become supported
------
hkmurakami
Won't people keep assuming gmail reads their emails at this point though?
------
andrepd
How do you know? That's the problem with closed source software, and software
that runs in someone else's computer. You have no idea what it does. You
aren't in control. Someone else is deciding what code runs on your computer.
That's a problem.
~~~
mrisoli
Big companies can't hide this stuff forever, you can eventually figure out, it
is just better business-wise for them to just state they read your emails for
ads, it can cost them a lot if they don't, plus most people don't really care.
A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking exclusively through WhatsApp about
a trip to London(in Portuguese with our very unusual jargon), I didn't do any
search for anything related it was all within our conversation, a couple days
later Facebook had a post on my timeline saying: "heading to London? Check
what your friends did there".
I don't remember reading anywhere that WhatsApp reads your conversations for
ads, but it was clear to me that's where they got the information, it was
spooky at first.
~~~
MajesticHobo
WhatsApp doesn't read your conversations for ads because it can't. Message
content is end-to-end encrypted. You must have leaked your plans through some
other medium inadvertently.
~~~
sedachv
This is called retargeting and is even worse from a privacy perspective: now
your data is going through multiple layers of ad buying tools, analytics, ad
exchanges, aggregators, ad networks, etc.: [http://2bd2y2367xnj3kpntjsifzmf-
wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-c...](http://2bd2y2367xnj3kpntjsifzmf-
wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/LUMA-Display-Ad-Tech-
Landscape-for-AdExchanger.jpg)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting)
------
ChuckMcM
It was interesting (but I suppose a random bit) that after reading this
article a new email showed up in my gmail inbox that was spam. I wonder if
this isn't the first move in a plan to create a 'pay' gmail service for
individuals.
------
ForFreedom
So what method have they adopted to display adverts in emails?
~~~
wdr1
It's literally in the article.
------
hellbanner
But they will still track links you click from gmail.com ?
------
rasz
Will they also stop tracking clicked links in gmail?
------
LeoNatan25
Almost as if they want to do no evil. Almost.
------
itiman
The fact of reading emails for ads is disputable even if it's used for a new
purpose, YT.
~~~
itiman
HAL: Ads will continue to appear inside the free version of Gmail, as promoted
messages. But instead of scanning a user’s email, the ads will now be targeted
with other personal information Google already pulls from sources such as
search and YouTube.
------
mrmondo
Too little, too late IMO
------
Markoff
Thank you EU.
------
Kluny
Gosh, thanks.
------
nether
Switch to Protonmail.
------
Lambent
To be clear, Google is not saying they'll stop reading your emails, only that
your emails' contents won't be used to generate ad content.
------
TheChosen
Quite obviously Google feels their profiling of users from other sources is
good enough that they can afford to throw them a bone - not to mention save
themselves a bit of effort since they will no longer need to maintain two
systems for GMail.
------
megamindbrian
Their AI knows what you are thinking anyways. The singularity is here!!
------
Manager
Well this is an interesting turn of events.
I wasn't expecting this from a company that makes most of it's revenue through
advertising. Sets a cautiously positive precedent.
------
funnyfacts365
Oh, the doublespeak... They will read your emails for everything else, like
Google Now, just not to show you ads. ahahahahahahahah
------
fernyherrera
word
------
rootsudo
How nice of Google.
------
flavor8
Fine. Can they please make Google Apps users first class users in the google
ecosystem?
------
ethanpil
Does that mean that Google now has no more use for Gmail, and soon millions of
people will be scrambling to cover yet another product sunset?
That would certainly cause an enormous loss of goodwill, but.... imagine this
scenario:
Google has some slow growth quarters, they need to keep the numbers up for
shareholders. They start to examine what they can squeeze. Gmail costs them X
(hundreds?) millions per year, but doesn't gain much from it...
Certainly its unlikely, as it is also a SSO tool, etc. Still....
~~~
kingbirdy
Considering gmail is a major part of google apps as well, I imagine they're
making plenty of money off of it
------
mtgx
So much for the argument "how else is Google going to make money if it isn't
reading your emails?!"
Companies can make money without tracking you 24/7 and reading all of your
private content. They just choose not to, because it's easier, and then spread
the propaganda that those things are "needed" to stay in business.
~~~
JeremyBanks
Google can stop reading your emails _because_ they track you so well you
elsewhere. You wouldn't want to cite this example.
------
patkai
Google will stop reading my emails for Gmail ads because I will stop using
Gmail. It's kind of a sad story, because they are the good guys, but once they
built a huge company they started to focus on maintaining it, possibly at any
cost. This is a cautionary tale: power corrupts. You, me, everyone. And yes,
the web will produce dictators we never imagined possible, because the
Internet is so powerful it will enable them.
~~~
sqeaky
I agree that the web is extremely powerful.
I also think this power is symmetric in who it enables. Unlike land ownership
or TV broadcasting entry isn't expensive and the needed tools can easily be
smuggled. Anyone can easily gain immensely from this free-flowing font of
knowledge and communication.
A potential dictator must take great pains to use gain that huge power in the
Internet era and I think you are right that we will see some insanely powerful
dictators. However, I think we see fewer than in previous eras though.
------
siliconc0w
I think there is some interesting middle ground where you could use machine
learning to go from 'show only relevant ads' to 'show only ads you might
actually click on with greater than .001 probability'. I guess this is like
'extreme' outlier detection but it'd be interesting to see what revenue the
ads at the 'long tail' of likelihood generate anyway. My guess the bulk of it
is from the standard high CPC stuff like Mortages and Insurance. Google says
it does this but i'm not too sure - I've never intentionally clicked an adword
and yet they're still shown to me.
Anyway this may solve the tragedy of the commons situation we're in now and
allow us to move away from the technology war of ad blockers, ad blocker
blockers, ad blocker blocker blockers, etc.
edit: removed comment on clarity of Gsuite vs Free due to downvote brigade.
~~~
gpribeiro
> Paying Gmail users never received the email-scanning ads like the free
> version of the program, but some business customers were confused by the
> distinction and its privacy implications, said Diane Greene, Google’s senior
> vice president of cloud.
Google doesn't read e-mails from GSuite. So the change is to stop reading from
Gmail's free accounts.
------
4684499
I'm fine to let them scan my emails for spam filter, yet they use it as an
excuse to justify their data collection and other things they do with my data,
which is unacceptable for me. How would I know if they are going to do things
against my interests one day? Ads targeting is already against mine.
I used to see Google as a stalker. How naive I was. There are billions of
people being stalked, exploited, and the whole process is automated. It comes
to me that users are not victims of stalking, they are lab rats.
Now Google stopped reading emails for ads, but they'll still read for other
purposes, which still makes me as a user feel insecure. I value my privacy, I
have my dignity, I shouldn't be a lab rat that they can just observe however
they want only because they provide free cheese.
Even if I start using a paid account to stop them from reading my emails
(assume paid account with better privacy protection is possible), I couldn't
stop them from reading others'. Stopping the data collection of one user won't
change the situation, they still have other lab rats' data they could collect
and analyze, which enables them to learn or predict other rats' behaviors.
The worst thing is, Google is not the only company doing this right now.
Surveillance technologies are developing, it's like every data company has
grown their teeth and become more thirsty for blood.
Edit: words.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python 3 ... - lifthrasiir
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/pypy-dev/2013-May/011394.html
======
jumblesale
The same functionality in Perl: [https://www.inkling.com/read/programming-
perl-christiansen-4...](https://www.inkling.com/read/programming-perl-
christiansen-4th/chapter-4/the-ellipsis-statement)
It's a fun feature but saying it's the main reason to upgrade to Python 3 is
going a bit far. I don't see how it's much different to something like # TODO:
implement this method! or raise NotImplementedError if you don't want it to be
invoked.
~~~
dalke
It's sarcasm. You can tell because of the "Even worse" and "</rant>".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alexander Grothendieck’s Mathematical Archives at University of Montpellier - fermigier
https://grothendieck.umontpellier.fr/archives-grothendieck/
======
fermigier
18000 pages of mostly manuscript notes were released today by the University
of Montpellier, following an agreement with Grothendieck's heirs.
These notes where initially given by Grothendieck to Malgoire, , as narrated
in [http://www.neverendingbooks.org/grothendiecks-
gribouillis](http://www.neverendingbooks.org/grothendiecks-gribouillis)
> In 1991, just before he moved to the Pyrenees he burned almost all of his
> personal notes in the garden. He phoned Jean Malgoire:
> “Si tu ne viens pas chercher mon bordel mathématique, il va brûler avec le
> reste.”
> Malgoire sped to Mormoiron and rescued 5 boxes containing about 20.000
> pages. The next 20 years he kept them in his office, not exactly knowing
> what to do with them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cicada 3301: The web's most baffling and eerie crypto-puzzle is BACK - ronaldsvilcins
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/11/cicada_3301_2014/
======
valarauca1
This years challenge seems more difficult, breaking an RSA-400+ bit length key
is no easy task for most people to do at the drop of a hat, and normally the
group get very annoyed when people work collaboratively on puzzles (last year
there was a point where the group said people in communication with each other
would lead to disqualification).
Its far from over yet, it'll be interesting to see what puzzles are yet to
come.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Signs Climate Pledge to Advance Paris Climate Accords Goals by 10 Years - CitizenTekk
https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/19/amazon-signs-climate-pledge-to-advance-paris-climate-accords-goals-by-10-years/
======
Zhyl
>I don't know about you people but I don't want to live in a world where
someone else makes the world a better place better than we do
\- Gavin Belson, Silicon Valley
------
tracker1
I do hope the reforestation efforts work out... I also wouldn't mind seeing
similar efforts in farming to better re-integrate animal + crop farming again.
A lot of actual nutrition has been reduced by mono-farms at scale, which can
be more efficient, but that efficiency isn't necessarily better for health of
an ecosystem, or the product's consumption.
\-- edit:
I mean matching a lot of experimental farms, fisheries, etc where rotation for
grazing animals and/or a more healthy ecosystem are part of the goal and
process.
------
fooblitzky
Where does AWS Oil & Gas fit into the picture?
[https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/](https://aws.amazon.com/oil-and-gas/)
------
thinkcontext
I'm impressed by the bit about 10K electric vans by 2022. 100K by 2040 seems
less impressive given the likely steep slope of adoption.
I'm curious if they have any projections about how it will effect their
competitiveness with their chief rival Walmart.
------
pqhwan
> which it says will save an estimated 4 million metric tons of carbon per
> year by 2030.
Can anyone speak to the significance of this estimation? What’s the global
carbon reduction goal?
~~~
godshatter
I don't know what the reduction goal is, but a quick duckduckgoing found a
number of 45 billion metric tons of CO2 added each year[1] as of 2017, which
comes out to 12.2 billion metric tons of carbon (C is ~27% of CO2 by weight).
So 4 million metric tons of carbon is about 0.03 percent of that total.
[1]
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/13/global-...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/13/global-
carbon-dioxide-emissions-reach-record-high/859659001/)
------
tito
What are Amazon's other 2040 goals?
What I mean is, why do climate goals all get to be decades out (21 years in
this case). That's like saying "I'm going to get in shape by 2040". Does AWS
have 2040 goals, too?
I would like to see Amazon carbon neutral by 2022, 3 years out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ECMAScript modules in Node.js: the new plan - ingve
http://2ality.com/2018/12/nodejs-esm-phases.html
======
apo
Meanwhile, Deno (alternative server-side JS built from scratch by the creator
of Node) keeps chugging along:
[https://github.com/denoland/deno](https://github.com/denoland/deno)
It will be interesting to see which happens first: developers migrate to Deno
or Node finalizes its ES module implementation.
I think both groups are doing excellent work, but the Node team seems to be at
a disadvantage having to continue support for some decisions made early on in
Node:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&vl=en](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3BM9TB-8yA&vl=en)
~~~
settler4
> import { test } from
> "[https://unpkg.com/deno_testing@0.0.5/testing.ts";](https://unpkg.com/deno_testing@0.0.5/testing.ts";)
This feels both very pragmatic and frightening at the same time.
~~~
Ataraxy
I'm not an "expert" but that feels just as insane as the npm argument people
make. I'd love to hear from someone more in the know as to why they aren't the
same.
~~~
mmmeff
They really aren't if you think about it. Going straight to a URL for a
version of a dependency is the same as pulling it from a registry, except it's
decentralized from a single source (NPM) and removes the extra hops in between
the package vendor and the package consumer.
On the flip side, that extra hop adds a ton of convenience in the form of
name-resolution, security and governance. It's the age old double-edged sword
of centralization.
~~~
oscargrouch
Maybe if you turn that url into a hash, than just use the hash to check if the
package has a local copy already, it wont be so bad. But you will need to add
the package version in the URL so that you know you will always have the
package you really want in your local cache.
------
russellbeattie
Let me state some things which I think are true:
1) A vast majority of developers hate '.mjs'.
2) In 5 years, most developers will have moved to import statements and
stopped using CommonJS' require().
3) Importing from a directory using index.js is both common in popular
projects, and a useful way to organize code like components.
4) We've already been waiting years for a standard solution and many of us are
getting annoyed at the delays.
5) With transpilers the norm nowadays, it seems NodeJS could make a clean
break from the past and simply provide tools to help convert older projects.
Am I assuming too much?
~~~
BillinghamJ
To be honest I don't mind `.mjs` - we renamed everything in our system to that
about a year ago, but I do think it's important for it to be consistent with
browser standards.
The index.js thing is nice, but I think consistency with browsers is more
important and I'd be willing to lose it.
~~~
JimDabell
> I do think it's important for it to be consistent with browser standards.
There's no browser standard about .mjs. In fact the web doesn't really notice
file extensions; it goes by media types and attributes. A browser knows that
something is JavaScript because it is served with the application/javascript
media type (or similar), and it knows it is a module because the <script>
element has a type=module attribute.
A lot of the talk about "browser equivalence" is extremely loosely worded and
leads people to think that .mjs is a browser thing, but it's not. It's a Node
thing. What they want is for code to work the same way whether it's running on
Node or running in a browser. The problem they face is that Node hasn't got
the type attribute to decide whether something is a module or not, so they
can't use the same mechanism the browser has.
The solution they have devised is to assume that .mjs is a JavaScript module
and .js is not. The consequence is that if you want the same code to work in
Node and on the web, you've got to change what happens _on the web_ to follow
the _Node_ idea of naming things .mjs. Otherwise when you import a module
named .js – which works in the browser – it will fail in Node. So this isn't
about making Node match what happens in the browser, it's about making what
happens in the browser match the Node approach, which is not a standard in any
sense.
~~~
BillinghamJ
Yes that's my point. As a Node dev, I have no problem changing my extensions.
However the browser environment should not be pushed to change and what works
on the browser should largely work with Node.
------
s_tec
I wonder why they kept the ugly .mjs extension. This is a hold-over from an
earlier plan, and doesn't seem necessary in this iteration.
This new plan seem to be going down the path that `import` is for modules
while `require` is for everything else. If that's true, then they shouldn't
need a special file extension for modules - it should always be clear from the
context which is which.
The only exceptions I can think of are executable scripts (which could use a
command-line option) and packages in node_modules (which can use a special
package.json field).
~~~
FactolSarin
They say that it's required for ecsmascript modules that neither import nor
export (for instance, modules that place things in the global namespace), but
I would argue those are mostly shims for a pre-moudule era and they should
just be `required()`. Or perhaps they could use some special comment at the
top to let Node know it should be treated as a module even though it doesn't
look like one.
Otherwise, just work down the `import` tree from index.js and anything that is
imported is a escmascript module, everything that is required() isn't. Of
course, this is just an armchair quarterback opinion, but I'm curious to know
why that approach wouldn't work.
~~~
s_tec
Exactly! You have to know whether something is a script or a module before you
can parse it, but with this plan, that's always clear from the context.
This is exactly how browsers do it, by the way. If you `import` something, is
a module, period. The `<script>` tag is the only place that supports both, so
they use a `module="true"` flag to indicate which is which.
~~~
jkrems
> This is exactly how browsers do it, by the way. If you `import` something,
> is a module, period. The `<script>` tag is the only place that supports
> both, so they use a `module="true"` flag to indicate which is which.
This is not entirely true. If you import something and it's served with a
content type associated with JavaScript modules, then it's interpreted as a JS
module. But if they are served with a wasm content-type, they may in the
future interpreted as wasm modules. In node there's the additional content-
type of "CommonJS file" which has to be handled somehow as well.
Non-module script tags aren't really relevant because node itself never
supported scripts (at least not what the browser and the ECMA standard calls
scripts).
------
tokyodude
I'm sure there are valid reasons but I disagree with the extension solution.
That is not in any way meeting the stated goal of
> One of the goals of the Modules Team is “browser equivalence”
There are already tons of browser libraries not using the .mjs extension.
Not clear to me why just using 'import' makes it a module and 'require' not.
I'm sure that's spelled out somewhere
~~~
snek
>There are already tons of browser libraries not using the .mjs extension.
Browsers don't care what extension you serve something as, so we can't really
directly match that in the default behaviour. What you _can_ do is use a
resolve hook to tell node to interpret certain files as esm even when they
don't have a `.mjs` extension.
>Not clear to me why just using 'import' makes it a module and 'require' not.
import doesn't "make something a module". if you try to require something that
resolves as being esm (rn we check that with .mjs) it will throw, because esm
resolution is async and require resolution is sync. You can't require esm but
you can import anything.
~~~
tokyodude
Why does import have to work with cjs? It doesn't in the browser. Why does
require have to work esm?
Why not just have a package up it's major semver and those packages that want
to start using it need to import it? That seems no different than the browser.
AFAIK you can't import a non-module and you can't non-import a module in the
browser or am I wrong?
~~~
snek
>Why does import have to work with cjs? It doesn't in the browser. Why does
require have to work esm?
`import` doesn't _have_ to work with cjs, but we want to do so because there
is so much code in the ecosystem that is cjs.
`require` won't and can't work with esm, because esm resolution is async and
require resolution is sync.
~~~
ricardobeat
Let this be solved in userland through compilers, like everyone already does
today. The stubbornness from current node maintainers on this subject is
astounding. Years of feedback, like you see in this thread, ‘but-what-if’ and
‘you-dont-get-it’ handwaved away.
------
through
The Michael Jackson Script is an absolute joke and had arisen solely from
NodeJS attempting to solve its own require legacy. It’s not the business of
any other party to do such a ridiculous thing.
.mjs is an aberration, a solution to a poor implementation of one web server,
not a solution. NodeJS need to do the hard work of solving their own problem
and stop attempting to manufacture “real world solutions” with .mjs.
~~~
snek
If you feel you can come up with a better solution for module syntax ambiguity
please feel free.
Over the last three years we (including hundreds of devs like you who come in
guns blazing calling us all idiots) haven't been able to come up with
something that works better.
~~~
through
Proposing or fixing a bug in a third party product should not affect a web
standard. If you want my personal help to assist the NodeJS fix, yeah, I would
be good there, but I can’t fix the toxic bikeshed culture that you obviously
enjoy. MJS is NodeJS solution. It is not a web solution.
~~~
through
You could support .es file types which would work just as well and is more
succinct than .mjs, but AFAIK the group won’t because of “branding” issues.
Bull. Use .es. Standard semantics for ECMSScript which is the name of the
language, no games or pretence.
------
bryanrasmussen
Since I've worked on International Standardization before I sort of know how
the sausage is made, but you always hope for a better sausage.
Anyway - browser equivalence? That, in a lot of things, especially where URLS
is concerned, means HTTP equivalence.
A file extension having a specific meaning is not HTTP equivalence or browser
equivalence, it is at best Windows OS equivalence where not having mime types
understanding meant you had to use the file extensions to identify what 'type'
of thing something was.
A hack solution that was maybe necessary (I don't know Windows internals
enough to disagree) and that caused me a lot of problems in the years
1999-2009 approximately.
~~~
snek
Browsers don't care what extension you serve something as, so it doesn't break
the interop we want with browsers if you put your files as `.mjs`.
~~~
bryanrasmussen
my point exactly, browsers care what mime type you use and the extension is
meaningless. I thought I was pretty clear on this matter?
~~~
BillinghamJ
Both old "script"-style JS and the new module kind have the same MIME anyway
------
chmln
Instead of forcing this joke of a file extension, it would be far better to
make a breaking change in a semver major release and do away with commonjs.
There is no usecase for having two module syntaxes at the same time. All the
big projects already use babel or typescript. The community would catch up
eventually.
~~~
through
I completely agree. As I pointed out below, following the path you suggested,
if the filetype has to change to fix the require regression, they could use
.es. Would it be surprising to use .es with ECMAScript? No.
~~~
chmln
Requiring users to adopt a new extension is a massive change and as an end-
user I have nothing to gain from this - I'm already using babel and typescript
along with a huge part of the community.
If this creates regressions like you said, let users deal with their code that
deletes things from frozen objects. Allowing bad behavior to continue and
stall the module evolution is questionable at best.
------
nobleach
I think it can be a bit difficult for users of compile-to-JS setups to
understand why this is better. As of right now, one can just `import foo from
'./bar';` and the compiler just makes it work. This has become fairly tried
and true. What might be confusing is that node's internals, and perhaps their
design goals do not align with this paradigm. While I'm certain that they have
reasons, it's going to be awfully hard to convince developers. (It already has
been, look at the backlash on `.mjs`.) The solution? Continue to use
TypeScript/Webpack/ESMloader forever. I personally like the semantics of
importing the way it currently works. If it never works like that natively?
Fine.
~~~
snek
The issue is that transpilers didn't implement correct ESM (both ts and babel
have opt in flags to enable more-correct-mode, but its still not 100%). they
implemented the syntax but forgot about the actual semantics like dependency
graph verification and such. Node is an actual implementation of js and so we
must perform these tasks, even while transpilers don't.
~~~
efdee
Honest question: Does anybody actually care that it doesn't?
~~~
snek
I don't think its as much a matter of people caring or not as it is that node
is implementing ecma262 esm, not babel esm or typescript esm, etc.
~~~
nobleach
What happens if people seem to prefer the babel-esm semantics? I'm not saying
that babel's semantics ARE better, but what if developers prefer them?
~~~
snek
then they can continue using them, and not use the real esm semantics? i don't
think anything would change for them.
------
snek
This is a pretty good breakdown but to the author: i would like to see a
better explanation of defaults. Node will ship with the defaults needed to
perform tasks logically and unambiguously. This however doesn't mean that a
user's use case is locked away. ESM in node has hooks which allow people to
override resolution behaviour, which means you could put esm in `.esm` files,
or cjs in `.sadness` files, or have all files in a specific directory be esm,
or read package.json and pull metadata out of it, etc.
~~~
styfle
Is this documented anywhere?
------
jagthebeetle
I'm not strongly opinionated or informed about this, so why does Node need
file extensions when Other languages don't?
Is it because of non-JS imports? I know that when Ryan dahl announced Deno, he
mentioned it as an _obviously_ good change, but, I'm not sure what the
problems with extension-less imports are.
(Edit for context: at work, we either use Closure or put everything under a
global root, and only import JS, so maybe I've been shielded from the state of
the world.)
~~~
snek
> why does Node need file extensions when Other languages don't?
Node allows you to require things that aren't commonjs javascript. (json,
native extensions, etc).
> when Ryan dahl announced Deno, he mentioned [removing extensionless
> resolution] as an obviously good change
I think a lot of people disagree with ryan dahl in this case (I certainly do).
The ability to have a dependency expose an interface without knowing what type
of thing that dependency is is very powerful, and i think it is one of the
reasons people like require so much.
~~~
ng12
> The ability to have a dependency expose an interface without knowing what
> type of thing that dependency is is very powerful
Is it? I honestly can't say I've actually used that feature -- although I can
say I have gotten burned by it by accidentally importing the wrong thing.
------
ianwalter
I appreciate the work going into this but the timeline is a bit disappointing.
------
writepub
Even with new features, node chooses to do things differently. Take worker
threads for instance. Node added worker support much later than the browser,
and chose to mysteriously use an API that's significantly different.
I wish interop with the browser becomes more Central for upcoming features.
Where the browser is lacking, node can supplement, but to supplant those APIs
is just inconvenient
------
keithwhor
Is there any reason we can't just have a `'use esm';` declaration at the top
of a file instead of a janky filename extension?
It's just as arbitrary, but there's precedence with `'use strict';`, and
instead of renaming all of my files I just prepend them appropriately.
~~~
jdd
The `esm` loader allows specifying a parse goal pragma as one of several ways
to disambiguate source – [https://npmjs.com/esm](https://npmjs.com/esm).
Node will likely end up needing more than just an extension to disambiguate as
well.
------
keepingscore
Did I read that correctly we are going to lose the ability to require paths
and modules eg import {} from './services' or import {} from 'lodash'?
~~~
jkrems
First: none of the exact rules are written yet. But current discussions seem
to suggest "Yes, this will go away" for "./services" being resolved to
anything but an absolute location ending in "/services". But importing so-
called bare specifiers ("lodash") will almost definitely be supported.
~~~
snek
> current discussions seem to suggest "Yes, this will go away" for
> "./services" being resolved to anything but an absolute location ending in
> "/services"
to be clear, this is still heavily in contention. node made a good choice to
support requiring something without knowing exactly what type of thing it is,
and a lot of people feel we shouldn't throw that away.
~~~
BigJono
Can you give an actual use case for this? Because it seems insane. How can you
use something without knowing what it is?
------
strictnein
from [https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html](https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html)
> For now, only modules using the file: protocol can be loaded.
Is it the plan to allow modules to be loaded from any protocol? Because that
seems dangerous, from a security viewpoint. I've been trying to find mention
of anything that mentions SRI support, or something similar, but I haven't
found it yet.
------
shurley
No one will use this Interoperability hack in light of the fact that Rollup
and Webpack perform this for you seamlessly:
import {createRequireFromPath as createRequire} from 'module';
import {fileURLToPath as fromPath} from 'url';
const require = createRequire(fromPath(import.meta.url));
const cjsModule = require('./cjs-module.js');
Bundlers will not likely be able to produce efficient static code for that
bizarre interop code.
------
z3t4
can a script using es6 modules start with something besides a import statement
? then it would be easy to know if to use es5 or es6 module syntax. why was
the es6 module system made to break the es5 module system ? why not just use
es5 modules ? why is es5 modules so slow? are es6 modules faster ?
------
pvorb
Can anybody explain to me why ES didn't simply adopt the require syntax from
Node.js?
~~~
yuchi
Import statements must be asynchronous in the latency-controlled environments
(mostly browsers). CJS is by definition synchronous and has different order
semantics when treating execution of an asynchronous loader.
~~~
pvorb
But it could simply be implemented using the same routine in browsers like
`import`. I don't see why `require` can't be asynchronous. There's an implicit
join after the last import. Maybe it would have been enough to restrict calls
to `require` to the top of a file.
------
donateee
babel/register: [https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-
register](https://babeljs.io/docs/en/babel-register)
------
revskill
Webpack with css, less, sass assets with React as a SSR library. What's the
current solution now ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mt Everest: Why the summit can get so crowded - mpweiher
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-48401491
======
wirthjason
When I was studying in Japan in college a Japanese friend and I climbed Mt.
Fuji.
You basically take a bus about half way up, then hike 80 or 90% up to summit
then spend the night in a cabin. Since you’re close to the summit you wake up
when it’s dark and hike the last bit so you can watch the sunrise from the
top.
We didn’t consider hiking in dark our plan and thus didn’t bing head lamps
like everyone else. We didn’t know what to do about not having lamps but left
the cabin super early in the morning anyways. As soon as we stepped out there
was a giant line of people stopped, waiting to get to the top. My friend turns
to me as say, “man, this is Japan.”
Give the huge line of people, all with lamps, we made it up to the top. It
took much longer than we planned because you couldn’t move until the person in
front moved.
We eventually made it to the top and watched the sunrise. However I was
shocked at what I found... gift shops!!! People looked at view for a minute,
said “kirei desu ne”, took some photos then proceeded to shop. They seemed
much more interested in omiyage shopping than being at the top of Mt. Fuji.
------
patient_zero
I hadn't really considered climbing Everest seriously, but now I know for sure
that I won't. Waiting in line is bad enough at sea level
------
781
This must be the ultimate checklist tourism site.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can anyone recommend any good ASP.NET blogs? - piers
There are some good blogs about PHP, Ruby and Python out there, but I haven't come across many good ASP.NET ones. The ones I know about are Scott Gu and Scott Hanselman, but I haven't found any other really good ones. Anyone here either have one, or can recommend one?
======
lifexkills
<http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/>
------
jfrm
haacked.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Opera 10 Browser UA string format changed to accomodate bad applications - aj
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/opera-ua-string-changes/
======
niyazpk
This is the take away from the article:
"Browser sniffing — unless you’re writing a web stats application — is always
a bad idea. It’s a misguided attempt to send different content to different
user agents. This is never scalable — you can’t change every website you’ve
ever made every time a new browser version comes out. It is also not future-
proof, as highlighted by this article."
~~~
access_denied
<http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/>
~~~
TweedHeads
text-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #a0937f;
cool
------
pierrefar
I think they should just stick to /10.00 and let bad code fail. This kind of
backward compatibility will only create more crud on the internet. Opera's
market-share is low enough so as not to cause too much fuss (changing IE would
cause too much backlash) but high enough to prompt authors of browser sniffers
to act.
~~~
jasonkester
The absolute last thing you want to do with your 1.5%-market-share-having
browser is allow it to show people broken web pages. They're correct here that
nobody is going to change their site to accommodate a dying browser. The best
thing they can do is what they've done.
If you're Firefox with 25% share and a strong developer following, then MAYBE
you could get away with that. Opera, treading water as fast as it possibly
can, would simply die if it didn't render every existing page on the web
correctly.
~~~
w1ntermute
I'm not sure where you got the idea that Opera is a dying browser. They have a
significant market share in the mobile market. As Wikipedia says
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_browser>):
_Approximately 40 million mobile phones have shipped with Opera pre-
installed. Opera is the only commercial web browser available for the Nintendo
DS and Wii gaming systems._
~~~
jasonkester
Here is the only yearly data that I could find:
<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>
You could certainly read that to mean that Opera has doubled its market share
since early 2003.
You could also read that to mean that Opera has remained at about 2% market
share for six years now, during which time Firefox has been born and risen to
about 40% penetration, and during the last six months of which Google's
browser has been both released and passed them by a factor of 3.
So yes, Opera is not going anywhere. You can read that to mean that they're
going to stick around if you'd like. You can also read that to mean that they
are not now, nor have they ever been a real competitor in the Browser market.
~~~
w1ntermute
I don't know if those statistics are really that accurate. They are often
biased towards the desktop/laptop, & often the USA/English as well. Also from
that Wikipedia article:
_As of September 2008, usage data on English-language sites show Opera's
share of the browser market as being below 1%. The browser has seen more
success in Europe, including about 18–20% market share in Russia and
Ukraine,and 5–6% in Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Czech Republic._
Unlike any of the other browsers listed in those statistics, Opera is
developed by a company based in a non-English language country. They have
their own niche languages/platforms and I'm sure they're doing quite well in
them.
That said, I live in the US and find Opera to be entirely usable on my laptop.
In fact, I asked on another thread
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=622038>) why Opera doesn't have a larger
market share, and most of the reasons given were non-technical.
------
zaph0d
Browser sniffing (when you actually want to find support for a particular
feature or bug) is the most idiotic thing ever.
------
aj
Unfortunately, there is no simple way out of this. ALL the applications across
the Internets will have to be changed..
Legacy code comes back to bite us in the rear again!
------
JVeinbergs
IE already has a solution.
Compatibility mode.
~~~
mseebach
How do you propose that would work? The problem is that scripts detect Opera
as version 1, not 10, and then failing - "if digit 1 of version < 4 then
fail". To the browser, the looks like (and IS) the expected behaviour, so
there no not-horribly-broken automatic fallback.
In a way this solution is compatibility mode. "Broken" detection scripts see
version nine (which is good enough), scripts that know about Opera 10 sees
version 10.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Blockchain Tech Can Save Banks $20B a Year - cdvonstinkpot
http://www.coindesk.com/santander-blockchain-tech-can-save-banks-20-billion-a-year/?utm_content=buffere8f19&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
NeutronBoy
As someone who's worked in banking tech, I can assure you the banks know that
the infrastructure and tech they have isn't cheap to run, and that it could be
done cheaper. The problem is that the immense complexity that exists in these
environments makes it so incredibly complex and costly to migrate that it's
almost impossible to do. One of the biggest banks in Australia has spent _over
$1 billion_ [1] on upgrading its core banking system and it's still not done.
It's not just the tech. It's not just the account data. It's complex business
rules, it's reporting (internal and external), it's legislative requirements,
it's integration with thousands (not exaggerating) of other systems
internally, up to hundreds externally, it's about legacy products from 30
years ago which are still on the books, etc.
[1] [http://www.itnews.com.au/News/256341,cba-goes-real-time-
as-p...](http://www.itnews.com.au/News/256341,cba-goes-real-time-as-part-of-
core-banking-upgrade.aspx)
~~~
cdvonstinkpot
Sounds like a startup opportunity to build what they need.
------
dpc_pw
Being Bitcoin entusiast, IMO blockchains provide no benefits for banks.
Blockchain is actually very ineffective protocol/data structure, and the
reason Bitcoin uses it is because it provides pseudo-anonymous network that
removes need for trust. Also Blockchain can be trusted only combined with
underlying unit of motivation and currency: Bitcoin (or other coins). Banks
don't need pseudo-anonymity and can provide some level of trust. Protocols
like Stellar / Ripple / Open Transactions and other non-blockchain digital
accounting technologies are much better suited for banks.
------
thomasfl
Could someone on HN point me to a good article or vidoe on blockchain tech?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Assembly 2015 demo party results - zaf
http://www.assembly.org/blogs/2/posts/24/
======
onion2k
As a web dev doing 3D stuff, I'm seriously impressed that the 6th place entry
in the demo comp (I Want To See Small Worlds[1]) was created with three.js.
They're doing great things with it.
[1] [http://archive.assembly.org/2015/demo/i-want-to-see-small-
wo...](http://archive.assembly.org/2015/demo/i-want-to-see-small-worlds-by-
primitive)
~~~
yAnonymous
The 1k intro winner was also done in JS:
[http://archive.assembly.org/2015/1k-intro/blck4777-by-p01-ri...](http://archive.assembly.org/2015/1k-intro/blck4777-by-p01-ribbon)
~~~
speeder
On my machine it lagged a lot...
Then I decided to see a video version of it, instead the sound is muffled :(
I wish I had a decent machine to see the demo properly.
~~~
aries1980
Demos has been requiring mid-high range machines with discrete GPUs (after
'97).
------
Mithaldu
To watch the winners of what is usually the highlight* of a demoparty:
[https://youtu.be/VD8c8XagJms](https://youtu.be/VD8c8XagJms) \-
[https://youtu.be/wzMmzqio9sA](https://youtu.be/wzMmzqio9sA) \-
[https://youtu.be/idOK0JlRhZY](https://youtu.be/idOK0JlRhZY)
Also, this cracked me up: SPORTS - Disk throw
* Some would argue that that should be the AMIGAAAAA compo. I don't disagree, but note that the AMIGAAAAAA compo is usually a little less accessible to the general public.
~~~
elpuri
Disk throwing has been a standard demo/copy party event since the dinosaurs
roamed the earth (at least in Finland). I remember there being a disk throwing
compo at Assembly '92.
------
bane
It's probably a good idea to point out that this party had a robust _Amiga_
demo competition this year as well. Remarkable.
~~~
vanderZwan
I wouldn't be surprised if the anniversary had anything to do with that.
------
hmottestad
Pro tip. If you are using a plugin to force HTTPS, then you will be redirected
from
\- [https://archive.assembly.org/...](https://archive.assembly.org/...).
to
\- [http://www.assembly.org/...](http://www.assembly.org/...).
And you will get a bunch of 404s
~~~
zaf
Entering manually (HTTPS)
[https://www.assembly.org/blogs/2/posts/24/](https://www.assembly.org/blogs/2/posts/24/)
works...?
Why would you get a redirect?
EDIT: on safari it doesn't but firefox it does redirect...
------
chippy
What is interesting is that it's possible to throw a disk (69m) further than a
CD (68m). Perhaps the hole in the CD makes a difference, or the disks are
smaller overall?
~~~
knodi123
I suspect it's more about the weight being concentrated (liek how you can
throw a wadded up ball of paper farther than you can throw an unfolded sheet).
I also think floppies weigh about 20% more.
------
wonkaWonka
Wow, that page looks like it's an ad for some kind of sports bar or monster
truck rally. Was that on purpose?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why does it cost $1.4B to take the US census? - jedberg
I was reading an article today about the head of the census quitting, citing lack of funding from the Trump admin. In the article, is says they requested $1.4B to take the 2020 census, $936M of which was for "computer system upgrades".<p>I understand they need staff to go around and hassle people who haven't filled out the forms, find the homeless, etc, and also marketing expenses to get people to fill it out.<p>But $1.4B seems ridiculously high, and so do $936M for computers.<p>Is anyone familiar with what is involved in a census that can tell me why it costs so much? I'm having trouble finding good (digestible) info with Google.
======
gigatexal
1.4B / 10 years = 140M a year to hire people to go out and talk to residents
and systems to collate it. I've nothing to compare that to to sanity check it
but it does seem high.
1.4B / ~ 300 million is about 4.33 usd per person. That doesn't seem all that
high especially if you divide that 4.33 / 10 as the census occurs every 10
years.
~~~
coralreef
Do they actually get data from 300m people?
~~~
zer00eyz
Pretty close.
One year we didn't fill out the foum, and they came and knocked on our door,
twice.
It isn't the data collection thats expensive it is the cross checking and
completeness that is expensive.
------
csa
First, that's just for 2017. Each progressive year before 2020 will be even
higher.
Second, the link below to the 2017 budget details provides some detailed
answers:
[https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget-
su...](https://www2.census.gov/about/budget/FY2017-census-budget-summary.pdf)
General budget page:
[https://www.census.gov/about/budget.html](https://www.census.gov/about/budget.html)
tl;dr - the $778 million is for a wide range of modernization efforts, not
just "computers".
------
Someone
It isn't $936M for computers, it is for "computer system upgrades". I would
guess that includes software upgrades and licenses and, possibly, programming.
Also: PII
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_info...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personally_identifiable_information)),
definitely when combined with 'government' makes for expensive systems, partly
rightfully so.
------
whb07
Furthermore, would you as the civic duty minded citizen plan to tread deep
into the desert or bayou to find the rural citizens for their census? Can't
exactly automate that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SUPERCLASS – The business plan for Target Audience - MrJonesEdition
https://mrjonesedition.com/superclass
======
MrJonesEdition
Hi HN! I made this. Here's some info on the data before everyone goes berzerk
:)
Use 'HN' to have access, good luck on your projects :)
I built this to help individuals and professionals start and refine their data
driven inbound marketing campaigns. SUPERCLASS is a business plan outlining a
data driven inbound marketing campaign.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Build this Scheduling App, Please. - JoelMcCracken
I always find that setting meeting times is really inefficient. I would this simple solution:<p>I go to a web and say "request new event scheduler", which then simply gives me a url to share. Anyone who visits the url can add themselves to the calendar, add available times, etc.<p>The big point is to make it _dead_easy_ and _amazingly_fast_, making scheduling over email a total non-issue.
======
kareemm
<http://doodle.com/>
~~~
JoelMcCracken
Nice, I actually hoped someone would just send me a link to something I didn't
know about. This isn't quite as simple as I was hoping, but it may be easier
than otherwise.
~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Can you explain why you think this is complicated?
<http://www.doodle.com/xdm3zs79gn9md2tw>
It's what I use and I haven't thought of any way to improves it. What do you
find lacking or excessive?
This alternative, for example : <http://www.meetingwizard.com/> : seems
enormously over the top by comparison.
Here are some other alternatives:
<http://www.agreeadate.com/>
<http://www.setameeting.com/>
<http://www.scheduleonline.com/>
<http://www.google.com/search?q=meeting+schedule+tool+online>
Perhaps you could tell us what's wrong with them, and that could act as a
spec.
~~~
JoelMcCracken
Well, I'm saying that it should be faster than sending out three or four
simple emails, as in you are probably only scheduling with two or three other
people. I'd like to literally go to the site and the first page says
"Your calendar is already created. Just share this URL with friends.
doodle.com/98u89joij"
IE, on each new session, a unique id is associated with the session. If I
initially input my own availability data, then it saves with the ID to the db.
Otherwise, just don't worry about saving anything until someone visits that
url and inputs some data to save.
Point being, I hoped the workflow would be "visit site. copy url", and you're
done unless you want to do more.
Edit: for all the other links, being forced to register is sufficient for
being too much work.
------
megamark16
I'd love to see more of these types of requests, i's nice to see unique
problems people are facing and sometimes you find out about services that
solve those problems that you didn't know existed.
------
Travis
<http://www.whenisgood.net/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FreeBSD 10.3 - jlgaddis
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2016-April/001713.html
======
dallbee
Of particular note: This release brings 64 bit support to the Linux
compatibility layer.
I suppose when windows caught up Bash on Windows, FreeBSD needed to do
something to keep one step ahead =].
~~~
akerro
>The Linux® compatibility layer has been substantially improved and now is
capable of running 64-bit applications on amd64 (x86_64), 1:1 threading
What does 1:1 threading mean?
~~~
kev009
There are at least three theoretical implementations of userland threads in an
Operating System:
* 1:1, where each userland thread maps directly to a kernel thread
* 1:N, where several userland threads map directly to one kernel thread
* M:N, where the kernel maintains a pool of threads and dispatches userland threads to them
History has shown that 1:1 threading has the best trade offs. It's worth more
independent research if you are interested in Operating Systems.
~~~
anthk
That's reminds me of database record relations.
~~~
akerro
Or just re-use of basic structures ;)
------
ksec
An Honest question, which of the large Startup / Internet Giant are using BSD?
Whether it is FreeBSD or OpenBSD or others.
Judging from some previous Facebook post, it is likely Whatsapp will be moving
to linux based as well instead of on FreeBSD. Yahoo used to be a FreeBSD shop,
but Marisa Mayer has since converted all to Linux. Microsoft had some FreeBSD
long ago but has since converted all to Windows or Linux. The only FreeBSD on
Netflix are their Open Connect Appliance, their main AWS instances, which is
the majority of their servers are all Linux. Both Cisco and Juniper are using
less FreeBSD as we speak. Even Apple, with many parts of their OS based on
FreeBSD, are using Linux for iCloud as well.
So who is using BSD?
~~~
kev009
Where did you see that WhatsApp is converting to Linux? At MeetBSD Rick Reed
claimed they had full autonomy from Facebook on that kind of thing
([http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/rick-
reed-600-m-unsuspec...](http://www.slideshare.net/iXsystems/rick-
reed-600-m-unsuspecting-freebsd-users)), and FB was looking at them to learn
how they did so much with so little engineers and servers.
Netflix is doing 100Gbit HTTP and > 60Gbit HTTPS on a single socket Xeon E5
with FreeBSD. These servers are about 1/3 North American Internet by volume.
In comparison to OCA team their AWS team sounds like a total tire fire to me
in terms of engineer count and monthly spend.
I run the OS team at Limelight Networks, one of the largest CDNs. We can peak
beyond 10Tbit/s on our current network and have to deal with a more
demanding/unknown workload compared to NF OCA. This is all courtesy of
FreeBSD. My entire management chain agrees that the cost of entry is lower to
influencing and driving development in FreeBSD vs other kernels, and we
collaborate with the other well known players on projects that are mutually
beneficial such as TCP and filesystems.
Companies switching from FreeBSD to Linux usually are victim of the decision
from bad VP-level management looking for a scapegoat rather than solving
actual business and culture problems. Yahoo began transitioning to RHEL in
2005 and AFAIK are still at least two years from conceivably being off of
FreeBSD. A 12 year _free_ OS transition is an embarrassing use of engineering
effort and total management failure.
There are a lot of companies satisfied with FreeBSD, especially in the
appliance space and small business, but they are not vocal because it just
works and is often rebranded.
~~~
beagle3
> Netflix is doing 100Gbit HTTP and > 60Gbit HTTPS on a single socket Xeon E5
> with FreeBSD. These servers are about 1/3 North American Internet by volume.
> In comparison to OCA team their AWS team sounds like a total tire fire to me
> in terms of engineer count and monthly spend.
Have any idea how many cores and what kind of network hardware they use push
those impressive figures? I would guess there is some network offload
involved, as this comparable to memory bandwidth of a single core of that Xeon
if I'm not mistaken.
~~~
bsdimp
For those numbers, it was around 18 real cores with hyper threading enabled.
Crypto is a great workload for hyper threads. These systems are currently
being built up and aren't yet in production. These are with last year's CPUs.
[https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/](https://openconnect.netflix.com/en/hardware/)
has the currently deployed system specs.
------
NamTaf
Idle question sort-of-related but I'm asking it here because those who know
the answer will be here:
The bge(4) driver by default doesn't support WoL, but a number of people have
managed to take the driver from FreeNAS 9.x which includes a patched driver
that does make it work and added it to FreeBSD 9.x. This was released as a
.patch file so you could patch the driver and recompile and is of interest
because it's the onboard NIC for the HP Proliant microservers that many people
use for their own custom file storage servers.
The upgrade from 9 to 10 broke this patch because the lines changed too
dramatically, but you can easily copy/paste it in to the driver source at the
right places and it works (I did it on 10.1 or 10.2).
My question is: Specifically what process does one need to go through to
provide a patched bge(4) driver to 'the appropriate people' so that the patch
is included in FreeBSD's default driver and is not broken with each major
change to the driver? How does one go from 'we have functioning code that
enables WoL support' to 'this is a tested, certified driver included in the
default FreeBSD install'? What licensing issues are there in contributing the
patch upstream from FreeNAS to FreeBSD?
This is all new territory for me, so some guidance would be greatly
appreciated!
~~~
cperciva
Assuming the patch is BSD licensed, there should be no legal/licensing issues.
Have you submitted a FreeBSD bug report with the patch? If not, do that first:
[https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Base...](https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Base%20System)
If you've done that already, or after you've waited a few weeks without anyone
noticing it, the usual tactic is to email people who have worked on the driver
in question recently; the SVN logs are useful here:
[https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/bge/if_bge.c?vi...](https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/dev/bge/if_bge.c?view=log)
Feel free to send me an email if you need more help.
~~~
NamTaf
Thanks. I've not done any of that as I didn't come up with the patch to begin
with. I'll do some research and work out where the legalities fall.
~~~
voltagex_
I'm halfway down the rabbit hole - I have to create an account to view the
original patch. No license header.
[https://gist.github.com/voltagex/160980fc680d830b8b7e68199a3...](https://gist.github.com/voltagex/160980fc680d830b8b7e68199a3dca02)
(sorry about Windows line endings)
[http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2974](http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=2974)
Does the BSD license apply to a patch to a BSD licensed file?
~~~
cyphar
> Does the BSD license apply to a patch to a BSD licensed file?
No, because the BSD License isn't copyleft. You'll have to contact the
original author as well as any contributors.
~~~
voltagex_
Good luck! 6 posts on that forum then disappeared forever.
~~~
viraptor
Not that hard. Google "hcb nas4free" and get:
[https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
bugs/2013-March/...](https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-
bugs/2013-March/052180.html) (Hielke Christian Braun)
The author already submitted this patch in 2013 - since it was contributed to
the project, it should be fine regarding the license.
~~~
voltagex_
Yeah, I shouldn't have posted the flippant comment. Sorry. I've posted the bug
tracker links in another comment - looks like there's some concerns about the
effects of the patch on high-end networking gear.
------
mlu
I know FreeBSD (or *BSD in general) is still used heavily in server
environments.
Is anyone using it on the desktop as well?
I always wanted to give it a try, but then I'm hesitant because of lacking
hardware support. I remember struggling with Intel KMS support in one of the
earlier releases. Is this still a problem?
~~~
kev009
I run FreeBSD -CURRENT on a Lenovo C30, which is a dual Xeon E5 workstation
platform. Key to my use for the past 1-2 years with a 30" and 3 24" monitors
is the nvidia binary video driver. Prior to this setup I ran Gentoo. I find
FreeBSD more conductive toward the things I want to work on, but I am also
much more interested in working on FreeBSD src than I was Linux kernel. I
maintain a small repo that does everything I want at
[https://github.com/kev009/digital-life](https://github.com/kev009/digital-
life)
On my laptop, a Lenovo T420, I run PC-BSD -CURRENT
([http://iso.cdn.pcbsd.org/11.0-CURRENTMAR2016/edge/amd64/](http://iso.cdn.pcbsd.org/11.0-CURRENTMAR2016/edge/amd64/)),
which eliminates the need to build src and packages. I also run PC-BSD
-CURRENT on my work desktop with a Radeon card and two monitors. I could
potentially expand my workstation builds to these with pkg, but PC-BSD is more
or less hands off which I want on these devices.
Open source video needs work, but as of this week that has started heating up
and we may start closing in toward DragonflyBSD in terms of Freedesktop/Linux
equivalence by the time FreeBSD 11.0 ships
[https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base-
graphics/tree/dr...](https://github.com/iotamudelta/freebsd-base-
graphics/tree/drm-next-3.9)
~~~
wowtip
Does it work fine for you as a laptop OS?
Battery time, suspend/hibernate, etc?
~~~
gkya
I've an elderly Asus notebook nowadays as my PC, with 10.2 on it that I
installed rather recently. It's battery is long-dead (I use it as a
workstation mostly), so I can't comment on that, but suspend/hibernate does
not work for me. FreeBSD does not have hibernate, and suspend, AFAIK, does not
work with Xorg, so it's practically useless. There are some posts that demo
how to do it, by unloading troublesome stuff before suspend and reloading them
later, but I didn't get around to trying that yet, because suspend does not
resume, and hard reboots give me the shakes without a backup, I couldn't port
my backup script to't yet.
Performance-wise, I did not notice much between Arch linux, what I was using
before, and this. My setup is very light, Emacs+Xombrero on TWM. I notice,
though, a certain performance problem with video in browser, but that may well
be Gstreamer plugins that run slower than Linux on *BSD, I can't comment, as I
don't know the internals. But VLC works just fine.
------
tachion
Have YOU donated to FreeBSD yet?
[https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/](https://www.freebsdfoundation.org/donate/)
------
voltagex_
I'm a first time user of FreeBSD, I jumped in on 10.3RC2 and ended up with a
"custom" kernel to enable vnet support. How do I upgrade _and_ keep the custom
kernel in-tact?
~~~
kev009
Sorry for this pain point :( we will hopefully have VNET default in 11.0.
Slightly risky way: you can run freebsd-update fetch and then install twice,
and you will notice it updates /usr/src.. it will instruct you to reboot after
the first install, but instead do another install and you will notice that
/usr/src has been updated. Rebuild your custom kernel and reboot. You risk
changed ABIs during this, in practice it may be fine but depends how much you
care about the box and whether you are comfortable cleaning up from a chroot
if things go really bad.
Better: use svnlite in base or real SVN to update /usr/src to the releng/10.3
branch. Build your kernel, reboot, do freebsd update to get the base updates
and make sure your kernel is intact.
Best: use svnlite to update /usr/src. Do buildkernel, reboot. Do buildworld
and follow
[https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/makeworld.html](https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/makeworld.html).
The more you run FreeBSD, the more you will want to follow -STABLE or -CURRENT
and do your own release engineering.
Future best: Use any method to derive custom kernel, use packaged base to
update base. Or again hopefully common use wont need a custom kernel.
~~~
voltagex_
I'm normally a Linux user but found FreeNAS too restrictive and then spent 2
months worth of spare time fiddling with this thing.
The learning curve seems vertical at times but I'm finding FreeBSD quite
refreshing. Ports and pkg-ng are great (although Australia really, really
needs a local mirror).
The files I need to boot from live on a USB thumbdrive and I've got IPMI to
the box so I'm not too worried. I think buildworld would be pretty slow on
this box (Atom C2758). I'll give it a shot.
I don't _really_ need vnet but having IPs per jail and some kind of network
seperation made more sense to my brain.
~~~
kev009
Yeah VNET is a pretty advanced feature at this point, hopefully once it's in
11 it will be more approachable to new users without any drawbacks.
~~~
voltagex_
_jails_ seem like an advanced feature to me - so much manual configuration.
Docker has ruined me by hiding the complexity.
~~~
floatboth
Hah, weird. For me, Docker seems to _create_ complexity. Daemon, API,
registry…
I made a tiny tool that spins up a jail with nullfs/unionfs mounts and RCTL
resource limits from a single JSON/UCL file:
[https://github.com/myfreeweb/sandblast](https://github.com/myfreeweb/sandblast)
------
gkya
An off-topic question: Does anybody know anything about the status of ath5k on
OpenBSD? My laptop has a AR242x/AR542x driver, can it be run on OpenBSD
somehow? There are a lot of articles on the web about it, but I can't find
actual information about whether it is possible or not to use that indeed.
------
eshansingh
S
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fojo.us - Open Drive : Show HN - hoogaguy
http://fojo.us
======
reubensutton
It would be great if there was a page explaining what it does, or if you could
post on here.
I'm assuming it's like a browser based Dropbox, which anyone can access if
they have the path and key right?
~~~
hoogaguy
Yup, thats it. Basic philosophy being, a pen-drive (plug n play style) but
without the hardware.
~~~
reubensutton
I like it. Some other ideas: * some sort of key file access * public password
to share contents with delete controls.
What's the storage limit?
~~~
hoogaguy
Haven't implemented any storage limit as such, but the max file size is 16mb
right now.
Key access file with delete control sounds great but wouldn't make any sense
to implement all that before the adoption kicks in. Storage limit can always
be implemented later, if the need is felt. Do you see it being regularly used
or do you think dropbox etc will still be a better for people? I was going
with the idea of making it a password protected disposable drive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Save $ on gas, reduce traffic jam: share rides (hosted on google app engine) - tt
http://www.ride4all.com
======
truebosko
The implementation kind of sucks but good idea. I'm in Canada but tossed my
commute up there to see if anyone wants a ride.
------
noelchurchill
Really basic. Not bad.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Radium Girls - vilda
http://www.messynessychic.com/2015/07/02/the-radium-girls-and-the-generation-that-brushed-its-teeth-with-radioactive-toothepaste/
======
tzs
For those who want more on this, there's a recent book on this subject: "The
Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women" by Kate Moore [1]. I
don't know much about it (just happened to notice it a couple days ago while
looking for something else at Barnes and Noble), but it has good reviews at
Amazon.
[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Radium-Girls-Story-Americas-
Shining/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Radium-Girls-Story-Americas-
Shining/dp/149264935X/)
------
Tomminn
"But the most baffling part about this story is not the fact that the general
public had no idea that radium was so dangerous, but the fact that some people
most certainly did. And yet, they sat back and watched as everyone around them
was poisoning themselves."
Chilling. And also reminder of how people in the future might look back at
those of us who sit by while our friends and family endorse the limitless
power of alternative medicine.
~~~
mchahn
At least alt-meds do nothing (usually). Radiating people is actively worse.
~~~
Tomminn
Agreed. Still, when people alt-meds are a valid alternative to chemo the net
effect is the same.
------
purplezooey
That web site is awful. It auto-plays obnoxious video ads for pharmaceuticals,
and the mute button does nothing. It also pops up to ask you to sign up for
some mailing list. It seemed to reach a new level of being annoying so I
didn't even get to read the article.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
So Long, Bill Gates, and Thanks for the Monopoly - edw519
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/news/2008/06/gates_monopoly
======
pg
"But the upside was enormous because the monopoly created a stable environment
where entrepreneurs could develop new companies and new products around a
common platform."
This is false. Multiple platforms mean porting and compatibility problems, but
they evolve faster.
Right now developers are pulling their hair out trying to make things work on
incompatible browsers, but who would go back to the days when Explorer had 96%
market share?
The Windows monopoly didn't encourage hackers to create new companies and new
products. Quite the opposite. Little of the work that hackers did reached
ordinary people, because ordinary people used an OS hackers didn't use, and
didn't want to write programs for.
~~~
kirse
The Windows monopoly allowed entrepreneurs to develop software for the largest
unified computer user-base in the world.
If we agree that the ultimate success of a software development business (or
any for-profit business) is rooted in its ability to maximize net income, then
how can you explain that multiple platforms and user-base fragmentation are
beneficial to that ultimate goal? One massively unified market clearly has
more income potential than several fragmented markets that individually
require additional effort to enter.
Also -- "because ordinary people used an OS hackers didn't use, and didn't
want to write programs for."
If hackers were too stubborn to build for the O/S that clearly had (and still
has) market domination, then I would argue that they really were not
entrepreneurs when they chose to overlook an obvious business opportunity.
Edit: I hope this comment doesn't come off as abrasive, because it was not my
intention. Please respond if you think if I've made a mistake in my argument.
~~~
pg
_The Windows monopoly allowed entrepreneurs to develop software for the
largest unified computer user-base in the world._
I wouldn't deny it. What I'm saying is that a unified user base is not nearly
as important as rapidly evolving platforms.
_If hackers were too stubborn to build for the O/S that clearly had (and
still has) market domination, then I would argue that they really were not
entrepreneurs_
You're right about that too, though again, wrong about the bigger picture.
Hackers aren't motivated mainly by money. When the only businesses you can
start are boring or evil, they don't start businesses. But when they do start
businesses, the fact that they're driven by curiosity and hope, rather than
the mere desire to make money, causes them to create the fastest growing
companies of all.
------
sdurkin
"Without that standard, the computer industry in the 1990s would have
resembled the web today: diverse, vibrant and flowering with abundant
innovation, but also frequently broken because of the inability of disparate
products to make the most basic connections with one another."
Wrong. Without Microsoft, the computer industry would have been forced to
tackle the issue of interoperability far earlier and more earnestly.
If it weren't for this illegal monopoly, computers today would have a vibrant
mix of operating systems and technology that would be able to share
information seamlessly.
~~~
allenbrunson
I'm of the opinion that operating systems form a natural monopoly. The average
computer user doesn't thrive on diversity. She wants to use whatever her
friends use, so they can help her when stuff breaks, they can all share
documents easily, etc.
I'm not crazy about the stranglehold Microsoft had on the industry for so
long. But I think if it hadn't been them, it would have been somebody else.
~~~
thwarted
An operating system monopoly is not necessarily the problem, it's when an
operating system monopoly is used to gain a monopoly on applications. In the
same way users don't care about diversity, they don't care about operating
systems. They care about applications. If Microsoft Office ran on other
operating systems AND OPERATED EXACTLY THE SAME WAY (which excludes
Microsoft's attempts to have Office and IE on the Mac), then the user could
still get help from friends when stuff breaks and share documents.
It may have been someone else, but perhaps that someone else would have been
about encourages standards and interoperability and not _application_ lock-in.
------
bayareaguy
_"If all that stuff worked right out of the box, we'd all be out of a job,"
said David Strom, an independent technology consultant and speaker in St.
Louis. Strom has a speech praising Gates for, among other things, effectively
guaranteeing full employment for IT people called in to make Microsoft
products work properly._
This sort of thinking is exactly why hackers I respect stay as far away from
Microsoft technologies as possible.
~~~
tfinniga
I love that the broken window fallacy is being applied to windows.
------
cawel
_"If all that stuff worked right out of the box, we'd all be out of a job,"
said David Strom_
I'm not sure if this argument is used to support monopolies (via fueling the
IT industry), but if it is, it's ludicrous. It's like saying that companies
insuring against vandalism should thank the vandals.
I do not see "fixing MS bugs"-companies as organic to the IT industry. Sure,
more people are employed, but it does not create innovation, it does not
contribute to the growth of the essence of the IT industry (different from the
GDP resulting from the IT industry).
_All of these problems are traceable to a lack of widely supported
standards._
Pointing to a lack of standards to explain some of today's annoyances (MP3
compatibility, sync issues, etc.) is correct. However, linking the lack of
standards with a lack of monopoly in those areas is wrong. I see soft anti-
trust policies (in the case of DRM) or lack of motivation for creating
standards-making bodies as more interesting causes. Diversity is not
incompatible with the existence of common standards. Let's think of all web
apps out there, offering competing products, all using HTTP.
------
m0nty
"it was the open architecture of the Microsoft-based PC that spurred massive
creativity"
IBM-based, shurely? I mean, it ran MS software, but if they'd been in the
hardware business they'd probably have done what Apple did, and produced a
closed platform. That's more-or-less what they did with their software, after
all.
------
schtog
Standards are one thing, monopolies another.
I guess as the complexity of our systems grow it will be more and more
important to keep the technology minimalist and easy to change.
Hmm what was i gonna say. Think virtual machines for example. There could be
several different but still compile to bytecode so you could run all kinds of
languages on different VMs and different hardware by making layers.
Hmm I will try to get this clearer and post again. But I stand by the first
sentence.
------
ComputerGuru
You know what? I think I'm really going to miss that guy....
------
MaysonL
I just hope that his leaving is more permanent than "You won't have Richard
Nixon to kick around anymore."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google search algo: downgrade pages bloated with ads above the fold - zalew
http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-improvement.html
======
p0wn3d
Remember back in the 70's and 80's before cable TV? We only had channels 3,6,
and 7. We loved TV but couldn't stand the commercials every 5 minutes. The
internet has turned into one big TV commercial. Websites are now 10% content
and 90% ads. It is so sad that we let this get out of control. Don't get me
started on social networking and how they exist to be the big TV commercial
just to make boatloads of cash.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I create a sweet React progress bar - obraz_TOR
https://github.com/abraztsov/react-sweet-progress
======
tonybaroneee
Well done!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nanofluids increase the efficiency of Nuclear Reactors by up to 20% - karamazov
http://web.mit.edu/mitei/research/spotlights/nano-nuclear.html
======
cincinnatus
Pure water is used to prevent radioactive isotope contamination. It seems
unlikely this will not be a problem here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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