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They need to take that money, break Yahoo up into pieces, sell it, and then whatever money they have they should fund 100,000 startups and see what rises from the ashes.

We're a little crazy. Think of the families of the people who work at Yahoo.

We're also a little overbearing. Who are we to say what others should do with what they own?


Well, if they are a voting share holder, they kind of do get to say what happens.

> Think of the families of the people who work at Yahoo.

Hope isn't a strategy.


I prefer that they posted it as an HN comment. Scrolling isn't difficult, and mobile users rarely click on links. I probably wouldn't have read it if it was in a pastebin or linked to a source.


Civilizations that have (generally) destructive, punitive, insular, judging, self-righteous, and violent myths don't.

This seems to be the opposite of history. Until recently, violence was one of the only ways for any civilization to persist. The advent of nuclear weapons changed that somewhat (but not if civilizations begin to use them). And most of the myths of a civilization seem to be a byproduct of their actions.


Despite complaining about the Quakers below, I'd have to disagree here, too. It's possible to be too peaceful, but it's also possible -- and very easy and common -- to be too violent.

Being warlike enough to defend your society is one thing; being warlike enough to conquer neighbors who hate you, or to throw away lives and wealth in pursuit of glory, is something else. Sparta, Assyria, and the Aztec Empire didn't turn out so well, after all...


In the case of the Aztecs, they quite arguably happened to run into someone even more destructive, punitive, insular, judging, self-righteous, and violent then they were.


Cortez and his 300-odd men could never have taken down the Aztecs, were it not for how all their neighbors hated them so passionately that they'd rather be ruled by smelly, strange-looking, gold-hungry space aliens.


Far more important were the western diseases they had no idea they were carrying


The diseases certainly had an effect (after the Night of Sorrow and before the conquest of Tenochtitlan, smallpox struck the whole Valley of Mexico); but Tlaxcala had an effect too, and if the Aztecs' subject peoples had rallied to their arms in the same way the Tlaxcalans rallied to the Spanish (after some initial fighting against them), there's no way Cortez could have won.


The Aztec civilization was already in a massive decline for over 150 years when Cortez arrived.


The Aztec Empire wasn't even 150 years old; if memory serves, Tlacallel flourished about 80 years before Cortes. Nor were they in decline -- Montezuma had stopped the empire's opportunistic conquests, and was focused on conquering the independent countries that still formed pockets of resistance geographically surrounded by the Aztecs. Tlaxcala was the most important of these, as it happens...


The empire is not the civilization. The civilization arguably goes back more than 1000 years, certainly since the Toltecs, which was a considered successor and collector of the Olmec, Teotihuacano and Maya people's cultures. The Aztecs themselves considered the vanquished Toltec their cultural superiors. By the time Montezuma II came to power, the Aztec world was already winding down, consumed by resource wars; and had entered a period of insular medieval-like culture that shunned their once great, open cities in favor of fortress-like enclaves.


Didn't Sparta get taken down by Macedonia. Who in turn got taken down by Rome? Sparta existed for ~500 years.

By that standard, we have extremely few dynasties who could be called "successful" these days. But I do agree that transitioning from very warlike to just somewhat warlike tends to help survival.


Sparta _existed_ for 500 years; they flourished for zero. They existed at the cost of innumerable distorted or ruined lives, and contributed nothing to the human patrimony except possibly the idea of totalitarianism (which is not much of a contribution).

They fell well before the Macedonians, too: a commander of a minor city -- Corinth, I think -- noticed that the Spartans always used the exact same tactics, deployed his troops in a preposterous formation that ensured that the Spartans would lose if they changed nothing, and won decisively. The Helots immediately revolted and recovered their independence, and that was the end of Sparta.


Case in point: Nassim Taleb, The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dominance of the Stubborn Minority

http://fooledbyrandomness.com/minority.pdf


Your claim brings to mind the idea that a man falling from a 50 storey building passes the 25th floor thinking "Everything is going great so far!"


The main problem is power. There's no way to project light into the retina without power, and it's difficult to get power to the lens without using wires. Induction is promising, but the falloff is dramatic. Meaning your inductive power generator would have to be pretty much on top of your eyes for it to power your contacts.

Glasses plus contacts might be a good idea. The generator could sit on the frames. The contacts would allow you to use a small amount of light to get the same effect as an Oculus, which means much smaller power requirements.

Still, to project light, you need some way of projecting light. It's hard to imagine something that can be embedded into a contact lens which is also transparent. And if it's not transparent, it's not really augmented reality.

Fun to imagine. Hopefully someone will come up with something.


Part of the appeal of FF7 is the soundtrack. Make that dynamic, and you would've ruined FF7.

It's a good idea that makes sense for a lot of games. Just pointing out a counterexample.


Dynamic doesn't necessarily mean "random". A game with dynamic music could still have a set of common themes. Good composers can blend themes together and make variations on a theme for any mood. There's no fundamental reason dynamic music couldn't be every bit as good, musically, as pre-composed music.


Proteus (video game) has procedural mixing of a pre-set score based on which objects the player is near at. I suppose not much in terms of actual composition (harmony etc), but something which continues to irk me (so to speak) to try to think whether more than that is feasibly doable presently (and not only in the future).


Has there been research into this? That's a really cool concept. It's something I'd like to look into, if anyone knows any references.


I heard an interesting talk by someone who explored real-time game soundtrack composition for his dissertation: http://www.danielbrownmusic.com/artificial-musical-intellige...


3 million dollars is nothing. It took a million dollars to make a single very low-quality video game, circa 2008. Salaries are expensive.

The investment model is set up to let founders "burn through" money while they explore new approaches to old industries. The investors don't really care that the money is lost. To be an investor, you have to assume 9 out of 10 of your investments will be write-offs.

So if you're not defending the investors' money, and if the founders are happy doing this, then why are you intentionally being harsh? Let them do their thing. Yeah they might fail, but so what? It's the only path to success.

It's not really productive to try to save people or companies via internet comments. You're more likely to demoralize them than to change their minds. Unfortunately, demoralization is often someone's hidden motive.


I have actually helped a company where our initial interaction was via an internet comment, so don't make assumptions. Stating market reality is not being harsh, there is an abundant supply of royalty free music available at a very low cost or for free. If you're demoralized because someone states the facts of a competitive market than that is very unfortunate and you're not really fit to be an entrepreneur in a highly competitive market. From experience, working on a product that is failing is very demoralizing. I actually will like to see them do something novel and great with their technology.

Moreover there is great ideas* in this thread that can actually help the company.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10707389


I actually will like to see them do something novel and great with their technology.

As a developer, occasional FPS gamer, and musician, I'd like to see them tackle adaptive generative music that is actually convincing. I want music that takes cues from the gaming environment without obvious loop splicing points and without feeling mechanical.


Yes, that was I was expecting.

1. I upload a video 2. Jukedeck finds me the perfect audio for it.


I think you're missing the whole point for "ShowHN", which IMHO is really valueable,worthy comments/opinions you should take into consideration.


Actually not. Here are the rules for Show HN:

Be respectful. Anyone sharing work is making a contribution, however modest.

Ask questions out of curiosity. Don't cross-examine.

Instead of "you're doing it wrong", suggest alternatives. When someone is learning, help them learn more.

When something isn't good, you needn't pretend that it is. But don't be gratuitously negative.

Calling someone's startup "headed for the deadpool" is the definition of gratuitously negative.


It's still all in good faith and in a civil tone.


There are a variety of algorithms which are safe in a post-quantum crypto world. Developing and deploying them will take time, but they exist. Making them safe will take longer, but it will happen.

The threat you describe sounds like a race. But in fact, it's more like a switch. Right now the world is pre-quantum. When the switch is flipped, to post-quantum, a lot of algorithms will break. But not all of them.

See http://pqcrypto.org/ for some interesting reading.

Post-Quantum Cryptography, Bernstein, 2009: http://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/135832/Post_Quantum...

Regarding your point, I don't think that people here are being dismissive of your ideas. You're quite right. But there are reasons to be positive about the future, while highlighting the negatives. Isn't it so interesting that certain algorithms can be safe in a pqcrypto world?

Notice where the algorithms spring up from. You mention a hackathon, but that's not where these algorithms root. They're from universities. And universities are interesting. If the legislation will face resistance, it will probably be from academics, like in the last crypto war.


Today there won't be much issues, I'm talking about a reality in which your Government (doesn't matter if it's the US, UK, Germany or China) is not only not helping you to build strong crypto (which they always done so in the past), but actually is working against you.

How easy would it to work on open encryption software if we'll have to revert to the Pre Bernstein V. United States era (which wasn't so long ago) and one that might actually be more heavily regulated than (restriction on actual work on encryption and related field rather than exporting software) before? Heck Phil Zimmermann almost ended up going to jail when PGP was "leaked" outside of the US, and this isn't East Germany, this is the US in the mid 90's.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States


And I'm saying, yes, you're right. But have hope. That's something to watch out for going forward, but we can go forward.

This thread's article is interesting, because it's the first step toward a world you describe. But reason has a way of prevailing. Not always, but usually.

One thing that's missing now, that someone here might want to cook up, is a good explanation. The topic of crypto is difficult. Not just because it's hard like calculus, but because there are a lot of subtleties. Old analogies to locks and doors aren't really applicable. What we need is a way of highlighting what's going on, why people should care, and what they can do.


When I download the source and try to open index.html in Chrome, it doesn't work.

"Unhandled promise rejection DOMException: Failed to execute 'texImage2D' on 'WebGLRenderingContext': Tainted canvases may not be loaded."

Does anyone know how to get it working? Thanks!


You need to run it from a web server. Open a shell on the root directory and run `python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8888` on it. Browse to `localhost` on 8888.


Why wouldn't (or shouldn't) one be able to make it run standalone?


It's to do with the browser security model and JavaScript restrictions on file:// paths.

I'm not entirely sure of the class of attack that it prevents, but it's been that way for quite a while now.


For a while, browsers allowed unfettered Javascript access to local files, so malware sites would just get users to save the site, and run it.

Tada, access to local files, or unlimited XHR requests for DDoSing, etc. :-)


I think it relates to the JavaScript used, and limitations imposed by the web browser.


Thanks, that worked.


If that's true, then it should be easy to name some startups that fell into technical mediocrity and recovered. Are there any?

I saw the opposite happen firsthand: a company that was about to get steamrolled by a competitor, and they knew it. There was nothing they could do, even though they had over two years to prepare. The reason they couldn't do anything was because their team was mediocre. Last I checked, that company no longer had any job listings.

How many people here have similar stories? It's tempting to believe that mediocre programmers can be mentored, but it doesn't seem that simple.


This is a great breakdown even for a novice who doesn't know much about how rendering engines typically function.

What would you like to know? I have some time, so if anyone was hoping to learn more about this, ask me.


The only graphics programming I've ever done has been with pygame.

What should I read next?


This domain is unique in that it's not a good idea to read. The most effective way to navigate this territory seems to be: Think of a simple goal, then force yourself to solve it. Don't look up how to solve it until you're so frustrated that you want to throw your monitor across your room.

Actionable advice: Set up a program such that you have an array of pixels. Say, 512x512. Now write a while loop which randomizes those pixels. Finally, figure out some way to "create a window and put those pixels on the screen."

You now have a game loop. This is roughly how every game works at a basic level.

The next step is to realize that a triangle is the fundamental way to draw shapes quickly. Want to draw a square? That's two triangles. Want to draw a humanoid? Sounds complicated, but artists approximate humanoids with a combination of spheres, cylinders, cubes, etc. And all of those can be divided up into triangles.

So a triangle is therefore the first place to start in understanding graphics in general. What's the goal? "Create a data structure to represent a triangle. Now try to draw a white triangle into your little pixel array."

It's going to be tough. But tough work is good. I remember how difficult it was for me to even get a basic white triangle up on the screen. But the rewards are worthwhile, because at this point a lot of other things will start to click. A "vertex buffer" will no longer be mysterious, for example, because you'll immediately see that your triangle structure (whatever you came up with) was really just "a vertex buffer with three vertices." And then you'll start to wonder why graphics programmers came up with such complicated words to describe such simple concepts...

At this point, you'll have the ability to go in one of two directions: "Notch" or "Carmack." It depends entirely on what you find interesting. If you like the idea of making games, concentrate on creating Pong. (You have everything you need, because you just got a triangle up on the screen, after all.) If you like more along the lines of what the article talks about, then concentrate on creating a software rasterizer. "Software rasterizer" is another one of those terms that turn out to sound scary, but is way easier than you'd expect. It's hard in the same way that learning to ride a bike is hard: it'll take awhile, but you'll never forget it. After that, nothing else you ever do (in graphics) will ever seem even slightly mysterious. I have some thoughts on how to learn the latter, if anyone's interested.


... then you'll start to wonder why graphics programmers came up with such complicated words to describe such simple concepts...

In general, the reason is that these were not the first concepts that they came up with. Often they started out with even simpler concepts that didn't even need names -- but it eventually turned out that these were too simple to offer good performance, or did not map adequately onto evolving hardware.

The original way to draw a triangle in OpenGL didn't involve vertex buffers at all. Basically you just said "OpenGL, draw me some triangles":

  glBegin(GL_TRIANGLES);
  glVertex3f(0, 0, 1);
  glVertex3f(1, 1, 1);
  glVertex3f(0, 1, 1);
  glEnd();
That was all -- no need to create buffers or bind them. The same simplicity extended everywhere: instead of writing and binding shaders, you just declared what kind of lights and materials you wanted before rendering your triangle.

But when we got programmable GPU hardware that could execute whole programs separately from the CPU, these old simple ways became a tremendous performance bottleneck and an obstacle to implementing more advanced rendering algorithms. On the desktop, all the old OpenGL APIs still work, but they were removed entirely from the mobile edition.


   This domain is unique in that it's not a good idea to read.
crazy talk.

Sure, learn by doing; but there are great resources to help you understand far, far faster than you ever will by experimenting alone. If nothing else, there is good code to read, and classic texts.


Mmhm. As with everything, it's a balance. It's important to understand that reading is one of the most effective forms of procrastination that has ever been invented. It's also the prism through which your entire future passes, but everyone already knows that.

For example, Carmack was able to "invent" BSP because he was (as far as I've heard) an avid reader of medical journals. Specifically, journals and papers about the graphics techniques they used at the time. The field of medicine turns out to be very lucrative for an ambitious graphics programmer, because they're often at the frontiers of what's currently possible. So apparently BSP was used in accelerating medical renderings, and Carmack was able to see their potential for realtime graphics. The only reason he was able to do that was by reading pretty much every possible thing.

None of that will help you unless you force yourself to do and not read, though.


You stated "This domain is unique in that it's not a good idea to read."

This is just not true in either of its claims. It's not even useful hyperbole, really, it's just wrong.

Graphics programming is exactly like other domains of technical development, you will learn best by a combination of reading good summaries/examples of what is known, doing work on your own (not cutting corners), and talking to people that know more about that you do.


And yet, if you proceed as if it were correct, you'll be amazed at what you'll accomplish. The comment I was replying to was essentially asking, "What would've helped you back when you were in my position?" Ten out of ten times, I'd choose to tell myself, "Stop trying to read about how graphics engines work. Figure out how to get triangles up on the screen, without copying someone else."

The best I can say is that my career began from that method. And by asking a lot of questions on IRC.


Glad it worked for you, but that doesn't make it good advice. And doesn't change the lack of uniqueness. It's usually a mistake to generalize from your own experience, when thinking about pedagogy. I'd wager that most people would do ok following that advice as if it were true ... But not as well as if they'd read as well.


>I have some thoughts on how to learn the latter, if anyone's interested.

gimme, gimme.


Blogworthy!



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