fancyketchup

> You can commit nearly anonymous transactions over long distances with it. It's value over international currencies is in proportion to the size of the black market transacted via BtC.

Eh, I think in the long run that will be more of a hindrance than a help, as it will give governments in many places a plausible reason to attempt to ban or limit its use (which would tend to lead to a vicious cycle of only criminals--however you define that--using it).

On a more practical level, I can't remember a time my credit card has been refused for local or international transactions (and any additional fees are largely invisible to me, the consumer). Paying with a credit card also carries certain advantages: If the goods aren't delivered, I spend 2 minutes on the phone and get my money back.

For the vast majority of consumers, the headache of converting local currency to BtC, learning how to use it, and finding a reliable escrow service will greatly outweigh the benefits of being able to buy drugs (especially as states decriminalize drugs). That keeps BtC firmly in the grasp of speculators.

I sort of gave up on Reason.com after their article on the LA Expo Line: http://reason.com/archives/2012/05/05/new-light-rail-ridersh...

The short version is that they surveyed ridership on the new line a couple months after it opened, and claimed that actual ridership fell short of the transit agency's estimates. The article also complains about long delays. This is, of course, very silly because two months is not very long to work out all the bugs in a large system, nor is it enough time for people to adjust their commute patterns to the new option. I used to commute on this train a few times per week, and service delays were more or less eliminated by September 2012.

Now, two years after the line opened, actual ridership in 2014 (30k people per weekday)[1] is well on track to hit the projected ridership estimates for 2030 (36k people per weekday)[2].

This sort of shoddy (and, dare I say ideologically-motivated?) reporting makes me tend to doubt the veracity of everything else they publish, especially after Reason doubled-down in a rebuttal[3].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expo_Line_%28Los_Angeles_Metro%...

[2] http://backup.buildexpo.org/phase2/Phase%202%20FEIR%20Docume...

[3] http://reason.com/blog/2012/05/08/trainspotters-deriving-num...

As others have mentioned, there is no universal definition of FP. But if you're willing to stretch your personal definition of FP to include LabVIEW, then there are a considerable number of real FP applications used every day in research and industry for real, productive things. It's just that LabVIEW tends to be considered outside the domain of "software engineers," so most people here probably haven't hear of it. Nevertheless, it is a real programming language, and you can do anything with it that you could do with any other language (albeit, much more tediously).

I don't think I've ever heard of LabVIEW described as a functional language (and it's clearly not a "purely" functional language), but it programs like one. Programs are written by connecting VIs (functions in LabVIEW-speak) with wires in a data-flow diagram. VIs don't contain any state (usually, unless you explicitly use local or global variables--which all the documentation warns you never to do upon pain of something really awful). VIs mostly don't have side-effects (unless you're explicitly doing something with the filesystem, or data acquisition, or motion control, or... ).

One of the difficulties of using FP for "real" things is that you give up something you got for free with imperative languages, namely control of timing. LabVIEW works around this with something called a sequence diagram, which forces VIs to be called in a deterministic order (because, being FP, you can't otherwise divine in what order VIs will be called).

LabVIEW also encourages the use of a trick to enforce sequencing without using sequence structures (and this trick is absolutely mandatory if you don't want a write-only program): The abstract name of an instrument resource is passed to a VI, and then returned unchanged. Since the returned values of a function aren't determined until it is run, you can chain several functions together in this way so that they run in sequence (which, IMHO, is bad practice because this abstract resource thing being passed about is something which is needed by each function, and can be modified by each function, but SHOULDN'T be modified by any function).

Annoyances aside, I've written a number of medium-sized programs in LabVIEW that implement entire data acquisition systems, including control of external instruments, positioning of mechanical parts, high voltage power supplies (no side effects, heh, sure thing), pulsed lasers (same), and a synchronous detector of my own design. I would also note that the data acquisition systems do not use any local or global variables (as LabVIEW uses those terms), so it could be argued that they are have a very high "functional purity," though that was not my intention when I wrote them.

My personal opinion is that the productivity claims of the FP camp are largely inflated. Maybe FP is better suited to problem domains that exist entirely inside the computer.

> don't go to grad school unless you get a stipend and tuition waiver

That actually sounds like some of the least controversial advice I've every heard about grad school, at least on the science-y side (maybe things are different in the humanities?). In fact, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone with a Ph.D. who didn't agree with that statement.

But also vastly reduced pollution. Popular Mechanics had a few articles about the extent of the problem in Los Angeles (which you can read for free):

http://books.google.com/books?id=SNkDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA178&dq=sm...

http://books.google.com/books?id=xdwDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA65&dq=smo...

Now, it's true that pollution is still generally worse in poor areas compared to wealthier areas, but the pollution issue alone makes me prefer a "poor" lifestyle today over a "middle class" one from 50 or 60 years ago. We also have additional consumer protections for food and medicine compared to 60 years ago, which makes it hard to compare products across decades.

The power source is immaterial. Industrial-scale smelting produces CO2 at the point of production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall-H%C3%A9roult_process

I think... you might want to read up on aluminum smelting, which converts alumina (Al2O3) into aluminum (Al). The process involves passing a large current between two graphite (carbon) electrodes via the alumina.

Al2O3 + carbon => Al + CO2

Edit: I can only guess that the down votes are for not providing a source? Here you go:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_smelting

It doesn't matter if the smelter runs on fairy dust or hippie juice. Reducing aluminum oxide to aluminum produces CO2 no matter the energy source.

So I started college as a CS major (and then switched to physics because it was harder :-), but my recollection is that my code was graded not just by whether it produced the correct outputs. It was also graded on structure, use of good variable and function names, comments, IDL diagrams, appropriate revision control check-ins, etc. As I recall, those sort of subjective things were worth about 50% of the grade on homework assignments.

That's sort of a straw man, though, isn't it? The Google guy said he'd take a B-level CS major over an A-level humanities major. So you're not comparing top-25% CS to top-25% humanities. You're comparing second quartile (roughly) CS to top quartile (again, roughly) humanities.

Now, I'm a just physicist with no skin in the game, but it seems to me that arguments on HN in support of the Google position (and yours in particular) all try to argue that CS is generically "harder," or that it's easier to graduate with a humanities degree, or that the xth percentile CS major is smarter than the xth percentile humanities major.

So far I haven't really seen anyone address the assertion that graduating with an A-average in a humanities major is very difficult. Maybe it really is easy to get a BA in humanities with a 2.0 GPA (I don't know, but it sounds plausible). But that's not the issue. The issue is how a 3.5ish GPA humanities major compares to a 2.5ish CS major.

Actually, as a car-free resident of LA for close to a decade (grad school then work), I'd say LA's public transit system is pretty good, and the major obstacles to making it better are rampant NIMBYism and the Bus Riders' Union (aka the Bus Drivers' Union). The bus system is a well though-out grid (though you do often need to use buses from multiple agencies for historical reasons), with both local and express service on heavily used routes. There are extensive connections between bus and rail service, and connections between rail lines are also generally well-timed, so there isn't much waiting on the platform. There's also a contactless payment system (TAP) that works on almost all transit agencies in LA County.

Frankly, the at-grade Red Line system wouldn't fare any better than buses in today's LA traffic.

LACMTA has been expaning rail and "bus rapid transit" (Orange and Silver lines), but is hamstrung by neighborhood groups who bring frivolous lawsuits that only make the rail service less useful and more expensive. Some recent examples:

1) Residents near Dorsey High School sued LACMTA to stop the Expo Line (some social justice nonsense about how rail transit is for the 1%), which resulted only in millions of extra taxpayer costs and Expo Line trains having to stop before crossing Farmdale Ave (adding several minutes to every trip).

2) Beverly Hills has an enormous traffic problem on Wilshire Blvd., but has tried to stop all of the following: a freeway; signal priority for buses on Wilshire; bus lanes on Wilshire; and a subway extension under Wilshire (some law-and-order nonsense about how rail transit is for the 99%).

3) South San Fernando Valley residents wanted a subway instead of surface rail on what is now the Orange Line, and they lobbied the state legislature to make it illegal to build a surface rail line on the right of way... so they got Bus Rapid Transit, which uses extra-long buses. The infrastructure cost is about half that of rail, but the operating costs are three times as high (because the line is at capacity, and each bus holds 1/3rd as many passengers as a train).

Land acquisition is actually an insignificant cost in building LA rail transit lines because LACMTA already purchased the rights of way they need years ago for peanuts. The Expo Line and Orange Line rights of way were purchased directly from railroads that didn't want them anymore. The proposed Crenshaw Corridor and Gold Line Foothill Extension would mostly use old Southern Pacific rights of way (that LACMTA already owns).

Tunneling is expensive in any city, but how else are you going to fix traffic? There isn't room to expand surface streets, and if you thought it was difficult and expensive to get a light rail or subway built... whoa boy, you don't want to even think about a new freeway.

As for the airport connection: There's already a free shuttle from the Green Line (Aviation Station, I believe) that loops through all the terminals, just like the parking lot shuttles. LACMTA also runs "Flyaway" tour-style buses from LAX and Burbank to a bunch of places around the city, where they connect with other transit lines. The reason the train doesn't stop in the terminals is that the LA airport authority has been saying (for the last 30 years) that they're going to demolish and rebuild the terminals in a year or two.

Sure, but there are sensors to tell the ship where it is. Give me a GPS jammer and a loop of wire, and I'll drive the ship to my secret treasure island. Of course, there are countermeasures for that, but I think the lack of steering wheel is a particularly weak argument.

Probably because we aren't willing to pay airplane prices and do maintenance on airplane schedules. I suspect that a container ship usually takes longer to travel between two ports of call than an airplane is legally allowed to go between inspections.

Airline unions appear to be, but the way the seniority incentives work give us the current outcome.

If you assume that total pilot pay for the airline is fixed and pay goes linearly with seniority (just to keep it simple and concrete), then increasing the wages of entry-level pilots requires reducing the wages of senior pilots. If you further assume that all pilots are perfectly selfish (that is, they'll never vote themselves a pay cut), then 50% of the votes automatically go to keeping new pilot wages low.

There will also be a contingent of just-below-median pilots who have paid their dues and are looking forward to the fat paycheck that comes with being in the top 50%. Transferring pay from high-seniority to low-seniority hurts the lifetime wages of this group, so they'll vote against it, too.

Thus new pilots are paid a pittance and old pilots are paid handsomely. I'd think this still works even if the pay scale is strangely-shaped.

It's not. But from what I've heard, it's much less than that per seat.

I'm saying that the PIs of most university labs would gladly pay several times the retail price of XP just to be able to continue having support for multi-thousand-dollar instruments.

But I think this nitpicking over a relatively minor point--the important part is that upgrading from XP to 7 costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per computer for some people.

Edit: In case you were referring to the sentence "$10k buys a lot of...," I can see how my intent was unclear (and I was sort of talking about both small and large labs at the same time). My understanding was that there is a minimum buy-in for extended support (something like $100k per year), but that such a contract would cover hundreds or thousands of computers. That's on the order of $100 to $1k per PC.

A medium-sized university lab might have dozens of instruments costing on the order of $10k to $100k. Now, paying $100k to support $100k worth of instruments for a year doesn't make too much sense, but paying a few hundred dollars per $10k instrument does. Even at $1k per PC per year, avoiding an instrument purchase buys a least a decade of extended support. It's just a question of getting a critical mass (or, by convincing Microsoft to open up the program to smaller organizations).

> at what point does supporting an older operating system like XP cost you more money then it would to spend the money upgrading to a later version of Windows?

Well... when expensive capital equipment runs XP, that point is essentially "never."

For example: Old versions of LabVIEW run on XP, but not 7. A license for one desktop runs $10-50k, depending on options. Lots of sciencey equipment requires software that only runs on XP. Want to upgrade to 7? Ok, here, buy a new $100k laser / $20k UV-vis-IR spectrometer / $10k multi-channel scaler / $10k oscilloscope / whatever. Another user mentioned his CNC machine (those aren't cheap).

I mean, you can do that, but $10k buys you a lot of extended support (which is curiously unavailable to everyone who isn't a big business). I'm sure most university labs would jump at the chance to pay a few hundred dollars per machine to support instruments incompatible with 7.

> I don't know the system, but I'm sure it's already synchronous in that there are numerous receiver channels and their acquisition values are correlated with the illumination angle.

This is not "synchronous detection" in the way I meant it. I don't mean this as a put-down, but it may be instructive to Google "lock-in amplifier," a term I mentioned in my previous post.

All of your other concerns are addressed by appropriate choice of PRN code(s). Additional vehicles, which operate without the need for coordination, merely raise the noise floor. They do not "jam" each other. It should be obvious that a minimum S/N ratio is required for the LIDAR system to work and further that an arbitrarily-high number of LIDAR transmitters therefore cannot coexist. However, it is far from obvious (to me, at least without learning more about LIDAR and plugging in some numbers to a model) that a congested freeway of driverless cars would have "too many" LIDAR transmitters.

ABS allows you to take maximum advantage of the traction you do have, but it doesn't magically improve your traction. The problem the GP is referencing is that the driver (be it human or computer) operates the vehicle using some sort of model for the maximum available traction. (Some) Humans are able to notice when it is snowing, re-tune their model and drive at an appropriate speed. It doesn't seem impossible that some heuristic could be invented to do the same for a computer driver, but I don't think anyone has demonstrated that heuristic yet.

> It's not clear that it works for multiple independent vehicles, either. We may only have self-driving car, singular.

I'm no LIDAR expert, but I do design and build synchronous detectors (think: boxcar/lock-in amplifier/gated counter). Maybe this has been tried and there's some reason it wouldn't work, but I don't see why you couldn't apply a pseudo-random modulation to the LIDAR emitter and then run the received signal through a correlator. Besides bringing some conversion gain and allowing for more accurate distance determination (compared to a simple pulsed-ToF), PRN modulation allows you to share the channel with other transmitters (CDMA, if you will).

> BTW, LIDAR doesn't work in snow and rain. Today.

Isn't this just a matter of the wavelength used by today's LIDARs? There's a huge hole in the liquid and solid water absorption spectrum in the visible range.

The trucks are driving between relatively fixed points, so it's a simple matter to build CNG stations there. Plus, the cost of a battery scales linearly with the capacity of the battery, while the cost of the CNG tank scales the square root of the capacity. Batteries are also heavier per unit energy, which reduces the truck's legal payload capacity.

So that use case has a strong argument for CNG.

Weight doesn't really matter for a personal automobile, and you can't (easily) make the tank big enough to argue that a large tank is cheaper than a large battery. It's true, but costs unrelated to tank size are still important, and the bigger issue is that the range sucks unless you give up the entire trunk (since you can't make a CNG tank flat (like Tesla) or T-shaped (like GM).

> Charging quickly does release more heat, which can reduce the lifecycle of the battery, but there are workarounds to minimize this.

I suspect that's why the GP was warned not to quick-charge his/her Leaf too often: The Leaf battery does not have an active cooling system.

I suspect the energy cost is a little higher than that because a commercial electricity customer (like Tesla) will often be subject to 'demand charges,' which are assessed based on the highest power used in a billing period. Since the point of a supercharger is to deliver a lot of power, the demand charge may be quite high.

I still agree with your conclusion though... Capital still dwarfs energy, even if they pay several times what you estimated.

Have these models actually been verified experimentally? My perception is that people sitting in the back of the airplane often place their carry on in the first available overhead bin space. This creates a traffic jam as people sitting near the front walk past each other looking bin space and then back to their seat. It also presents a problem when exiting the plane as all the people in the front try to make their way back to collect their bags.

It may be the case that the two pieces of plastic are "yellow back and border" and "grey front cover, " but having any other color on the back invalidates the infringement claim. If they had done a yellow border with grey sides and back, they would not have infringed. If they had done yellow back and grey front (with no border) they wouldn't have infringed. If the had done yellow front and grey back without border or yellow front and back with grey border they wouldn't have infringed.

There are all sorts of ways to make a yellow and grey multimeter that don't infringe on Fluke's trade dress. Fluke isn't monopolizing a general two-tone color scheme: They are monopolizing a specific arrangement of two colors, and that is an eminently reasonable thing to do.

This is a little like arguing "Well, copyright shouldn't exist because you shouldn't get a monopoly on just some general words." But that's a strawman--you can only obtain a copyright on a specific arrangement of general words.

And I quote:

"[...] chances are you will get a zero-profit or even below-cost deal on your new car"

Let's say I'm a car dealer and I need to sell one more car to get my bonus. Let's say that car cost me $20,000. Let's say the bonus is $100,000. Now let's say I give away the car for free. I still have $80,000 more than I started with at the beginning of the comment.

Yea, neither am I: Grandpa had a Ford dealership until about 5 years ago, his son ran the service department. My uncle on the other side currently sells cars for Honda. I'm well-versed in the car business.

I'm not sure how your comment contradicts mine. If you get a $100,000 bonus for selling a vehicle, the marginal profit on that vehicle is damn near $100,000. Dealerships don't sell cars for a loss. Of course, that doesn't help the consumer unless the consumer wants that particular model, with the particular options that need to be sold to get the bonus.

The great thing about comments like this one are that they help me identify whose opinion not to take seriously in the future.

Not being able to distinguish the difference between copying multiple distinctive elements of trade dress (yellow back AND yellow front border AND uniform grey front) and inadvertently using a particular color anywhere on the product is really quite an amazing feat.

See, but this just shows that even those who think they are educated car shoppers actually aren't. Dealers never sell cars at zero or negative profit, unless you ignore things like holdback (a rebate on the wholesale price of the car when the car is sold at retail) or factory quota incentives (a "bonus" for dealers who sell a certain number of certain models of cars in a particular month). If you think you got the car for below cost, chances are you forgot to factor in holdback or you just pushed the dealer over the edge for a big fat manufacturer bonus check.

I'm not a Fluke junkie either, but I don't buy the "functional colors" argument. Nobody made a multimeter that looked like that until Fluke started doing it. Fluke also makes a range of "intrinsically safe" multimeters with a red instead of orange border. Are those less "functional?" They are certainly less well-known, so it wouldn't make sense to copy them.

It's the same as the cheapo "bench" multimeters that have five input terminals and the same layout as an Agilent 344xxA (or Fluke 88xx) but don't have a 4-wire Ohms function (or even a low-enough range to need 4-wire Ohms) or a proper guard connection (which is the purpose of the the 5th terminal).

I think you made an arithmetic mistake. Look at it another way:

10 minutes per person per day * 8kbps = 600 kB per person per day. 600 kB / person / day * 365 days /year = 214 MB / year.

That's nothing. Consumer flash media is something like $0.30/GB. Let's mark that up 100x because the three letter agency doesn't care about costs and has an inefficient procurement process, so $30/GB.

0.209 GB / year * $30 / GB = $6 per person per year.

There are 300 million people in the US, but phone calls are between at least two parties, so:

300 million people * 0.5 * $6 per person per year = $900 million per year.

You can't even build a mile of highway for that little. Hell, some big cities in the US have a bigger annual deficit than that.

Wait, so you're equating the risk of allowing someone to be trained to fly an aircraft with the risk of allowing anyone to fly an aircraft without any training?