matthudson

HN search has been one of the most helpful resources (among many) to my personal and professional life. +1 for that alone. It sowed the seeds for a career path (went from a yoeman replaceable scripter to a guy with a reliable paycheck that can comment with angst on HN.) HN-algolia is snappy. I've been developing a behavior where I default to searching HN before I search google (for better or worse).

Also, I really apologize for this but, please don't say things like: "Time for me to get down voted to oblivion".

You've spoken your mind (and helpfully so) with the end of your comment (which is otherwise good).

Self-referencing how one expects comment voting to go is a behavior that I wish people would refrain from. It makes the comment "about" itself --- rather than the content. It's a primer that stems from perceptions about how it will be interpreted by the community, which in turn manipulates voting behavior about the comment. (<insert-discussion> voting systems on community forums. is voting itself a good system? </insert-discussion>).

Call to action: Machine learners, you'd better start tuning your sarcasm classifiers.

A large portion of my comment was a response to the tone. I shouldn't have done that.

Something about the original comment really bothered me. And I can't quite put my finger on it. I'm not a good enough writer to flesh out what bothered me without responding to the tone.

I do feel pretty strongly that it's wrong to casually talk about mentally ill people as objects of fascination. And then to advise against engaging them because it might be a liability to yourself, as if that's the only concern. e.g.: "...[if they happen] to commit suicide a week later and mention you in the note."

I think I'm perceiving a lack of empathy in the linked article and the top comment. Or something. I think I just need to stop commenting.

I've thought about it, one part of what "shocked" me about it was the hubris inherent in the statement: "...someone I could save by argument.". As though those that cannot be "saved" are merely a passing fascination, not to be bothered with for fear of liability.

I wasn't "shocked" by the way. However, I was largely responding to the tone- which I shouldn't have done.

"...most notably the ultrarich like the Zuckerbergs, would think it's not even worth their time to deal with 'crazy people'"

I don't know the Zuckerbergs nor any other ultrarich people, so I suppose we'll have to take your word for it.

"Life is all about making compromises and finding the right balance. Looking out for yourself can be, and should be a part of the process when you're deciding to help out something."

I mostly agree with this.

I want to make it clear that I was responding to the attitude I saw in the comment (or at least what I perceived to be the attitude) that the mentally ill are objects of fascination until they expose you to civil liability.

I think a bit more empathy is in order.

"I do think you should take a little bit of break. :) Be well, and take care!"

Yeah, I think I'm done commenting on Hacker News. Take care, as well.

"I would recommend against having dealings with the obviously mentally ill. I'm not sure in what sense you might be legally liable (for a civil suit) if they happened to commit suicide a week later and mentioned you in the note. ... Leave the clearly crazy to the professionals."

"Though if this is your first real crazy caller I could understand where the fascination came from. ... It took me a while to get that this was not someone I could save by argument."

Here's a bit of Hacker News "empathy" that I find fascinating. Likely in the same sense that you find the mentally ill fascinating.

The comment reads like some kind of bizzaro water-cooler advice on how to deal with that neighborhood "crazy caller" problem. Like when someone commiserates with Jane from accounting when she tells them she's worried because she can't keep the neighborhood kids out of the family pool.

On the surface, it's empathetic: "If this is your first... I can understand..." In fact, the comment does (correctly) assert that professionals are better inclined to help the mentally ill than the lay-person. But underneath, the comment reeks of an unseemly attitude that suggests the mentally ill are a burden to be cast aside at all costs (with the requisite sigh).

Perhaps it's a bit unfair of me to parse out those bits of your comment and infer so much. But, seriously?

Have we really reached the point where we are calculating the likelihood of "sav[ing] someone by argument" vs. the risk of civil liability?

Are these people merely objects of amusement and fascination?

I wish I were a better writer, so I could flesh out exactly why your comment bothers me. I think it has something to do with the clinically detached tone and the casual implication that the mentally ill are at best a passing amusement; and, at worst, a liability to be avoided.

Maybe I just need to take a break. I must be misunderstanding your comment.

All of them, because it is ridiculous to assume that you know what every person in a particular group of people is like in real life based on the actions of a subset of that group on a message board.

Some celebrities "get" reddit, and some don't.

Some answer three questions and leave, and some stay for days.

Some see it as a promotional tool, and some are actually part of the community.

Some participate anonymously, some have AMA accounts, and some have both.

Most of all, even if you did know a good portion of them on and offline, you can't possibly extrapolate what the rest of the group is actually like in real life.

The idea that you can encapsulate an entire person into a couple dozen comments (on average) that they leave on a message board is absurd to me.

Going on to extend that abstraction to an entire class of people is even more ridiculous.

How can you possibly know that without knowing one of the celebrities personally, and then extend that as a general rule?

"...it is widely believed by experts and, more importantly, stakeholders..."

What sources would you recommend reading to learn more about that? The 9/11 Commission Report? I'm embarrassed to admit that I haven't done much reading on inter-agency relations pre-9/11.

(I hope this comment doesn't read as snark, I'm genuinely interested in learning more.)

I think that can be a feature as well.

Also, are the contributors anonymous in the sense that you have no way of knowing the identity of the contributor? Or, anonymous in the sense that the contribution originates from a particular pseudonym?

Have you already modeled it? If you're comfortable leaving an email address so I could get in touch, I can send you a few prints of your design.

You should probably start with the Adafruit guide, it's a good survey and starting point. It doesn't delve deeply into actual prototyping, but it covers the 'due diligence' aspect.

The first half is run of the mill startupy stuff, but the second half has a lot of useful information to consider.

I'm not sure how helpful the blog links will be at this point.

Re: External Casing- If you have access to a 3D printer, I highly recommend trying out a few iterations of the casing yourself before you try to outsource.

Once you have everything working, you can find companies that do limited runs of PCB and casing.

This seems like a good place to start:

http://learn.adafruit.com/how-to-build-a-hardware-startup

I don't know if you want to do a startup, but there is good information in the guide.

Here are some other blog links that might be good starting points for further reading:

http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/10/electronic-compone...

http://octopart.com/blog/archives/2013/11/what-every-hardwar...

http://pinocc.io/blog/open-source-hardware-business/testing-...

By the way, Octopart and Adafruit are really great.

I was being somewhat facetious with that last line.

However, I don't think that it is outside the realm of possibility that relatively small entities, on the order of a small-cap corporation or private laboratory, could eventually create a weapon that has far more global destructive power than a radioactive dirty bomb.

This would afford the entity more leverage at a global bargaining table- as opposed to a negotiation with a single government. Combined with the relative anonymity one may be able to maintain when releasing the virus, these entities might see a higher expected value in engineering a virus.

It would be "DIY" in the sense that you wouldn't need the backing of a large nation state to produce an ICBM, or opportunistically steal some radioactive material to create a dirty bomb.

Also, a virus is implicitly cheaper to distribute: with a longer incubation period and an exponentially increasing rate of propagation, a virus could reach critical mass before there's time to react.

In a sense, this makes them more effective than other types of WMD- which may have lower singular chances of successful detonation, have high per unit capital costs, tend to have local area effects only, and are generally difficult to produce far removed from military industry at scale.

Personally, I think the world is more likely to end with a bug than a bang. I honestly don't know which is more terrifying to me.

"The question I always think of when people raise fears like this about bio-weapons is what what motivations are there for 'bad guys' to release indeterminate killers like a bio-engineered virus?"

I'd imagine the threat of release would make for a pretty compelling bargaining chip. Potentially, you could gain a lot of leverage without having the backing of a sophisticated military-industrial complex (unlike nukes).

It's kind of like a DIY WMD for the millennial, "maker"-terrorist generation.

If you're employee #30 and your share is 0.05%, that might be fair if it's a biotech that has already taken a $100M infusion from the venture capitalists (who'll typically take 90%, in that case).

Could you point me in the direction of some sources that back up the "90% [in the typical case]" claim? I'm genuinely interested in learning more.

cueball, megan, and black-hat guy: an entertaining visual programming language

Legions of xkcd fans: collectively a "sufficiently smart compiler"? an "eager-to-please interpreter"?

What do you hope to achieve with this comment? What good could possibly come from it?

Instead of attempting to shame while pointing fingers, say something constructive or leave the issue alone.

I agree with 'danielna, your comment is in really poor taste.

I'm really interested in seeing some of those examples. If you don't remember the links, can you point me in the general direction?

"It's just amateur in any language."

Can you point out specific instances of where it is amateur? That would be more helpful to learners.

Here is an early writeup of the research from the Los Angeles Times:

http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-hiv-imag...

The OP is the press release from the Scripps Research Institute, but the LA times article is good as well.

Here is the link to the abstract of the referenced paper (you will need access to "Science Express" to view full text):

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/10/30/science.1...

"This is the worst thing that ever happened"

Self-referential comments are not encouraged on HN.

Instead of criticizing your own comment, consider saying something constructive or interesting about the OP.

"... gained illegal access to a vendor's account..."

Kind of off topic, but suppose "FC" were arrested, could this person be charged with malicious entry into an otherwise illegal enterprise?

Do those legal rights extend to people who had already been breaking laws?

Obviously, a bank robber has a right to not to be murdered by another bank robber. But can the other bank robber be charged with stealing the victim's ill-gotten money in addition to the murder?

Mapping, modeling, and indexing a cell's structure is a very different problem than indexing hyperlink structure on the internet.

A wholesale computational model of the cell is an incredibly ambitious task to achieve via a broad, unfocused approach to building a chem-concentration database.

The main issue they would face is in your bullet #1: What is your "Pagerank" for cell structure and chem-concentration analysis, what/who do you put your weight behind?

How do you merge these data sets? This research is distributed in labs all over the planet with different quality standards, research objectives, lab conditions, data hygiene, statistical significance, etc.

What you've written seems like a plausible approach in a pure research setting within a single lab, but if their end goal is a computational model of the cell with commercial side-effects along the way-- the best way to achieve that would be to chip away at it piecemeal. Not through an unfocused merger of cell "big data".

E.g. identify specific protein binding sites and conformations that correlate with a specific type of breast cancer, track their conformations under different conditions--- prove that your data is superior to data yielded by existing models.

Of course, you would also have to monetize somehow.

The specific thing you chose is less important than not attempting to paint the whole model at once.

"I feel like this is missing a big point. Arduino is the safe, easy entry point to learn electronics."

An Arduino Uno costs about 25USD. Blowing up a few of those, or other components gets pricy. This service lowers the price of entry to almost zero, which is a pretty big deal for people with low disposable income or limited access to the hardware.

Consumer vehicles are definitely getting there, at least for high income and/or high net-worth people.

And while that is a relief, it is still very troubling to think about the implications for our transportation infrastructure as a whole (where consumer vehicles represent a minority fraction.)

How will we power our ocean freighters, our freight trains, our 18-wheelers, and our high capacity airplanes without high energy-density hydrocarbons (or with prohibitively expensive hydrocarbons)?

I can imagine nuclear and electric solutions (hand-wavy or hypothetical) to some of these modes, but could they be implemented on a global scale in time?

It makes me wonder what our transportation infrastructure will look like 100 or 200 years from now.

-In what non-obvious ways will we look backwards to people of the future?

-Will these people envy how cheaply we moved goods across the globe?

-Will they laugh at how expensive it was to move things across the globe?

-Will they even have the luxury of thinking about these things?

"Is it just me or would the material strength of 3D printed items have to become exponentially better for them to become a success for any kind of serious use?"

Today I used a polymer extrusion printer to create a prototype in the lab. I used PLA, one of the two most common polymers for this type of 3d printing, and it is a very strong model. It's as strong as any injection molded instance of the same object would be.

"I mean they mention car parts in the article - that would require more than an evolution in part endurance, it would have to be a revolutionary increase?"

It won't take a revolution in part endurance, in many instances the endurance is already there. People often conflate the 3d printers they see available to the consumer now with the absolute limit case of the technology.

This is an instance of an author describing the larval stages of a new phenomenon. The author describes something specific and currently possible: "...designers, entrepreneurs, start-ups and architects seeking models..." And then goes on to explain to a general audience the zeitgeist of this technology: On demand additive manufacturing.

A lot of the confusion associated with "3d printing can't do that" is that of the 3 main types of 3d printing, only one has seen somewhat widespread consumer adoption (so far): polymer extrusion printing. That's essentially most of what you see as commercially available today.

There are two other types: stereolithographic printing and laser sintering printing. Stereo will bring us higher resolution polymer based prints. Such as extremely intricate plastic tools capable of advanced capillary action for a laboratory. I recommend checking out Formlabs.

Laser sintering uses powdered bases to create metal and ceramic parts. Objects made this way can absolutely be very strong. This may bring the car parts to a repair shop near you.

Five to seven years ago, the state of polymer extrusion printing today would have been unthinkable. I'd put my money on laser sintering and stereolithography to follow a similar trend.

"I guess you can use them to make molds for stronger parts but you cannot make the strong part itself."

I made a strong part today! :)

Generally speaking, 3d printing doesn't smell that bad. In a well ventilated area many people can't even pick up on the smell at all.

It's certainly no worse than the an unfamiliar smell you may encounter in an automotive garage. To say it's awful is a tad much.

If you are talking about the most common types of 3d printers on the market today, polymer extrusion printers, the smell is entirely dependent on the polymer you are using. The two most commonly used are ABS and PLA.

ABS has a more potent and unpleasant odor, but it's really not that bad. PLA, derived from sugars, ranges from almost no smell to a neutral "cooking oil" smell.

I haven't had the pleasure of working with stereolithography or laser sintering printers (yet). But I'm willing to bet that stereolithography printers have no odor or at least less odor than polymer extrusion printers (they use UV light to heat up a resin, somewhat similar base material as extrusion printers but probably produces less of the "hot polymer smell").

On the other hand, I'd also be willing to bet that laser sintering printers produce a great deal of odor sometimes, as they heat up powdered base materials to produce metal and ceramic parts.

Of the three main types of 3d printing: polymer extrusion (aka full deposition), stereolithography, and laser sintering; only polymer extrusion has somewhat widespread consumer adoption (as of today), and it just doesn't smell that much.

Oops! No, that's my bad. I liked your comment by the way. I was just trying to give people a reference time if they were curious.

I'm still watching the VOD because I didn't catch it live. I didn't realize the timing doesn't sync. In the VOD he first talks about unified memory architecture at about 51 minutes.

He actually started talking about unified memory architecture at about the 51 minute mark. (If anyone else is curious.)

I work in a biochemistry research laboratory at a large, well funded university. It's interesting to observe the software/hardware usage around the lab.

The boring majority of software in the lab is just the latest iteration of a 'Microsoft-whatever' suite stuffed into a standard enterprise Dell box.

It's the exceptions that are interesting.

For example, a few weeks ago the lab's last PC that ran Windows 95 died. That really sucked for a few people because a piece of proprietary software that ran an important microscope camera only ran on Windows 95. (Only ran on Win95 if you didn't want to pay big time for an upgrade to a modern OS.)

Intriguingly, a PI I am working with is planning on using his old Silicon Graphics machine very soon. He told me there are still certain features lacking in modern software that can be found on software written for some older SG machines.

Finally, we are in the process of restoring an old machine that is frequently used for pulling apart very thin pieces of glass for electrophysiology experiments. Granted, all the software inside is embedded. But the software and the hardware still exceed 13 years of age by a wide margin.

It's really neat to see older programs and hardware chugging along. And it's strangely reassuring to see that while encountering the latest Javascript framework debate on Hacker News.